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Thanks Barney, hope you and yours are all ok.

I don't think you need our advice, have a chat with your local Government representative. I hear you have whole departments specializing in home security, surveillance, poisoning people in Salisbury... 

Watch out though if using Ajax, it's better suited for cleaning floors and toilets.

Give it a go, really is straight forward and could be superb for your line of business 

Here's a great article from Marketing Week and well worth a read.

The headline stats are:

• Brits spend £2.1bn more on lager, wine and spirits in 2020
• Consumer confidence rebounds amid vaccine rollout
• UK marketers set to lose £1.2bn due to ad fraud
• One in five see no difference between YouTube and TV
• Super Saturday shopper traffic down 40%

Source: www.marketingweek.com/supermarket-spend-consumer-confidence-viewing-habits

No great surprises about alcohol consumption after this year! But interesting that one in five doesn't see any difference between YouTube and the TV. That will no doubt dramatically change as more youngsters overtake us ageing dinosaurs. My own kids would sooner watch YouTube rather than TV channels.

I don't get it myself, but that's because I'm old 

I'll tell you what, I think you need to find some better things to read. "Loneliness in the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic: Cross-sectional results from the COVID-19 Psychological Wellbeing Study"

That's enough to make you jump out the window 

Have a great xmas 

I've been a fan of Quora for a long time, and end up spending many hours disappearing on wild tangents, following stories or themes I've subscribed to. Normally completely non-work, but always fascinating and always learning new things.

I had heard Quora was a favourite target for SEO's, ie target a conversation relevant you to your business, answer a question or provide a solution, whilst linking to your business. Those that can't pull it off just look like the usual low-grade spam. But some get some very good results when done properly.

Then I heard Quora had moved into PPC. After initially dismissing it, I decided to explore it as a possible replacement after falling out with Google (that's another story). So I had a dabble, without spending any time on it, created only 1 advert and started a campaign with a healthy dose of cynicism.

To my surprise, it was actually generating conversions, albeit only a few, but was only costing me about £1.50 a day! I got sidetracked and it was a couple of weeks later when I managed to allocate some time to sit down and look at it properly.

I created multiple adverts, targeted specific topics, and added country exclusions. Guess when I started taking it a bit more seriously...

So what started as a half-hearted experiment is turning into a viable lead generating machine.

If like me you are a bit cynical about advertising on Quora, I'd suggest you rethink and give it a try. Allocate a small budget, just £5 - £10 per day. Set up a block of adverts (I did 4), let them run for a week and check the analytics and see how they are performing.

As with any PPC program, it is about test and tweaking until you are getting a viable return you are happy with. But make sure any changes you make have time to bed in and show results (good or bad) before making more changes. The advantage of Quora is you can target specific topics and conversations with your advert. Not only that, you can see what sort of topics and conversations are making the noise and plan your adverts accordingly. Whereas Google tends to be more general. I can see this working for most type of businesses, whether service or product-related.

To monitor goals, like other PPC programs you will need to add a bit of code to your website to track events, and then add a goal conversion event to the pages that you want to track as a success.  But this is straight forward, and if you don't have access to your websites code, talk to your web developer for who it should be a 5-minute job.

If nothing else, it's worth a look as a potential lead generation tool in this ever more uncertain world. I'm still a big fan of Google, regardless of our recent spat, but I think Quora is a lot more effective than say Facebook PPC, at least in my industry.

If you do try it or use it, report back and let us know how you got on. If anyone wants an update as to how my campaign is going, ask me in a month or twos time and I'll put some more screenshots up.

Anyone who is in business will at some point have done some competitor analysis. This may be scientific using analytical tools and maybe some market research, or a quick Google search of the other plumber van you saw down your street.

There are a lot of tools out there to supposedly help you, but most are making high-level guesses and assumptions from questionable sources or algorithms. If you are looking at doing any analysis, do your homework and don't be fooled by impressive looking websites and stats.

I came across this one which made me smile, zoominfo.com

According to Zoom Info, my little merry band of 4 has suddenly morphed into 345 employees! I'm more concerned about our revenue though which seems to have dropped nearly $10 million  Luckily though, according to Zoom Info, our turnover is still $65 million so we should be able to weather the storm...

Don't tell HMRC though as they'll be wanting more tax off us 

A better way of doing competitor analysis is to ignore these comparison apps, such Alexa Traffic Rank, SpyFu and the host of other ones that will want to charge you a monthly fee. Instead, simply work out what your customers type into Google to find your services or buy your products. If you don't know, just ask them! Either a simple textbox at the end of the checkout process, an email or phone them. This information is your marketing holy grail.

It is also often the biggest surprise to a lot of new business owners and leads them to wasting so much money optimising the wrong keywords or incorrectly positioning their marketing. What you think people type in, and what they actually type in are rarely the same.

Once you have this information, type a phrase into Google and you will instantly see who your competition is. Get a list and do your own competitor research with a Mark 1 spreadsheet and a few columns.

Why do they appear above you? How many reviews have they got? Quality of their website? Information on their site? What's their digital profile like?

Once armed with this info, you can then start making some informed decisions, without relying on automated tools spewing out duff info.

Takes longer, but the result you get will be 1000 times more effective.

Happy analysing 

Can't dress it up, it's been a monumentally depressing year for so many people, unless you work for Zoom or are a self-employed courier driver.

But there has also been massive changes to our culture, opinions and beliefs. A lot of them for the better. Cleaners, Nurses and Checkout Staff have become the new heroes, a lot of us have rediscovered a sense of community, and the days of the 9-5 worker trotting off to the office have been turned on their head. We are moving to a flexible home working task-based economy, which was always going to happen, Covid just fast-forwarded the process.

Plus we have gone nearly a whole year without obsessing about Brexit! Who could have imaged that 12 months ago. 

Normally the New Year is a surge of optimism and energy, to change habits, grow revenue, be a better human being, etc etc. Unfortunately, that seems to be a little lacking if you switch the news on. Optimism seems to have exited stage right, and it looks like we'll all be growing potatoes, brewing moonshine, darning old clothes and reading under candlelight.

So let's kickstart some optimism here 

Start updating your business and marketing plans, get your business as lean as it can be, and if business was slow this year, don't do the same things next year and expect different results. Diversify, examine your skill sets and look around you.

There is a record number of people starting their own business, some through choice, others through desperation. All these small businesses need access to skills and talent they can't afford to employ. So 2021 is going to be even more about outsourcing and growing small business clients. Everyone has skills that are in demand by someone else, and I haven't met anyone yet who can do it all.

So look for those opportunities and grab them. It might admin assistance, copywriting, graphic design, digital marketing, bookkeeping, sales assistance. Maybe it's a handyman service to help set up someone's small office. Or a builder to build the home study, IT support to kit it out and support it, insurance specialist, legal advice, negotiation or contract help, the list is endless. 

Small business is going to be even more important in the years to come as our economy modernises and leaves behind outdated and inflexible business models and attitudes. Support your fellow small business owners, communicate, network, pass leads on if you can't handle them, and watch the Karma unfold. Become known as the person to talk to in your niche, be the nice person in your niche. Avoid vitriol debates and one-sided echo chambers, I think most of us have had enough of division and anger.

But that's all for 2021. Right now, where ever you are, and whoever you are with, have a safe and calm Christmas, recharge those batteries, take a breath and let's all take on 2021 together.

Merry Christmas.

News images from the French end of the Chunnel...

A belated welcome aboard from myself, playing catchup.

More of a 45 day man myself