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Newsletter / Blog


2018-09-05
Marketing, Sales, Web Design and Economics


This blog is about Marketing, Sales, Web design and Economics and was the content of our Spring newsletter, adjusted so that our standard introductory paragraph is not seen as duplicate content, or the content of our previous blog added in the monthly newsletter not be seen as duplicate content - negative for good SEO results.

General news

This month we also write a bit about our own sales and marketing efforts besides marketing your business via a website. We survived the first month of Francois not receiving his monthly salary as a Financial Manager. He wrote a very popular blog on the number one restaurant in Strand, Bens. More than 150 people liked his post. We do a website in Afrikaans on Holidays in the Helderberg where we now ply our trade.  www.helderbergvakansies.co.za. The website offers us the opportunity to engage people in the tourism industry, to write shareable content on Facebook. When ready we will sell advertising space on this website. Its a lifetime project. 

Economics / Accounting on/of Advertising Expenes

Advertising and marketing is because of the alphabet usually the first expense under Total expenses in an Income Statement, grouped together with all the other expenses. When doing cost accounting or analysing the different kinds of expenses Advertising should be viewed as a variable expense and not as a fixed expense.

Quoting from another website https://strategiccfo.com/variable-vs-fixed-cost/

" In accounting, a distinction is often made between variable vs fixed costsVariable costs change with activity or production volume. In comparison, fixed costs remain constant regardless of activity or production volume. In accounting, all costs are either fixed costs or variable costs. "

If you advertising and marketing spend is done correctly then your sales and gross profit should increase. For many small and medium business owners their time is often their most valuable commodity. So we have to reason that time = money.

Let us say you are a web design company in the Helderbrg and you "pay yourself" a salary at a fixed rate, you also advertise with Google AdWords, Newspaper advertisements this could be the scenario:

Scenario Cost of Advertising R Gross Revenue R
Scenario 1 R10,000 R100,000
Scenario 2 R20,000 R150,000
Scenario 3 R30,000 R225,000

It is possible to accurately calculate the cost vs benefits when doing Google AdWords by using tools like Google Analytics.

From above it should be cleared that one should have a different approach to advertising when considering what you can or can not afford.

It is the one expense that people almost always under budget for when doing a business plan or marketing budget.

Without some spend on sales or marketing chances are slim that you will get new sales or even get extra sales from your current client base.

Spending on advertising when the economy is down

In 2015 Francois wrote a news article on News 24 titled "Advertising in a tough economy" . We were greeted yesterday with the news that economy as measured in terms of the growth of the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) has shrunk for two consecutive quarters which qualifies South Africa to be viewed as in a technical rescession. It is not as if we had needed more bad news in South Africa. It is tough to get up in the morning and smile. But we have to in order to survive with our small businesses.

Feeding the sales funnel

Francois has set himself the target of targeting 50 new potential customers today. Yes sales is unfortunately a numbers game. You have got to feed that sales funnel to get the job done. Its quick and easy to directly target people via Facebook pages. If you have a problem with rejection then sales is probably not the job for you. Francois is so set on sales today that it actually irritates him that later this morning he has to actually do an onsite demo presentation which could lead to the website being build there and then, the training to commence. We definitely will look at getting in more people on a contract basis so we each can focus on our different tasks. This mornings meeting should actualy be viewed as a sales meeting and should not take longer than 20 minutes.

Other ways to market your website / business services

We are web designers and we do get leads on a monthly basis from our own website's organic search results but it is not enough. There are other ways to market your website.


Writing a monthly newsletter like I am doing now is but one way.

Writing newspaper articles like the example listed. 

Facebook marketing is another. This morning Francois used his own private Facebook to remind people what he does.

 
Francois Marais
 
7 mins
 

Target for today is to contact 50 people for a website / advert on one of my niche directory websites. Have done 3, doing my monthly newsletter quickly, so be warned I might contact you today to get a website. (My Facebook friends get 25% off this week - mention this post). Doing a great blog on the recession and your website etc. "

 

 

Ok the cat is out the bag - the subscribers of our monthly mailing list can also get 25% off this week only.

 

 

Time is not really on our side this morning and lets face it who wants to read the newsletter of a web designer who basically repeats himself on a monthly basis.

 

 

Here is the content of a prior blog I wrote on our value proposition, what sets us apart from our competition.

 

 

 

May the resession not turn into depression for you. Focus on things under your control, things you can influence and change. One being your website.

The content of this blog was largely the content of our Spring newsletter. We changed it immediately after the newsletter was emailed because Google does not like duplicate content. We use a standard introductory email to better bypass Spamfilters. This standard information is seen as duplicate content. So would the content of a prior blog be seen. Wanted to send out a newsletter but did not really have enough to say so we copied a previous newsletter.

Sales and marketing and making money does most definitely involve good time management since it is a numbers game that requires positive energy.