Hey there podcast family, welcome back and welcome to episode 55 of the Small Business Made Simple Podcast.

As usual thank you for lending me your ears today – I know you have lots of choices, so I sincerely appreciate me being one of them!

If you’re a first time listener, super super welcome, I am so pleased to have you here.  I am your host Jenn Donovan, and, it’s my job, via this podcast, social media and everywhere else actually, to make your business life simpler. 

Business can be lonely and hard and complicated and it’s hardly ever easy, but it should be simple or at least simpler, so that’s my commitment you to on the Small Business Made Simple podcast!

To help your life or at least your working life to be simpler – come and join in my group Like Minded Business Owners.  Ask questions, mingle (online mingle) with like minded business owners and show your expertise and market your business just a little!

Besides my marketing/business owners’ group – I also have another group on Facebook. It’s called Buy from a Bush Business – the link is in the show notes if you’d like to check it out.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/buyfromthebush/

At the time of recording these a little over 135,000 people in the group – yep 135,000 (yikes!) and it’s this group that has inspired this episode.

But whether you’re in that group or not, there’s a few things I consistently see business owners doing in both their digital and social media marketing, as well as offline marketing, that they could just tweak a little and make themselves easier to buy.

My mentor taught me two things around this subject:

1. Make yourself easy to buy from, and
2. A confused buyer never buys

I’m pretty sure if you looked your consumer behaviour you’d agree with both.

If you have to click 7 buttons to purchase something through someone’s check out, you’ll likely stop after button 3, if you google someone’s business or look them up on social media and can’t find them, you’ll move onto the next business or if you pick up the phone to chat to someone only to get an answering machine or an undecipherable message, you’ll, again, more on.

It may not be fair, and it may not be right, but the world moves at a quick pace and we, as business owners, need to make things as simple and easy as possible in order to get the sale.

We lose momentum really quickly and are well aware, as consumers, that there’s always the next business who will want our money.

So, how do you make yourself easy to buy from?

1. Be Your Own Customer

Whether you have an online shop, a bricks and mortar or your sales are made via messenger, have you been your own customer and gone through the process?

Or better yet, get your Mum or Grandma to do?

What’s that saying, if you can’t explain it to a 6 year old, you don’t know what you’re talking about. 

So, if a person who has little computer skills can’t navigate your website or your social media, then there’s some fixing to do.

The KISS method – keep it simple superstar!

If your processes are streamlined, simple and easy, you are going to win more business than your competitors who aren’t.

I super guarantee it!

2. Be Easy to Find

I think it was the wonderful Kate Toon, Beyoncé of SEO, a past guest of this podcast (episode 39 for those playing along at home!), who said

If you’re not on google, are you even on the internet?

And further to that, if you are on google but no one can find you, are you even a real business?

Yes, you might not come up in lots of searches, but if I type into google your actual business name and location and you don’t come up …. You are definitely not making yourself easy to buy from.

Google my Business should be your BEST FRIEND in 2020.

Not sure what I’m talking about, google, google my business!  And perhaps check out episode 47 where I talk about the 6 marketing predictions for 2020 – Google my Business is one of them!

If you don’t have a website, if you can’t afford or don’t want to do google ads, make sure you have google my business set up and you are posting to it like you would a social media platform like Facebook.

It will, in time, make you easy to find!

3. Email Signature

How many emails do you send each day?  Each week?  Each Month?

What’s your email signature look like?

Is it branded?  Does it have your contact numbers, email, website?  Social Media icons so people can click and check you out?

Bonus points if it has a photo of you!  I would recommend every person has a photo of themselves in their email signature. 

Why?  Because humans interact with humans – not logos.

If you’re concerned – have both a logo and a photo or a photo of you holding the logo!

If you create blogs or podcasts or great content like that, have a link to your latest one in the email signature too!

(This is something I need to work on – it’s a bit hit and miss – depending on where I send my emails from – Gmail, outlook, mail chimp, Flodesk etc)

Talking about email providers, I’ve just changed (or in the middle of changing) to Flodesk.  If you’re interested in a new email provider – go to https://flodesk.com/c/LOVEJENN and have a look.  There’s a 30 day trial but after that, with my little link in the show notes, you can get 50% off and only pay $19 per month.

The templates are super super good!  Trust me!

4. Links – URL Links.

This is a big one for me.  Huge in fact.

Links to products, posts, services that either

• Don’t work – they are broken
• Go to a Facebook page or a home page
• Are click-bait

Drive me insane.  I can’t be the only one.

If I click a link, then I actually expect to go to whether I think I’m going.  If I want to see product x, take me specifically there – not to a home page, not to a Facebook page where I scroll and scroll and scroll and don’t find what I want.

Make yourself easy to buy.

My other pet hate is lack of links.  A business owner will lead you to want to view the product or buy the product or service, and not send you anywhere. 

You have to guess.  You have to click their name (if it’s said in the Facebook group), hope they have their business prominently placed on their personal page, or google it and see what they can find.

From a marketing point of view, you have to have a serious good “hook” for someone to go to extra lengths to find you or find something you buy.  Most will give up rather quickly.

A little like you probably would if you were your own customer or client!

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m totally not perfect.  My business and its assets are totally not perfect, and that’s why it’s so important to, again as in point 1, be your own customer.

Every few months, go through your processes, your procedures, your social platforms, your website and so forth and check them out.

Are they pointing where you need?  Is all the relevant information there and easy to find?  Am I, as the human behind the business, easy to find?

5. My last point is round the saying “a confused buyer doesn’t buy”

Do what you do and do it exceptionally well.  Don’t keep adding products or services just because.  If you make candles, don’t start selling social media management.

If you have an accommodation place, don’t start hairdressing from the reception.

Do what you do well.

If a person can’t tell what you do, by research, by talking to you or your customers/clients, or if there is too many choices, no choice at all will be made.

It’s just the way we are made up.

So, let’s spin this into a positive.  I feel like I need to come down from my high horse and give some action steps on how to make yourself easy to buy from.

1. Take a few minutes today, or over the weekend, and be your own customer. Go through your website, your social media platforms, click links, see where they lead, fix what needs to be fixed.
2. Make a word document or a google doc up and put all your links in it. All your social media platform links, your website, and any other important places you send people throughout the course of your business.  Then they’re always handy.  You don’t need to get them every time, they are all just in one document. 

I have all my affiliate links in my document too.  So, if I’m ever recommending a product, and I have an affiliate link for it, I know exactly where to get it!

3. Use Google my Business. Post to it, like you would a Facebook page, for instance, once or twice a week – make yourself easy to google!
4. Look at your email signature. If you don’t have one.  Reach out to a graphic designer and get one made.  Or you can, of course, have one made on sites such as fiverr.com – I had mine done a few years ago now – probably time for an update, but I think it cost about $15 from memory.  Of course, supporting local business is better, but if you don’t have those skills around you, online is another choice.
5. Take a stock of all the ways you make money, or all the products that you sell. Do you need them all?  Are they all profitable?  (That’s probably a topic for another podcast)  Do you have too many and just confuse your buyer?  If you know which are profitable, you know which ones to cull!
6. Oh and 6, if you’re sharing something for someone to look at, purchase or browse, please give them a link and a link to the exact thing you are talking about. A confused buyer doesn’t buy and neither does a busy one!

So, there you have it.  Some ways, I’m sure there’s more, to make yourself easy to buy from.

I haven’t touched on good customer service, but that’s an obvious way to make yourself easy to buy from.  Exceptional customer service will also bring more buyers and more repeat buyers!

I need to find someone to come and chat to us about that on the podcast!

That’s all for episode 55 my podcast family.

Let’s hit the ground running in 2020 …. It’ll be as EPIC as you make it!

I’ll be back next Thursday with another cracking episode guaranteed! It’s all about Pinterest and I cannot wait to share it with you!

If you’re enjoying this podcast, don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode and share this with a friend.  If you’re still in gift giving mode, I’d love a rating and a review.  Those things are like gold for podcasters like me!  It would mean the world.

But that is all for Episode 55. I’d love to connect with you all on social – so let’s get social on social – I’m on all the platforms, join the Like Minded Business Owners Group on Facebook – so let’s do that!

…….. and remember small business peeps, as my opening song says, there’s no point in dreaming small!