Any pointers to attract UK clients?

[creasemedia]

Hello,
My name is Kevin Lee, it's been close to 10 months since my last post. I manage a small business in web design (e-commerce) and based in barcelona, Spain. I have built the business from scratch around a client base of American businesses for the past 5 years.

Myself being based in the EU now and with the US$$ so weak against the EU€, the business profit margin is so low I'm not sure how I can continue. So now I am prepared to focus on the UK market, any pointers / advice on which UK portal or forums to place advertising banners would be greatly appreciated. I would raise a small budget for these paid-web-based advertising but I'm not quite sure where start in the UK. I specialize in bespoke design & e-commerce solutions to small/medium size business. Thanks,

Kevin

[Vinsomelosesome]

Hi Kevin,

How about posting a few links to the kind of work you do?

You have your customers and your customers have their competition. Certain differentiable elements can be definitely be ascertained from comparing your work to those designers (your competition) to whom your customers' competition commission work.

The value of these differentiable parameters would determine whether or not you can get assignments in a market. Although USA may be culturally as different from UK as chalk is from cheese, one business goal of organizations across the world rarely differs – make money.

It ought to be relatively simpler to demonstrate how your solutions fare better than the competition in assisting clients to fulfill their ‘make money’ objective. Thence, all you might need to do is drive home that point with a hammer.

As for web advertising, you may be jumping the gun. The media has to be worked out around your communication strategy. So, strategy comes first and media later.

That’s my two pence for now. Perhaps, I’ll come back for more later.

Vin

[wecando.biz]

Kevin

Feel very welcome to list your business in our directory - there are a number of off-shore companies doing this already.

If you are serious about finding UK clients then you could do worse than work out a target market, work out which companies are in those and start to network with those people on business focused social networks like LinkedIn (and ours when it has grown!). Online business networking could well become a much more effective way of engaging new clients that mailshots or cold calling.

Regards

IH

[creasemedia]

Originally Posted by Vinsomelosesome

Hi Kevin,

How about posting a few links to the kind of work you do?



Vin

sure thing, did you mean my past work? I specialize in e-commerce & Content managment Systems (CMS). One aspect of my approach which is unique would be the equal attention of the 3 elements in web design: design / coding / profitability. I'm an advocate of DIY (Do It Yourself) approach by offering advanced applications such as CMS to clients to take control of content & ultimately SEO as the two is closely integrated. Some past work below:
www.thetakebacktee.com
www.sonomarket.es
www.yabadoo.es

more samples and info of my company can be found under:
www.creasemedia.com

I use Joomla! and other open source programs to customize the code to my designs which are user-friendly. Simplicity has been the warcry from the get-go. The clients love it as it let's them to do useful things and very easily.
thanks for reading & your comments!

[Vinsomelosesome]

In order to form a bond between your offering and your prospect, you ought to begin with identifying an important problem which your prospect is facing with his current system/supplier.

When a marketing message reaches a prospect, there are only 2 things going on in his mind:
1) How does this offering compare to other offerings?
2) How does it compare to my doing nothing?

Lets assume your offering of design/coding/profitabilty is unique. A prospect pays your site a visit. He's impressed with your service bouquet and clicks on serenewear.com to browse your work. Problem 1, the url returns an error message. But this is a small problem.

He sees that you also offer ecommerce, but if he gets through to serene, he would discover that the serene's ecommerce handled by zeppelindesign. The prospect evaluating you on the basis of your work is now suspcious of your capacity to execute ecommerce. or even the design. More so, this prospect may end up thinking that probably serence chose zeppelindesign because you weren't up to this client's (serene wear) expectations.

One prospect pain which DIY can take away? Or a prospect's issue which suppliers of other brands have no yet been able to rectify? Check these with existing customers to ensure speed.

After an analysis, move to the next goal of highlighting your prospect's pain. That usually gets their head nodding in agreement, leaving you a perfect opening to drive home your sales pitch.

[creasemedia]

thanks Vin, Serenewear's out of business it seems like. I must change the link, thanks for the reminder. At this point in time, I'm after getting leads generated by the paid-advertising. Although I agree with everything you say, the focus is exposure right now.

[BIZAL]

Originally Posted by creasemedia

thanks Vin, Serenewear's out of business it seems like. I must change the link, thanks for the reminder. At this point in time, I'm after getting leads generated by the paid-advertising. Although I agree with everything you say, the focus is exposure right now.

Exposure

how does this translate into leads? This is like the people talking about how many visitors thier website gets. The fact that none or very few of those people convert into leads or sales seems to me a vanity issue not a sales & marketing issue.

Lead Generation is all about testing. i.e. define who you wish to target and then test various methods and repeat and enhance the good ones and stop the ones producing a bad ROI. Then check combinations as some provide amazing ROI if done at the same time where as other methods results will not change.

[Alterity]

The UK isn't the easiest market to crack, especially in the small business sector which is so fragmented. I would suggest you start by targeting sectors in which you have a good track record first, as this will be your strength leveraging into the UK. The fact that you have successfully produced sites for companies in the US is evidence that you are able to service overseas markets effectively.

For further advice, I would suggest speaking to Business Link and the Federation of Small Businesses. They both have some great resources.