Ben Walton

Do you control your website assets? Firstly, what are they? ✅Domain ✅Hosting (Or Service provider, wix, Squarespace, Shopify etc) ✅DNS management - (How you point your domain to different services, like your website, emails etc) ✅Emails (Gsuite, Microsoft etc..) If the answer is no... I strongly recommend you take a look at this. Today I had a call about this exact thing. Prospect: I've got a website, I'm not happy with my current provider, I have been recommended to you and would like to move everything to you. Me: Do you have access to the hosting or domain? Prospect: No, that is with the current provider I have fallen out with. Domains, websites etc can all be scary and things you may not even consider you need to have a handle on. Usually, it only matters when things are not going well. This is why I created Barruko , to be different and give the best value/service we can. Drop me a message if this sounds like something are going through or want to avoid 📩

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Boost Your Vape Brand with UK PLUG ME Looking to elevate your brand in the UK vape market? With our database of 2,300 vape shops, where we have strong relationships, we’ll introduce your products directly to retailers and ensure they’re fully equipped to stock them. 💼 💡Here’s how we can help: - Shop Visits: We’ll educate store staff to confidently recommend your product. - Product Trials: Hands-on experiences and free samples to build excitement in-store. - Prime Shelf Space: We secure top spots for your products before the competition. - Streamlined Purchasing: Simplify retailer onboarding through official distributor channels. Partner with UK PLUG ME and watch your brand soar in the retail sector! 📈 #VapeRetailSupport #BrandGrowth #UKPlugMe #RetailSuccess #VapeIndustry

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In business, there is always lots of talk about ones USP (Unique Selling Point). I prefer to take the concept of USP, shake it up and give it a twist, as let's face it... What is actually totally 'unique' about what you do? Yes, what you do may be a little 'different', but is it totally 'unique'...as in nobody else is doing that thing? I prefer to think of it in this way: What is 'it' that makes you, YOU? And... What do YOU want to be KNOWN for? No matter if you are a freelancer, agency owner, or even a director... Go and answer these two questions and you might just get that lightbulb moment pop into your head... #USP #Business #SEO

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Getting going or getting ready? https://lnkd.in/eAePcWuv Business is tough out there and has been for a lot of this year as a lot of agencies and SME owners have found out. To be frank, it is and has been pretty brutal for agencies and SMEs these past few months with uncertainty, longer lead times and rising costs. But in tough times, how do you react? Do you get going and hope things will improve or to do get ready to fight, be proactive and take action? Burying your head in the sand really won’t help. So don’t get going, get ready … This joint blog by me and Remeny Armitage Royle and Brilliant and Human looks at not being doom and gloom about the current state of business and aims to provide proactive tips and food for thought to help you help yourself and make good from what we can. Help yourself by keeping your marketing going, building your sales pipeline and researching your customers and competition.   #research #customerresearch #marketing #leadgen #salespipeline #marketingplan #positioning #businessdevelopment

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CPMs down 4% today 🤔 Now that the Election is over, the cost of delivering your ads to your potential customers might have just got 4% cheaper… This is data from tens of thousands of Triple Whale integrated Shopify stores, your CPMs might look a little different What does this mean for our brands? … Not a whole lot! It’s just interesting Day to day changes in CPM of 4% are actually totally normal, and a lot of the time we actually prefer to pay more for delivery, clicks from Facebook & Instagram users that are more likely to buy. You could get really cheap ad delivery (and clicks) if you only served your ads in India, but unfortunately your sales would take a hit. This is a little reminder that while efficiency is important, the goal is growth (Not CPM, CPC, CPA or ROAS)

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Between content marketing, performance marketing, in-app marketing, social media ads and half-a-dozen other tactics - how does a business figure out what is right for it at the stage it’s at? I think the biggest mistake businesses make is not realising that there’s a huge difference between marketing to *reinforce* a brand vs marketing to *build* a brand. For example - take a product like Coca Cola. It’s a brand that has universal awareness. The marketing problem statement here is to reinforce it to an audience that is already familiar with it. Their social media feed might look great but copying their tactics might be the completely wrong strategy for you. Similarly - if you’re primarily an offline brand and start selling on online channels - your problem statement would be very different from that of a successful D2C brand that inspires you. This is also where I see an issue with outsourcing your work to marketing agencies. These agencies are usually good at working with brands that are already established or well-funded startups that don’t care about RoI on their marketing budget. But for any other types of business - letting your marketing get done by people who don’t understand the nuances of your business/product and its competitors/comparables usually ends up in disaster. Agencies need to overpromise to get a contract from you, and ultimately underdeliver because they will use the same template and formula that they’re using for half a dozen other clients to save time and money. If you’ve faced these problems as a startup/business at any stage - would love to connect. I’m working on a detailed framework which aims to solve some of these problems by aligning marketing objectives with business ones. Feel free to DM.

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450+ Links for Our E-commerce Client 🛒 Case Study Spotlight 📈 Today, I’d love to share a remarkable case study that showcases TLG's success in the e-commerce sector. Client: A leading e-commerce company in the seafood space Challenge: Client wanted a more cost-effective and sustainable method to improve their visibility and drive sales Outcome: Secured over 450+ high-quality backlinks, resulting in a significant increase in revenue for the company (from $608k to $1.22 million) This case study is a testament to our expertise in delivering impactful link-building solutions tailored to our clients’ unique needs. 📖 Read the full case study here : https://lnkd.in/eRfwhxeA #LinkBuilding #SEO #DigitalMarketing #Ecommerce #CaseStudy #TheLinksGuy

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Virtually all food & drink businesses don't send enough emails. You're guilty of this right? This leads to two guaranteed outcomes, 1️⃣ you are missing out on sales 2️⃣ you're slowing down the time it takes for people to understand more about your business and products What's stopping you? Usually, it’s one of two things: 1️⃣ Design pressure – You feel everything needs to be perfectly polished. 2️⃣ Time constraints – You keep putting it off, often because you're spending too much time sat pondering why sales aren’t higher. 💡 Here’s how to fix it: 1️⃣ Forget perfect design. Focus on the basics: - A clear headline (e.g. 30% off for BFCM). - A relevant image to grab attention. - Simple copy - clear, direct, and to the point (don't worry about being a 'good' writer or being funny... if struggling, just stick to writing a simple explainer) [image below is an example of focussing on the basics] 2️⃣ Set up automated email flows. - Flows work 24/7 to engage customers, often when they’re most ready to buy. - They’re the secret to growing sales without having to manually create campaigns every week. -- Sending manual campaign emails is something that regularly slips (I'm totally guilty of this for Bloody Bens - my Bloody Mary drinks biz) --- Automated flows are the remedy. This approach helped me: ▶ Grow one brand where email drove 50% of total sales. ▶ Take another from 8% to 27%. ▶ Boost another to 30%. -- that's a lot of otherwise missed revenue and customers, who would have lapsed, won back. ▶ and, if you're wondering, for Bloody Bens right now, email represents 37% of sales. --- 👋 I’m Ben, founder of On A Plate Growth Agency. I help food & drink brands grow DTC sales through effective email strategies, from start-ups to those doing £50k a month on Shopify. 💡 Want to learn more? 1️⃣ Join my free online workshop on 28th Nov, 11am-12pm (only 5 spots available). 2️⃣ Book a free 1-2-1 email optimisation session (worth £400) - offer ends Jan. ▶ DM or email [email protected] to grab a spot or book a session.

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It’s been just over 5 months since we launched our new affiliate site and I was thinking this would be a good time to provide an update on the progress so far, and hear from fellow affiliates and SEO experts in my network what they think about some potential concerns of mine. ***The Site*** Domain: two-word EMD Main topic: slot reviews Target market: NZ (we rank for pokie keywords in NZ and AU, and slot keywords internationally) Content: 260+ Slots, 35+ Software, 12 Casinos, News (3/week), Strategy ***Current Stats*** DR: 21 Referring domains: 23  Organic keywords: 225 Trends: clicks, impressions, average positions and rankings growing steadily Page speed: 87 (desktop) – 51 (mobile) Pages indexed: 216 (dropped from 375 in July) ***Background*** The site was built on a custom WP theme, but the development team did a really poor job. We had so many problems from the start and decided to launch before the site was 100% as we simply could not wait any longer. The code is really bad and that’s why the site is quite slow and has other issues. They are set to finish the final set of corrections and I plan to have a proper site audit before switching to a new dev agency. There is still a lot of work to be done on the site content wise and obviously in the backend, and while I have been encouraged by the performance of late, I am a bit worried about the number of indexed pages and low number of crawl requests. Crawl stats have been pretty bad from the start, averaging at mere 150 crawl requests per day. If there are any experts on the matter here, I would love to hear their opinion about how many requests per day should relatively new sites strive to get. I’m guessing the fact that the website being slow and not properly coded are the main reasons why Google seems to struggle crawling it, so just wondering whether I should start taking action or maybe wait some more to see whether situation improves, especially as the rankings keep moving in the right direction. The main dilemma is whether to try and correct the errors or go for a brand new theme based on the current design, but I guess I will know more about it after the site/code audit. 

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Before October 2023 we consistently got 110k - 140k organic visits per month to Wyzowl. But then we were hit by Google HCU and our traffic has slowly declined to around 50k organic visits per month. This has been painful! These are the things we've done to try to recover... 1. Added author links to every blog post. The aim of this is to build transparency and show expertise of the writer of each post. 2. Added a modified date to each blog post. We had this previously but it was a manual line we used to add to the top of any published post. Now we have a date stamp that is synced with the modified date of the post in the code. 3. Updated the style of our blog We have improved the UI/UX of our blog by adding: - A table of contents to the sidebar - A read time at the top of each blog post - A read meter so people can see how far down the blog post they are - A way to show expertise in each post (see #4) 4. Added expertise blocks We realised that our blog posts could be a little vanilla. So we added blocks to highlight things including: further reading, statistics, expert tips, insights & more. This highlights the extra value in each post. We used LazyBlocks WP plugin for this. 5. Re-wrote & designed all pages Our video type & industry pages could be considered search first instead of people first. So we re-wrote and redesigned all pages so they are people first with each page telling a story about that product. Now they are true people first pages. 6. We're creating more new posts Our blog posts have always been written internally by our expert copy writers. And we're continuing to do this. I believe that creating high quality content in our area of expertise (video) is important so we're not being disheartened by this. 7. Many smaller updates We've also implemented many smaller updates to improve the usability of our website and the way we present it to visitors. Has this worked?? It short, no. Our traffic has not recovered. BUT... it is looking steadier now. I do believe all of these changes are for the better. We have a better site that gives much more value to the people who visit it now. And I'm hopeful that in the future this will result in our traffic increasing and us seeing better results from organic traffic once again. What is your experience? Can anyone join me on the HCU slippery side?

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With the current economic climate, things are tougher than ever - so inevitably, we want to cut budgets... but it's a false economy to cut marketing budgets! We need to make sure we are front of mind and market ourselves to our ideal clients... especially now! And to help with this, we need our clients insights and strong relationships more than ever. Nicole Martin FCIM Chartered Marketer and I wrote a joint blog sharing ways of doing this. https://lnkd.in/esg7s2hE #happyclients #marketingnow

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Things to absolutely do now on Black Friday to maximise Klaviyo profits - Remove the discounts on the email flows, re-state the black friday offers and make them finish the purchase (the discounts are not stackable anyway and will HURT conversions) - Halve the time delays on your email flows (seriously, be aggressive now) - Add a little banner in every email in which you remind them of free shipping above XYZ$ (improve AOV) - Don't use the exact offers for early black friday, black friday an cyber Monday (if you do, exclude the people that already bought, or they're gonna be pissed) These don't take so much time to do, make sure to implement these changes

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‼️ 4 questions you should ALWAYS ask yourself before posting ‼️ Need help with your posting? Contact us today for a free consultation: 📞+44 203 924 0555 📧[email protected] #kooxagency #digitalmarketing #socialmediamarketing #businessgrowth

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The sausage making machine.   We often receive client briefs demanding, "We need XX leads by XX date, of this size, and in the market." Good luck with that.   When performance dips for a month, the immediate reaction is, "Make more calls! Send more things out! Do more stuff." However, B2B sales performance is far from linear. Buyers are more complex than ever, and their purchasing processes reflect this complexity. Additionally, recruitment and retention, especially in sales, have never been more challenging.   Is it fair to assume there are silver bullet fixes to these macro-level changes?   In my view, the focus should be on finding an outsourced partner with the capability, sales processes, knowledge, technology, people strategy, and culture to address these issues more competently and efficiently than in-house teams or other outsourced options.   In the true outsourced partnerships we have with our clients, they understand that they are outsourcing far more than just "making some calls and hoping for the best."   The sausage machine doesn't exist.   Matter (formerly Ampli & NERVE)   #B2BSales #B2BSalesAndMarketing #B2B

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Is there one right format for you to focus on when it comes to planning out your offline direct mail strategy? 💌 There are plenty of choices thrown around ranging from a simple postcard design, A4 letters in branded/non branded envelopes or the more complex catalogue format. When it comes to initial investment in tangible media like most things there isn’t a simple black and white answer to the question of where you should start. The chosen route should be built on a number of factors including budget, need for control of design and potential customer lifetime value. You might want to keep costs low through a simple approach or you might want to ensure a range of product and breadth of your offer is placed in front of your customer. Fundamentally it isn’t the initial cost you should worry about, it is the return this investment can generate that should be the most important factor. 💰 Paperplanes helps our partners plan across numerous formats every day, leaning on our 30+ year insights built on our experiences working with Tesco Clubcard insight through to high-growth eComm executions that help our partners nail the right strategy. We can help you uncover the right choice for you, your customer journey and your brand so if you want to find out how direct mail can work for you reach out today for a quick initial today. We are glad to help. 👍 #paperplanes #directmail #marketing #formats

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💡 Wondering how to market your farm's new venture? Look no further! Our FREE Farm Marketing Strategy Worksheet is designed to help you identify and execute the perfect marketing strategies for your project. Don't miss out - download yours today! https://lnkd.in/e_-fy6gH #AgricultureMarketing #FreeDownload

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