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Email Marketing strategy

by Clinton December 7th, 2011 | Building an online brand, Case studies, Ektron CMS400.NEt, email marketing | No Comments »

Target – relevance – report - follow up

These are the four essentials of email marketing. Without building a strategy around these elements you will be wasting a lot of time.

It is essential to have a cohesive strategy when undertaking an email marketing campaign. You need to consider the following elements and resource them accordingly:

  1. your target audience – this should be clearly defined with a solid understanding of their needs and what motivates them
  2. your mailing list – the ideal mailing list is one that you have a one-to-one relationship with and where the recipients have agreed to accept mailings and communications from you.
  3. what your regular mailings are going to be about – ensure that you choose targeted and appropriate news stories, case studies and product features that are relevant to your target audience
  4. target your content to your audience(s) - it is much better to have several smaller targeted mailing lists than one large one. It is more work to manage but will get much better results

Themes to consider when writing content for email newsletters

  • Relevant case studies or “success stories” to your target audience. Choose recent projects which have worked well within your target audience. Where you have delivered a stunning results or overcome a problem. Illustrate to your audience succinctly that you really understand them and their needs.
  • Relevant and unique news that will interest your target audience. Things you have been involved in that are newsworthy that increases/reinforces your standing in the eyes of your audience.
  • Profile of a relevant product or product range. Treat a product/range as a news item. Bring it to life with specific details about it, who uses it and its specific benefits.

And above all keep it Brief, keep it relevant, keep it interesting.

Record, analyse and act

The greatest thing about online marketing is the ability to really understand what your target audience are interested in and to respond appropriately. So don’t waste your efforts, make sure you record, analyse and act upon this information. Define what you want your audience to do and have clear calls to action within your marketing emails.

Use a good product which records all user interactions with your mailings so you can respond accordingly. You need to know who your active readers are i.e. those that bother to open your email, and more importantly who clicks through to your site.

You want to segment your active readers by their actions and then respond with the appropriate follow up action.

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Creating a social media campaign for sales leads

by Clinton July 19th, 2011 | Building an online brand, Online marketing, Social Media | No Comments »

There are many reasons for undertaking a social media programme such as:

  • to improve your customer service
  • to improve your “word of mouth”
  • to improve customer satisfaction
  • to understand what your customers think of your business and products/services

None of these are direct lead generators in their own right, and none of them are going to provide quick responses. Social media engagement is about a state of mind and a complete process rather than a quick campaign or a marketing activity. However, if the long-term goal is to improve the profitability of the business then there are approaches you can undertake in order to direct your social media campaign.

Example requirements: A small business with a niche product and low customer base looking to grow awareness and generate leads

In this case, there is a lot of work to do both inside the company and beyond. To use social media effectively you need to provide QUALITY CONTENT and disseminate it effectively to your target audience.

Key fundamentals to this include:

Getting all of the staff on-board

Your staff need to be part of this process in order to:

  1. maximise availability to be involved in client and prospect conversations
  2. be involved at an organisational culture level
  3. spot opportunities to improve the customer experience

Get your existing clients on-board

Rally your existing clients behind you in order to:

  1. identify what their views are on your business and your product
  2. see what else they want
  3. start the conversation within this sector about your product and how it meets their needs

Utilise all existing contacts

Network online by:

  1. create a list of everynne you know with websites that would be likely to exchange links with you. Then get backlinks under your key phrases with all of these sites
  2. encourage all of your clients to subscribe to your twitter feed - give them a reason to benefit from this. Tweet about tips, new features, benefits

Utilise all existing marketing material

Start blogging using WordPress under your existing URL

  1. Create a key-phrase matrix that prospects are using to find your products. This should be under headings of Big Phrases - the competitive popular phrases and Niche Phrases - the ones which are less popular but will convert quicker
  2. Utilise existing material such as case studies, press releases, product sheets etc, to create new articles 150-250 words. These articles should all be based around a key phrase so each blog is optimised for a specific phrase
  3. Within the blog link to the most appropriate pages(s) within your main site
  4. Identify other sector specific blogs and join the conversation on their blogs. Make your posts useful and beneficial not just sales talk

How to tweet

  1. Tweet about your blog post under your main phrase with a link to it
  2. Start conversations on Twitter around this subject matter
  3. Identify conversations already on twitter around your subject matter and join in

Action List

This is a guide to actions you can undertake to maximise the impact you have on existing and prospective users of your products. There are some quick wins and some longer-term strategies and they encompass the spectrum of what is termed Social media and web 2.0 technologies. I also find it useful to intertwine these activities with SEO techniques to maximise your reach

Phase 1 - quick and easy wins

  1. Google Places: set up a Google places page to promote your products and services from a local/regional perspective
  2. Reviews: contact your clients and ask for positive reviews. those that review you positively ask them to add their reviews to your Google Places page - you may need to incentivise them
  3. Tweet: use twitter to regularly post useful and interesting items to your existing and prospective client base; use phrases that people are likely to search for within your tweets; link to articles and useful information within your own website; follow useful people that are in your audience group that could help to spread the word. Treat it like a conversation and not a monologue
  4. Maximise your website: Ensure your website is user focused and can be utilised as a resource to link to and engage with users
  5. Identify where your target audience congregates online: which media do they use? Specialist websites to comment; industry blogs; industry forums; social media locations

Phase 2 - Identify key players in your sector: engage with these people to champion your product

In

  1. Twitter
  2. LinkedIn
  3. blogging

Engage with these people, introduce them to your products, ask for their opinion, see if they will independently review your products

Phase 3 - create new content

Video is seen as a great way to engage with people because:

  1. it gives instant information in a concise form
  2. it can show you and your people as individuals and start the online relationships
  3. it can mix people and products

But you must make it user and not product focused and benefit based

Tools to help you

google blogsearch - to help identify appropriate blogs to engage with

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Starting out with a social media strategy - step 1

by Clinton April 21st, 2011 | Building an online brand, Online marketing | No Comments »

Social media is now seen as a must have online marketing tool, but there is a lot of misplaced enthusiasm about it. Just randomly tweeting or having a facebook page  won’t help you very much. You need to really understand how facebook and twitter will help your audience and why they will either “follow” you or engage with you on facebook.

Instant social marketing with business benefits

I’ll deal with facebook in another post, but for now I want to give you an instance guide to benefiting your business with social media tools.

  1. start with a good understanding of how your users find your services or products and the key phrases they use to find them. This involves key word research which you can do yourself or get a reputable search engine optimisation company to undertake this for you.
  2. start blogging with Wordpress - Google loves Wordpress - in principle, posts get indexed quicker and higher than pages from your site.* Blog about useful topics that your targeted audience is interested in and optimise your posts for your specific key phrases identified above. Include a link(s) in your copy under your key phrases to your main content
  3. tweet about the blog post using the key phrase and include a link to your blog post

The TAKEAWAY from this is that you create a piece of copy once that is targeted towards your audience and promote several times. so write good copy on your site about how your services and products benefit your target market, blog about it then tweet about the blog.

*To get the most benefit from a Wordpress blog, you need this to be on your website as a folder and not under a separate domain or a sub-domain. The reason being is that all the google benefit you accrue from your blog is then passed to your site as a whole and vice versa.

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Online PR service and press release sites for SEO

by Clinton March 25th, 2011 | Building an online brand, Online marketing, SEO | No Comments »

A common question is how useful are press release sites  and are they a worthwhile tool for SEO?

PR companies tend to use wire services and want to get their press releases on as many sites as possible without really understanding how Google and indeed their on-line readers react to these paper based news items ported to the web. Apart from the obvious implication of Google penalising the duplicate content there are other things to consider.

This is a useful discussion on the subject of news/press releases . It is also a great introduction to the wide wide world of HARO or www.helpareporter.com.  This is an interesting take on news publishing as it is by request and not just waiting for people to stumble across content. This is from their site:

“Help A Reporter Out (HARO) is a social media PR and marketing company serving reporters, entrepreneurs and small businesses. Founded by entrepreneur Peter Shankman, HARO originally started as a Facebook Groups Page in late 2007, becoming a full-fledged online service in early 2008. Today, HARO is a profitable, social media phenomenon that brings nearly 30,000 bloggers, reporters and journalists, over 80,000 news sources and thousands of small businesses together to tell their stories, promote their brands and sell their products and services, every day.”

It is an ideal way for a small business to promote itself as an expert in its field and to offer its expertise to a journalist for inclusion in their article.

Another interesting site is pitchengine.com which as the site itself says:

“Skip the press release. Create a Pitchâ„¢ and share your news, announcement or promotion directly with your customers. Publish it to search engines, social networks, your website and more with PitchEngine. It’s your story: Go tell it.”

PitchEngine enables users to openly create and share their own content, while including images, videos and attachments at no cost. It is a useful place to summarise and promote a business proposition and services.

A useful article on tying traditional and online media together can be read in this triangulation article.

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SEO copywriting service

by Clinton March 25th, 2011 | Online marketing, SEO | No Comments »

SEO copywriting service

SEO Copywriting is a skill that should be learnt by all webmasters with an interest in search engine optimisation. Copywriting for search engines should be written to make sense to the visitor, but a strong eye should be cast to how search engine spiders view the pages of a website. Although things like key word density are important in SEO copywriting, there is more at stake to get good results in search engines.
It is best to focus upon 3 - 4 key words per page, but also use variations of those words as well as supporting words to modify the phrase a little. Search engines are becoming more sophisticated and are becoming more adept at providing returns for related phrases as well as specific phrases.

Summary of where to include key phrases when writing copy for search engines

Title Tag

The most important part of the page, as this is what Google uses to define the content and meaning of the page. Also useful to help users identify what the page is about in search engines. HOWEVER, do not put key phrases in the title tag that are not used elsewhere on the page.

Description

In Google, the meta description does not impact upon your search positions. However, it is very useful as the text snippet that accompanies the displayed title tag in the search results and as such should be used as the hook to encourage searchers to click on your result. It is an important tool in your SEO copywriting arsenal.

Headings

The HTML structure of the page helps the search engine spiders to understand the relative importance of different parts of your copy, so use it to your advantage. Use the standard H1, H2, H3 HTML structure for example to define the relative importance of your headings. In practice this means using your key phrases within the main and sub-headings on your page. Re-inforce the importance of those key phrases by using them in your headings.

Within the copy

Many SEO “specialists” will harp on about key word density, as though there is some magic formula as to how many times you need to repeat a phrase. Not enough and you won’t get well indexed, too many and you will be penalised. In practice this is rubbish. Ensure your copy reads well and naturally includes the relevant key phrases. To re-inforce the importance of the key phrases use them as early as is practicable in the first paragraph, and if you can repeat them naturally then do so. However it is also important to use the variants of the key phrase for page in context throughout the copy of the specific page. Use variants and associated phrases on the page rather than mindlessly repeating the phrase.

In hyperlinks

Hyperlinks are essential to good SEO. Of-site links are obviously very important, but do not overlook the importance of the in-page links. You should aim to link to each of your major pages using the principle link phrase from at least one of key page in the site. These links should be as natural as possible and within the flowing copy of a page.

Elsewhere in the site

Google and the other principle search engines are moving much more towards “semantic searching”. This means that context is just as important as specific key phrases. In essence what they are looking for is not just an optimised page, but a page that has context within the site it is sitting in. therefore it is useful to use the key phrases from specific pages throughout the site to reinforce the fact that the page is not in isolation. God places to put these key phrases are in navigation where possible and also in hyperlinks within the copy of other pages.

And Finally…

Remember, don’t just write for the search engines, however tempting it may be. If you go overboard then you can fall foul of the search engines and be penalised for spamming. In any case if it looks spammy then your visitors won’t like it and will be more inclined to go elsewhere. Ensure that it reads well, is talking about your subject and also includes the key phrases where it is appropriate to do so.

More information about search engine optimisation.

What would you like to do now?

1. contact us for help with your SEO campaign
2. get some help with your copywriting.

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FAQs on SEO (search Engine Optimisation)

by Clinton March 25th, 2011 | SEO | No Comments »

We’ve compiled a few common questions and our responses to the FAQs of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).

How do I gain page one rankings for our key areas of business?

1. Identify a broad range of 2, 3 and 4 word key phrases around your subject matter

2. Create a two pronged strategy of quick wins for the long tail results and a progressive strategy for the main key phrases by:

a. optimising all main pages for a range of the key phrases with concatenated phrases (phrases with key words plus supporting long-tail words) to allow quick wins for the longer phrases and gradual ranking increase for the more competitive phrase

b. focusing on:

i. Title tags for search engines

ii. Meta description to increase click throughs

iii. Effective page structure e.g. phrases in H1, H2 tags etc.

iv. Linking under key phrases throughout the pages

v. Review and advise upon copy writing on key pages

How do we ensure that our site ranks higher than our local competitors for key phrases?

1. Ensure you are effectively listed in Google places

2. Encourage clients to post reviews in Google places

3. Ensure you are listed in directories with a regional bias in directories that we know Google rates highly

Drive traffic to our blog and help to establish thought leadership for the authors

1. Provide strategy on how to write effectively for blogs targeting web traffic e.g.

2. Target key phrases as the article titles,

3. Link to pages on your site about these topics under your targeted key phrases

4. Link to other authority sites under your key phrases

5. Encourage other related blogs to link to you

How do I improve key page ranks?

1. All of the above will improve rankings and traffic. To improve further and consistently under a wide range of phrases we will generate targeted back links from other related high quality sites.

2. Create and post articles on related blogs

How do I keep my site up to date with latest SEO strategies?

Guillaume, our Search Engine Manager is always kept current by attending major SE seminars, and subscribes to paid SEM sites. We also test theories and develop our own strategies based upon what we know works. We also do not engage in poor quality techniques such as mass linking, articles publishing on low value sites, cloaking etc. This means you will not be penalised as Google develops and changes it algorithms. But by following their guidance you can only improve rankings as they de-value sites which have not been following their guidance.

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An integrated approach to social network marketing

by admin March 2nd, 2011 | Building an online brand, Online marketing | No Comments »

Social marketing means many things to many people and with the growth of blogging, Twitter, facebook, LinkedIn etc, there is a move to exploit these for commercial gain. However, it is is not as simple as setting up a facebook profile and waiting for the good times to roll. Facebook is not necessarily right for every business and you need to have an integrated strategy to understand how any of these tools can work for you. We can help you.

How we can make social networking work for you.

Every business will have different needs, because their customers will also have different needs. Some audiences will not respond to joining a facebook group but are happy to be alerted by tweets or will read a blog. We can help by identifying the right approach for your business and your customers. In particular, we can help identify which tools to use to better engage with your audiences and whether they are on-site, off-site or a mixture. Often engaging with your customers on your site can be very powerful and you can create compelling advocates out of your existing customers.

We can advise on:

  • what to tweet, how to maximise exposure in Google and how to build a following
  • how to use blogs to improve search results
  • how and why people engage with businesses on facebook
  • how to benefit from user generated content on your site and make your customers your sales people…

And don’t forget…

Don’t try and just connect with your audiences off your site. Customer reviews, comments, opinions, feedback and discussions can be incredibly powerful ways to improve search rankings and conversions on your site. Good social networking is about connecting and engaging with your audiences where they congregate and using their enthusiasm to spread the message of your business.

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Writing copy for PPC (Google Adwords) campaigns

by admin November 18th, 2010 | Online marketing, SEO | No Comments »

Writing copy for PPC campaignss needs to be carefully considered. There are two key areas that are crucial to success in a PPC or Google Adwords campaign.

Writing copy for PPC ads

Writing copy for PPC ads needs to be undertaken carefully. You need to consider the exact phrase speople will be using to search for your services or products and where they are in the decision making stages. If you encourage them to click on your add before they are ready to buy then you risk wasting a lot of your PPC budget, too late and you lose potential customers.

It’s important to identify a wide range of key phrases that are associated with your core audience and prioritise the phrases in terms of the decision making process. Then choose the phrases at the closest point to the actual decision making point. For instance, there can be little point paying poeple to comin to your site when they are reviewing products before having chosen which product to buy. Search engine optimisation would be a better option to pursue for this traffic.

Once you have identified your key phrases, it is important to bear the following points in mind:

  • include the key buying phrase in the ad copy
  • focus upon benefits and outcomes rather than features
  • include a positive call to action, a reason to click through on the ad

Writing copy for PPC landing pages

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PPC management Google Adword management

by admin November 15th, 2010 | News | No Comments »

It is very easy to set up a Google adword (PPC) campaign, and Google is very adept at getting you to part with your cash. However the real art to setting up an effective PC campaign is in getting the maximum conversion for the minimum cost. To run an effective Pay Per Click campaign you need to look at the following aspects:

Ad copy

Ad copy is one of the single most important aspects to running an effective adwords campaign, poor ads produce poor results. It is essential to create effective compelling and succinct ad copy targeted at the specific people you want to engage with. Key emthods of creating good add copy include:

  • Push the benefits not the features: A common mistake and easily done, but push the key benefits, what it does for someon not how it does it
  • Grabing  attention: Include your keywords in the ad copy, particularly in the title line.  But make sure it makes sense
  • Appeal to an emotion: People buy on emotion and much more so than they are willing to admit to
  • Appeal on quality and/or price: but only appeal on price if you can be the cheapest otherwise appeal on Best service, best guarantee etc.
  • Include a call to action: Asking readers to do something now is especially effective when combined with an urgent price appeal, such as ‘See us Right Now for 10% Off’, or ‘See Us Now for Limited Offer’.
  • Capitalise important words: Did you notice that the examples I’ve used here use an upper case letter to start each word? This may not be great English, but it tends to be the best way to go within a Google ad.

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Estate agent website

by admin November 8th, 2010 | Design, Online marketing, bespoke development, mobile web | No Comments »

We are really pleased to announce the launch of our latest estate agency website for Parsons Son & Basley.

Key features we have implemented include:

  • complete integration with estate agency software for residential sales, commercial sales and auctions
  • integrated search engine optimisation for estate agencies for all individual properties
  • a mobile web version of the site with a specific design for mobile browsers
  • alert sign up for individual properties, to allow people to be alerted as soon as a property becomes available that matches their criteria

For help in making your estate agency website work harder for you, please get in touch now.

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