Tag Archives: Online marketing

Email Marketing strategy

By Clinton Posted on by  | Posted in Building an online brand, Case studies, Ektron CMS400.NEt, email marketing |  |

 

Target – relevance – report – follow up

These are the four essentials of successful email newsletters and email marketing campaigns. 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 needto 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.

Remediation of contaminated land

By Monica Posted on by  | Posted in client sites |  |

Ashdown Site Investigation is a Sussex-based company specialising in the remediation of contaminated land.

Remidiation of contaminated land can take many forms such as:

  • the cleanup of contaminated sites;
  • groundwater quality improvement schemes (including the use of quantitative risk assessment and groundwater modelling procedures); and
  • passive and active ventilation systems for buildings constructed on gassing sites.

The On-site remediation technologies are the soil remediation and the groundwater remediation. There are opportunities for technical advancements in soil remediation to address difficult contaminants and environments  and to make on-site treatment technologies more efficient and cost effective. Successful proposals will have the potential to fill unmet needs in the market such as technologies that:

  • Offer financially viable solutions at smaller sites;
  • Provide a higher degree reliability for in-situ applications;
  • Effectively interface with construction processes or techniques; or
  • Reduce secondary emissions, such as air emissions.

Significant advances are required in groundwater treatment systems to make them more efficient and reliable. Traditional pump and treat technologies, for example are very inefficient at addressing low levels of contaminants that have migrated overlarge areas. Successful proposals in groundwater treatment might:

  • Provide alternatives to pump and treat;
  • Provide greater assurance that a method has been effective across the treatment zone;
  • Improve treatment for dense non-aqueous phase liquids; or Address a wider range of contaminants.

Working with specialist remediation contractors Ashdown Site Investigation is able to offer a complete range of in situ and ex situ remediation advice and site services.

Benefits of the Ektron Marketing module

By Clinton Posted on by  | Posted in Ektron CMS400.NEt, Online marketing, SEO |  |

The benefits of the Ektron CMS400.net marketing module are very important to web marketers as they give you an incredible amount of power and flexibility based around customer choice. In essence the key aspects fall into two categories:

  1. personalisation of content based upon visitor behaviour and search terms
  2. data capture of customer behaviour on your site and integration with your CRM

Latest think tank website launched for the Fung Global Institute

By Clinton Posted on by  | Posted in Case studies, client sites, News |  |

132,000 Google pages indexed in 24 hours…..

We are proud to have recently designed and launched the website for the new global think tank based in Hong Kong, the Fung Global Institute. Due to the high profile launch and international papers such as the New York Times publicising the launch online, the site was indexed and had an unprecedented 132,000 references on Google 24 hours after launch…

Overview

The Fung Global Institute is a new think tank created in Hong Kong to reflect upon and develop key issues surrounding Chinese and global economic growth and key economic factors influencing business within South East Asia. The website is a key communication tool to deliver content to a global audience.

The requirements

The requirements were to enable a wide range of content types to be easily managed and presented on-line from a wide range of sources. Key deliverables were to create a high quality platform to reflect the prestige of the new organisation and to enable all related content to be linked together easily through tagging.

What we’ve achieved

We have created a high quality website which is easy for the client to update and has excellent features to help the visitor to get the most from the content. The site has a high visual impact with plenty of space for the content to “breathe”. Features such as the News Carousel, embedded video and related content all work together to give a more fulfilling experience to the visitor.

The outcome

The launch of the site generated excellent coverage in international media outlets such as The New York Times and Bloomberg.


New low cost UK probate service solicitors website

By Clinton Posted on by  | Posted in client sites |  |

We have recently launched the website for Probaters which is a specialist UK  probate solicitors service. The USP about Probaters is that they offer a blanket low-cost fee probate service up to estates worth £1.5m.

The benefit to those seeking a probate service is that they do not need to go through a probate broker service but can go diretc to a specialist UK based probate solicitors that will be able to sympathetically deal with their needs from start to finish.

The benefits of a UK probate solicitors service

The key benefits of using a UK probate solicitors service is that they are specialists in this sector AND they are governed by the Law Society. This means that the risk of the service being poor is much reduced and you have a higher degree of assurance that you will get the job done in a professional manner.

How to use Linked In effectively

By Clinton Posted on by  | Posted in Building an online brand, Social Media, social media for sales |  |

I was recently at a bar with someone I had only met that day at a meeting and he introduced me to four other of his industry colleagues. The first made me feel like he had me by the ankles and was turning me upside down to empty my pockets. Despite the fact that I wasn’t in the market to buy from him he pestered me and completely alienated me. However by the end of the evening, of the other three people I had gained two business cards with an interest in what I had to offer. The secret- drinking beer and forgetting about buisness. It’s about making a connection and bringing business in at the appropriate point and not that being the point.

And that is the same with Linked In. Go in measured and targeted and helpful. I get put off by linking with people with multiple hundreds or thousands of connections because I don’t feel that they would have time for me and they are looking to maximise their benefit at the expense of others.

Choose carefully who you link to and approach them with a benefit to them rather than treat them as a just sales opportunity for you. In much the same as you would in a business or social networing situation.

Key rules of online networking

  1. Be the one who can be helpful.
  2. Focus on the right types of contacts not contact to build up a massive list
  3. Engage in groups and become a trusted source of good knowledge

Creating a social media campaign for sales leads

By Clinton Posted on by  | Posted in Building an online brand, Online marketing, Social Media |  |

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

Starting out with a social media strategy – step 1

By Clinton Posted on by  | Posted in Building an online brand, Online marketing |  |

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.

Guide to search engine optimisation

By Clinton Posted on by  | Posted in accessibility, Building an online brand, Online marketing, SEO |  |

Here are the top 5 factors for successful web sites in 2007:

Note:

This article is four years old but all of these factors still hold true with regard to getting good search rankings in Google.

Success factor #1: Accessibility

Accessibility is not only good for business it is a legal requirement and necessary for search engines to be able to effectively spider and index your website. Often web developers use technology that actively impedes search engines and prevents them from accessing all of a website’s pages. The first rule of search engine optimisation is to allow a search engine to access all of your web pages.

A key secondary consideration is to ensure the HTML code of your web pages does not contain errors that prevent search engines from indexing your site.

Search engines like HTML, it allows them to assess the content of your site and determine what the content is about. If you use Flash or graphical images to portray your core text messages, it will be invisible to search engines. Ensure your core content and messages are in HTML.

Success factor #2: Site and information architecture

Site architecture is essential not only for search engines but also for your audience. A search engine needs to be able to find their way around a site effectively as do site visitors. Ensure you have a core logical HTML navigation and do not use Flash or javascript as the only method of accessing your web pages.

You also need to ensure you have a coherent website based around a common theme. Increasingly the most important search engines use a technique called latent semantic indexing in their ranking algorithms. This is to determine not only the content of the individual page but also the context of the site that is sitting within. Search engines will give higher rankings to a page that is within a website that is relevant to that page.

Success factor #3: The right keywords

Once you have ensured that a search engine can access your site and visit all of your pages you need to make sure that they know what those pages are about. This is where you need to focus upon your key phrases and ensure you find which phrases your audience are using to find websites such as yours that meet their needs.

Once you have these key phrases, ensure you place them effectively throughout your site on the most appropriate pages for those terms.

The choice and use of your key words is a crucial element in determining whether your search engine optimisation campaign will be a success. Also think about supporting key words that go with the main key phrase for that page and use them liberally within the content

Success factor #4: Content

The search engines are looking for the most appropriate pages they can find to match the search terms of their users. In order to do this they are looking for quality content. You should be aiming to create unique quality content that separates your site from your competitors.

Write about relevant topics that you know about and try and keep adding to the content on a regular basis. Google likes sites which are kept fresh with new content and also sites that are regularly updated with relevant content.

Success factor #5: Inbound links

Links are one of the key factors that determine the success of a search engine optimisation campaign, but are one of the least understood. Links are crucial, especially in a competitive marketplace, but it is not about sheer weight of numbers. RELEVANCY is far more important than numbers. Get good quality links from quality relevant sites on a regular basis and you will do far batter than buying a large number of non-relevant links.

The more targeted the link i.e. the more relevant, the more it will improve your search engine rankings for that phrase. That’s why we are creating several sector link building communities to help build quality links for sites.

So, What do you want to do now?

  1. Contact us to help you improve your search engine results, or
  2. find out more about working with an ethical search engine optimisation company.

Back to view other articles.