Building your digital marketing jigsaw

Here are some practical steps you should take when building your digital marketing jigsaw:

1. Get your “Home” in order before you invite visitors in. Make sure your website reflects you and speaks to your target audience. How can you solve their problems? No website is better than a bad one.
   
   
2. Make sure you can be found by Google and its friends – ensure your website has simple, good optimisation – your web developer should talk to you about this. Check out Google Maps – gets you right to the top of the Googles.
   
   
3. To blog or not to blog? Can you provide your clients and prospects with valuable changing content? This is easier for service industries than with products. If you can then a blog can be a good platform – if not don’t create one and leave it empty
   
   
4. Be a content radar. Start to make a list of topics, articles, themes, current market trends that you can talk to you clients and prospects about. How can you grab their attention and see you as a source of help? What campaigns are you planning? Events, workshops, special offers
   
   
5. Choose your on-line soap boxes – which social media sites are best for you and your business?
   Linkedin – BtoB
   Facebook – BtoC – main users 15 – 35 yr olds but 35 – 55 growing users
   Twitter – cross section but mainly service industries
   Youtube – great if you have a visual business
   
   
6. Get a good photo and profile for each of the sites, either as yourself or your business.
   
   
7. Start following and listening to others. Join in the conversation. Start your own conversation – start spreading the word from your website, blog via social media and email.
   
   
8. Integrate with your existing Off-Line Marketing
   
   
9. When in doubt get some advice or help …..  or attend one of our Social Media workshops: 

Get your on-line marketing prepared for 2011 - 4 things to do

The end of one year, the beginning of another.  Lots of lessons learnt and plans for 2011 to make   The Christmas and New Year period can be a quiet time for some and a chance to catch up on some of those tasks that you keep putting off, tasks that are critical to bring you the best results from your on-line marketing activities.

Now is the time to get your on-line marketing ready for 2011.  Here are 4 things you should do this month, if not first thing in January.

1.       Put an On-line Marketing Plan together

Your plan might be in your head but by putting it in writing it makes it more official and available for others to follow and deliver.  A good plan should contain

• Who are your target market?– who are you aiming at and why they should buy from you.
• What are your goals?  - specific figures around sales, market share, growt
• What resources to you need? – people (internal or outsourced), suppliers, hardware, software, social media platforms
• Set out a 12 month plan – what is planned and when.  Think topics, compelling events and activities
• Document your on-line policy if you have other people working with you to ensure everyone is consistent in message and deal with feedback, enquiries in the same way.

2.       Review your Website

Your website is pivotal to your on-line marketing.  As well as ensuring the design is right for your target market, speaking the right language and clearly answering their questions. You should also have the ability to:

• Fully edit / add / manage main pages of the site as well as regularly add content such as news, special offers, events
• Add and edit “Call to Action” buttons on every page if appropriate
• Add unique titles, descriptions, keywords to any new pages, posts and if the content changes. Integrate with social media channels – follow on Facebook, Twitter etc buttons available on the site

3.       Set up Google Analytics

If you do not already have this facility or one with similar features then setting up Google Analytics on your website can give you valuable information about the traffic to your site.  Simple to set up and then add the code to each page of your website or ask your web company to do this for you. If you do have analytics then: 

• Set some goals to reflect the goals you have set in your On-line Marketing Plan so you can see if you are achieving these goals
• Create custom reports to see how specific on-line activities are performing i.e shopping cart, pay per click, social media
• Always review these reports and compare and adjust your on-line plan if needed

4.       Organise your data

Whether you have a dedicated CRM solution or just a simple spreadsheet ensure that all the valuable data your business is using is organised in one place

• Contact Details- customers, prospects, suppliers
•  Customer /Prospects – proposals, sales enquiries, visits
• Social media followers and friends
• Campaigns – who responded
• Referrals – who has been referred and referring others
• Results – where have these come from
• Costs – how much did it cost to make a sale
• Email marketing mailing list

With each of the above steps you will have a plan to execute, a professional and trackable website for people to visit and all the data at your finger tips to run any number of targeted, successful campaigns.

As with all marketing, particularly on-line if there are any elements of the technology or the marketing process that you are not sure about then get some advice.  

Champagne ideas on beer money

According to the market research, businesses that invest in marketing during a recession typically see a return on investment of more than 4 per cent in the short term, as well as gaining market share three times faster in the two years following a recession.

Fortunately, effective marketing doesn’t have to break the bank - if it’s done creatively. The following are just some of the ways growing businesses can make the most of the tough times ahead by smart use of direct marketing.

Refresh your marketing materials

Revamping brochures, pamphlets and flyers can be done cheaply in-house using Desktop Publishing software or even Microsoft Word to create professional looking documents that can be printed locally. Even photos can be purchased, royalty free, from sites such as www.istockphoto.com

Ensure your website is up-to-date

• As more and more people move online, it’s vital you don’t get left behind and miss out on their custom. Ensure the content of your website is relevant and up-to-date and all your latest customers and news is posted regularly. Silly things like contact details, email addresses, phone numbers and links are current.
  
• If your website is out of date and does not change neither your customers nor the search engines will visit it. Include a blog or something that can be easily updated with useful information and details for your customers.
  
• Sign up for all the free “relevant” online directories – get your website listed and out there – even Linkedin, or Facebook can add traffic to your site.
  
• Utilise the free Web Optimisation tools that Google now has available or attend a good website workshop that will tell you how to design a good website that the search engines will be able to easily optimise.

Email effectively

Email marketing is an affordable method of reaching out to potential customers and can be targeted very effectively, with the added benefits that recipients can respond immediately. You can send out emails to various mail groups using your in-house address book or database. Another, larger scale and perhaps more efficient option is using an outside email marketing company to assist – but whichever you choose, ensure you are able to measure the emails’ effect on sales.

As an example – I worked with a client before Christmas to send out 4500 emails – 450 of them were opened and 90 of them clicked on the link with 14 looking at his website for more details. After following up the people that were interested he now has already secured one piece of business with another two in the pipeline totalling £30,000 – not bad for an afternoons work.

Press the flesh

• You are always the best ambassador for your business – networking is a proven method of meeting new people and increasing business. Research your local groups and go along for a visit and make sure you make some meaningful contacts whilst you are there.
  
• Dust of your little black book of contacts – friends, family, suppliers, people on Linkedin and see what they are doing and who they may know that could either help you with your business or refer you on.

This year will be hard, but companies who invest wisely in selected marketing initiatives will bolster their position and enable them to emerge surer, stronger and brighter from the economic gloom ahead.

Remember – if you don’t ask you don’t get.

Good Luck