With all the brouhaha of the Facebook IPO, it’s easy to look at Facebook and think that it’s sitting pretty atop the social space: more time on site, more visits, more users… surely, it must be only a matter of time before Zuckerburg dominates everything?
Well, firstly let’s terminate one misconception: there is not going to be ‘only one winner’ in this space. It’s too big for that. Continue reading “Prioritise Your Twitter Marketing, It’s ‘Winning’ the Social War”
If you’re an online business and you have a reasonable active website (say 100+ visitors a day), then it’s about time you planned for (or fast-tracked) a mobile website.
There is a trend happening at the moment across every single website we manage for clients – the proportion of mobile visitors to the site is doubling year on year. Currently most of our client sites are averaging between 10 and 15% of mobile visitors. This is up from about 6% this time last year.
For virtually every business with a website in the world, the one measure which makes the most immediate and substantial change to their fortunes is their website conversion rate.
Yet few businesses spend much attention on improving conversion rates through optimisation of their website and therefore they lose the one single area where they could generate an immediate improvement to their profitability.
So, here are some simple tips to get started on… things you can take away with you and evaluate your website: Continue reading “Why Does Your Site Not Convert?”
Look, we’ll be the first to jump on any truck passing which could serve our clients better, particularly when it comes to the Internet.
In the Internet’s case, if you don’t get on the truck straight away you find it’s fuller than a bendy bus in rush hour… however, we have served ourselves a cease and desist order when it comes to ‘Social Media Marketing’ – quotes intentional.
Put this into real-world context: if you’ve ever been at a drinks party and wanted to engage with a conversation, do you:
a) Barge into the conversion, talk over people, relentlessly pursue your message, hand out some business cards and fliers and then exit without hearing what anyone else has to say, or do you
b) Listen carefully, wait until you have something relevant to say, and then engage with the group in order to participate
If you can retain this picture, then you can understand better why so many marketing businesses are perplexed with social media – because social media marketing contradicts itself.
Continue reading “Social Media Marketing – Don’t be a Twitter!”
In the good ol’ days the marketing budget was the ground rule for all marketing. Sure you could stretch it here or there, but it was set, rigid, in stone, and if you wanted to gain something you had to pilfer from somewhere else in the budget.
This made sense, because often stretching a budget in a certain field of marketing would actually reduce the overall effectiveness of the campaign.
For example, with direct mail, the larger the list bought, normally the less targeted it becomes; or with advertising, repeat advertising, whilst reinforcing the message normally has less effectiveness with the same creative.
So, What’s Changed… ? Continue reading “Marketing Budget? Online Is Different”
By co-ordinating all areas of online marketing as an integrated approach will give you the greatest rewards and value. The traditional view of ‘horses for courses’ which may have served offline activity well, works less well when there is, in the most part, a single destination – a website (or a business sitting behind the website).
The Challenge of the Multiple Supplier Approach
Say, for example, you want to achieve more incremental business: you contact an email specialist, a search-marketing agency and even a social media supplier… as well as liaising with your incumbent web developer – the time investment alone needed to co-ordinate and measure all this activity is substantial and then, beyond this, it is often difficult to pull together the fuller reporting structures to identify which aspect really worked for the campaign. With all suppliers claiming effectiveness – it is difficult to work out what needs to change to improve. Continue reading “The Case for an Integrated Online Marketing Strategy”
We come into contact with a wide number of businesses and find the vast majority have ‘historical’ websites which often need urgent attention or complete overhaul. So, we decided to compile a list for you: go on, check your site against these, see how you stack up! In reverse order…
5. To Neglect Copywriting
This problem is so common it should be framed and put up on everyone’s wall (or sellotaped to a their screen, or stapled to foreheads).
Copy is treated as the poor cousin of design and technology when it comes to web. More often than not a project will be led by a designer (who has little or no interest in good copy, let alone an aptitude to write) or a developer who finds grammer a challenge, let alone copy.
The only other alternative is when a client nobly tries to write the content themselves: yet it normally ends up being long-winded, unengaging and full of facts without any mention of benefit. At worst, it can end up being just impenetrable ‘industry-speak’ and copious amounts of unnecessary detail.
If you were sending a mailer, would you get the printers to do the copywriting? The rules still stand for online – use a specialist to write your site, otherwise it will show.
If design is the bait, then copy is the hook, so allocate proper budget and make sure your copy really hits the mark.
4. To Forget This is a Marketing Medium
When we ask: “What do you see your website doing for your business?” Most clients either say ‘I don’t know’ or reel off a long list which practically covers the entire UK population and beyond. Yet the focused website is the one that gets the business. Continue reading “The 5 Biggest Website Mistakes”
“Connecting with Consumers where Local meets Social”
Looking forward to going to the ‘Local Social Summit’ in November. Speakers from all round the globe coming to London to get busy and share some of the latest stuff.
Ergo will be there… keeping an appropriately firm finger on the pulse and making sure that we know exactly what we’re talking about when advising clients.
Maybe see you there? Local Social Summit Website
In the next few weeks, we’re going to tackle some of the key reasons why we’re SEO-sceptics when it comes to many businesses and the way in which SEO services are sold to customers. In this article, we challenge the need to spend on an SEO every month.
Ok, so you didn’t take our first advice to ‘never commit to a monthly SEO contract‘, or perhaps you found another creative way to work with your Search Engine Optimsation which didn’t involve regular payments… but you still want to make sure you’re getting value, right?
Here are five ways to make sure that you can manage your SEO and ensure they’re going to deliver for you.
1. Don’t Focus on Position
Do not, we repeat, NOT, fall into the ‘Page 1 of Google’ trap. This is usually the domain of the lazy SEO. They will guarantee a first page position and, as soon as they get it for you, they’ll down tools and just bill you monthly.
Continue reading “5 Critical Keys to Managing Your SEO Supplier”
