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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!”

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”

Just the other day the MD was with a tree surgeon in his back garden. A Leylandii needed cutting, again… and we were chatting about his work. The surgeon said:

“The amount of these £$*%£$ trees I have to see EVERY week. They’re a real pain. An imported blight. It would be better if it were chopped down.”

We replied

“True. But where would your business be if it weren’t for these trees?”

The surgeon went very quiet.

Continue reading “The Tree Surgeon and the Leylandii”