Social media appears in many forms. There are social networking sites (eg Facebook and Twitter), publishing i.e. blogs, photo sharing such as Flickr, audio and video, microblogging and gaming are just a few ways to socially share, collaborate, interact and communicate. But whatever social media is being used by consumers and businesses and whatever new social media tools and platforms are being developed and launched onto the market, social media is here to stay and rapidly growing both in terms of web traffic and popularity.

Here are some facts about Facebook:

• As of January 2012  Facebook has more than 800 million active users
• If Facebook was a country, it would be the 3rd largest country in the world, behind China and India
• On average, more than 250 million photos are uploaded per day
• More than 350 million active users currently access Facebook through their mobile devices

Social media provides ideal opportunities for businesses to make contact with customers and get to know customers. Businesses also increasingly need to be where their customers and prospective customers are on the internet. With over 800 million Facebook users, Facebook and other social media channels are going to be where your audience is for a lot of products and services. Here are reasons why social media is essential for your business.

1)    It’s free

What marketing tool or channel do you have that is free? Either none or not many we are guessing. Social media is free. To use this fantastic free platform is a no-brainer. Social media platforms and tools are there for the taking and they give you instant access to customers and prospects, as well as the opportunity for you to get to know your customers.

2)   Drive traffic to your website 

Social media is a fantastic way to drive more traffic to your site and direct new customers to your business and products. Social media also contributes to increasing rankings for your website which improves your business’ visibility in the search engines.

3)   Generate leads

Customers are more likely to buy a product and service, or buy from a particular company, when it has been recommended by friends and family. 90% of consumers trust peer recommendation and only 33% trust adverts. Social media channels have been created for sharing, so if a customer is happy with your product and your business, they may well recommend your products and company to their friends. If you don’t appear on social media channels, this simply won’t happen for you. Peer-to-peer lead generation costs you nothing and gets you new customers.

4)   Use Facebook as a web presence

Some businesses are using their Facebook page as a strong web presence in its own right. As well as driving traffic, you can also get people to take action on your Facebook page. Some users prefer to stay on Facebook than go off to websites, so you should be able to give your customers and prospects what they want if they prefer to use Facebook.

5)   Get feedback from customers

You can use it to gather information and feedback from your customers. For some businesses social media is an incredibly useful research tool and a cheap and effective channel for feedback. Feedback can also include suggestions from your customers which in turn will help you to refine and improve your business and the service you give to customers. Some businesses are wary about receiving feedback from customers directly and so out in the open. Feedback isn’t necessarily going to be negative. In fact when positive feedback is given it is a great feeling. But if you do receive negative feedback, at least you have a chance to put things right directly. You can feedback directly and offer to put things right or contact your customers about their feedback directly using social media. And because it is so open your communication and willingness to put matters right and address customer issues can only be seen positively by customers.

6)  Use social media for brand awareness

Social media is a fantastic way to create visibility and awareness of your brand and company. It can also help you to target new customers as well as present a human and helpful face to your customers. You can use its wide coverage and reach to gain attention in your market.

7)   Get to know your customers

How well do you know your customers? Or how well do you think you know your customers? Social media can give you a platform to engage, consult, and have a dialogue with your customers and prospects to get to know them better. When you get to know your customers better and understand how they tick, you can offer them the products and services they want.

8)   Educate your customers

Another way to look at it is how well do your customers know you? Do they know everything you do and what you offer?  Social media shouldn’t just be about selling as this is a huge turn-off to audiences when they interact on social media sites.  You can use social media platforms to educate your customers about your brand, your business and what your business stands for. Many businesses have used social media proactively to educate customers about their brand.

9)   Give immediate customer service

Some businesses operate social media as a customer service tool, which saves costs, resources and time. For instance on a Facebook page if a customer asks a question about opening times or has a generic query about the type of services you offer you can respond to them quickly. And it is all about being where your customers choose to contact you. Generic customer information and latest updates can also be distributed via social media channels quickly and easily.

We offer a range of social media marketing for businesses. You can read more about our expert social media services in Surrey and the rest of the UK.

1. Save costs

Some marketing activities are an expensive and costly way to reach customers and prospective clients. Emailing is using the data that you already have and is an extremely cost-effective way of promoting your services or products. Emailing is also a fast and cheap way to communicate order confirmations, registrations and service updates.

2. Enhance your communications

Communications with your customers using email marketing is instantaneous and simple to distribute. Because of its immediacy, emails are a perfect way to promote time-sensitive information, offers, discounts and promotions. Email marketing also drives customers to your website using links that they simply click in the email. This will help to promote your specific products, services and offers by driving them to specific pages of your website.

3. Increase your company reach

When you send an email to a customer, there is also the opportunity of your email being forwarded and sent onto the recipient’s contacts and it going viral. Emails can also be shared on social networks and will have a wider footprint reach than you originally intended. Emails can be integrated into your existing systems and digital marketing activities in a number of ways that will extend your brand in the marketplace more than ever before. A greater number of emails are being accessed and read on mobile phone devices, so your emails can be also read by your customers on the move.

4. Sophisticated targeting

Email marketing will give your customers greater choice and options in the type of information they wish to receive from you. With every email you send you can create sophisticated targeting that will allow you to email highly targeted content based on your customers’ actions, preferences and selections.

5. Build strong relationships

Building a stronger relationship and rapport with your clients is vital to your business. Email marketing offers a cheap, fast and effective way of staying in contact with your customers. It helps to strengthen your brand as well as increase loyalty to your company and products.

6. Measure performance accurately

The beauty of email marketing is that it is completely transparent and measurable, so you can see what success is being achieved immediately. You can measure the cost of emailing and the return on the number of incoming calls and emails, sales and transactions. There is  a wide range of measurement criteria for email marketing you can measure and track which gives greater insight into your marketing successes which in turn improves your campaigns’ performance.

7. Improve your Green credentials

With more and more focus on greener ways of working, email marketing is an eco-friendly way to reach your customers and cuts down on wasteful paper-based marketing methods as well as huge printing costs.

We provide a range of solutions for email marketing in Surrey, so please get in touch with us to discuss your requirements and the options we can offer you.

We’ve put together some pointers to help you, a check-list to help you select an excellent SEO specialist who will do a great job, have your interests at heart and not their profits, and who don’t promise results to get your money and then not deliver.

1.         Beware cold callers

Some SEO and PPC companies are cold-calling and hard-selling their services to customers over the phone.  Typically these companies that call companies use a string of unfamiliar SEO-PPC jargon deliberately to confuse and scare customers. These unethical companies then go on to pressure customers to set up a direct debit over the phone there and then, saying that their business will suffer if they don’t. We don’t regard this practice as particularly ethical, helpful or customer-friendly.

These type of SEO companies literally obtain numbers out of a telephone directory and ring lists of business owners to take advantage of people with little or no knowledge of Search Engine Optimisation and to hard-sell their services.  Because they cold-call, they are also sales and profit-led and target-driven which means that they will only be interested in the profit margins and length of contract they can get from you.

The people doing the calling are reading from a script in a call centre so they are call centre agents rather than SEO specialists. They therefore know nothing about the complexities and techniques of SEO as their job is simply to sell and get profits.

These companies will also do the bare minimum work to get you listed and starting to rank. Their work won’t be bespoke to your business and market and they will use a cookie-cutter system that they use for all of their clients, as it’s a fast way to earn a buck for them, but not necessarily good for your business.

So we would advise, never be pressured into signing up into a contract or giving away your credit card details over the phone.  A reputable SEO company will not have to pressure their clients into working with them, and they will also give you an honest response about whether they can get great results for you based on your type of business, sector and market. In order to advise you honestly, they will first need to do some research and look into your business and market, not get your credit card details over the phone.  Reputable SEO companies will not take your money without giving you information on what they can do first and how they are going to do it in a detailed proposal.

2.         SEO is not a standardised service

Some larger SEO organisations have commoditised and standardised SEO so it is not specific to your business, as they work as big SEO operations in a mass-market.  They’ll often use standardised practices for SEO for all of their clients which mean the SEO isn’t bespoke to your business’ website, sector, competitors and market.

We believe that SEO cannot be a standard process, easy tricks or ticking boxes, it involves making your company visible to the widest possible audience in the most bespoke and relevant way, otherwise you just won’t get the traffic to, nor conversions from your website. Therefore your website will actually perform less well rather than maximising relevant traffic and volume of conversions to leads and sales.

3.         How high are their rankings?

The best advertisement for an SEO specialist is their own website rankings. If they have high rankings in Google and the other engines, then they are more likely to be credible and have SEO ability that is likely to be applied to your website. If their site is nowhere to be seen on Google, then they are best avoided.

4.         No false promises

Excellent SEO specialists will talk to you in-depth about your business, conduct initial SEO analysis and then come back to you with a bespoke proposal for your business requirements to achieve the very best results for you.  Excellent SEO specialists don’t promise the earth just to get your business; they will be realistic about timescales and what they can do.

An excellent SEO specialist will also be honest and open with you. If they can’t get the rankings for you because it’s too competitive, then they will advise you honestly and openly about what is achievable and what isn’t, because it will vary widely for every business.

Some business websites will never achieve high rankings because factors including their available budget, website, market, competition or profit margins won’t achieve successful SEO results.  A good SEO specialist will tell you if this is the case rather than promising something they can never achieve, and they will suggest alternative online marketing methods to drive traffic to your site.

5.        No-one can give guarantees

Another thing often included with false promises is guarantees. Well, NO SEO specialist nor SEO company can give a guarantee of rankings to customers. This is because Google changes their algorithms constantly and uses different approaches, so no company can guarantee anything. Google and the other search engines are firmly in the driving seat. An excellent SEO specialist will use long-term, high quality SEO techniques to ensure that Google’s algorithm changes don’t affect your website rankings. What can be guaranteed is that every effort will be made to improve rankings, but this won’t necessarily put your site in top position for your main keywords because no SEO specialist is in control of Google and the search engines.

6.         Ethical results last a lifetime

The most important factor to getting great results is to implement SEO strategy ethically. Being ethical or `White Hat’ as it’s known in the trade, means that your rankings are never, ever compromised. We have seen business sites’ rankings drop back to Pages 2, 3 and 4 in Google because their SEO suppliers have used spammy and unethical or `Black Hat’ techniques, which are only quick fixes with no substance, and this means they are risking  their clients’ website’s rankings. Google and other search engines will possibly penalise or ban your website if SEO practices aren’t within their strict policy guidelines, so it’s a high risk to go with someone who uses unethical practices, and you could lose the money you have invested in SEO.

7.          No long term contracts – get out when you want to

SEO factory companies also lock their customers into 12 month contracts. This is a long time in the SEO world and is not realistic nor good for your business, because what if they’re not giving you what you need? Your business will be evolving, but the service they give you won’t be. A good SEO specialist will allow you to drop out of the arrangement when it suits you, not them.

8.          Conflicts of interest

Another thing to find out is do they have clients that are in the same business and market as you and are likely to be your competitors? If so, this presents a conflict of interest as they are likely to use the same keywords to the same audience as yours and may be applying the same techniques. Not only is this money for old rope, as they’re potentially not doing anything new for your business, you’ll be directly competing with a rival company using the same supplier and possibly the same campaigns.

9.         Bad link building for SEO

Another key factor for excellent SEO is high quality link building. An excellent SEO specialist will take the time to build high value links to your site from high quality sites that are long-term and have higher authority with Google.  Some companies may use `link farms’ which are low quality sites, together with other low quality, spammy techniques.

SEO companies who promise thousands of links to your site, such as 10,000 directory submissions may be associating your site with the wrong type of links. They may also buy links on your behalf, and when your contract ends, all of your links disappear because you aren’t paying them anymore. These type of links will also be used for other companies and are not bespoke to you, your business or the industry that you are in.

So, all-round, low quality links are a very bad idea.

10.       Overseas outsourcing

Another way to get great rankings is to use good quality, useful content in a variety of channels and a variety of ways. Some SEO companies and specialists will outsource their content work to companies in other countries, for instance India.

We absolutely know that some of these overseas companies produce sub-standard work with poor language, structure, wording and grammar, which means that your company brand is associated with poor quality content that doesn’t make sense, has no relevance and is being distributed and seen globally.  So an excellent SEO specialist will ensure that the content produced for your SEO strategy will be of the highest quality at all times, and won’t compromise your brand or reputation.

Click here to find out more about our specialised SEO services.

1. Don’t have any objectives and don’t plan your campaign

You will need to set up a campaign by thoroughly planning it first. Produce a questionnaire to answer questions such as ‘What are my business goals for my PPC campaign?’ and answer questions as precisely as possible. For example with the question above you may answer:  ‘I want to increase sales by x%’, or ‘I want to increase my leads per month by x’. By initially defining goals, you will be able to benchmark success once the campaign is running.  Other questions that may be advantageous to ask are ‘Who are my competitors?’, ‘Who is my target audience?’ and ‘What are my Unique Selling Propositions (USPs)?’ or ‘How can I differentiate my company from my competitors?’. If you need to, perform further research on your industry.

2. Use default settings and throw your money away

Don’t set up your Adwords campaign yourself if you are not sure of what you are doing; you may save money in the long run by having a qualified Google Adwords Consultant set it up for you.

By using the default settings for Adwords, you may be opted in to the Display Network (ads on 3^rd party sites), as well as the Search Network (ads on Google search results pages). Usually, initially, we want to target the Search Network only. You may also waste a lot of money on irrelevant clicks by not using negative keywords (keywords such as ’free’ that will prevent your ad showing for searches that contain those terms). See more on negative keywords below. Don’t set up one campaign and throw 100’s of keywords into one adgroup (groups of closely related keywords and their associated ads). We have often seen this for clients that come to us saying that their accounts are not performing well. Remember, keep very focused.

3. Don’t think about your account structure

Before setting up a campaign, ensure that you define your account structure. An Adwords account is made up of campaigns, which contain adgroups, which contain keyword phrases and associated ads. Often the account structure will mirror the way your website is set up. For example, if you offer holidays, you may have a section on Spain and a section on France and within the Spain section you may have pages for Madrid and Barcelona and so on. Your account may then have one campaign for Spain and one for France. For the Spain campaign you would have adgroups for Madrid and Barcelona.

4. Don’t do any competitor research

Ensure you research your competitors so that you can differentiate your company with the USPs you identified in your campaign planning. Also, competitor research can help with keyword research.

5. Go for any old keywords

Don’t set up your campaigns for generic or inappropriate keywords phrases, get specific. Use keyword tools such as Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery and the Google Adwords Keyword Tool to carry out keyword research and develop a list of keywords for each adgroup defined in the account structure.

6. Forget about negative keywords

Forget negative keywords at your peril. Build a negative keyword list by brainstorming and using keyword research tools. Negative keywords prevent your ads from showing for irrelevant searches and this helps to boost click through rate (CTR) and conversion rate and saves you money on irrelevant clicks. For our holiday example, negatives might be ‘jobs’ and ‘skiing’ as we don’t offer skiing holidays and we are not looking to recruit.

7. Create one ad and reuse it for everything

Don’t use the same ad in every adgroup or even worse, don’t use only one ad for the whole account. Create at least 2 unique ads for each adgroup tailored to the keywords in your adgroups so that you can compare the performance of each ad in the adgroup and test out different messaging. Mention the main keyword phrase in the ad title or headline and ideally once in the ad copy also. Include your USPs and benefits in ads, as well as a call to action such as ‘Call Today’. Don’t land all your ads on your Home page, rather land visitors on the page that is most relevant to the ad.

8. Use Adwords settings to show your ads to the whole world

Adjust settings for each campaign, for example geo-targeting settings will show your ad in the defined area, such as England only or the whole of the UK.

Other important settings include opting out of the Display Network (ads on 3^rd party sites). The Display network can be useful, but it is better to separate out Search Network ads and Display Network ads because you have more control.

9. Waste money and miss opportunities by not tracking your visitor data

Google Analytics

Track visitor usage by using Google Analytics, a free web analytics solution.  You can view statistics on how your Adwords campaign is performing, as well as other data such as non-paid visits, content viewed and the ratio of new to returning visitors.

Adwords conversion tracking

When driving traffic from your Adwords campaign it is vital that you measure whether visitors performed the action that you wanted them to on your site, for example filling out a contact form or making a purchase. Adwords conversion tracking does just this by inserting a small piece of code on the contact form ‘thank you’ page for example.  If someone clicks on your ad and then fills out your contact form, they will trigger a conversion in Adwords and this is tied to the keyword phrase they used to search with.

10. Leave your account to run itself and don’t monitor it

Don’t set up your Adwords account and then leave it to run without monitoring; closely monitor your Adwords account. Bids will need to be adjusted and you may need to pause keywords and add more keywords and negative keywords. Daily budget may also need to be adjusted.

11. Ignore ongoing optimisation

Don’t just monitor your account, take action and optimise it! Based on the feedback from monitoring and analysis of the account, improve the account to increase your performance and see increased click through rates and conversion rates and lower your cost per click.

We have seen 11 approaches to PPC campaign set-up that lead to poor results and 11 solutions that improve set up. Adwords and other PPC platforms can be profitable if set up in the right way.

Please let us know in the comments how your Adwords campaign is set up.

• Attract new customers
• Sell your products or services
• Convert to leads and sales

There are some dos and don’ts for creating a great website and most importantly of all to give your customers an excellent experience on your website so that they don’t want to go elsewhere. Here is a checklist of 11 essential issues to prevent your customers clicking off your website.

1.         Get great web design

If your website is poorly designed, graphically and in terms of usability, it is going to put potential customers off. Your design needs to portray you in a professional way, using good design practices that are also up-to-date. A customer centric design will encompass the goals of your target audience whilst also achieving your business goals. For more on usability please see Jakob Nielsen’s website.

2.         Have clear navigation

Poor navigation on your website is going to confuse your customers as well as present a confusing website for your business. Designing and executing a clear and workable navigational structure throughout your website will enable customers to get to the information that they need quickly. If you have confusing navigation and users need to click a number of times to find hidden information, you are going to lose them to your competitors’ website. A search function is also a useful addition to aid navigation, but make sure you have a good search system in place so customers can find what they are looking for quickly.

3.         Don’t use clashing colours

Colours in design can be very subjective, but there are basic rules for using colours for good web design and also that applies to accessibility rules and regulations. Colour backgrounds for copy need to allow users to read your content easily, and makes sure contrasting colours don’t fight with each other on-screen,  giving your customers a poor experience. You can use colour in some great design ways and it’s best to use colours that contrast tonally well.

4.         Write engaging and clear content

Websites need to be clear about what their purpose is to the user straight away. So make sure that your site has concise and clear copy that explains what you do and what you offer at what price and how to find out further information.

Also make sure that you have all the information that your customers need and are looking for, rather than what your organisation wants your customer to know, and don’t use jargon or technical terms that externally customers won’t recognise.  Good content also goes hand in hand with clear navigation.

Your customers should be able to know what you do within 30 seconds of being on your website. Don’t write huge volumes of words on your website as customers won’t read all of it, so write your most important facts in the first paragraph of each page and make it succinct. Avoid marketing speak and fluffy words, just get straight to the point so you are clear.

5.         Don’t install pop-ups

Pop-ups are pop-up windows that appear on the screen without customers wanting them to. This is a real-turn off for users, because it is interruptive and intrusive to what they are trying to do on your site. Some companies use pop-ups for surveys, but it’s best to have these appear after a couple of minutes so that your customer has a chance to use and look at your site before answering the survey!

6.         Ensure fast loading

If your website has huge image files or a flash presentation that needs to load, you are making your customers wait for your website to appear. Not all customers will wait, they want to get to information quickly and easily, and a slow loading website is likely to make them go to another site.

7.         Have a clear call to action

The reason why you have a website is to create and convert leads and gnerate sales. So it’s vital that you have a clear call to action on your website. What is it that you want your customers to do? Do you want them to book a room directly, book a car service, contact you by phone, email or send a message via a contact form to you? However you want to handle your leads, put it clearly on your website and make the contact options clear to your customers.

8.         Stay clear of flash introductions

For some reason, flash introductions seem to be just as popular as they were ten years’ ago. Very often flash introductions are forced onto a user before they can get to any other part of the website. You may think that flash introductions are a crowd-pleasing attribute for your website, but they are not a great experience for your customers. Flash can be slow to load and is often a turn-off and barrier to people who just want to get onto a site quickly. If you must have a flash introduction, then make it optional for users to view and turn-off and on.

9.         Use video with content

Some businesses use video only to explain what they do, with long videos on their website pages expecting customers to sit and watch them. If you have video, make sure  you also have content on your website that explains what you do and what you offer, and that the video is an added option to view rather than the only thing to view otherwise you will lose customers who don’t have time to watch videos.

10.       Give scent trails

Your customers may be browsing for a while on your site and get sidetracked along the way into other areas of your website. To get your customers back on track again, make sure you include scent or breadcrumb trails in your website so it’s easy for your customers to find their way around and the  information they are looking for.

11.       Optimise for users and the search engines

Some web design companies will design your site without thinking about the longer term goal of delivering traffic to it. Holistic and best-practice web design will include optimisation for visitors but also search engine optimisation to include your target keywords sensibly on each page.