Category: Web Marketing

So many businesses have struggled over the past twelve months due to the restrictions in place because of the Covid pandemic. It may be that the business has not been able to open at all such as many in the leisure industry or that the business has had to change to trade online. For this who are still able to sell products or services in some way, it is important to continue marketing.

If you have recently moved to selling products online then you need to ensure that people can find your products. Most people use a search engine such as Google or Bing to find products they want m. In order to get your site found you may need to enlist the help of a marketing expert. They will be able to advise you where’s best to invest your money. It may be that you also decide to do a Pay per Click campaign to get your site found. Google have their own one called Google AdWords which allows you to get traffic to your site almost instantly. You pay per click through to your website in hoping that these visitors will then purchase from you. The amount you pay will depend on the competition for the keyword and the quality of your site in relation to that phrase.

Social media marketing is a great way to promote your business. Unless you are doing paid for ads, it is all free to use and you can build up an online following very quickly. Sometimes what can happen with on the social media site, Facebook for example, is that you will do something which gains you a massive number of followers but then over time they start to dwindle off and before you know it you have a fraction of people following you that you did before. This often happens if you have run a competition and asked people to follow you to be put into the draw. After the competition a large percentage of this people will then leave unless you give them a reason to stay. Ideally you should try and run competitions often to keep people interested. You could do one small one every couple of weeks and then a bigger one every couple of months. Holding on to your followers is vital but you have to keep them engaged in order to do so. Also with many of the social media sites, if you do not interact with a profile that much you often will not see all their posts in your feed.

Launching a new business can be tricky as you may be starting from a completely blank canvas. It may be that you are launching a new product or service that is not known so you will have to make people aware of who you are and what you are offering. Having a website is a great place to start, but if none knows you exist then they may not search for you or your products. Social media is a fantastic way to get your brand and products recognised. You can opt for the paid for advertising or you can choose to build up a following organically. If you decide to go down the organic route then you need to think about how you care going to get your posts seen. You may be able to advertise on some local groups but be aware as sometimes these groups have restrictions regarding advertising. You can also ask all your friends to share posts and links to your social media pages.

The best way to build up a following quickly is to offer a prize draw. Some many companies quickly gain hundreds of followers by running a giveaway competition in exchange for a share and like of their page / posts.

A popular way to communicate with the local community is through the medium of social media as it is a good way to publicise community events, dispense information and safety advice. Although the idea of using a physical noticeboard situated in a prominent position has been used for years this is becoming a less common way of communication largely due to the fact that fewer people are walking to shops than previously and therefore they are not seeing the notices posted there.

A social media community page where two or three members act as administrators on the page and monitor the posts and comments is becoming a regular sight. Members can request to join the group and, in some groups, have to wait to be accepted before they can begin posting. This method of communication is useful as it can convey new information quickly for instance in the case of a cancelled event. Local businesses can advertise their services and any special events that they are holding such as open days.

A disadvantage with this type of community noticeboard is that there are people who do not use social media so they will not be aware of posts that may concern them.

If you are a business owner of a small business you may not have thousands of punds few every month to spend on marketing. You need to think very carefully about how best to invest your marketing budget to quickly see a decent return on your investment.

You should already know how important your customers are as not only might you rely on their repeat business but also their word of mouth reviews to gain you more customers. Word of mouth marketing is great, but it is not ideal to have to solely rely on it.  You need to explore other marketing avenues that work well for your industry and business. Costs can often be tight in a small business so each pound needs to be spent wisely. There are a few ways in which you can market your small business for little money or sometimes for free but you often do need to be willing to invest some of your time.

Social media is a great marketing platform for business of all sizes. It allows you to connect with people in your local area if your business is aimed locally or nationally. Setting up a profile or account on the social media sites is very easy but you may find that you struggle to manage them. If this is the case then you may wish to either go on a social media marketing training course or outsource the management to a third party.

If you have decided that social media marketing is not something you want to do for your business then you could be making a huge mistake. Social media marketing is often a very cost effective and successful way of marketing and if you chose not to partake in it then you may be cutting yourself off from huge number of potential customers.

Many people now search online to find companies that offer the services and products they want or need. You may be advertising through Google, Yell or your own website but if you have no presence on the social media sites then you have no way on connecting with these people.

You may want to have a profile and try and build up a community by getting others to share your page and posts or you may decide to do a bit of paid for advertising on social media and gain followers that way. Paid for advertising often gets you quicker results but you do need to have knowledge of how the paid for ads work and how best to set them up to get a good return on your investment.

Advertising using any format has always been down to a delicate balance, too little and your advertising isn’t effective, too much and you can actually annoy potential customers and reduce your uptake on offers or services. So how do you find that balance?

It’s said that a potential customer needs to see an advert an average of three times for them to take notice and store the information from the advert. With that in mind repetition can certainly be effective as long as its not too noticeable.

Using social media is a great tool for advertising as you are able to tailor you advert and send it to only people who fit into certain categories meaning that the advert is likely to be more relevant to them.  If you decide that you want to send your advert only to people aged between 18-25, for example, you may want to tailor the language you use to be less formal and include more slang or current popular youth culture words.

You may want to consider running your advertising campaign for a fairly short amount of time but in concentrated bursts, this will give you the repetition you need without annoying customers who will have seen your advert regularly.

Its always worth carefully tracking the impact your advertising campaign has had to help you in the future to judge just how much is enough when it comes to repetition. Asking for customer feedback on where they saw your advert is a great way of doing this.

With the age of social media, it is now easier than ever to fall victim to bad social media reviews and comments that have a negative effect on your business. Nowadays, many people use the internet and particularly social media to find companies that offer the products or service they need and to get feedback from others on what they are like. Regardless of whether or not you have a presence on the social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, you can still find that you have customers who are not happy and have no issue voicing this for thousands to see online.

All companies will get an unhappy customer or complaint at some point, but it is how you deal with it that makes a difference. If you find a bad comment that has been left about your business online it is important to address it. You may want to message the person privately to discuss the issue but it is also worth commenting on their post to say that you are very sorry to hear they are not happy and have messaged them to discuss it in more detail. This shows other people who may read the comment that you have accepted someone is not happy and are trying to sort out the issue.

If you are a fan of programs such as Dragons Den or The Apprentice, they you will quickly start to realise the impact that marketing can have on a product or an entire business. Many of the candidates on these programs have an idea that may be really great, but without the correct sort of marketing, it is hard to let people know that your business or product even exists.

There are numerous ways of marketing and some types work better for some businesses that for others. Doing little or no marketing will make it virtually impossible to gain success and in turns sales and this is often the reason why many companies fail.

Social media is a great marketing platform for all types of businesses and to start with you don’t even need to invest any money in them, just a bit of your time. Even having  social media accounts on Facebook and Twitter for example can gain you a few enquiries and if nothing else, will give you a place to showcase what your company offers and give your customers a way of contacting you other that the usual.

Setting up a basic social media profile is relatively straight forward, but to get the most out of it, it is recommended to speak to a marketing company.

As a marketing consultant, it surprises me how many companies are still not using social media as part of their marketing strategy.

Not only are these businesses not using social media but it is not always because they don’t know how to, many are just very reluctant to. If you use social media yourself on a regular basis you will probably understand the power of it. You may be following a number of businesses and joined a number of groups and find that you regularly interact with them and even purchase based on posts you have seen. If, however, you don’t use social media you may think it is a waste of time and a place you do not need to advertise on. By using the social media sites you do not necessarily need to do the paid for advertising, often creating a profile and keeping active is enough.