Marketing in today’s multi-channel, digital world can sometimes feel a bit a confusing with so many options and an almost endless “to do list”. To make your life just that bit easier we have listed some of our favourite tools. Listed below in no particular order we hope you find the list to be useful. […]
KitKat has been grabbing the national press headlines this week with the announcement that it will be selling bespoke hand made £14 KitKats from its website and selected John Lewis stores in the run up to Christmas. Chocolate fans will be able to choose from 1,500 flavour combinations. They will be asked to choose their […]
Whether or not you are into Horse Racing there is an undeniable buzz in the air in Prestbury, Cheltenham and Gloucestershire as The Festival approaches. The statistics surrounding the Cheltenham Festival are quite staggering, here are just a few:
The economic benefit to the county is estimated at around £100 million
In 2016 236,472 pints of Guinness were consumed on the course
£2.3 million is taken out of cash machines in the town
Approximately 10,000 Irish racing fans come to the Festival
134,600 travel through the town’s train station
20,000 bottle of champagne are served at the racecourse
1 ton of beef is eaten on the course
The shuttle buses from the town centre to the course make 80,000 journeys
A typical jockey will consume no more than 1,500 calories in a day
The race meeting is also a focal point for Marketing of all kinds. For over a week now the betting companies have been promoting their Festival offers and there will be all kinds of stunts from them during the week to get their brand in front of the racegoers. The picture that accompanies this blog is of the giant Hollywood style Paddy Power sign put up on Cleeve Hill overlooking the course in 2010. Local pubs go to great lengths to promote their racing breakfasts. The local council offers free parking in its car parks to tempt shoppers into the town centre during the lull when the punters are at the racecourse and the Business Improvement District runs a competition for the best racing themed window.
Aside from the direct economic impact, what is the value to the town of being “put on the map” by this event? It is very difficult to estimate this, but a campaign to raise this level of name and brand awareness of Cheltenham would most certainly cost millions.
In the ten years of running Prestbury Marketing we cannot recall receiving an enquiry from a business or business person whilst they were visiting Prestbury for the racing, but maybe this year will be the year? If you or your business need help with your marketing or PR then feel free to get in touch.
Hornsea School and Language College in East Yorkshire was recently “rebranded” on Google as Hornsea Prison & Hell on Earth. The temporary change perhaps unsurprisingly attracting national headlines.
Behind this enterprising prank is a lesson for all businesses of the importance of claiming your Google My Business page. This page is what produces the box that appears top right when you search for your business and also generates the red circle on a Google Map when people search for your category of business on Google e.g. Marketing Consultants. What some businesses don’t realise, is that if you don’t set up your own page, Google will set up one for you (as I suspect happened in the case of this school).
You can tell whether your business has been claimed because if it hasn’t – wording along the lines of “Own this business?” will appear as a link on the page. Theoretically, nobody other than you will be able to claim your business as part of the verification process of claiming your page is sending a postcard to your physical address with a code that you need to enter online. But this doesn’t stop somebody from suggesting a change in the listing to Google, something they actively encourage. The problem is that if you don’t own the page there is nobody for Google to contact to approve or reject the change and it will therefore automatically happen. In all probability, this is what happened in this case with the school.
But preventing unwanted or incorrect changes is not the only reason you should claim your page. Far from it. So what can you do once you own your page?
You can add your own photos.
You can fully populate your page. E.g. opening hours, facilities, category of business (you can be in more than one), website, telephone number.
You can enter a short promotional description of your business.
You can add events to your page.
You can run promotional posts that include a photo, text and a call to action button with a link (unless you are a hotel that doesn’t have this functionality on their listing). These are free (at the moment) and will drive more people to your website and are a great way to share content you are creating for other purposes like blogs.
You can respond to reviews.
You get access to the insights which shows how many people saw your listing in the last 30 days (if Google read this, can we have the ability to set a date range for this like with Google Analytics please), how they found it and what actions they took e.g. called you, visited your website or asked for directions.
Impressive functionality I am sure you will agree, all free and a unique insight to what is happening before people make contact with you. One way of thinking about this page is that is effectively extends the sales funnel to allow you to understand the dynamics of what is happening even before you are aware of a potential customer.
So the lesson from all of this, is if you have not claimed your page do it today (we can help you with this if you struggle). Once you have claimed it or if you had done already, make sure you make the most of the functionality and keep an eye on the results. If you don’t have the time or resources to do all of this, then businesses like us can do this for you, feel free to contact us.
One final cheeky request. If you have found this blog useful, or you have already worked with us, please free to Google us and leave us a review (or do the same on our Facebook page). Ask your customers to do the same as the more reviews and the higher the score you have, the more likely you will be to appear higher in category searches and the more positive first impression you will give.
To say we live in interesting times is an understatement. Uncertainty around the world of politics, our relationship with Europe and the economy are occupying our minds daily (if not hourly). Combine this with the fact that despite all the labour saving tools at our disposal (both domestically and in our businesses) we all seem […]
Pizza Hut has launched a bold new TV advertising campaign (watch the advert here) with the ambitious aim of “owning” the UK pizza delivery market in 2019. An audacious aim perhaps, but you have to admire the advert – well you don’t “have to”, but it undeniably has a lot going for it. The campaign […]
As one year draws to a close and another is just about to start, it is a good time to try and look forward to the next year and reflect on likely changes over the next 12 months and how these may impact on your marketing and priorities. In this blog we look at some of the key themes that we think are going to emerge.
1. The growth of voice search
With the phenomenal growth in the likes of Amazon Echo, Amazon Dot and Google Home it is little wonder that volumes of voice searches are climbing fast. Estimates already suggest that 20% of Google Searches on mobiles are voice searches. By 2020 it is predicted that every major brand will have a voice strategy. It is also likely that we will see Google introduce a new category of ad campaign specifically for voice searches. Google’s own research has shown that “near me now” searches have grown by 150% over the last two years.
What can you do straight away to enhance your voice search presence? First and foremost if you have not already done so, claim your Google My Business listing (more on these later), ensure they are fully populated. Voice searches are 3 times more likely to be local in their nature. If you are not already doing so, start blogging and try to build into these the longer question type phrases that people may use e.g, How can I improve my marketing in 2019?
2. Embrace Google My Business and make the most of it, whilst it is all still free
Hopefully if you are reading this, you will have already claimed your Google My Business page. These are the boxes that appear top right when you search for a specific brand or company (you can see ours here) and what drives the maps with red teardrops on when you search a category (see below example).
If you haven’t already claimed your page, then do it now. If you search for your business, and a box appears with wording something along the lines of “Do you own this business” or “Claim this business” then click on this and follow the steps to claim the page (Google has set up pages for many existing businesses in readiness for them to claim them). When you Google if no page exists then go to the Google My Business homepage and click on the green button start now.
See how you compare with reviews, both in terms of number and score. Having more reviews and a higher score can be very powerful for businesses where their market is predominantly local. Cheeky mention that if you work with us and haven’t reviewed us on Google or Facebook, please feel free to do so.
Get into the habit of posting regular Post Updates. These can be highly effective and are completely free promotional updates that appear in your Google My Business box. Post regularly and compare their performance to hone these as a tool. These are completely free at present, but we would not be surprised if 2019 saw Google introduce charges for these. We have seen many of our clients see very good results from these this year.
3. Video’s importance will continue to grow
Opinions differ on the extent to which videos on your website can help with the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) of the site. Cisco however predict that 82% of global consumer internet activity will be video related by 2021.
Why else might you want to embrace video if it may or may not benefit SEO? A growing proportion of people prefer to watch a video than a long block of text. Even in a study of business executives when asked whether they would prefer video or text, 59% said video. Embedding videos on your website can reduce the bounce rate on a page and increase the dwell time on a page which can be beneficial for the Google quality store. Also other sites are more likely to link to pages with video on them. One study found that 85% of interactions can be attributed to images on social media posts, whereas another suggested that video can outperform static images by over 130%.
Whilst all of this is good news for video production companies, more home grown knowledge based videos and animated style videos that businesses can produce at a modest cost are also likely to increase.
4. Internal Marketing (or Internal Communications) will grow in importance
We are currently operating in a very tight job market with historically low levels of unemployment and shortages of skilled employees in many sectors. On a regular basis, we hear clients say that one of their biggest challenges is finding skilled people.
Despite this situation many firms (particularly medium sized ones who perhaps don’t have a dedicated resources, yet also don’t have the advantages that much smaller ones have of one to one communication with the decision maker in the business) are not taking internal marketing/communications seriously enough. Do you really know how engaged your staff are, how many understand what the business is trying to achieve and what their role is in this? How many of your staff will be waking up on New Year’s Day with the new Year’s resolution of finding their next role?
Of course, communication is just one factor in the overall pay, benefits and wellbeing of employees, but how many employers would not want to reduce staff turnover?
5. More and more businesses will embrace integrated marketing
The choice of marketing routes and tactics can seem bewildering and most businesses will have a wide array of forms of marketing at their disposal – website, social media, direct mail, newsletters, email to name just a few. Used together in a structured planned manner focussing on particular campaigns, products and services, these can be incredibly powerful and significantly increase return on investment from marketing.
Radio, TV and Newspaper industry groups are quick to point out the multiplier effect on response when these are used together and they have a point. Whilst not literally true in every instance, there is an old marketing principle that the average person needs to see on average an advert seven times before they respond. In our fragmented media world and with the explosion of social media, this can be achieved much faster than before.
Challenge yourself, do you have a Marketing Plan and are your planned activities as integrated as they could or should be?
In writing this blog, we set ourselves the constraint of focussing on what we think may be the biggest things to emerge when it comes to marketing in 2019. Many will have different views and certainly we see things like PR, content marketing, paid for social media activity and website page loading speeds also being a key focus (check out Googles nifty tool for checking this here). We hope though that at the very least we have prompted some debate, or given some food for thought. Of course if you need help with any of the areas that we have covered we would be delighted to hear from you – contact us here. Otherwise we wish you a Happy New Year and a successful 2019 – let’s make it a good one.
So you have decided that the time is right to recruit your first marketing person? Maybe the amount of marketing that your organisation undertakes has grown to a point where you consider you would be better off having a dedicated person. But you are not sure what to do next? Well here are our top […]
It has been a busy week in the world of social media, as Jenny Jervis outlines in this week’s update. Instagram Stat-attack Instagram Stories have now reached 300 million daily active users, which is up from 250 million for in June 2017. This platform continues to grow at a rapid pace and provides great opportunities for […]
This is the first in a series of regular updates from Jenny Jervis on what’s new or interesting in the world of social media. The Internet of things The Internet of Things is big news for social media marketers due to the increase of devices that will be hooked up to the web. Its forecast […]
Now more than ever when your online presence is absolutely crucial, your Google Business listing is one of the most powerful (and under rated) marketing tools at your disposal. It’s more than just a simple directory listing—it’s a gateway for potential customers to find, learn about, and engage with your business. Here’s why maintaining an […]