The countdown is well and truly on for this year’s Gloucestershire Business Show on the 17th and 18th May at The Centaur, Cheltenham Racecourse – 9.30am-4pm each day. This has got to be the biggest and best business event in the county now in its third year – with over 140 exhibitors, a number of […]
In the ideal world, everything you ever do on the Marketing front will be a rip roaring success. But from time to time things can go wrong for even the best marketers – but then is the time for a calm head and to ask yourself some questions (or ask somebody like us), to help […]
Our top 10 tips for making sure you make the most out of your website and what it can do for your business.
The chances are that if you are reading this and you either work in a business or run a business yourself, then that business will have a website. The possible exceptions might be if your are just starting out, your business is very small or you consider that the internet is not important to your business (I know hard to imagine, but some people still think that way).
Far too many businesses though fall into the trap of thinking “thank goodness for that” when they finish their website and consider it a job done. That might be the case when you produce a brochure – after all you cannot change a brochure once you have had it printed, but this should most certainly not be the case with a website. We would urge you to think of it more as the start than the finish. In many respects websites should be thought of being a little like painting the Forth Bridge – it is never finished (although having decided to check our facts it turns out that even painting the Forth Bridge finished at some point as you can see here).
So if you accept our argument that you should regard your website as never being finished what exactly do we suggest that you should be doing to/with it. Here are our top 10 suggestions:
1. Check your Google Analytics. The amount of information and insight that the free version of Google Analytics provides is quite remarkable. It allows you to understand how many people are visiting your website (whether that number is increasing or decreasing), how they found your site, how many pages they looked at, what they looked at and much much more. If you don’t have Google Analytics on your website we would strongly suggest you get your web company to add it. Even if you don’t look at it now, from the point it is added it is compiling a history for you that you can look at the future.
2. Ask yourself what is the Google Analytics telling you (or for that matter, ask us to to do that for you)? It can for example help guide you on what aspects of your marketing are working best for you. For example if you are running a direct mail campaign or perhaps doing a door drop, does this lead to an increase in the amount of direct traffic to your website. What proportion of your website traffic is coming from social media – anything less than 5% and it is worth looking at more closely. Where is your most engaged web traffic coming from and where are you losing visitors? These are just some of the questions you should ask yourself.
3. Is your website mobile friendly or to coin an industry phrase – responsive? Google announced in February 2015 that from April of that year it would start to penalise websites that are not mobile friendly by ranking them less highly in searches on mobile devices. If you are at all unsure whether your website is mobile friendly or not, then Google have a free to use tool where you can check your website – you can find it here.
Aside from the rankings though, there are other compelling reasons why you would want your website to be mobile friendly. Firstly and perhaps most obviously you would want your website user experience to be as good as possible regardless of what device they were using wouldn’t you? Google Analytics also tells you what your bounce rate is (the bounce rate is the percentage of people who arrive on one page and leave the site immediately), not just overall, but also by device. A “bounce” could in certain circumstances be good, for example – I look at a website for a telephone number and I find it straight away. Most bounces though are considered bad and you should be looking for the lowest bounce rate possible. If your website is not mobile friendly you will usually see a higher bounce rate for tablets and an even higher bounce rate for mobiles.
The good news about responsive sites is that most new sites will be built as a responsive site and the days when it cost more to have your website built mobile friendly are long gone.
4. Look to see whether there is a correlation between web traffic and business levels. If there is, then this might increase the argument for doing more to drive traffic to your site e.g. more social media, pay per click etc – at least on a trial basis to check that this also leads to an increase in enquiries and business levels.
5. Keep your site fresh. It is generally well accepted that Google and other search engines, “like” websites that are regularly updated. It is one of the reasons that we write blogs like these, although they are also a great way through social media of driving traffic to our site. Even if you don’t blog, there are other ways of keeping a site fresh, adding testimonials or case studies are another good way.
6. Check whether your site is secure. Aside from the fact you would not want your site hacked or enquiry data stolen, Chrome announced last year that they would progressively highlight to users the websites that they considered to be not secure. If you look at an insecure website (ours included but we are taking steps to address this), Chrome will currently show an “i” in a circle next to the address in the browser, which if you click on it will show that the website is not secure. Later this year they will make this much more prominent with a red warning bar, that is likely to have a damaging effect on the traffic that visits your site. Fortunately it is not very difficult to change your site from being http to https, which is what is required to make your site secure. You will also need a security licence. Your web company will be able to quote to do this or we can direct you to firms that can help with this.
7. Measure what you can. Google analytics will tell you a lot about how your website is performing but you also need measures in your business as well. Make sure that all enquiries are logged and that new enquirers are asked how they found your business, then monitor this information and ensure that you calculate the amount of business that the website generates and that you can gauge how well web enquiries convert compared to others.
8. Look for opportunities to list your website on other websites, as this can be a good way of driving traffic to your website that might not otherwise find you. Make sure that you set up a Google My Business listing, as it is free and will help you be found even when people are searching for your type of business rather than your name. A glance at our referral traffic so far this year, found that 3 people already this year had come to our website via our listing on the Cheltenham Chamber of Commerce website. PR activity that leads to online articles can also sometimes include links to your website.
9. Consider Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). SEO is where you, or someone on your behalf will make changes to your website to make sure that you rank highly on searches for the terms that you want to be found for. Large organisations that drive a lot of traffic to their site and get a lot of business from it, can spend thousands a month on this. A one off exercise though, costing hundreds rather than thousands can highlight changes that you can make to your site that will improve its ranking. We usually suggest this is done as part of building a new website.
10. Consider paid for activity to drive more traffic to your website. If your website is performing well and you are generating business from it, then it may be worthwhile considering paid for activity to boost the amount. There is a huge variety of ways this can be done, but Google adwords (pay per click), boosted Facebook posts or online advertising are some of the most popular. The great thing about any form of online marketing is that it is highly measurable. Could you also do email marketing or e-newsletters to prospects to drive even more traffic? It is crucial though to make sure that you ensure your website is working well before you start spending money on driving more traffic to it.
Hopefully we have given you some food for thought with this blog, but if it all sounds a bit daunting or you don’t have the time or expertise to carry out this work, then that is what we are here for. You can contact us here. So what are you waiting for?
As we approach 2017, here are our 12 predictions for the Marketing industry in 2017.
1. The percentage share of Marketing budgets devoted to some form of digital marketing will increase.
2. There will be a rush to make website https as Chrome rolls out its planned changes to mark non secure websites as insecure.
3. The importance of social media will increase, but the market will also become more fragmented, with the dominance of the likes of Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin becoming increasingly challenged (very much a continuation of 2016).
4. More and more businesses will adopt content marketing as they strive to increase traffic to their websites.
5. Demand for experienced Marketing staff will climb, outstripping supply and leading to more firms to “grow their own”.
6. Integrated marketing, will become the norm – with less and less businesses running marketing or campaigns in silos.
7. Businesses will devote more time and energy to their full digital presence, not just their website and will strive for a more consistent brand image.
8. Economic uncertainty will prevail driving businesses to source suppliers locally.
9. Customer expectations will continue to climb and the gulf between expectations and reality will grow wider. This will drive more firms to measure customer experience and invest in training and technology to improve results.
10. Pressure on marketing budgets will increase the focus on customer retention, cross selling and improving conversion rates on new enquiries.
11. Businesses will place an increased importance on customer and prospect data. Ensuring it is up-to-date, complete and increasingly segmented.
12. Growing numbers of businesses will turn to outsourced providers to supplement existing resources or skills (well you would expect us to say that wouldn’t you?)
In a year of such major political events, it is all too easy to overlook some of the main events in the world of marketing. We list here a light hearted look at twelve marketing things that happened in 2016 – one for each month of the year.
January
John Cleese returned as Basil Fawlty for a TV advert for Specsavers.
February
Google stopped showing adverts on the right hand side of search results.
March
21st March Twitter celebrated its 10th birthday.
April
Facebook announced major news feed algorithm changes.
May
The Content Marketing Association unveiled a forecast that UK businesses spend on Content Marketing will increase by 179% to £349m by 2020.
June
27th June – England vs Iceland – The most tweeted about TV event of the year with 2.1 million tweets
July
13th July – Pokemon Go was first released in the UK and high street brands were quick to try and make the most of the phenomenon.
August
The domain .blog first became available.
September
8th September – Chrome announces that from January 2017 it will start to mark websites that are not https as insecure.
October
Tesco and Unilever have their very public spat over pricing that saw Marmite come out as the big PR winners.
November
11th November Buster became a household name, featuring in the John Lewis Christmas advert for 2016.
December
Amazon launches its own food label brand – Wickedly Prime.
Here at Prestbury Marketing we have always been firm believers that businesses should play an active role in supporting their local communities. This belief is not just based upon a gut feel that it is the right thing to do, but more the fact that we believe that “doing good is good for business”. The […]
Social media isn’t just there to grow your brand and connect with old friends, when done correctly, the big platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Instagram can play a key role in creating new business leads and attracting new customers.
Let’s take a look at how Trumps triumphant yet surprising win in the USA presidency last week has been marked as ‘the first true social media election’ of all time. We know that social media is forever growing in users; since the USA election in 2012, Facebook now boasts more than 60% monthly active users along with Twitter’s influx of more than 185 million users. This substantial increase in active users made social media the obvious option for reaching voters and creating global conversation. The Wall Street Journal summed the situation up nicely when it said the “traditional media” and the Democratic and Republican parties have lost “dominance” of public opinion to the “digital revolution.”
Trump and Clinton succeeded by getting people to talk both about and with them. Both candidates had an on-going relay in campaign messaging, barely missing a day without updating Twitter. The power of social media has had a similarly positive impact on helping businesses create leads and reach new consumers, just like Trump and Clinton searching for voters. We see typically between 5% and 15% of our clients web traffic coming from social media to see whether you are achieving this you do of course have to monitor the evaluation tools of each form of social media and google analytics.
Some of the key features on social media can allow businesses to create free engaging content, set up paid for adverts, upload 360 degree imagery and post live footage in order to potentially reach thousands and thousands of people.
We’ve listed a few pointers to help your business shine on social media:
1. Keep content regular – It is important that you’re constantly posting on social media, we don’t mean every minute of everyday but enough to ensure your business is being seen and your content is fresh in users mind.
It can take a little while for you to build social media followers, it never happens in an instant but the more engaging content you upload the more interaction you are likely to receive thus driving website traffic and increasing likes, comments, click through’s and shares. Focus also on growing a relevant audience and not just chasing numbers for numbers sake.
What level of frequency should you aim for? We suggest you begin sharing up to two Facebook posts, 10 – 30 tweets and 3 – 5 Instagram posts a week.
2. Be engaging – The most engaging content on social media requires images, videos, links and graphics to be uploaded with your posts. This will increase the chances of your content being seen as users are more likely to interact and click play to watch short videos than they are to engage with words on there own.
3. Do your research – These days you’ll find the majority of businesses are using social media and moving their marketing budget towards digital and social media advertising but we are a big believers in doing research first, then testing and evaluating..
We recommend you distinguish where your audience is online, what platforms do they use? What is their daily routine, the times when they are online? Can you find key hashtags being used in your industry? Are there any popular conversations or weekly Twitter chats you can join in on?
4. Stay connected and honest – As well as posting your own content and driving traffic to your website, the key to creating new business leads on social media is to keep up to date with users in your industry, stay connected, follow competitors and find the top influencers that can help your content be seen by others.
Building an honest and positive brand reputation online is crucial. Once your live on social media pretty much all your content can be seen, reviews can be read and follower stats can be found. Consumers look at social media accounts when deciding on a purchase, make sure you are delivering content that says what’s exactly on the tin. Also finally, don’t forget the value and benefit of watching social media, it is not just enough to post and share, you need to respond to and interact with your customers.
We offer various levels of social media management as well as social media training, so if your social media marketing could do with a boost please get in touch.
Last month Chrome came out and announced that all websites that are not HTTPS, will from January next year start to be flagged by them as not secure if the sites either require passwords or take credit card details. The move has been designed to “encourage” firms with HTTP sites to turn them into HTTPS ones.
The motivation for this announcement was to quote Chrome to “help users browse the web safely” and part of “a long-term plan to mark all HTTP sites as non-secure.” So in time this will affect all HTTP sites and not just those that take passwords or credit card details. Below is how Chrome will eventually flag up all HTTP pages.
So exactly what is the difference between a HTTPS or HTTP site? If a website is not HTTPS, it is not secured and it is possible for someone else to interfere with the website before you see it. For a long time, only websites with serious security concerns bothered to get a certificate (which is what sits behind a HTTPS website) – for example businesses taking payments or banks allowing people to log into their accounts, but HTTPS sites have become increasingly common.
From enquiries we have been making to web companies on behalf of clients, changing your site from an HTTP site to become HTTPS is nowhere near as big a deal as it was for example to make a non mobile site, mobile friendly. It is an additional cost however and yet another thing to add to your growing “to do list”.
Is it worthwhile making it the change? We think so. No-one yet knows how the general public will react to these changes, but it is likely to put many users off and that cannot be a good thing for your website. If that were not reason enough it is a widely held view in the Search Engine Optimisation community that making your website HTTPS will give it a google ranking boost as well. So all in all, it probably is really a question not of yes or no but when.
When two mega brands like Unilever and Tesco clash, it is always going to be interesting and this week was no exception. Both brands hit the headlines this week, prompted by an attempt by Unilever to raise the wholesale prices it charges Tesco by about 10% of some of its household name brands (Hellmans Mayonnaise, […]
Marketing Week Magazine has this week reported on the fact that the snappily titled Adidas “global head of digital ecosystem design” David Greenfield, has compared TV advertising to the fax. Clearly a damming and unwelcome comparison for TV advertising, but is it a viewpoint that all marketers should listen to? According to Thinkbox (the marketing […]
The Challenges of Managing a Marketer When You Are Not a Marketer – And How to Overcome Them12th September 2024 - 9:40 amRunning a successful business requires bringing in diverse talent with expertise in various fields, and marketing is definitely no exception. For many business owners or managers, however, managing a marketer can be daunting, especially when marketing isn’t your forte. From understanding technical jargon to setting realistic expectations, navigating this relationship can be tricky. In this […]