A Key Tip to boosting your website search engine ranking
Internet marketing is an essential element of any marketing plan, and a website that generates a flow of qualified enquiries should be a central plank of an online marketing strategy. Having a website is one thing. But having a website that can be found on the major search engines is quite another.
Having your website rank as high as possible on search engines should be one of your primary online marketing goals. So it’s no surprise that I’m often asked, ‘what’s the one thing that will help my website improve its ranking on search engines?’ In truth there isn’t one ‘magic bullet’, but there are several important factors that really cannot be ignored. One of these is the content of your website.
Search engines love content, especially up to date, relevant text content. Too often a website will have loads of images, or make use of Flash, particularly as a Home page. It may look good, but are you one of many website visitors who get bored, frustrated or downright annoyed because of the time it takes for Flash to download? You probably react like most people by leaving. If it’s your website, you’ve just lost a potential customer.
Of course Flash animation and images have a place, especially on an ecommerce website. But when it comes to Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) they need to be used with care. Don’t use Flash for your Home page, and when it comes to images, don’t forget to use alternative image tags (alt image tags) that include your key words to allow search engines to ‘read’ what the image shows.
Adding new content and keeping it up to date is also very important, so a Content Management System (CMS) is a must. Use newsletters, blogs, forums and articles to help you keep the content of your site fresh, and don’t forget to submit your articles to directories or other authoritative article websites like Ezine.
You also need to make sure the content of your website reflects the key words or phrases you want to promote through your search engine marketing campaign. The key words need to be used in their relevant context rather than needless repetition, known as ‘keyword stuffing’, which will end up getting you penalised by search engines. How often the key words are used (keyword density) is another factor. You can have too little or too much; it’s reckoned that between 3-8% is about right.
But writing key word rich relevant content is time consuming and often harder than it seems. The good news is I can solve your problem when it comes to the search engine optimised content of your website. I’ll save you valuable time as well as giving you a website that attracts new enquiries and then turns them into paying customers.
To discuss how I can help you with the content of your website, ring me now on 0845 47 47 486.
Andy Kinnard
Fresh Ideas Marketing
Fresh marketing solutions to boost your business
Direct Mail – what’s in a name?
What really annoys you about direct mail? I’m pretty sure they are the same things that annoy me.
One of the most annoying is when people get my name wrong, and I don’t just mean calling me things like Mr Kinard, Mr Kincaid, Alison Canard or Angus Cunard, but how about Mr Thatched Cobaltester? I’m not kidding, all of these have been used on direct mail recently addressed to me.
In the case of Mr Thatched Cobaltester I even took the trouble of contacting the sender ( a large telecoms provider) to tell them no such person resides at my address. In fact with a name like that he probably doesn’t exist at all! But guess what? Yes, of course you guessed, I still get direct mail from the same company still addressed to the intriguing Mr Cobaltester. Needless to say it goes straight into the bin, as do most letters addressed to ‘the owner’ or ‘the occupier’.
I happen to believe that direct mail can still be a very effective and targeted way to reach both prospects and customers. It’s more effective if it’s personalised with the recipient’s name included in the address. But personalisation is only effective if your data is accurate. I’m definitely not alone in consigning poorly addressed direct mail to the bin, usually before I’ve even opened it. Which means that the direct mailing campaign has failed at the first hurdle, getting the recipient to open the envelope to read the message inside.
The quality of the data used for a direct mailing is such a fundamental issue. The best data is the data you’ve collected yourself. But even then you need to be careful and check that it’s accurate, particularly for existing customers. If you buy in data then you need to be choosy who you buy it from. My own experience is that you pay for what you get. Data that’s cheap to buy is very often also cheap in terms of quality and ends up costing you more in terms of wasted letters and postage.
It’s a good idea to ask a data agency to supply you with a sample of the data you want to buy. Have a close look at it for obvious inaccuracies. If possible incorporate the data into a mailing to see how many of the letters are returned because the data is either inaccurate or out of date.
Yes, there are plenty of other essential aspects of effective direct mail, but having poor data, in particular getting the recipient’s name wrong, is a sure way for your carefully crafted message to not even be read.
For more information on how to use direct mail to boost your enquiries and sales, ring 0845 47 47 486 or visit www.freshideasmarketing.co.uk/content/directmail
Andrew Kinnard
Fresh Ideas Marketing
Marketing Solutions for Growing Your Business
Split testing – ignore it at your peril
According to research reported in Marketing Week in July this year, many SMEs are improving their chances of survival by increasing their overall use of marketing channels. Unsurprisingly, the use of email is second on the list of channels being exploited. Rather more of a surprise is that direct mail comes in at third.
Of course an integrated approach to marketing is much more powerful than relying on just a single channel. So many SMEs are using both email and direct mail. An essential element of any email or direct mail campaign should be split-testing. I say ’should be’ because all too often it’s overlooked in the rush to get the message out to prospects and customers alike.
Missing out the element of split-testing means you are wasting money and missing out on more enquiries and sales. Too many businesses fall into the rut of seeing response rates fall and consequently cost per enquiry or sale rise.
Put simply, split-testing is where you compare the results from two or more different messages to see which produces the best results. This should be a continuing process where you keep the best performing message and then test it against another new message, again keeping the one that performs the best. This means that you are constantly refreshing and evolving your message and improving your response rates and reducing your cost per enquiry or sale.
However, for split-testing to be most effective you need to make only small changes to your message each time you run a test. This requires patience to reap the maximum benefits from a split-test programme. However, the rewards can be significant, with 100% or 200% increase in responses not uncommon.
It’s a good idea to start a split-test programme with the most obvious things first. For example:
- Email or letter headlines
- Long copy v short copy
- Responder type
- Insert type
The important thing is to choose one element at a time to split-test before moving onto the next one. Doing several at a time will only confuse the results.
It may seem obvious, but you must also have a clear way of measuring and recording your results.
Split-testing email will allow you to maximise your open, click-through and response rates very quickly. Applying the same principles to direct mail can be just as rewarding, but bear in mind the time frame to see improvements will be rather longer.
For more information or help with the use of email or direct mail split-testing give me a ring on 0845 47 47 486 or contact me by email here.
Andrew Kinnard
Fresh Ideas Marketing
Marketing Solutions for Growing Your Business
Which do you buy, features or benefits?
Let’s suppose you want to buy a compact digital camera for your daughter’s wedding. You search online and read the following information: “This camera has optical zoom banding of 3-3.9, megapixel banding of 10 to 10.9 megapixels, digital zoom of 4x, Macro 6cm, stores pictures through SD and SDHC and weighs 110 grams.”
Who other than a camera enthusiast is going to understand this? Is this the information you need to decide to buy this or any other camera? Probably not.
The above information was taken from a real camera retailers website. In reality it’s a list of features. The problem is, lists of features like these don’t make people buy products or services. What’s amazing is that businesses and advertisers do this all the time; list features but ignore the benefits.
Benefit selling – ‘Sell the sizzle not the sausage.’
What does make people buy is when they can see a product or service solves their problem, meets their need or appeals to their emotions. These are benefits and benefits sell.
So a feature is what a product has, but a benefit answers the question, “what’s in it for me?”
For example:
1. Feature – The camera has a 3x zoom.
The benefit could be express in this way.”Being able to zoom quickly to 3 times the size means that you can quickly capture the perfect close up photo at the touch of a button.”
2. Feature – The camera weighs 110 grams.
The benefit can be expressed like this. “Weighing just 110 grams means that you can slip this camera easily into your pocket or bag and never miss that perfect photo opportunity wherever you are.”
So how do you turn features into benefits that sell?
The simplest way is to identify an advantage for each feature.
- Start by making a list of as many features for the product or service.
- Then identify the advantage of each feature by asking, “which means that..?”
- The advantage then allows you to highlight the benefit.
- You then decide which benefits are the most powerful and focus your marketing on these.
If you haven’t done so already, why not look at your product or service right now and begin the process. If you feel you need help with this and then writing the sales letter, email, advert or website content that promotes the benefits of your product or service, you need the skills of an experienced copywriter.
The good news is that the copywriting help you need is just a phone call away.
Ring me on 0845 47 47 486 and let’s chat about how I can help you better market your product or service using benefit selling and watch your sales grow!
For more details on my copywriting service visit my website here.
Andrew Kinnard
Fresh Ideas Marketing
Marketing Solutions for Growing Your Business
PR – the forgotten aspect of marketing
PR is often the forgotten aspect of marketing. Mention PR to a business owner and they tend to think of glitzy, expensive, celebrity centred events, or damage control statements on behalf of multi-national companies or A-listers trying to cover up a tabloid story. As such PR tends to come over as a negative, reactive method of marketing rather than a positive proactive way to interact withyour customers. So it’s not surprising that in general terms, small businesses don’t believe PR is for them.
The reality is very different, PR can be a terrific and very cost effective marketing tool for businesses of every size. At its simplest PR can be a story about your business released to the local, regional or national press, radio or TV station. But even better is an extended PR campaign that allows you to build long-lasting relationships with your customers, prospects and the media.
The result of a successful PR campaign will be an increase in awareness of your business, products or services. This will lead to more traffic to your website, more enquiries and more sales.
Forget the expensive glitzy PR. The most effective PR will cost you little more than time, so really it’s a no brainer.
Discover 10 effective ways a small business can use PR to create a buzz for your business.
Regards
Andy Kinnard
Founder Fresh Ideas Marketing
Marketing Solutions To Build Your Business
Up and running!
Welcome to the Fresh Marketing Ideas blog. Here you’ll find ideas, news, thoughts, ramblings and rants about all things marketing. I trust you will find the content interesting, informative, useful, amusing and even sometimes downright weird.
The blog is aimed particularly at owners of small to medium sized businesses, sole traders and professionals; those who know the importance of marketing their products or services to their clients and prospects, but either don’t have the time or realise they lack the knowledge to do this effectively. So I’ll be sharing ideas, solutions and advice to help you grow your business through effective marketing.
For those interested, you will find further marketing information, ideas and solutions to grow your business on my website www.freshideasmarketing.co.uk
I look forward to having you as a regular reader.
Regards
Andy Kinnard
Founder of Fresh Ideas Marketing
Marketing Solutions to Build your Business
