May 2017 - Creative Agency Secrets

3 Marketing Tips to Stand Out to Your Customers

31 May, 2017/0 Comments/in Marketing /by Rebecca Caroe

Every good business owner and marketer knows that standing out from the crowd is important when it comes to attracting the interest of potential customers. However, when millions of companies around the world are all competing for the top spots and the most customers, standing out from the crowd can often feel impossible. Yet, some companies manage to do it, so it’s entirely possible to get both existing and potential customers to take notice of you, rather than your competition. Here are some of the best ways to encourage this.

#1. Novelty Marketing Methods:

When it comes to marketing efforts, today’s customers are used to it. Nobody is going to be wowed by Facebook banner ads, website pop-ups or being added to an email marketing list – it’s all fairly standard today, and being bombarded with advertisements has become the norm for anybody opening up their laptop or picking up their smartphone to go online. So, think outside of the box when it comes to marketing. Old-fashioned methods such as sending postcards, for example, are rarely used today. Therefore, you have an opportunity to take advantage of the gap and stand out from the crowd. Check out these great postcard design ideas for inspiration.

#2. Become an Authority:

Becoming an online ‘authority’ is trickier than it may sound, especially today when the web is filled with new content on an hourly basis. Standing out in your niche is even more difficult when you lack in knowledge, however, as your customers will expect brands to be knowledgeable about not just their own products and/or services, but also about the niche itself. Today, brands must be prepared to go above and beyond the call of duty when it comes to providing their customers with information. Your audience will expect informational posts, videos, graphics, and a high level of customer engagement from your team to help them with any industry-related queries. Provide this through a highly-interactive, authority business blog or social media profile.

#3. Connect with the Audience:

The days of marketing being all about how great a product is and why you should spend your money on it are quickly dying out. Today, customers aren’t as bothered when it comes to learning about a product; the amount of competition available means that they can probably buy it or something similar elsewhere. When it comes to price, they know that a quick Google search will likely give them all the information that they need on where to find the best deals. So, what are they looking for in a brand? Today, customers want to shop with brands that they feel relate to them on a more personal, individual level. A strong level of customer service, prioritizing the online user experience and offering additional support, advice and information to your customers to help provide solutions to their industry-related problems all come under your brand’s ‘voice’, to connect with your audience on a human level.

Did these tips help? We’d love to hear from you in the comments.

Increase customer engagement through live chat

24 May, 2017/0 Comments/in B2B, B2C, Case Studies, Digital media, Marketing /by Rebecca Caroe

How can you increase customer engagement through live chat on your website?

Creative Agency Secrets live chat icon

A question I received and I thought the answers given were intriguing. Because after the obvious answers, yes it should engage – because people talking to people, if done respectfully, should successfully answer questions and possibly transact sales. But the risk here is for marketers to try to create inappropriate outcome measures like ‘engagement’ from customer service activities.

More people on the site should chat with the live chat representatives. These are real people. Don’t even think of trying to use bots. It undermines your brand – unless that’s what your brand values are – robotic.

Use more than one chat option

I would also recommend adding Facebook Messenger as a second live chat option. So many people use it in their private lives, it can be used to build trust with your brand in a medium the customer is already familiar with.

Try this integration for Messenger [disclaimer – I’ve never tried it].

Create a secondary output from chat

We have a mantra to “Write once: Use Three Times”. And chat is a great source of content for marketing.

We recommend using the chat interactions as source material for your content marketing. Every question should become an FAQ answer. And a blog post. And part of your product descriptions, and and and.

Did you know that you can also build a mailing list using the Facebook pixel from your Messenger interactions?

Using this, you can do push messaging using FB straight into Messenger which is an awesome replacement for email marketing. Particularly as many lists are suffering high unsubscribe rates from customers with over-loaded inboxes.

Happy to discuss further if you need.

How to test your website is working effectively

23 May, 2017/2 Comments/in B2C, Case Studies, Content Marketing, Local Marketing, Marketing, SEO /by Rebecca Caroe

May I show you a little insider secret from the world of web marketing? It’s called a website rank check tool. It shows you a score out of 100 for how well your website is built, secured and how well it delivers marketing engagement.

My favourite one is the WooRank tool – I have it installed in the toolbar of my Chrome browser. But you can use this website or the HubSpot Website Grader Tool does a similar job – but from behind a registration paywall.

We use this when testing SEO on a website for clients. But you can do it yourself – we’ll show you how.

A case study Central Flowers

WooRank Website Test Tool

I read a lot of newsletters and when I got one from a printer and web design company, I clicked through to their gushing review of their team’s work building a website for their customer. So I decided to do an independent check on the website. It scored 52.3/100. Hardly a rip-roaring success for a new site.

You can see the result here and it demonstrates two things

The web team are only designing for HUMAN visitors, not SEARCH ROBOTS
The client is not expert in hiring and buying expertise.

First things first. The web team should know about these issues

Headings should be in a hierarchy (they choose to only use H1)
Three image Alt attributes missing (so search engines can’t index the image and link back)
No anchor text in several external links (except the one going to the web design company)
No language declared (so the search engines know it’s English)
No blog – so the web rankings won’t become good because the site won’t get regularly updated (this is a failure of marketing strategy more than web design)
Secure (SSL) website but registered to a different domain (a property management company)
Automatic Copyright update to the correct year (it’s 2016 on the site)

These are hygiene factors. They show up the lack of quality control by both the developers and to a lesser extent by the client.

The #1 mistake business owners make when buying a new website

The mistake is to buy a pretty design layout. This is made by a designer.

What you need for an effective website is web development made by a web developer as well. This sets up the effective tools and structures which humans cannot see from a website front end. But robots and web search engines CAN see. And now you can too.

Go and test your website using the Hubspot or WooRank tools now. And send me the results.

Book in a 20 minute call and we will tell you what can be easily improved and how you can do it yourself (yes, really – most of these improvements do not require web development expertise, only editing in your CMS).

Or just buy the book.

A Beginner’s Guide to Social Media Marketing

16 May, 2017/0 Comments/in Social Media /by Rebecca Caroe

You cannot possibly compete online if you do not have a strong social media presence. It is one of the most influential platforms on the internet, so you must start developing engaging campaigns on the likes of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram, if you haven’t already. Our goal is, therefore, to help you develop an effective social media strategy that will ensure you stand apart from your industry rivals.

Focus on Relationships Not Sales

Take a look at Dove’s social media presence; their goal is to inspire and promote confidence in people (particularly women) globally; selling soap appears to be a secondary objective to this positive message. Many beginners often make the mistake of giving it the hard sell when using social media for the first time; however, this will provide little to no value to your brand. If you want to engage with your followers, you need to give them a reason to follow you. While you might believe you have the best product in town, your target market might take a little convincing.

So, instead of pushing your goods and services onto social media followers, aim to create social media posts that make you different from your competitors. For example, you could launch an online competition, share helpful blogs and post high-quality photos for their enjoyment. You should only publish promotional ads every three to five social media posts.

Integrate Video Marketing

Some of the most inventive advertising is currently happening in video marketing. Take a look at this online advert for Hotels.com. According to Cisco, online videos will make up more than 80% of consumer traffic by 2020. It is, therefore, a powerful tool to use on social media, as people are more likely to drop everything they are doing to watch a funny or informative video. You should strive to develop creative, entertaining and unique videos that make people not only want to follow your page but share your posts.

YouTube is also one of the most influential social media platforms, with more than one billion unique views each month. If you want to become a leading channel on YouTube, you should not only create innovative videos, but you could buy subscribers from Social Media Daily to boost your profile and encourage views and subscribers.

Listen to Feedback

Consumer feedback is the cornerstone of a successful business, as it allows a brand to refine their goods and services to improve customer satisfaction. Lego has long seen the value in working with customers to improve its products.

Social Media can be a superb platform to gain insights from your past, current and potential customers. You should ask questions to provide customers with a forum, so you can offer the perfect service – so it can be great for product development purposes and could save a company a significant amount of money in the future.

Engage

It is important to make your social media followers feel that they are more than just a number. L’Oreal encourages staff to use the hashtag #lifeatloreal to promote the culture at the organisation this, in turn, encourages consumers to see the company as human and approachable.

You should engage with your followers, responding to their comments, mentions and direct messages. It will prove to them that you are a caring brand that appreciates their social media following, which will encourage online and brand loyalty.

So, if you want to embark on an effective social media marketing strategy, you should aim to be creative, active and helpful in your online approach.

An Open Letter to Sumo.com

9 May, 2017/5 Comments/in B2B, Marketing ideas, SEO /by Rebecca Caroe

Dear Globally Successful Technology Business Owner,

Sumo.com logo and header

I am delighted that you have successfully bought a new domain for your business sumo.com and are seeking to transfer the strong SEO from SumoMe.com to the new domain.

Tough job.

Your marketing coordinator wrote to me with a list of URLs on my site which are pointing to the old domain. I understand how much easier it will be for you to regain Search Engine first page results if these are redirected to the new domain.

She asked “do us a huge favor” to change the hyperlinks and to “change any mentions of SumoMe to Sumo“.

This is actually a lot of work on my website.

So I wrote back

Dear Nxxxxx, This is a big ask. May I suggest you offer us something to compensate us for our time? Maybe two free months of usage?

Waiting for a response…. since April 7th, 2017.

Lots of love

Rebecca (Pissed off business owner)

Marketing Rant coming up…

It does NOT have to be like this.

Be innovative with how you ask for Testimonials [or other favours]. How about offering a charity donation, an internship, some free consulting with your experts…. so many choices and so little cost to the business.

I am sick and tired of corporations taking advantage of their hapless customers and when the ONE TIME that I have some influence over the situation – they expect me to roll over and act dumb.

What would you do?

PS. No, none of the links are active – so the lady doesn’t have to do more SEO work to resolve the redirects [free little joke from me there!]

Archive for month: May, 2017