Advertising

Making your website Google-friendly will increase traffic

There’s an art to writing for an online audience these days. Not only do you need to produce content that is engaging and interesting to your intended audience, but you need to know the latest SEO trends and at least be aware of Google algorithms to ensure your well-written content is actually found. The folks at Google are pretty transparent with how the search engine works but that doesn’t mean creating optimised copy is easy. In fact, keeping Google happy without making your article confusing to humans can be quite a challenge. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO): This refers to any activity used to improve search engine rankings for a website. The aim is to improve organic (unpaid) results. How does Google actually decide what sites are delivered to searchers? Phase 1: Crawlers analyse your site This is far less creepy [...]

Improve your website with these posts

The first rule of content is that it needs to be useful to readers, otherwise they’ll have no interest in it. The next rule, that is equally important, is that your content needs to be well-written and presented in a way that is easily consumable for your readers. On the web, there are a few styles of posts that work across a range of businesses. How to get started creating content What’s a pain point for your customer? That’s what your content should address. You may address this pain point through education, presenting your customers with a clear list of options or walking them through a step-by-step thought process. However you approach your writing, you should always be useful and bring value to your reader. Ready to ramp up your website content? Here are some tried and true post styles that we know people love. [...]

Can social media drive B2B sales?

If social media doesn’t get a mention in your business marketing plan, you’re not paying attention to the behaviour of billions of people worldwide. Social media is here to stay. It impacts our friendships, our buying, our behaviour and it definitely should impact our business marketing. Social media is used for a lot more than social interactions, but businesses need to tread carefully to avoid coming across as using the platforms merely as soapboxes. Clever businesses use social media as an engagement platform rather than an announcement platform. In a business-to-business (B2B) context, social media can be used as a lead generation tool as well as to enhance brand recognition. The key is to share useful, relevant content your followers will appreciate, rather than constant self promotion they will process as spam. Social media usage changes almost on a daily basis. There are some companies [...]

5 key tips for writing better articles

Many businesses know that regularly publishing great articles can help them stay relevant. They realise when their content solves problems for customers, their own business improves. The problem is the job of writing is often tacked onto another role as an afterthought, resulting in some fairly average output. The difficulty for these businesses is the fact that writing high-quality, relevant content is a difficult skill to master. Businesses that have an onsite or outsourced marketing team are at a clear advantage. They can leverage expert writing and marketing skills and combine it with their own industry knowledge to create truly valuable content. For companies who don’t have marketing assistance, it’s even more important to have an understanding of what will work online and in print to ensure any effort put into writing is not wasted. The skill of content writing can be developed and improved [...]

Nimble competitors are moving ahead of you

Your relationship with your customer starts long before they hand over their money, or at least it should if you’re a good businessperson. Clever businesses know that the relationship they build with a prospect prior to a sale not only impacts the outcome of that transaction, but also the chance of further sales down the track. It’s a marathon, not a sprint For many industries, particularly in business to business (B2B) transactions, the sales cycle is a long one. When dealing with high priced items, you don’t see customers googling what they need and instantly hit the buy now button. Customers for these items like to research first, so if your competitors have a great online presence your potential customers are reading all about them and not you. Cultivating relationships over a period of time is what gives your competitors the edge. People spend an [...]

Content marketing that actually helps your customers

Traditional advertising has the flavour of telling your customers how good you are or what your products can do. Content marketing, in order to be successful, must take the path of providing your customers with something they need. The premise of content marketing is simple: be of use to people and when they are ready to make a purchase they will come to you. It’s tempting, of course, to make your content all about you, to really drive home the point that you’re worth doing business with. This is not a good idea! Content marketing should put the customer first. Good content marketing is a specialist field, but that doesn’t mean you can’t create your own content. Below are some tips to help you produce content your customers will love. Solve a problem for them This is probably the number one thing that makes content [...]

Comparing apples and oranges: readers vs subscribers explained

When comparing magazines you might get offered conflicting figures on readers and subscribers. These are two very different things, so it’s important to understand the difference and make sure you’re comparing apples with apples, and oranges with oranges. This is because readers and subscribers are two different ways of looking at a publication’s circulation. Much like apples and oranges, when you know what the differences are you’ll be able to tell them apart and make sure you’re comparing the same thing. So let’s break down the differences between the two. A publication's readership represents the likely reach of a publication. This is usually calculated by contacting a representative sample of people and asking how many people read a single copy of a publication. Subscribers on the other hand represent the sale or distribution of one copy of a publication. Each subscriber represents one actual physical [...]

Catching clients in a funnel

As a business, the world of marketing can be daunting, with numerous channels and limited time and budgets. And if you’re not a marketing expert, it’s more confusing trying to understand how to best market a company for optimum results. The other day I was searching the internet for a specific business on Google and noticed that one of their competitors came up on top in AdWords. They must have been paying to use the company I was looking for’s name as one of their keywords. But I didn’t want to hear from them at this point. By this stage in the purchasing process I already knew what I wanted and the company that I wanted to buy from. It felt a bit like someone jumping out when I was already at the cash register and trying to force an alternative product into my hand. [...]

What fat fingers really need is gripping content

I was trying to read an article on my phone the other day and kept accidentally hitting a banner ad. I did this about 5 times, my frustration growing along with the boosted stats. After finally managing to extricate myself from this digital maze, I did some reflection. Now I might not have the deftest touch, but I’m not some kind of Inspector Clouseau-esque phone user, bumbling over the touchscreen like a fat-fingered buffoon. So I thought: I can’t be the only one. Just how many banner clicks are accidental? After some fairly competent googling, in which I managed to avoid misclicking on some eager but unsuitable search suggestions while steering clear of irrelevant adwords results, I managed to locate an article stating that around 60 per cent of mobile banner ad clicks are unintentional. 60 per cent! If you’re counting on your hands, that’s [...]

SEO scams: the house always wins

SEO is a little like blackjack. And if SEO is blackjack, an SEO scam is like counting cards. And the house always wins. Say you’ve got a weekend in Vegas and decide to try your hand at blackjack. You know a little bit about basic strategy, and you do ok – coming out slightly ahead – but you wish you’d done a lot better. So, instead of just forgetting about blackjack and going back to your normal life, you rent a dank, darkened room with deteriorating amenities and obsessively study everything about the game. You want to get an edge, so when someone on scamgamblers.com offers to sell you the book Counting Cards for Dummies, you have only one partially pop-inspired thought in mind: ‘hit me, baby’. But when you go back to Vegas to try out your new edge at Casino Googale, you find [...]