5 Essentials for a Great Web Strategy
Web Browser Wars Hot Up
Taking PPC Marketing to a Higher Level
Social Media Focus: SlideShare
5 Essentials for a Great Web Strategy
There is absolutely no doubt how internet uptake continues to grow, with mainstream media using the web to play a more active role in engaging their audiences. In April Oprah did a Twitter feature, then opened her own Twitter account. The response: over 945,000 followers at the time of writing this article.
So, what does this mean for SMEs (small and medium enterprises) in a recession? One clear message is that consumers (and businesses) are becoming more comfortable and willing to find, form and maintain new relationships online. With this in mind, is your online strategy up to scratch?
Creating a Winning Web Strategy
The maxim 'if you fail to plan, you plan to fail' can be applied to your online business presence. Time spent preparing an online strategy for your business is time well spent, and essential for the long term success of your website.
Every website plan will look different. Each plan will be customised to complement various staff and customer requirements, as well as to fulfil marketing goals. Whatever your needs, here are some factors to consider when preparing your web strategy:
1. Short- and Long-Term Objectives
Instead of regarding your website as an online brochure, unlikely to change until the next round of updates to your marketing materials, consider it as an opportunity to increase sales and cut costs. Ask yourself: 'What do I want my website to achieve in the next few years?' As well as asking: 'What you want your website to achieve now?'
The web can be used to accomplish many different things, such as to create leads, train staff, provide online customer support, magnify your marketing messages, complement your sales processes and cut down on travel expenses, to name a few.
2. Think Dialogue – Not Dormant
More UK internet users spent time on social networking websites in March than on e-commerce sites. While it's too early to regard this as a trend, it does indicate the continued popularity of social media sites – and with it, the expectancy of participating in an online dialogue.
Include plans to make your website engaging by keeping it fresh and interactive. Modern media tools such as a blog (web log) provide an excellent way to publish new content instantly on your website. Keeping your website regularly updated gives your business a progressive feel and can help attract search traffic.
3. Web Marketing is a Must
No web strategy is complete without an online marketing plan. Marketing your business over the internet doesn't need to cost the earth; in fact, real savings can be made over offline advertising. Worthwhile activities would include:
- Identifying how and where to attract your target audience – you want pre-qualified website visitors, not just lots of website traffic.
- Adopt techniques to bring new customers to your site – this may include search marketing (paid and organic), banner ads, video ads, viral marketing and more.
- Consider using email newsletter marketing as a means of keeping in touch with and engaging existing (and new) clients on an ongoing basis.
- Use social media websites to genuinely connect with people who need your product.
A well-prepared marketing plan will enable you to reduce costs and help you effectively measure what is working for you.
4. Track, Test, Tweak
The web provides excellent tools for tracking your site activity; letting you identify where it's coming from, what the most popular pages are, and the most popular path through your website, which translates into more sales and bigger profits.
The process of analysing the effectiveness of your online activities completes a good marketing plan, giving you the ability to identify what really works for you, and then to adapt your plan accordingly.
5. Expect to Evolve
The internet is not a static medium, so your web strategy shouldn't be either. Be prepared to implement changes so you can respond to online trends from your target audience.
If you would like to review the effectiveness of your online business strategy, please call us on 01488 674191.
Return to the top
Web Browser Wars Hot Up
Gone are the days when Microsoft's Internet Explorer was the only viable browser program available for surfing the web. In 2001 Internet Explorer boasted a massive 96% market share; today, however, it's more around 70% and falling.
Microsoft has been slowly losing the web browser war to newer, more user-friendly web-browser programs such as Firefox, Opera, Netscape, the new Google Chrome and more. Last month, in an effort to improve its position, Microsoft launched the latest version of Internet Explorer.
The new, improved Internet Explorer 8
The introduction of tabbed browsing in Version 7 was a huge step forward from Internet Explorer 6, (although it was a long time after Firefox had tabbed browsing as standard). In Version 8 Microsoft seeks to build on this with some other useful features. These include:
- An in-Private Browsing mode, which conceals the user's online activities.
- Search suggestions being made as you type, with images where relevant.
- Session saving, to allow you to pick up where you left off.
- Crash recovery, so you don't lose your open tabs if the program (or your PC) crashes.
- An improved screen filter for protecting surfers against malicious websites.
- Additional right click options for highlighted content.
Microsoft is calling Internet Explorer 8 its fastest browser, but in tests against its main competitors, Firefox and Chrome came out quicker.
What about the Competition?
If you haven't used any of Internet Explorer's competitors' browsers, you may be denying yourself of a richer web-browsing experience. Here's a round up of the top alternative browsers, together with some of their key features.
Firefox 3 – Mozilla's Firefox web browser has the second-biggest market share after Explorer. The open- source browser's main strength is the number of add-ons available to enhance your browsing experience. If you have ever thought of a nice function missing in your browser, you will probably find a Firefox add-on for it.
Opera 9 – The Opera browser doesn't get as much publicity as some of its rivals, but it has been a reliable and innovative option for a long time. Some key features include an integrated email client and news reader, excellent file download tools, wide-screen monitor support and the ability to synchronise your favourites over the web. Coming soon, Opera Turbo is anticipated to take surfing speeds to a higher level.
Google Chrome – The Google browser has made huge inroads into the web-browsing arena. Chrome has a sleek, minimalist design, which maximises the viewing window. It's early days for this browser, so we can expect more features to be added with updated versions. The lack of tools in comparison to its rivals is not all bad though, as the flip side means it opens and renders web pages quicker.
Safari – The Safari web browser is the default web browser on Apple Macs. Recently, Apple extended the browser's reach by making a PC version available. As you would expect from Apple, the browser is fast, looks great, and adopts the now familiar iPod thumbnail image Cover Flow view.
Other browsers include Flock, Lunascape, Maxthon, Songbird and more, each sporting unique features and tools that appeal to surfers' niche interests and business processes.
What it Means for Your Website
An increasing number of web-browser options is good for end-users (no one likes a monopoly), but be sure to check that your website presents correctly in each rendering engine. If you would like to test your website or review your website design, call us on 01488 674191.
Return to the top
Taking PPC Marketing to a Higher Level
Managed correctly, Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns are an extremely effective way for small businesses to market their business online. PPC advertising is an attractive marketing medium, as a charge is only applied when your ad is clicked on and visitors are directed to your website.
Unlike most standard forms of advertising, PPC search-engine marketing enables you to target potential customers who are looking specifically for your service. If done right, a PPC campaign can pay for itself many times over.
Sharpening the PPC Saw
Pay Per Click is now a fundamental part of the online marketing mix of many SMEs. This doesn't mean the paid search arena is saturated, or that many of these companies achieve a maximum return on their investment.
The PPC market place is huge, and provides ample opportunity for advertisers of all sizes; and just because your top key terms are beyond your budget doesn't mean you cannot have a successful, cost- effective PPC campaign. Here are four tips for taking your paid search marketing activities to the next level.
1. Plan Your Campaign
The straightforward tools for setting up a paid search advertising campaign make it easy to get started. But taking your time with a more planned approach will allow you to apply tools that will optimise the effectiveness of your campaigns.
A well-prepared campaign will include the following elements:
- Keyword research
- Organising the selected keywords into ad groups
- Preparing creative, targeted ad copy
- Tailored landing pages that relate to your ads
- Tracking
- Analysis
While you can be up and running with your ad campaign in minutes, you will achieve the best return on your investment by working through these important managed steps.
2. Pre-qualify Your Visitors
One of PPC marketing's strengths is the ability to pre-qualify those who click on your ads: Craft a well-worded ad to include your keywords and some details about your product. Done well, this will deter the 'tyre kickers' and encourage those who are ready to buy.
You may also consider offering a free download, White Paper, email course or webinar as an incentive for clicking on your ad. This will capture contact data from a high percentage of those clicking on your ads.
3. Boosting Your Budget
Bidding to have your ad positioned at the top of the search results is not always the best strategy. More traffic often comes from the second, third or even fourth position, which will save you a significant amount of money.
You can also make your budget go a little further by setting up conversion tracking. This not only allows you to identify what keywords are working best for you, but also demonstrates to the search engine that your content is relevant. This can result in your ads benefiting from better positioning without increasing your bid amount.
4. Don't Suffer from Analysis Paralysis
Web advertising provides excellent visitor activity tracking, allowing you to achieve a greater return on your PPC advertising investment by identifying what is working and what needs tweaking.
Be careful, though, the wealth of website data can be overwhelming, especially if you are not well versed in the technology, tools and terminology of PPC marketing. The key is being able to hone in on the important stats, and then understand how to interpret them.
If you would like more help implementing successful PPC marketing campaigns, please call us on 01488 674191.
Return to the top
Social Media Focus: SlideShare
If you have a company presentation, then you can participate in SlideShare. As the name indicates, SlideShare provides tools and web space for publishing your business presentations online.
An astonishing 14 million website visitors, most of them professional people, participate in SlideShare every month, making it 'the world's largest community for sharing presentations'.
How Can SlideShare Help you?
SlideShare can truly claim to be one of the first social networking sites to focus on business, and it is clearly ahead of the pack of other social media websites that adapted their tools to engage the business sector as an afterthought.
Participating as part of the SlideShare community enables you to upload, enhance and share your slides, and discuss other PowerPoint, PDF and Open Office presentations with like-minded people.
The purpose-built online sharing tools allow presentations to be shared privately (for internal use only), as well as publicly, with the aim of eliciting some social interaction from your target audience.
Getting Your Message Heard
Spreading your sales message across multiple web platforms is part of an effective Web 2.0 marketing strategy. With this is mind, you can use SlideShare to help:
- Upload your company presentation to share with new and existing customers
- Publish tutorials about your products to enhance your support services
- Share slides from business presentations as a means of reference and promotion
- Develop conversations with other businesses that relate to your industry
- Add insightful comments to enhance other presentations in your niche
To bring an extra dimension to your presentations, SlideShare tools allow you to synchronise audio with your slides.
Once a presentation is viewed, the 'YouTube-esk' user interface provides all the usual methods of sharing content across the web that millions of web users are now accustomed to.
Making New Connections
As well as publishing your own materials, use the SlideShare search tool to find other presentations that relate to your target market – or simply to locate topics that interest you. Make comments and contribute genuinely to enhance the presenter's message.
As part of the SlideShare community you can join and create groups related to your areas of interest. Monitoring groups will allow you to home in on who will be most compatible with your interests. It will also give you a feel for the tone to take when you first make contact.
Presentation Tips
Adopting a professional but simple approach to preparing your business presentations will enable you to publish short, succinct and memorable marketing messages. With this in mind, here are some tips:
- Be creative with your copy – not with 'wizzy' effects
- Keep the presentation style simple – a light colour background for your slides is ideal
- If you are using images, optimise them so the slides load immediately
- Keep your messages short and to the point
- Consider adding some personality – it is a social networking site, after all
- Don't overwhelm the viewer with facts and figures; use them to enhance your message, not as your message.
If you use business presentations, you may want to consider dusting them off and publishing them on the web. To review the effectiveness of your social media marketing activities, please call us on 01488 674191.
Return to the top