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Over the past few decades there have been so many different forms of marketing

Email marketing has been around for years and for some companies has worked really well. It is not always the cheaper form of marketing but is often more cost effective than sending out postal marketing letters, flyers or brochures and it is easily tracked. This allows you to see if it is working and what sort of revenue it is bringing in. With this information you can then make an informed decision as to whether to continue.

People often get bombarded with emails from companies trying to sell something and these emails often get deleted with no action taken, so it is fair for business owners and decision makers to worry about investing in this form of marketing. Companies such as Wowcher, Amazon and Tescos use email marketing as a huge part of their marketing strategy because it works for them. With many of us picking up emails on our mobile phones, email has become a quick way to get in touch with someone. In the current lick down situation, even more people have the time to read their emails and are more likely to shop online so now may be the best time to try it.

If you already have a social media account on Facebook but are looking to try and promote it and build up your following or get traffic to your site, then you may consider doing some Facebook advertising. The beauty with Facebook paid ads is that you can set your own budget, so it you want to start off small you can. You do not have to commit to keep running the ad either so you can stop it at anytime or set it to only run for a certain number of days.

When setting up your ad, you have a number of options available to you. You need to decide what the main aim is with the advert. Is it to get traffic to your site or to get likes on Facebook or is it to sell a particular product or service? Once you have decided this you can then choose the right option to create your advert. You will also need to have an image that you can use on the ad. This may be a generic one off your social media or website or you may design on specifically to be used on that advert. You can also select groups of people you want to show your ad to based on their interests and also their location, gender and age.

Having a website is the first step to online marketing, but having a website is often not enough on its own. You need to invest time and money to get your website up the search engines and to stay there.

When you have a website, it is important to know how it is performing on the search engines. The first thing you need to do is track how many visitors you are getting to the site. This will show you an overview of how many people are visiting you site on a daily basis. Some servers have stats packages installed on them to allow you to do this or you may wish to use Google Analytics which is user friendly and free. If you find that you are not getting many visitors to the site then there may be an issue with your rankings. To check your rankings, you need to have a list of at least 20 keywords or phrases that you want to be found for. These phrases are what people type in on the search engines, which then pulls up a list that is relevant to that term. Often the more generic phrases will be a lot harder to compete for so ideally you want to have a mix of generic and long tail phrases so see the bigger picture. You can track these yourself by going on to the search engine like Google and typing the keyword in. You have to be careful when doing this as Google will often order the sites you see in order of how often you have visited them rather than if you were just a member of the public searching for the first time

The Covid pandemic has bought massive disruption to many businesses. Some have been forced to close their doors for months on end, and if they were not able to trade online, this may have meant they couldn’t earn any sort of income.

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have helped a number of businesses immensely during the pandemic and particularly throughout the various lockdowns. If they didn’t have a website, it gave them a way of communicating with their customers and selling their products and services online. Having a website created is by far one of the best ways to build up your business online but it can be expensive and can always take some time to get it up and running. This is something that just was not feasible for many businesses and therefore unless they used social media, they could not continue to trade. Some of the social media sites work better for certain businesses than others. Facebook can be great for selling products, taking bookings and updating your community of followers as to what is happening. LinkedIn is great for networking and essentially word of mouth type marketing and Instagram is ideal for those that want to showcase their work in the form of images.

What do businesses want? What do they need? How do they do it? If you are in business, and you ask yourself these questions, then you should think about finding a new career, and if you do not think social media is the answer to any of these questions, then you should get some tests done!

We all know that the activity is buying and selling products, services or even yourself. But more recently I have found that companies want more than a great return on investment or just a significant increase in sales, they want to connect with customers in a more personal way, get involved in activities and interact with them on a daily basis to get instant information about their own ideas or new product lines. You and your company should try to create a friendship and trust with their consumers, because let’s face it, consumers control whether or not you even see a return on investment or increase sales, so why would you not want to hear what they have to say?

So you can take advantage of social media, the way of the future in advertising, you should have a good social media strategy in place and must also have knowledge on how to monitor communications around your company. I recently discovered that your main objective should be to share, assist, create and solve, all the problems and successes of your business and respond to these questions quickly. The most important thing to remember is to add value to your company and your products. Do not offer unnecessary information that your customers can not use, instead let them know of any problems your company is having with some products and see how they feel you should solve them. Your customers will quickly realise the errors and things that your company is doing wrong and will be quick to let you know how they feel.

So when you’re trying to figure out the best way to get your company to the top of a Google search page, always remember that the success of search engine optimization starts with a good understanding of the grand strategy of social media and monitoring techniques to provide useful information.

The last 15 months have been a challenge for us all. Some businesses and freelancers have thrived and others have found it tough, or maybe not even made it through. One industry that has done well is the world of online marketing. Although initially some businesses cut back on their marketing, worried about cash flow, they very quickly realised that they needed to be investing in improving their online presence in order to continue trading. With the UK going in to lockdown and having restrictions imposed at different times throughout the year, it was vital that businesses could communicate and trade with their customers online. If they didn’t have a website then they would either need to have one built or use one of the other marketing platforms such as social media. The social media sites have proved vital to thousands of businesses as with them, they may not of been able to do any business at all. Even when restrictions are lifted, it will be a good idea to continue with this sort of online marketing as the world of online retail is ever growing and unlikely to stop.

An online marketing company or freelancer will be able to advise you on where to invest your budget to get the best return on your investment.

The last 15 months have been a challenge for us all. Some businesses and freelancers have thrived and others have found it tough, or maybe not even made it through. One industry that has done well is the world of online marketing. Although initially some businesses cut back on their marketing, worried about cash flow, they very quickly realised that they needed to be investing in improving their online presence in order to continue trading. With the UK going in to lockdown and having restrictions imposed at different times throughout the year, it was vital that businesses could communicate and trade with their customers online. If they didn’t have a website then they would either need to have one built or use one of the other marketing platforms such as social media. The social media sites have proved vital to thousands of businesses as with them, they may not of been able to do any business at all. Even when restrictions are lifted, it will be a good idea to continue with this sort of online marketing as the world of online retail is ever growing and unlikely to stop.

An online marketing company or freelancer will be able to advise you on where to invest your budget to get the best return on your investment.

Social media can work so well for lots of different business. Some have been said that without social media advertising their business would of failed. Getting the balance right is essential when it comes to promoting your business through sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Too much and people will be put off following you, too little and you will become forgotten about. When you first start out with social media marketing, you may well feel that you can do it all in house but if your business does start to grow quickly there may come a time when you feel it has gotten too much to handle. Missing messages and not responding can be detrimental but rather than cutting down on your social media marketing, why not look to out source it? A web marketing agency will be able to offer you a quick package where they manage all your social media marketing in your behalf. They will obviously change a fee for this, but it is usually well worth paying it rather than stopping the marketing altogether. You can also then call on their expertise to advise you on what you should and should t be doing to get the most out of the sites.

Whenever you are looking to do something new within your business, it is vital that you plan for it in advance. It may be that you want to launch a new product or try a click and collect service or possibly target new areas to sell your products or services in.

It is vital that create a marketing strategy well in advance of when the change is going to happen so you have plenty of time to market the idea and let your existing and potential customers know.

If you are going to start advertising in new areas then you need to think of the most cost effective way of doing so. It may be that you decide to do a door to door leaflet drop or perhaps you use Google AdWords to get your site found for new locations. Whatever you chose to done sure to have a way that you can track how successful it has been. Social media is another great way to target new locations and there are often local groups that you may be able to join and advertise in to get the word around. Just always check the rules of the group before posting!

Standing out from the crowd and building brand awareness on social media is no easy task. With more and more companies and businesses using social media as a form of marketing, it should come as no surprise that competition levels are high and you need to do something to get your brand recognised and to stand out from the crowd.

You need to make sure you stand out and give your social media profiles a personality. It is easy to fall in to the trap of posting a picture or articles and a link to a blog post every day and think that you’re done,  but people will often find this boring and will quickly move on to something else. Adding a touch of humour to some of your posts or putting a picture of something funny that happened in the office allows people to connect in a more personal level and keeps them engaged. Try and move away from sounding like a robot. Choosing to use words that include feelings and emotions will help to keep your posts personal. If you are struggling, always re-read your text before posting and ask yourself does it sound like something you would say in a conversation, if not then you may need to change it.