Marketing Tips For Your Business

No matter how good your business, it will never succeed unless you are successful in getting the word out to the paying public – which is why marketing is so important. For entrepreneurs looking to break into business, negotiating the marketing minefield is an important part of the initiation – but mastering the available means can make all the difference.

Using Professionals to Market Your Business - One option open to those entering the world of business is to employ a marketing professional to handle the promotion of their product or service. In much the same way as those who do not possess a great head for figures might choose to outsource their payroll control to a PAYE payment company, those with little understanding of advertising, press and PR may wish to employ a marketing manager to deal with this side of business. A marketing manager will be able to create and implement a promotional strategy for your enterprise that will best publicise all that you have to offer to those who may wish to purchase.

Marketing your Business Yourself - If you do decide to carry out your own marketing strategy it is important to ensure that you have covered all available angles. Areas that you may wish to consider include:

• Free press and PR: A clever media strategy can gain a product or business valuable column inches without any initial outlay. Try and build a relationship with the relevant press, whether that be local, national or specialised media and ensure that you keep them informed of any citing or newsworthy developments and undertakings.
• Paid advertising: If you are going to splash out on expensive advertising you must ensure that your efforts are clearly targeted towards your target audience – carry out extensive media research to clarify which outlets will give the best return before committing your cash.
• Online advertising: Advertising on the web can give great returns and there are a range of ways in which this can be done. If you have money to invest in an online campaign then you may wish to consider a PPC (pay per click) approach which allows you to carefully select what kind of online audience your marketing materials are displayed to, as well as ensuring that you only pay for leads generated by the advertisements placed. Alternatively you may wish to try a more social or viral approach to your online efforts – pushing your product or service through social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube in order to build a better web presence and drive traffic to your own website.
• Direct marketing: When you begin your business it is important to gather details for any customers or potential customers with whom you come into contact. Creating a database of enquirers, together with their demographics and other details can allow you to create carefully targeted direct marketing campaigns tailored to those customers’ specific tastes. Consider asking customers to supply their emails or addresses in order to be able to keep in contact and build on their business.

The Best free CMS options - Drupal v Wordpress

I am not sure about you but I tried wordpress as a CMS (Content Management System) and I just do not enjoy the interface and some of the restrictions. Having said that, wordpress now accounts for over 10% of all websites on the Internet, so there is definitely a large following for wordpress as a free and effective CMS. It is certainly worth considering.

I have started using Drupal and I find the layout and ease of adding in objects (called modules in Drupal) makes Drupal a far superior CMS compared to Wordpress. many might disagree but so far I find Drupal simply way out in front in all ways.

Drupal templates

If you want to easily build a dynamic website and be able to include everything from modules for contact forms, online shopping, catptcha verification, adsense blocks and just about about anything that can be programmed in PHP, you can grab a free programmed module and plonk it into your drupal site.

One excellent way to get started is to grab a free or to buy a nice pre designed Drupal template. The best template site I have come across so far is Theme Shark Drupal templates and these are paid templates but are well designed. Wondering what on earth I am on about when talking about Drupal? Take a look at the Drupal Modules that you can add in and you will find almost 8000 modules (small programs) you can add. You can now build highly dynamic websites and without the need for a programmer at all.

Quality and Original Content: SEO Strategy

Following on from the last blog about SEO Strategy, a further look at the key areas that you should focus on when building your site. The Google Algorithm changes recently have had a huge impact on many websites and webmaster efforts but only those who have continually ignored the advice from Google themselves, will have been affected. You can read the Google Blog at any time and you will find that the key to success in search results is NOT a hidden secret.

Google are clearly pushing for people to share links and not to hoard link juice. In addition having quality and original content on your website is a key! There is no reason to copy other people's text as it does not take a huge effort to write about your chosen subject and in the long term, you will gain far more by taking the time to generate interesting and fresh content, as opposed to copied content.

Google can instantly tell instantly tell if your content is originally and so can you. After adding a new webpage (or in fact before adding it is even better) can easily be done by for example checking the content via a site such as www.copyscape.com.

Quite simply, follow a few straight forward rules and already you will have avoided what many webmasters have failed to so and you will avoid the penalties which they have experience:

• Build fresh and original content. Do not waste time trying to auto generate trash content. Eventually it will catch up with you.
• Include social media buttons so that people can bookmark your content.
• Do include some outgoing links from your site. Sites which do not share do worse than sites which do (this is one of the changes seen with the latest algorithm changes).

SEO Strategy

Your SEO strategy can define not only how your business does in the short term but how you do in the long term as a business and for this reason, think carefully about your online marketing strategy. Building links only to one page on your site will mean that the computerised Google spiders will see a lop-sides website in terms of incoming links.

If link building is natural, then links will have a variety of link text and the links will come in to various parts of your website i.e. include deep links in addition to ones pointing to your homepage and other main pages.

A long term strategy to do things as naturally as possible will help to protect your site against future Google algorithm changes. Google are continually striving to push genuine sites higher in the searches and one sample of how they have done this seems to be to give a higher rating to sites with their keywords in the top level of their domain.

If you are buying a domain based on London holidays for example, make sure to have the work 'London' in the domain name. Take a look at the top 10 results for London holidays and you will see that most sites in the top 10 for that term, have the word London in the domain.

Usability should always be considered in SEO

It potentially can be very easy for website owners who are optimising their own site to get carried away in that they might lose site sometimes of Usability. You have to keep your end goal always in mind and if you are selling a product or service through your website, you need to always ensure the users can easily navigate your site, do not get distracted from the core products and services with gimmicks added to your site etc. A nice fun game on your site might make people laugh but will it make them buy your product? If yes then add a travel game onsite if you sell vacation rentals for example. If the game is a distraction then leave or remove it.

The old 3 Click Rule never goes out-of-date and I always keep this in mind when designing and optimising a website. Every page on your site should be accessible within 3 clicks of the mouse. If a page is not then your site structure is wrong in some way. How will users find the contact or page in question.

Make 'Contact' buttons EASY to see. Make contact details such as email or support and sales easy to find - preferable always visible site-wide on the top of the site. Makes forms as simple as possible if you use one for the contact page. There are so many forms I quit halfway through as there are so many drop down menus and I find myself having to enter details such as phone numbers, country and a whole of information which is completely unrelated to my enquiry.

Talking about usability - let us know you feedback on the new chocolate website which a close friend has put live. What has he done right and not right?

Is Social Media important for Online Marketing

Over the past two or three years, social media has grown into a crucial tool for online marketing firms and advertisers. Social media networks such as Twitter and Facebook are used by millions of people all over the world, and are an excellent platform for companies to advertise and spread word about their new products.

One industry that has embraced social media is the film industry with viral marketing now becoming a standard advertising strategy for each new release. Whether it's music videos, websites, online trailers, posters, polls, articles or exclusive interviews, Facebook and Twitter are fully utilised to inform as many people as possible about upcoming releases. It is no coincidence that all new films have Facebook pages and Twitter profiles so people can find out the latest information.

Companies are also realising that those that embrace social media technology are also prime advertising opportunities in their own right. Stephen Fry, for example, has a massive Twitter following where he blogs about his thoughts and concerns. He is also a massive fan of Apple technology. In the build up to the release of their iPad, Apple sent test products to a host of technology blogs and websites, but they also sent one to Fry, realising that if he liked it (which he did), he could influence millions of potential customers.

Today, it is considered a major misstep by companies not to include social media in an online advertising campaign and as a result, Facebook, Twitter and MySpace have never been more popular. If you want to ensure you have a strong online presence, ignore Social Media at your peril!

Why having an Online Presence is Essential

Before the days of the Internet, if you started a company and wanted to advertise your products, it would cost you large amounts of money for TV, print and radio ads - this would increase if you wanted them nationwide. If you wanted to go global, costs again increased exponentially. Today, people run their own companies from their homes, promoting everything from selling Hotels in Vegas, through to sauna and massage products and services and to a global audience anks to the internet.

The internet has allowed companies and entrepreneurs to sell their wares to a global market, easily and efficiently and this is why having an online presence is so essential. Of course, there is more to it then simply having a website and/or an eBay account. Depending on your product and services, there are a number of ways to reach potential clients.

As well as ranking for specific keywords and phrases and optimising your website for certain search engines, companies often advertise on affiliate or similar sites to attract a certain client base. However, this requires time, money and the right technical know-how to do it properly. Of course, new methods of establishing yourself online are appearing all the time.

One of the most popular methods in recent years has been that of social media marketing, where companies have utilised the large number of people who use services like Facebook and Twitter to advertise their latest products. Whereas most traditional forms of advertising costs money, by advertising your latest services to potentially thousands of people via Twitter or Facebook, you are reaching large numbers of clients for free. Today, almost every company worth their salt has embraced social media networks and use it as a crucial part of their online presence.

Back to the Basics: Meta Tags and Content

Even the most practised Online Marketers and SEO specialists often find that it is worth returning to check the Meta Tags and page content. Pages get updated and target terms change for webmasters.

If you want to come high in Google for a term such as 'Paris apartments' then you will need to ensure that the term 'Paris apartments' exists both in your Meta Tags and also in the text on the webpage also. If you are targeting many terms then you will need a webpage to tackle each term.

From time to time, it is always worth revisiting a cross section of your webpages to ensure that the Meta tags and content is still relevant and up-to-date. The target base can change for your business over time, the things you are selling might also have changed and updates to your site might also have watered down the affects of your webpages for search results.

Using white space and menus

eMarketing as a whole covers a very wide range of factors and of these SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is just one. At the end of the day, apart from getting good search positions and good traffic, nailing a sale or lead is what it often comes down to. You can have the perfect site and a good number of new visitors each day, but ensuring you have godo usability on your site is what can help to finalise the sale.

White Space - is nothing new in design and has been used for years on people's CVs (Resumes), on Powerpoint presentations and in magazines for example. The same is for design. Take a look at the Barcelona Short term rentals page on the Holiday-velvet.com site for example and you can see how white space has been perfectly used. Clean design, easy on the eye and easy to find what you want. Excellent use of white space.

Use of menus - How you make information available is also key. There can be so much information which you might want to add that it you add too much of it on the same page the user could get confused and sale be lost. Too little information and the same problem. So making buttons which sub-consciously direct and aid the user. Using colour such as on the Holiday-velvet.com site can work very effectively. Take a look at the image shown here for a great example of using menus ands colours to direct users.

Have you also noticed Google Ad center?

I was checking my sites in Google Sitemaps the other day in their and one thing I noticed is that Google have now added a thing caled Ad Center. Is it me or are Google semming to be take over the world> Is there anything Google do not offer apart from seling lingerie?

Ad Center is an interesting tool in that it is more than Adsense (Adsense is the opposite of Adwords - adsense is used by webiste owners who are happy to allow ads on their own sites such as what you see on my Vegas site where you will see the tour and helicopter ads).

With Google Ad Center it is for website owners who wish to advertise and the difference from Adsense is that it offers you the chance to include our traffic statistics and extra information to try and entice advertisers. Ad Center ties in your crawl stats and rankings from Google Sitemaps and it gives people willing to spend on advertising extra information.

The strange thing is that 'Google Ad Centre' today has suddenly disappeared and no longer exists. It has disappeared into thin air, only days after it secretly went live in Google Sitemaps? Were Google doing a quick live test of it? I added 2 of my sites to this new service. Let's see what happens.

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