Coast Digital Blog

For many business, it has been a tough year that has required significant sacrifices, quick-thinking and patience.

If you are in business, the question on your mind will be whether 2010 will be as challenging, or whether it will create a kinder environment. Only time will tell, but if you haven’t started to plan then it’s definitely the moment to do so.

These are my top ten tips for businesses that need to address their planning for next year. You may have your own priorities – so be sure to share them in the comments.

1. Don’t underestimate the power of engagement

If you want to generate a lot of positive consumer behaviour, you must communicate with your target audience. You can do this by using any of the four main engagement techniques (i.e. content, message, platform and experience), but be sure to record and evaluate the response as this will shape the way you present your brand to a mass audience. Your sole objective should be brand engagement.

2. The new generation of consumers expects a great deal more

Too many brands these days are oblivious when it comes to assessing what their customers want. If yours is one of them, revenue will be slipping through your fingers.

Consumers snap up the latest pocket-technology and web wizardry and, if your business acts intelligently on this trend, you should soon introduce lucrative and profitable new revenue channels. Businesses simply have to become more savvy about the digital world – mobile devices and evolved web technology are quickly going to be central to the way we do business.

3. Green is the new black

Climate change and the environment are no longer seen as fringe issues, and your business and brand need to speak and act green. Your environmental activity also needs to be authentic, sincere and likeable – and if it’s not, consumers will give their business to your competitors. Green issues will be more crucial than ever to brand promotion in 2010.

4. Price is more important than ever.

Businesses that failed to adapt during the recession, particularly by failing to change their pricing strategy, usually lost sales. In 2010 you will need to be kind to customers with competitive pricing, and in return you will build up brand loyalty. As many companies have found in recent months, if you don’t cultivate a loyal customer base you could easily go bust.

5. The ‘Three Simplicities’ – websites that are simple to find, simple to understand and simple to use

If a website is simple to find, simple to understand and simple to use, then it will be simple to buy from. By all means focus on price, promotion and brand – but if you don’t keep your website simple, your eBasket will leach sales like a colander. Talk to a web design agency if you need help.

6. Don’t make assumptions about your target audience – behaviour is what matters

There’s no need for generic audience profiling these days. With tools such as Google Analytics and social media platforms, you can tailor your planning to your actual audience. If you interrogate your data properly, then you will have a major competitive advantage – but do employ specialists who have necessary skills in disciplines like web analytics and competitor benchmarking.

7. Give customers that little bit extra

Consumers love knowing they are getting more bang for their buck, so if your brand adds extra value compared to your competitors, then they are more likely to choose you. Adding value can also be a much better option than price slashing, which can spark off detrimental price wars.

8. Give customers customisation and control

Whether it’s a product or a service, customisation options are becoming more visible than before.  With many luxuries raised to the status of essentials (e.g. iPods, mobile phones, laptops etc), you need strategies to help buyers personalise their purchases (e.g. offer different colours or cases).

This technique has migrated to the services industry and is strong within the online environment and it’s an effective way to generate a buzz about a product and increase sales.

9. Bring your marketing activity together

Culturally, marketing activity tends to be conceptualised, developed and executed within its department (offline, online, digital, PR), ignoring the activities being created within the other departments. This often results in campaigns that have very little (if any) synergy, which is a strategic no-no. Lack of communication can also result in mixed messages, which confuse your audience – to the detriment of your brand. Bring departments together more often and more intelligently and your marketing will improve significantly.

10. Affinity marketing will see brands coming together for a common cause – more sales

Affinity marketing that brings complementary brands together is nothing new, but in the UK is has predominantly taken place within the ‘white labelling’ sector – mainly supermarkets and financial organisations. However, over the past year a growing number of smaller businesses have joined forces to offer consumers more enticing offerings.

This is a great area to explore, and if the partnership makes sense to your target audience then the potential benefits can be huge. Activity costs can also be split, making it an economical and increasingly popular strategy.  

Summary

2010 will definitely be a challenging and aggressive year for businesses, particularly as many will want to compensate for the recent downturn and will be competing against new firms that have capitalised on recent opportunities. Although we can’t predict exactly what the commercial climate will throw at the business sector, logical and strategic planning is essential – and if that requires the help of an online marketing agency, then it’s worth talking to one now.

What are your business aims for 2010? Leave your comments below or contact us to discuss your digital marketing plans.

On Wednesday, I spent the morning at ad:tech London, the show that bills itself as being “all about interactive marketing”. For those who didn’t make it and are interested in what they might have missed, here’s a quick run through of this first-timer’s observations.

Footfall indicates a flourishing industry

Unsurprisingly, the exhibition floor at Olympia was packed from the moment I got there until the moment I left. Forrester Research recently predicted a further 15% growth for search marketing between 2009 and 2014, so it’s no surprise that so many people want a slice of the action. Don’t underestimate the increasing importance of social media though (also discussed in detail at ad:tech), for which Forrester is predicting a 34% expansion.

I took a sneaky peek at other visitors’ badges and found a healthy mix of marketers and small business owners. Exhibitors and speakers alike therefore needed to adjust their pitches if they were to address the many different levels of understanding possessed by this mix of visitors.

Seminars cover the basics – in a good way

I attended a range of seminars throughout the day – alternating between the analytics/affiliates and search/ad networks theatres. The first seminar was pitched at a relatively basic level, but the speaker made some good points. This is my summary of the most interesting ones. 

• Web marketing activity should be integrated with offline marketing activity. A good point and one that too many people overlook. If your online marketing agency is aware of offline campaigns that might be driving additional traffic to the website, it will be able to track success with analytics and ensure that those visitors are driven to relevant landing pages that meet their expectations, rather than just a generic homepage. 
• Pay per click results should inform natural search campaigns, and vice versa. This is often one of the primary benefits of working with an agency that manages both. PPC data can tell you which keywords are resulting in the best conversions, allowing you to be more targeted with natural search efforts
• Many people who manage their own online marketing campaigns fail to set up analytics accounts properly – and some don’t have any monitoring in place at all. This concern was echoed by Microsoft’s Group Search Manager whose lasting message was “Know your searcher”. Analytics data can be used to help you plan more efficient campaigns. Microsoft also argued that you not only need to track everything, but you also need to be able to respond...
• Be flexible with your online marketing budget. This by no means implies that you need to be prepared to plough more money into the campaign at any given time, but simply that you need to take advantage of seasonality and ROI trends. You can achieve this by reallocating budget if there is a surprising upturn in search volumes earlier – or later – than you expected.
• Invest in your brand as well as your keywords. This message resonated well with me, particuarly as I’m someone who has come to the online arena with a background in more traditional forms of marketing. It is an irrefutable fact that people still click on the brands that they recognise ahead of those that they don’t – even if the known brands are further down the SERPs (search engine results pages).

This links back to my very first point – get your PR agency talking to your online marketing agency and make sure that your various campaigns support and strengthen one another. According to Microsoft, 54% of people are more likely to search on a brand term (company name, tagline, key phrase from adverts, etc.) once they’ve seen a display ad. And, of course, this can all be tracked online.

Why should you go to ad:tech 2010?

Overall, it was a good day and I’d recommend the seminar programme to anyone who is interested in increasing their basic understanding online marketing. The main seminars were completely free (you can pay to attend the Google University if you so wish), so they’re a good option if you want to learn whilst avoiding the persistent sales pitches from the exhibitors with stands.

If you’re a seasoned online marketing professional, I couldn’t say with confidence that you’re likely to get a lot out of a visit to this exhibition – unless it’s a bit of competitor analysis that you’re after, of course.

If you didn’t make it to ad:tech this year and would like to talk to someone about online marketing – or if you did go, but were disappointed by the companies you spoke to – give Coast Digital a call. We’ll be happy to help you with any aspect of digital marketing that interests you.

Yesterday Google launched a service called Sidewiki.

I'm a sucker for anything new, so before I'd read more than a couple of sentences on the topic, I was downloading the Google browser toolbar with Sidewiki integrated into it. The add-on toolbar is available for Firefox 2+ or Internet Explorer 6+ and it will soon become a feature of Google's own browser, Chrome (and, I hope, the nascent Chromium for Mac).

So what's the concept?

Google Sidewiki - an introduction

Essentially, Sidewiki is a system that allows you to comment on any web page. The idea, according to Google, is for readers to contribute "insights" and "helpful information" to any page. All you do is press the Sidewiki icon in your browser toolbar, and then you can leave your thoughts on any page. For example, one of my first actions was to give the team here at Coast some well-deserved praise. Visiting www.coastdigital.co.uk I typed in the following:

In an ideal world, the Sidewiki would be used for relevant, intelligent discussion of the page in question. But I have doubts that this will even be the norm. Visiting the Google UK home page, I found that the discussion so far didn't add anything to my experience.

Similarly, a spammer had got in on the act early over at econsultancy.

Will people warm to Sidewiki?

This is the question that is all important, and - I think - too early to answer. There are, as I write, no Sidewikis on the home pages of technology sites such as The Register or the Guardian's technology pages - and a paltry two Sidewiki comments on the blog of Google's Matt Cutts. Most of the stories I've so far read about Sidewikis don't have Sidewikis themselves (apart from the one I added to The Telegraph).

So, a day in, things are looking slow. Only if Sidewiki gets popular will its joys and flaws become properly apparent.

Sidewiki pros and cons

That said, there are pros and cons that you can already detect. The best thing I've seen so far is the facility for site owners to add a sticky post at the top of the Sidewiki. As long as your site is registered with Google Webmaster Tools, and you are logged into your Google account, you are recognised as the site owner - and your comment goes to the top. Great for adding another welcome or plug for your services.

I can also see that backlinks in Sidewiki have SEO potential, though I plan talk to some of the team here to see what they think. Will these links actually have much value? I just don't know.

On the other hand, my worries are these:

1. Taking conversation off-page. I like to decide whether there is conversation on one of my web pages. And I don't like the idea of people commenting on, say, my blog posts in Sidewiki instead of the comments thread on my own page. It takes value from my sites.
2. Privacy. I quite like the ability to see Sidewikis on pages I'm browsing, but to do so I have to use Google's toolbar. I am not comfortable with it recording details of the sites I visit. In my own Google account, I always switch on private browsing, and I'm suspicious of the information gathered by the toolbar.
3. Spamming. Enough said.
4. Reputation management nightmare. Some industries are incredibly competitive and cut-throat, and I can see huge reputation management issues coming to light. For example, restaurants already have to contend with good and bad reviews on external sites, but to have poor reviews (potentially posted by competitors) in a browser sidebar alongside their own sites will be difficult to contend with. Personally, I'd rather eat in a restaurant where the owner manages the kitchen, rather than one in which they spend their time trying to bump Sidewiki comments down the page.

Of course, Sidewiki may well fizzle out in a week. Comments please, and preferably at the foot of this page...

When asked to define their relationship with their company’s website, most people will fall into one of two distinct camps: it’s either a perfect partnership or a constant battle.

A stalemate situation

It’s a fact of life that some sites are more user-friendly than others; and if your company’s website has been built on an inferior CMS (content management system), the task of maintaining it will continue to be a daily battle until you take action.

Whilst most modern websites have a CMS that allows administrators to update content with a few clicks of a mouse and taps on a keyboard, you would be surprised how many people don’t have access to the ‘back end’ of their company’s site.

This leaves them with no choice but to pay an external developer to make amendments — no matter how small — whenever they need to make a change. Although some people might prefer to outsource this process entirely, it takes time — most web design agencies will need to book your work into an already busy schedule, and developers will need time to reacquaint themselves with your site.

As a result, the task of updating information is often neglected because it is too time consuming and costly. This means that the all important news articles and blog posts don’t have a hope of being refreshed on a regular basis – any SEO professional’s worst nightmare since we all know that content is the key to SEO success.

Wouldn’t it be so much easier if you could just log in and tweak some homepage text, add a new employee or publish a blog post yourself?

Taking command

There are different options available to you if you want to make your website more user-friendly. You may need to find a web design agency that can completely rewrite your site on a different platform, or you might just need to speak to your original agency and/or hosting provider to see whether there is any CMS training that is available.

In my view, websites shouldn’t be unmanageable and they certainly shouldn’t be inaccessible. A website with content that is constantly refreshed and updated will not only perform better in terms of SEO, but it will also be more engaging and encourage visitors to return time and time again.

Engagement

Social networking is all about engaging people and starting conversations, so if your website is static, unchanging and stuck in the past, it is definitely the weak link in what might otherwise be a flourishing online strategy.

Website re-development can be a daunting task but there’s no need to go it alone. If you’re looking to have your website transferred to a more useable CMS, or if you’d just like some advice, talk to us. We’d love to help.

Over the last couple of months, I’ve met with nearly all of Coast Digital’s online marketing clients and reviewed each individual campaign. And if there’s a single topic that refuses to stay in its place on the agenda and forces its way into every conversation, it’s this one: content.

More, more, more

Although people tend to assume that most companies have an in-house marketing department, external PR agency or reliable copywriter to churn out regular press releases, case studies and white papers, the reality is often very different.

More businesses than you might expect struggle to maintain the regular flow of new content that’s needed to support a flourishing SEO campaign. And whilst I can’t fault our online marketing team for wanting “more, more, more” so they can keep pushing pages higher and higher up the SERPs, some clients will always find it a challenge to produce fresh, interesting and relevant website content on a regular basis.

Quality vs. quantity

Whilst it’s easy to set yourself or your team a target of adding, say, four new articles (press releases, case studies, blog posts, etc.) to the website each week, producing content to support an SEO campaign is more than just a numbers game. Your content not only needs to be based on your keywords, but it must also be fresh and original.

It’s not an easy balance to uphold. I admire good writing, so it is difficult for me to support the idea of creating content that exists just for the sake of link building and improving search rankings. Our online marketing team agrees and points out that content need to say something about your business, your marketplace and your views.

If you genuinely care about a subject, it is much more likely that you will write compelling content people want to read and to link to. Simply writing articles filled with keywords won’t to appeal to anyone and, believe it or not, the search engines won’t appreciate it either.

Top tips for writing for SEO

1. Quality – Content that you add to a website should reinforce your company’s credibility and must be readable. This might sound obvious, but you would be amazed at how many firms post content on corporate blogs that has not been thoroughly proofread. Not only does this reflect badly on the post’s author, but it can make the company look slack. Remember that first impressions count — and, if you’re not careful, you can easily drive away potential clients.
   
   High quality content will not only make your business appear more trustworthy and reputable in the eyes of your customers, but it will also improve your website’s credibility in the eyes of the search engines.
    
2. Clarity – Articles added to your company’s website should help visitors to understand easily what it has to offer and where its expertise lies. A blog can be a very persuasive sales tool if visitors are convinced that the company is in tune with the issues affecting its customers and is able to offer practical advice.
    
3. Engagement – Use fresh content to engage with your audience. Inviting responses via a moderated comments section will let others respond and add to the debate. It will also extend the lifespan of each post, increasing the chances of others linking to it and driving additional traffic to your website.

This is not an exact recipe for success and many corporate blogs flourish in their own distinct ways. However, it’s not a bad place to start, and I don’t doubt that we could all benefit from thinking a bit harder about quality, clarity and ways of engaging our readers when we sit down to write.

Most importantly though, I’d suggest you find a tone, style and process that works for you, your company — and your SEO agency. And if you need a little outside assistance, please contact us — we can help.