Monthly Archives: February 2013

Why Small Businesses Need To Carry Out SEO Too.

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why small businesses need to carry out seo too

why small businesses need to carry out seo too

In a digital age where people are always looking to save money and time. Their search for a product, service or an event will usually begin online.

If you own a small business, the chances are your business won’t be as well known or have the same kind of reputation as a big business. This means you need your website to be appearing right at the top of search results, preferably 1st.

Even with a fraction of the budget available to a large business. A small business can still outrank big well-known websites and steal that coveted number 1 ranking.

 

SEO in a Nutshell

If you know what SEO is, feel free to scroll down. If not, the concept is pretty simple and the chances are you’ve read about it or thought about it and just not realised that it was SEO.

In a nutshell: SEO is a strategy which consists of multiple techniques which all work together to optimise your website for search engines. Making it easier for your target audience to find.

 

How Can SEO Benefit Small Businesses?

Ideally every business wants to show up number one on the first page of results, and if done correctly SEO will help you reach that goal.

A study carried out by Chikita found that only 6% of people click through to the second page of results. This emphasises just how important it is to get your website showing up on the first page of search results.

The more traffic your website gets, the more leads you’ll generate which in turn will hopefully lead to more sales.

If carried out properly, SEO can even help small businesses rank above big websites. And competitors which you may think it’s impossible to beat.

Gardening Delights topiary

Example:

One of our clients, a web based business called Gardening Delights, who specialise in selling sustainable and eco-friendly products, has a range of topiary animals and shapes. Despite topiary not being their speciality, they keywords used on their website and the websites reputation allows them to rank 1st in Google for terms such as ‘topiary frames’, above Amazon and website who specialise in topiary products.

As well as helping you to rank higher in search engines, carrying out SEO will help you improve your website on a whole.

As well as helping you to rank higher, carrying out SEO will improve your website on a whole.

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Part of your SEO will no doubt include editing your websites copy to include keywords and keyphrases you want to rank for. It will also include fixing any technical issues on your website, such as creating redirects.

Both of the above will benefit anyone visiting your website. As your website will provide them with a better user journey, and will also contain information they’ll be looking for.

 

Contact Us

Are you a small business based in Burntwood, Lichfield, Cannock, Staffordshire or the West Midlands? Are you struggling to get found in search engines? If so, give us a call on 01543 387 047 or if you’d prefer, drop us an email at contact@themarketingpeople.com. Let’s talk about how our monthly SEO contracts could help your business rank higher in search engines. In the meantime, why not check out more of our SEO blogs?

Email Marketing Campaigns That Deliver – Browns Distribution

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email marketing campaigns that deliver

email marketing campaigns that deliver

Email marketing is a simple and easy way to reach your customers. Better yet it allows you to easily segment your customers and send each group an email targeted to them.

After working with Staffordshire based Browns Distribution at the end of last year to rejuvenate their brochure for the New Year ahead. They engaged our email marketing services to help them introduce their brand to prospects.

The aim of the email campaign was to introduce prospects to the brand. To ensure that existing clients were aware of their full range of services and ultimately, to generate leads and sales over a series of three emails. The email campaign is also being supported by a direct mail flier, which also lists their services.

To ensure their email was successful and beneficial to their customers and prospects. We worked with the team at Browns Distribution to create a list of key messages which needed to be included in the email.

After working out the key messages and calls to action, we were able to create a visual. Then build an email which was inline with Browns Distribution’s branding and would get through contacts spam filters.

Before sending the email we also asked Browns Distribution to update key areas of their website. So that the website would support the email campaign and encourage any visitors from the email to download their brochure.

Our Email Marketing Works

The email successfully generated leads for Browns Distribution. One of which was a prospect they had been trying to get in touch with for the past 12 months and had been refused through the normal sales channel.

Using the stats, open rates and click throughs from the reporting system. The Browns Distribution Business Development Team were also able target effective follow ups.

If you want an email marketing campaign which works and delivers against your goals, get in touch with The Marketing People to find out more. Call us on 01543 387 047 or email us at contact@themarketingpeople.com

Four Tips For Writing Pawesome Product Descriptions

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four tips for writing awesome product descriptions

four tips for writing awesome product descriptions

Bonjour Humans,

I spent last night surfing the internets for a new iBone cover (Chops chewed the last one). And I couldn’t help feel frustrated at the amount of poor product descriptions.

Being the friendly Marketing Dog I am. I thought I’d give you folks some hints and tips to help you write the best and most pawesome product copy you can!

To explain my points I’m going to use an example product throughout. This is the Holy Grail for most dog owners, a dog proof bin.

 

Get Found – Keywords

To help your products perform well in both search engines and in your websites search function, you need to include keywords in the product title and description.

Let’s imagine this dog-proof bin comes in three colours; silver, black and white.

The colours and the words ‘dog proof’ and ‘bin’ need to be included in both the product title and description. For example, if someone is browsing your website and your product title just says ‘Black Bin’, they won’t know that it’s a dog proof bin, which means you’ve just lost a sale.

It’s very important to include keywords but don’t be tempted to go overboard use too many. This is called keyword stuffing; search engines don’t like it and will punish your search rankings for it, and in some extreme cases they will banish you from the listings all together and send you to your bed with your tail between your legs and no treat after dinner.

 

So What? – List Benefits

Even if it seems really obvious, and most of the time it will do, list your products benefits. The whole time someone is reading your product description and pondering a purchase, there’s a little voice in their head going; ‘So what? If I part with x amount of my hard earned money, how will this product help me or solve a problem for me?’

People are being careful with their money and they want to know that they aren’t wasting it by buying your product and that it will help them.

Let’s think about the dog proof bin, the benefits are obvious, but let’s list them;

  • It holds rubbish
  • Your dog can’t get into the rubbish
  • This means your don’t won’t injure themselves or make themselves ill after raiding the rubbish
  • You won’t have to spend your evening picking the rubbish up off the kitchen floor

Humans are being careful with their money and want to know that your product will help them and won’t be a waste of money.

Thankfully the only money issues us dogs have is, whether that 50p we swallowed is going to cause us problems.

 

Know Your Target Audience – Know What They Want

You’re all good business owners and marketers, so you know exactly what kind of person your customer is and what kind of information they want to know.

There will be certain questions your product description will need to answer for your customer. Such as;

  • Will it arrive fully assembled, part assembled or in bits?
  • If I need to do some assembly what tools will I need?
  • How big is it so I can figure out where to put it in my kitchen?
  • What size liners will I need?

This of course will vary depending on what your product is, but take time to think carefully about what questions your product description needs to answer.

Knowing your target audience also means you can gauge what kind of tone of voice you can use. With something like a dog proof bin, you can get away with a bit of humour and a few puns, but only if all of the information is there.

 

Formatting

Formatting is important, people don’t want to read huge paragraphs of text, so short and succinct sentences and paragraphs are important.

When listing your products advantages, you may have a lot to bark about, so listing them as bullet points will make it easier for people to digest. Figuratively of course, eating a website would be more impressive than raiding a bin.

Keep an ear out for The Marketing Dogs tips for pawesome product listings which will be on the blog next week.

 

Contact Us

If your e-commerce website isn’t performing as well as you’d like, or you need help with your product descriptions, get on the dog and bone and talk to my lovely humans, The Marketing People. You can call them on 01543 387 047, or drop them an email on contact@themarketingpeople.com. Don’t write to them though, I’ll only eat your letter.

 

If you want to read more from our website series of blogs, just click here to see what other resources are available.

The Marketing Dogs: Best In Snow Winners

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best in snow winners

best in snow winners

Bonjour & Ni Hao Humans,

Last Monday we were sad that all the snow had disappeared, so we put together an email asking for you lovely humans to send us pictures of your pets in the snow.

We really enjoyed pawing over the pictures and seeing your pets having as much fun as we did.

The humans said that we could pick the three Best In Snow pictures. We received so many pictures that we really couldn’t choose just three. We put our brains to work and decided to get around it by choosing three Best In Snow each and one more for good luck! Aren’t we crafty?

Without further ado, here is our Top 6 Best In Snow, in no particular order because they’re all so pawesome!

Molly and Taylor P&R Alarms' donkeys

– Molly and Taylor

Cookie and Boo

– Cookie & Boo

Spirit in the snow

 

– Spirit

Rocky in the snow

 

– Rocky

Mylo in the snow

– Mylo

Lottie in the snow

– Lottie

Marley the Husky in the snow

– Marley

Thank you to everyone who sent us pictures of their pets in the snow and we hope you’ve enjoyed looking through our Top 7 Best In Snow.

Remember that you can now follow us on Twitter @TheMrketingDogs to find out what life’s like at The Marketing People for a Pug and a French Bulldog. In short, it’s very interesting.

Before we go, we just wanted to remind you that if you need any help with your marketing we can help you.

If you need a hand with web design, email campaigns, social media or digital marketing George is your man.

If you need a paw with stationery, brochure, exhibition graphics or any other printed collateral talk to Chops. You can email us on georgeandchops@themarketingpeople.com, or if you fancy talking to our humans directly, call them on 01543 387 047 and say The marketing Dogs sent you!

Got to go, the Postie has arrived, we’re going to trick her into giving us the post and then eat it.

Paws and licks,

George and Chops.