Yearly Archives: 2013

Email Marketing: Five Best Practice Tips for Subject Lines.

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Email marketing five best practise tips

Email marketing five best practise tips

You know what it’s like yourself, you have an inbox full of emails and you have no intention of reading them all; you just scroll down looking at subject lines waiting for one to catch your eye. So what can you do to encourage people to open your email?

Subject Length

First off, most email clients are only able to display somewhere between 30 and 50 characters and mobile devices will show even less, about 20 to 30 characters. This means ideally you don’t want your subject line to be longer than 50 characters and if the majority of your opens come from mobile devices, it needs to be even shorter.

If the majority of your emails don’t come from mobile devices, then try and ensure your main keywords are within the first 30 characters so that your subject line interests anyone who does use a mobile device.

 

Create Urgency

It’s really important to try and create urgency and to make your recipients stop and want to open the email right away instead of telling themselves they’ll read it later and completely forgetting about.

For example if you are emailing your customers to tell them that there’s an offer ending soon make sure you get that urgency across by using the words ‘ends soon’, ‘ends today’, ‘ends tomorrow’ etc.

Another thing to bear in mind that using ‘Re:’ and ‘Fwd:’ at the beginning of your subject line to try and trick your recipients into believe a friend has forwarded the email onto them may well annoy them and leave them feeling tricked of scammed.

 

Clear Subject Lines

Be honest with your customers and make it obvious and clear what the email is about. If your subject line says one thing and your email is really about something else, they may feel tricked and won’t bother reading the rest of your email.

Make sure your subject line also contains keywords which will mean something to your customers. You should have a good idea of what kinds of keywords your customers use, but if not check your websites Google Analytics which will be able to show you what people are searching for to reach your website.

 

Words and things to avoid

There’s a lot of debate over whether a certain word or phrase in the subject line will get you caught in a spam filter, it’s more likely that your email will be marked as spam due to a number of things rather than mentioning a spammy word in your subject line.

However as best practice avoid the obvious spammy words such as; act now, extra cash, no obligation, money back guarantee, limited time, click now etc. If you do use a word which is associated with spam and you do get through spam filters, the recipient may well think your email is spam because the words ‘limited time’ to them sets alarm bells ringing.

As well as avoiding obvious spammy words;

  • Don’t write your entire subject line in caps
  • Avoid exclamation marks
  • Avoid using different fonts
  • Don’t put unnecessary g  a  p  s between characters or use numbers and special characters in the place of letters

 

Test, test and test again

When coming up with a subject line write a list of all the possible subject lines and keep revising subject lines which sound good until they sound great.

A good way to improve your subject lines is to look at what emails you’ve opened recently because the subject line interested you; what was it that caught your attention and made you open the email? Also put yourself in the customer’s shoes; is this subject line something they would open?

Once you’ve got a list of a few great subject lines select three of the best and use these as a split test for your email campaign.

After you’ve done a few campaigns and looked at the results of your split tests, you’ll begin to get a good idea of what your customers like and what interests them the most and equally as important, what doesn’t interest them or get them opening your email.

 

Contact us

If you’re a business based in Burntwood, Cannock, Lichfield, Staffordshire or the West Midlands and need help creating opportunities to sell your products or services though email marketing, get in touch with us to find out how we can benefit your business.

You can get in touch with us by calling us on 01543 387 047 or email us at contact@themarketingpeople.com

How to Write SEO Friendly Title Tags

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How to write SEO friendly title tags

How to write SEO friendly title tags

Title tags tell both search engines and people what a page is about. It’s vital to get your title tags right and make sure they’re SEO friendly. As they show up in search results and need to encourage people to click through to your website.

 

It’s vital to get your title tags right and make sure they’re SEO friendly.

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What is a Title Tag?

As we mentioned above, the title tag tells people and search engines what a page is about. You can find a list of SEO terms in our SEO Jargon Buster if you want to expand your knowledge.

 

Where does a Title Tag Appear? 

Title tags in Google search results

Title tags appear in search results (as shown above) and in people’s browsers (as shown below) at the top of the window and as the title of any tabs open in the browser.

Title tag in browser

 

Can I use my Company Name?

Yes, you should definitely use your company name!

 

If a user already knows the name of your company, they may choose to click through to your website based on your name alone. Especially if they’ve had a positive experience or know someone who has. If a user doesn’t know you, using your name may help to build up brand recognition.

 

How long should a Title Tag be?

It’s recommended that your title tag is no longer than 70 characters. Since that is the total amount of characters a search engine can display in search results.

 

A title longer than 70 characters will not damage your search rankings. It will just mean the entire title won’t be seen. Similarly, a title much shorter than 70 characters won’t harm your SEO. It will mean that you’re missing out on opportunities to use keywords.

 

Tips for creating interesting SEO friendly title pages

Now we’ve answered a couple of burning questions you might have, here are three really simply tips to help you write interesting and SEO friendly title tags.

 

What’s it about?

The first and most obvious tip is to ensure the title tells people what the page is about using important keywords. Don’t be tempted to fill your title tag full of keywords as keyword stuffing may harm your SEO.

It’s important to get the right mix of informative and attention grabbing so that people read the title and want to go to your page because it sounds interesting and/or sounds like it will answer their question.

Sometimes it can be really difficult to try and fit everything into 70 characters, so make sure you aren’t using words such as ‘and’ or ‘if’ and are only using words which are absolutely necessary.

 

Make sure titles are unique

It’s really important to make sure your titles are unique.

You shouldn’t have two pages the same or with the same content on your website, therefore your titles should all be unique.

Don’t be tempted to use the same title across all of your pages, because although it may save you time it may reduce the number of visits you get from search engines because people are confused about what’s actually on the page.

 

Most important keywords first

Make sure you put your most important keyword right at the start of your title tag.

SEOmoz carried out some testing and found that the closer to the beginning of a title the keyword is the more impact it will have on search rankings.

If you want to learn more about SEO, why not check out our post on what is SEO and why is it important?

If you’re a small business based in the Burntwood, Lichfield, Cannock, Staffordshire or West Midlands area and need help improving your websites title tags, SEO or search rankings, get in touch with us to find out how we can help you. Call us on 01543 387 047 or go to our SEO service page for more information. You can find more of our SEO blogs here. 

Why Customer Reviews Are Important & How To Get Them.

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why customer reviews are important and how to get them

Customer reviews are important, think about the last few products you brought; did you review them online first? For many people, reading product reviews has become an integral part of the buying process.

Why are product reviews so important?

Whether you have a website or an ecommerce website, having reviews or testimonials on your website can help to make your business more credible, trustworthy and will hopefully convince people to buy from you instead of your competitors.

The Nielsen Global Trust in Advertising Survey carried out during 2011 found that 70% of people trust opinions posted online. Online reviews were the second most trusted form of advertising, with ‘recommendations from people I know’ beating it to first place, this shows just how important consumers consider reviews to be.

As well as showing people that your products and services are great it will also help your SEO. People will generally use the kind of keywords and keyterms in their reviews that your target audience will be searching for when trying to find your products.

How do I get customer reviews?

Emails

Amazon has a brilliant model for gaining product reviews. If you’ve ever ordered from Amazon you’ll have noticed that a few days after you receive your product you receive an email asking you to review the product. This ensures that the majority of products sold through Amazon have reviews.

If you have an ecommerce website this can be replicated by setting up automated emails to go out to customers a few days after you estimate their order should have arrived.

 

Leaflets with orders

When you send your orders out, you should always include details of how to get in touch with customer service if the customer is unhappy. Along with your customer service information, encourage happy customers to leave you a review and make sure you tell them how to do it.

If you sent out leaflets or flyers with your orders showing customers what other products you sell or alerting them to offers, make sure you include a call to action to review their product on there as well.

 

Social Media

Many consumers take to social media, Twitter especially, to vent their frustrations or sing a business or products praise.

Monitoring social media using tools, such as Social Mention, Twitter Advanced Search and Google Alerts can help you get a good idea of how people are feeling about your brand.

This works well for your business in two ways. The first is that you can address any unhappy customers and try to sort their issue out; this also shows your business is proactive in ensuring your customers are happy.

The second is that if you see anyone singing your praises, you can thank them and ask them if they’d like to share their thoughts on your website and send them a link to a review page.

 

Customer Service & Suggestion Cards

If you offer a service which requires your customers to visit your shop, office or business, you could ask customers to leave their thoughts and any suggestions on a card.

These can then be typed out and posted on your website. It’s important to make sure you type them out instead of scanning them, as a scan won’t benefit your websites SEO.

 

7-litre-Compostable-and-Biodegradable-Bin-Caddy-Liners1

What if I get a bad review?

If you get a bad review, do what you can to contact the customer and rectify the problem but whatever you do don’t delete it, unless it’s offensive of course.

People will be suspicious if they see pages and pages of five star positive reviews. The odd average or poor review shows consumers that you’re being truthful and posting all reviews and not just deleting the poor ones, which will make your business look honest.

 

What do I do with customer reviews?

If you have an ecommerce website ideally you want reviews for each product or service.

If you haven’t got an actual product for sale on your website, showcase your testimonials and reviews on a ‘testimonials’ or ‘reviews’ page.

You may also want to do this if you’re an ecommerce website and a customer emails you or provides you with a general review about your business as a whole. For example, one of our clients, Gardening Delights, has individual reviews on each product but they also have a Testimonial page for general feedback.

Don’t think you need reviews as you’re a small business?  Here’s a post on how they help you grow as a business.

If you’re a small business based in Burntwood, Lichfield, Cannock or the West Midlands and need help with any aspect of your marketing, print or web design get in touch with us to find out how we can offer your business real benefit.

You can call us on 01543 387 047 or fill in the contact form on our website. 

How the Mobile Phone Has Changed Marketing & Website Design.

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How the mobile phone has changed web design

How the mobile phone has changed web design

Earlier this week the mobile phone celebrated its 40th birthday. As a modern dog who spends pawlenty of time on his iBone, I wanted to look at how the mobile phone has changed marketing and website design.

At the end of 2012, Portio Research found that there were 83 million mobile subscribers in theUK, 36 million of which were smartphones.

Thanks to smartphones, humans (and dogs) can get on the internet. Read product reviews and buy regardless of where they are. For example, if you’re out walking your four-legged friend and they lose a ball. You could order them a new one right there and then.

As a result, marketing, advertising and even website design has had to adapt and change as the popularity of smartphones grows.

 

Social Media is furry very im-paw-tent

Last week research was released which found that smartphone users with a Facebook account check their Facebook 13.8 times a day on average. If that’s not proof of how important phones and social media are to humans, then I don’t know what is.

For businesses who use Facebook, that’s 13.8 additional chances for them to target and engage their ‘fans’. That’s before we’ve even though about the likes of Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram or Tumblr.

In short, businesses no longer have to rely on their audience being at their computer to try and engage with them through social media.

How businesses use social media varies greatly. Some will use it to create and drive interest in them. Some will use it to engage with their customers or try to drive them back to their website. Some go the whole hog and use Facebook commerce apps to sell their products directly through Facebook.

From a consumers point of view, social media is useful for finding out customers thoughts on a product or service before they spend their hard earned money.

Consumers also find social media, Twitter especially, is one of the best and fastest ways to resolve an issue. As a company wants to be seen to be active in helping its customers resolve a problem. As a result some companies have Twitter accounts dedicated to customer support.

Both of these allow businesses to get a feeling for how people are feeling about them and their products. To flag up whether there are any issues they need to resolve. Or if there is anything they need to do to improve the publics perception of them.

While some of the above would be possible without smartphones. With people spending so much of their time on their phone there are now more opportunities for businesses to generate leads and get conversions and to create loyal customers.

 

QR Code

QR codes were originally used in the automotive industry, but again thanks to the capabilities of smartphones they’re now frequently used in advertising campaigns or on business cards.

QR codes can be used for a number of things, such as to encourage people to;

  • Sign up to a mailing list
  • Pre-order or buy a product
  • Enter a competition
  • Find out more about a product

 

SMS Marketing

Of course, without the mobile phone SMS marketing wouldn’t be possible at all. Some businesses use text messaging to get in touch with their customers. To remind them about their business, alert them to offers and competitions or ask them to fill out a survey.

In fact, every Friday Mum and Dad receive text messages from Domino’s Pizza trying to tempt us into ordering a big tasty pizza.

 

Email Marketing

During the second half of 2012, 28.98% of emails were opened on mobile devices. Meaning that marketers are now having to take mobile into account when designing their emails.

In some cases where the majority of email opens come from mobile phones. A business may decide which day and what time to send an email based on a peak time for mobile phone use.

 

Mobile Optimised Websites

It isn’t just marketing that’s had to adapt due to the popularity of mobile devices. Website design has also changed over the years.

Ideally businesses should now have a mobile friendly version of their website. This means that people who view their website from their mobile will be able to use it easily without having to scroll or zoom in too much.

Mobile friendly websites are especially important for ecommerce websites as if it’s difficult to navigate or search for a product the user wants, they will just use a user friendly competitor instead.

As well as creating mobile friendly websites, some retailers have also created phone apps. Big brands such as eBay, ASDA, Forever 21, Topshop, Amazon and ASOS have mobile apps that allow users to browse and buy products.

Getting users to download your app means they’ll constantly be reminded about your company, increasing the likliehood that they will use your app instead of browsing the internet and using a competitor. It also means you’re likely to create loyal customers as they’ll use your app out of convenience.

Thanks to the mobile phone businesses have more opportunities to market and sell to their target audience and consumers have products at their fingertips wherever they are.

 

Must dash, I have a iBone chess match scheduled with Chops. We are intelligent you know.

Paws and Licks,

George.

 

Contact Us

If you’re a small business based in Burntwood, Lichfield, Staffordshire or the West Midlands and need help with your marketing or website design, get in touch with my humans who can add real benefit to your business. Fill out the contact form on their website or pick up the dog and bone and give them a call on 01543 387 047. 

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

How to Create a User Friendly Website.

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How to create a user friendly website

How to create a user friendly website

A user friendly website which provides a great experience is vital for encouraging users into your website and steering them down the sales funnel.

Ideally you want everyone who visits your website to become a customer (preferably straight away!). But if your website if confusing or frustrating to use, that won’t happen.

Providing users with an easy to use website and a great user experience will make buying easier. If they don’t buy then and there, they’ll remember your website and may return when they are ready to buy.

 

Design

Your website’s design is important for creating a great user experience and an easy to use website.

As we mentioned at the beginning of the post, your website should look easy to use from the second a user arrives on your website. If it looks confusing or cluttered people may be put off and decide to visit another website instead which looks easier to use.

It is also essential to ensure that your websites branding matches the branding on your marketing collateral. And your social media profiles, to avoid confusing users.

 

Navigation

Gardening Delights menuYour navigation is the core of designing a user-friendly website. If users can’t figure out which page they need to go to or how to find the information they’re looking for, they’ll go to another website where they can.

The page titles in your navigation should give users a good idea of what they can expect to find if they click on that button.

If you have a lot of pages or sections on your website, you might consider having a sub-navigation within each section or page to make things easier.

For example one of our clients, Gardening Delights, has a sub-navigation on the left hand side of root-category landing pages to help users navigate around categories easily.

To ensure you don’t confuse users, ensure your navigation is exactly the same throughout your website. And always make sure to include a ‘Home’ button.

 

Blog

If you have a blog make sure it’s integrated into your website and sits on the same URL as the rest of your website. For example ours is www.themarketingpeople.com/blog. Not only is this SEO friendly, but it also makes it easier for users to find.

It’s also important to use your websites navigation on the blog so users can switch between the two easily. Not only is it website friendly, but it looks much better and more appealing. Rather than having a blog which looks completely different to the rest of your website.

 

Content

Creating concise and useful content is important. As we’re sure you’ll want users to leave your website having learned something about your company or products, even if they don’t become a customer on that visit to your website.

There’s nothing worse than arriving on a website to be met by a wall of unformatted text. Even if it contains the best solution or answer to a user’s question, they’ll be put off by a block of text.

Encourage users to read your content by making it look appealing by using titles, headers, paragraphs and images. You should also consider whether the font’s readable in terms of; the font itself, size and the colour.

 

Mobile

Last year roughly one sixth of all internet traffic in theUK came from a mobile device, such as a tablet or smartphone, and that number will only continue to grow.

Having a mobile optimised website means that mobile users also get the same great user experience and are able to browse your website easily.

 

Case Study

We recently carried out some work for one of our clients, Gardening Delights, to help them create an easier to user website. This involved; reviewing the website and planning and organising the changes and carrying out the changes themselves.

As part of the websites update we;

  • Re-organised their navigation and renamed pages to make it clearer what kind of products users would find if they clicked on that button.

 

  • Added new categories to make large categories with lots of different yet similar products smaller and easier for users to look through.

 

  • Created and implemented new sliders and graphics for the homepage which linked to the root-category landing pages

 

  • Created three new landing pages which fit with the brands current positioning, which offers users helpful information.

The final result is a website which is much more user-friendly and enables users to find the products they’re looking for quicker and easier.

 

Contact Us

If you’re a small business based in Cannock, Burntwood, Lichfield or Staffordshire and need help making your website more user-friendly, get in touch to us to find out how we can help you. To find out more, call us on 01543 387 047 or fill in the contact form on our website.

 

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

Eight SEO Techniques to Avoid & What To Do Instead.

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8 SEO techniques to avoid and what to do instead

8 SEO techniques to avoid and what to do instead

It’s natural for a business to want their website to rank first in search engines and black hat SEO techniques can be tempting. However they can do more harm than good.

Black hat SEO techniques are techniques which break search engine rules and basically trick a search engine into giving a website a higher search ranking than it deserves.

Search engines ‘frown’ upon black hat techniques and are smart enough to know if you’re using them and will punish a websites search rankings if you are caught. In some extreme causes they may even remove a website from its listings altogether.

SEO is a long and ongoing process, so using black hat techniques to try and get a quick win will do you more damage in the long run.

Using black hat techniques to get a quick win will do you more damage in the long run.

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Not only can these techniques damage your search rankings, but by choosing to use these techniques you won’t be giving any readers any kind of benefit or useful information, so it really is better to put some time and effort into creating useful content.

Search engine algorithms are incredibly smart, and there are a number of things they will take into account when deciding which order to display search results, here are just a few;

–          Relevance to keywords searched for

–          Is the content high quality and helpful?

–          High quality inbound links

–          Traffic to the website

Below is a list of eight black hat SEO techniques you should be avoiding and what you can do instead to naturally improve your websites search ranking.

 

Keyword Stuffing

This is probably the most common black hat technique as it’s fairly easy to do. It involves ramming your content with keywords and keyphrases to the point it probably makes little sense to anyone trying to read it.

The idea behind this technique is that the more instances of keywords you want to rank for there are in your copy, the higher you’ll rank in a search engine.

Thankfully search engines are smart and can distinguish between high quality content that is naturally keyword rich and content which is just crammed full of keywords.

What to do instead

Carry out some research into keywords you want to rank for, look at keywords your target audience may use to reach your website and carry out a Keyword Research Report (KRR).

Once you have done this you can begin creating helpful and useful copy which is keyword rich and makes complete sense to the reader and which will help you improve your search rankings.

 

Hidden Text

Hidden text means creating text which is the same colour of the background.

A user will be unable to read this hidden text, however search engines can read it no problem.

Since search engines can read hidden text and users can’t, hidden text is used for keyword stuffing.

What to do instead

As we mentioned above; carrying out keyword research and writing high quality, useful content will benefit you, your website, your users and your business far more than hiding a massive list of hidden keywords.

 

Buying Links

Parting with £9.99 and receiving 5000 links sounds like a good deal, doesn’t it? No.

Inbound and outbound links can benefit your SEO, especially if you’ve got incoming links from authoritative websites, such as the BBC or .gov websites.

However if you’re spending £9.99 and receiving 5000 links in return, the chances are they’re all going to be incredibly poor quality and will actually damage your search rankings.

If search engines see that thousands of poor quality websites are linking to yours, they will assume that your website is low quality itself and won’t provide a reader with useful information, and they will therefore decrease your search rankings.

What to do instead

Work hard to create great, useful and shareable content that people will want to link to. You could also write guest blog posts for similar and relevant websites which would provide you with a link to your website.

 

Comment Spamming

Commenting on blog posts or news stories which allow you to link back to your website is one of the quickest and easiest ways to gain backlinks.

Some website owners abuse this and leave poor comments on any and every blog post or news story which will allow them to link back to their website.

This is called ‘comment spamming’, and the chances are that if you have a website or a blog with a comment section you’ve been a victim of this. You know those really vague comments with a link back to a completely unrelated website? Yeah that’s the stuff.

What to do instead

Leave useful and helpful comments on blog posts or news stories which are related to your area. It really is that simple.

 

Directory Listings

There are very few directories which are high quality and are worth listing your website in nowadays. Search engines really don’t award much to being listing in directories, however being listed in some can be useful.

There is no punishment to being listed in directories, unless perhaps you pay to submit your website to thousands of low quality directories in one go. As we mentioned above, having thousands of low quality incoming links can harm your SEO.

What to do instead

Go for human edited listings which are often much harder to get into and require more information, for example, Yahoo Directories or DMoz.

 

Mass Article Submissions

If you write a brilliant piece of content it make sense that you’d want as many people as possible to see it. However submitting it to as many article directories as possible isn’t the right way to do it.

You’ll be creating duplicate content which will all be linking back to your website. Search engines don’t like duplicate content, as it could infringe copyrights and is a poor way to try and improve your search rankings.

What to do instead

Get your content in front of as many eyes as possible by promoting your content through social media or email marketing.

If you really want to submit your content to directories, submit it to a couple of the highest quality ones that give you the most traffic, instead of the low quality ones which probably don’t send any traffic your way.

 

Content Scraping

For an honest website owner abiding by white hat SEO techniques, this has to be the most frustrating black hat SEO technique. It involves copying content from one website and posting it on another website without attributing anything to the original creator of the content.

Sometimes scraping websites may link back to the website where the content came from, which could actually have a negative affect on the original websites search rankings as they are a poor quality website.

Not only is content scraping a black hat SEO technique, it’s also illegal as it infringes copyright laws.

If you find that your website has become a victim of content scraping, Google allows you to report scraper pages.

What to do instead

Nothing good will come of content scraping, at all. Research what kind of content your target audience want and create useful, high quality content which people will want to share.

 

Cloaking

Cloaking involves displaying different content to the website users and search engines. If your website is found to be using cloaking you be removed from a search engines index altogether as they are unable to do their job properly if you are showing them one thing and users another.

What to do instead

Instead, focus on building a great website which offers users a great user experience and contains useful and informative information that will help you to generate leads and hopefully sales.

 

Are you a business based in the Burntwood, Lichfield, Cannock, Staffordshire or the Midlands? Is your website not performing as well as you’d like in search engines? If so get in touch with us to find out more about our SEO services and how we can help improve your websites search rankings. Or you can check out more from our SEO blogs here. 

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.