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Google My Business: How to Improve Your Local SEO in Under 5 Minutes

Posted on 9th August 2019 by The Marketing People

Improve your company’s local search rankings with Google My Business

Watch our short video and dramatically increase your local web visibility immediately.

It’s easy to set up, it’s extremely effective, and best of all, it’s totally FREE.

The Marketing People’s SEO Manager John Hoey shows you the simple steps to set up your Google My Business account and easily connect with customers based upon your location. Easily add your email address, phone number, cover photo and other information contained in the business profile. This can be done once you have verified your account to improve rankings.

Don’t miss out. Watch our quick video here

Video: Improve your Local SEO by setting up Google My Business

A quick and easy guide on how to setup your google my business account and attract local customers

For your convenience, please find below step-by-step instructions from the video on how to get your business live on Google:

Google My Business is a free piece of software that Google offer, so anyone around the world can set up their business.

By searching The Marketing People in Google, look at the box on the right-hand side with our logo, telephone number, opening hours and reviews included.

Click here and sign in. The first thing it asks for is your business name, so type that in and click next.

Next, do you want to add a business location where customers can visit you, like a shop or an office? By typing in your business address, this allows Google to display your location on Google Maps.

Now it will ask, do you serve customers outside of this location? If so, it will prompt you to specify where. Be selective with the areas you include and don’t flood it with every city in the UK; this won’t improve your Google My Business listing.

Your business category is next on the list. Google will copyright you for the categories that you input, so make sure you select the most relevant one.

Next up is your contact details. Add your telephone number and website address. If you need help with designing and developing a new website, or you need some changes making to your existing website, please call us.

Once you have clicked finished, Google will send you a postcard through the post to your physical location. Once you have received this, go back here and enter the code that’s on the postcard. This will complete the optimisation.

Now it’s time to populate your page.

You’ve got all this information down the left-hand side, including your address and your service areas. You can add your opening and closing hours and any special hours for Christmas, Easter or any religious celebrations. You can also easily post photos, blog posts or anything else that may help your search results.

So there you have it, there’s a really quick and simple, free business tool to improve your Google rankings with your gmb listing.

SEO is a fundamental part of the overall process of delivering inbound enquiries, engaging effectively, and convincing and converting those visitors to customers.

Take advantage of our free SEO audit to discover where you are listed on Google, and how to appear ahead of your competitors.

For an SEO contract that provides a return on investment (ROI) call The Marketing People now on 01543 495752 to find out how we can help.

The Marketing People Acquires John Hoey Web Design

Posted on 13th June 2019 by The Marketing People

We are pleased to announce the acquisition of John Hoey Web Design.

At The Marketing People, we are continually looking at ways to improve the benefits our services provide our clients to achieve their particular business requirements and objectives.

Enhancing our existing in-house offering with a proven SEO expert, user-centred web designer and developer who shares our business benefits focus and client service approach, we are pleased to have John join us at The Marketing People as our appointed SEO Manager.

Many clients had informed us when switching to The Marketing People that they were not quite sure what they were paying for when it came to their previous SEO provider, who they had a distance relationship with and only received occasional reports from them that they didn’t understand. Or, if their provider understood their business and their objectives, they hadn’t seen the results they were promised they would get when employing them.

SEO has changed and continues to do so; it’s part of the marketing mix, not an afterthought once the website has been designed and built. It should be considered at the design stage for web design, and also any digital campaigns to drive inbound leads and enquiries.

With this acquisition, our collective current and future clients can continue to develop their competitive edge in their sector and marketplace at all touch points for potential and existing customers. Coupled with the marketing consultancy, brand development, creative graphic design, digital marketing, web design, print and promotional services we provide, SEO gives our clients the opportunity and means to make their targeted brand and marketing work.

Put simply: marketing is the key to any business success, and that investment in marketing by clients should deliver the maximum return achievable. This acquisition is in line with our collective objective to help clients do just that- to attract, engage, convince and convert potential customers while maintaining existing clients.

To read John Hoey Web Design’s blog post please click here.

For more details, please get in touch with a member of our friendly team on 01543 495752.

Website Lead Generation

Posted on 23rd July 2018 by The Marketing People

Website Lead Generation for Normans Book Keeping & Payroll

Our brand development and subsequent website lead generation has been a massive success! We tied it all in together and provided the web visitor with just what ‘they needed’.

‘Book keeping is boring, isn’t it?’ We beg to differ…

When the managing director from Norman Book Keeping & Payroll came in to see us, he was interested in ‘refreshing’ his website. He wanted to grow the business, targeting particular types of customers and appeal to those looking for the right kind of help. From Owner managed business to larger SME’s, looking for expert bookkeeping and payroll services. A little frustrated, he had tried once before but it didn’t seem to have made any difference. The business still had no inbound inquiries from the website. He realised that the traditional method of just telling a website designer what you want, doesn’t work very well, without the right marketing know how. Let’s see how we applied our knowledge into marketing his business correctly and effectively.

In a nutshell we needed to do the following.

‘futurise his business in line with his customer’s needs and the book keeping industry’s competitive landscape.’

This now became a little more interesting.

The previous business marketing showed a dowdy, but functional business involved in providing all of the things you would expect in bookkeeping and payroll services. After consulting for a short while, we realised this wasn’t all they did. They actually provided some pretty amazing innovative services, allowing for online cloud-based book keeping services in partnership with Xero. This allows for easy integration with, spreadsheets, Sage & Quickbooks, plus a plethora of different mobile apps driving information into a modern and exciting book keeping model. Some of these apps include the likes of Go Cardless, Shopify, Paypal and Stripe.

Norman Bookkeeping needed to resemble a contemporary firm, able to link up with your data effortlessly. They wanted to show how they produce quick, easy management reports and information as and when you require it. They didn’t need to change the way they worked, just the way they appeared and the way they communicated this up to date book keeping and payroll service in Aldridge, Walsall and regionally around the Black Country & the West Midlands.

For example

There are many advantages to using Normans such as:

Access your data on the go!
Automatic Bank Feeds mean that we can do the job much quicker and therefore cheaply
Holding all your purchase data electronically means that you will be fully compliant with HMRC’s new regulations for Making Tax Digital
Get paid faster with online invoicing
There are hundreds of apps that will link directly with Xero such as Stripe, GoCardless, PayPal and Shopify to name but a few.

So what did we do?

Provided a thorough consultation and brief discovery
Advised upon current trends, industry requirements and intelligent customer targeting
Worked on a real and true representation of the business services against the required target audience and an ideal customer model
Applied some competition analysis and helped to create a unique ‘POD’, or point of difference. We also took into account some ‘POP’, or points of parity. In other words, what do we need to do to prove a ‘USP’, without moving too far away from the industry services that others also provide. e.g. ‘we do that too, but with a difference’.
Provided a brand positioning report and direction
From this positioning came a brand positioning statement and strapline
All of the above now went into creating a new brand and its ID/logo
We began the graphic design element using some desk research, developing fonts, illustration and visual perspectives. We employed colour coding, image research and other creative elements/marketing collateral to create something really functional and easy to understand.
Provided in depth technical site scoping to give the potential visitor the very best of user journey and slick informational navigation
Wire framed the site scoping, to visualise the website more effectively against it content requirements
Wrote effective and intelligently considered positioning copy and calls to action plus dynamic contact copy relevant to each piece or relevant service, to engage website lead generation
Developed the website, provided 301 re-directs, to capture past cached pages and posts for SEO purposes, unveiled and relaunched!
In general, we improved the user journey and calls to action through content and a contact dynamic, re-branded the business, improved the brand visibility and developed its website lead generation capacity

Norman is now called Normans

We now know exactly what Normans do and they are most certainly, ‘not boring’.

See for yourself here @ – https://normansbp.co.uk/

Normans are now successfully receiving leads from the website. Not just any old leads, but the right kind of customers discovered against our agreed customer modelling! It’s been a massive success, their target audience can now discover the perfect solution to a book keeping and payroll problem. Contemporary services and time saving applications, information at the touch of a button. It’s right for them, it’s modern and ‘just what they need’, communicated clearly and concisely through a brand the customer can proudly recommend to others.

Before you rush out and spend £1000’s of pounds on SEO, think about this. Make sure your website has got what it takes to engage, convince and convert your visitor first. Theoretically if your lead conversion is 1% and it equates to £1000 worth of business, we can convert this to 2%, 3%, 5% or even a 10% uplift. You do the math, it’s not impossible to double your websites return on investment. You can apply the SEO later, when you know you can convert.

Normans now ‘Convert Numbers, into Knowledge’… because here at The Marketing People, we help to ‘Convert Knowledge, into Numbers’.

For more information on our website lead generation services, contact The Marketing People on 01543 495752 or contact@themarketingpeople.com

The 5 essentials to a successful landing page

Posted on 21st July 2016 by The Marketing People

You may have heard us mention a number of times about landing pages, but we haven’t covered them in detail in any of our recent blogs.

Today we’re going to take a closer look at landing pages in 2016, and what you should focus on to make your landing page as successful as it can be.

What is a landing page?

It can be really easy to get confused as to what a landing page is. It’s just a page that your visitor lands on right? Not quite.

As Hubspot so eloquently put – “All landing pages are web pages, but not all web pages are landing pages”.

Simply put, a landing page is a web page with a focus on a singular purpose, without the distraction of the rest of the website.

So, for example, you may use it to get someone to sign up to the free trial of your software. Or perhaps, to download an eBook, or for a discount voucher.

These pages can rest on your regular domain, but are hyper relevant to that specific topic. So this means removing all links to other distractions, and making it simple for your reader to ingest the information.

So might you use a landing page?

Landing pages are known to greatly improve conversion rates, as they are targeted. So how can you use landing pages for your site?

Signing up for a free account
Signing up for a course
Signing up for a free guide
Get a quote
Free review or analysis
Schedule a consultation

If you want to see some of these in action, go to Hubspot’s Landing Page Best Examples article, for some great (and varied) examples.

What do you need to focus on?

So these can be used is a variety of ways, for a variety of different purposes. How do you even know where to start when it comes to your landing page?

Here are 5 steps that should start you off in the right direction:

A valid offer for a landing page

Landing pages massively increasing conversions sound great right? However, that doesn’t mean you should set up landing pages for everything. Your website should be doing the job as an informative tool of your services. Landing pages offer a targeted option to persuade users to complete a certain action.

In order to persuade your users, you will need a good offer that is of value to that user. For example, you may be trying to grow your contact list of those who may be interested in your inbound marketing services. You would perhaps offer a beginners guide to inbound marketing for your business. This would be downloadable in exchange for contact information, and would provide value to those users.

A clear, short and simple layout

Now you have an offer that’s valid, you begin to put together your page. It’s best practice to keep your information above the fold where possible.

This isn’t always possible, but having your main information, and your call to action as the first things on the page will increase conversion rates. This is as users don’t have to work to find the information, what they wanted is right there for them.

When designing, consider how this will look on different devices, is your call to action still prominent?

Informative, professional looking content

Once you have an idea of how you are laying out your page, you will know how much content you need to include.

Again, it is better to keep this to a minimum, as a wall of text is going to cause a barrier to your conversion. But this needs to be precise, and informative, without being too pushy. Your audience is not here for a hard sale.

You also need to pay close attention to your font. Always ensure it is clear, and professional, and follows brand where possible. The last thing you want when a user gets to your page is to not be able to read the instructions.

Contrasting call to action

Your call to action is what is actually going to get the user to click. It goes without saying it needs to obvious, and as we have already established – above the fold.

One of the most popular tips is to have your call to action button in a contrasting colour to the rest of the page, to make it stand out. You could also consider using arrows, or images that point towards your form or call to action.

Also consider the text on your call to action button. This needs to be persuasive, and clear as to what will happen when the user presses it.

Trustworthiness

When you take away the links to the rest of your website, you can remove all signs of trust for a potential customer. They don’t know if you are who you say you are.

Consider adding your accreditations to the page. Or perhaps testimonials or reviews. You could even use some snapshot into your social media accounts. Anything that will reassure a nervous user that you are trustworthy, and telling the truth.

Remember though, all landing pages are different, and will perform differently. It is always best to A/B test landing page, so that you can gain the best results for you. The above will help, but nothing will be as useful as seeing results for yourself.

Consider changing the headline, content, layout, images and call to action to see what works.

If you are in any doubt when it comes to landing pages, our friendly team can help. Just give us a call on 01543 495752 and take advantage of our free marketing consultation.

inbound marketing – 5 priorities

Posted on 20th October 2015 by The Marketing People

5 priorities you should have when it comes to inbound marketing

You’ve probably heard a lot about inbound marketing now, (we’ve talked about it previously). How you should be working on a customer focused marketing and sales plan, opposed to something more company centric.

However you might not quite understand how to get inbound marketing to work in your company’s strategy or how to make sure you get the results you want. We’ve got five priorities you should have when it comes to inbound marketing and how to get your business noticed. Make sure your inbound marketing works.

Get found

You need to be visible to your potential customers. That means having a website for customers to find you.

That website needs to SEO friendly so it can be found by search engines. (Not sure on the lingo? Check out our SEO jargon buster). This means good keywords, good meta descriptions, using alt tags and ensure your site is fast.

Be user friendly

Once you’ve attracted all of these potential customers, you need to make sure they can get round your site. This may sound like a simple thing but with most companies never looking at their site from a customer’s point of view, it can be easily missed.

How many clicks does it take to get to your products or services? How prominent are your main services on the home page? Is it easy to find how to contact you? These are all things you probably don’t consider for your own website.

There is also another huge consideration. How easy is it, to use your website on a mobile phone or tablet, is it responsive?

Not sure how to create a user-friendly website?

Cracking content

Potential customers have found you and found where they want to be. Now you need to feed them information that will entice them in, inform them and encourage them to get in touch or purchase online.

How do I create this content? Well there is plenty of guides, including ours on creating the best, most useful content. You probably have tons of topics already that you can write about.

You want to make it as unique as possible, so change up those product descriptions where you can!

When it comes to blogs, you want a mix of evergreen content and news content. Evergreen content is the advice and tips which will always be relevant. The news will be updates in your industry, but they may change over time.

Social Media

Social media seems to have a bit of a Marmite reaction in businesses. Some businesses really love it and take advantage of every network they can, others are not convinced or just don’t have the time to do it.

The social media approach is brilliant for promoting the content you have created. It takes people straight to parts of your website that may be of interest and making you easier to find and connect with.

It’s a great way to connect with potential customers and keep in contact until the time comes that they are ready to buy. And if they have had hints, tips and advice from yourself. As well as an easy quick link of where to find your product or service, they are more likely to buy from you than from a competitor who doesn’t do social media.

Call to action

You’ve done a lot already to ensure your potential customer is happy, informed and can find you. So the last bit is to encourage them to act.

If your potential customer is interested, they may contact you automatically, others need a little more help. Using tools like landing pages means you can channel a sole ‘call to action’ to fill out the form on a page. By removing all other distractions and just leaving the form, people are more likely to complete it then go off and nose at another page.

You should now have plenty of ‘calls to action’ to follow up on.

There is an enormous amount to inbound marketing and lots more you can go into however most businesses still have a split approach with some outbound activity still going on, so time has to measured. Remember to prioritise the above and get those calls in!

If you need a little extra help with your inbound marketing, give us a call on 01543 495752 for a no obligation chat.

How Your Business Can Use Topical Content to its Advantage.

Posted on 25th October 2012 by The Marketing People

What is Inbound Marketing? Why and how you should be using it.

Posted on 27th June 2012 by The Marketing People

What is Inbound Marketing….Have you ever become tired of cold calling or maybe wish you could gain leads people contacting you?

What is inbound marketing?

Quite simply, inbound marketing let customers find you.

Outbound marketing is where you reach out to people.

It’s been suggested that people defy outbound marketing methods by simply ignoring them. By using inbound marketing, you’re offering the reader something of interest, especially relevant to something maybe they had specifically searched for.

Why should you be using it?

First of all, inbound marketing relies on people finding you rather than the other way around. So the chances are that anyone who is visiting your website, blog, Facebook or Linked in profile article, already has an interest in what you do or sell.

This is more likely to engage a customer rather than just reaching out to anyone and everyone.

How to use it.

If you’re already carrying out Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), creating content and using social media, you’re already using inbound marketing.

If not, here are a couple of tips to help you out;

SEO; will make it easier for people to find your website. If you haven’t carried out any SEO on your website yet, Google have recently released a video explaining a few basic and essential SEO tips.

You can check whether all your hard work on SEO is paying off by using tools such as SEOmoz which will provide you with information such as your page rank or how well you rank for keywords or key-phrases.

Content creation; Writing blog posts, taking photo’s, creating videos or info-graphics are just a few examples of content creation.

The best ways to encourage people to visit your website is to create something useful and informative. Something that will help answer a question for them, for example, we find that our ‘how to’ blog posts are the most popular.

Social media; When you’ve created your content you can share it by posting a link on your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ or upload an image to Pinterest. Don’t forget to provide a link back to your website.

An article on emarketer explains that a ‘significant percentage’ of Facebook and Twitter users are reading news or content that they wouldn’t read elsewhere. This proves how powerful social media is as a marketing tool and provides a fantastic springboard for your inbound marketing. It hands you the key to a gateway, beyond which are thousands of interested customers.

Are there any disadvantages to using it?

No! Like everything else, it will take time and patience. You won’t see overnight success however if you keep committed and keep working hard, eventually it will begin to pay off.

Do you use inbound marketing? If so, have you seen any success and in conclusion how long did it take to start seeing results? has anybody asked you what is inbound marketing?

Inbound marketing is the ideal route for a lot of companies to provide leads coming to you rather than you chasing them. It does however take a lot of work and effort, so maybe use our inbound blogs to keep you going along the way.

Finally if you live in the Burntwood, Lichfield, Cannock, Staffordshire or the West Midlands area and require some help or advice with your marketing? Why not see what we can do. Take a look at our case studies then call us on 01543 495752 to book a no obligation consultation meeting today.

Inbound marketing