Any business no matter how big or small should have a marketing strategy in place. A marketing strategy is essentially a plan of how and where you are going to market your business. It will usually include time scales and costs. It can be easy to get carried away with investing in multiple marketing avenues without really checking what return on your investment. If you are you are getting. If you do decide to use multiple companies for your marketing then you may find that they overlap their services meaning that you are paying twice for the same thing, or even missing out a significant marketing avenue. If you only have a small marketing budget and no one in house that has marketing experience you may be best to outsource it to an individual or marketing company. When creating a marketing strategy try to think of short term and long-term goals as some things are pretty instant such as Google Adwords and others take time... Read More »
What to look for in your web stats
Website statistics are vitally important when looking at your website performance and marketing. There are hundreds of website statistic tracking tools available for you to use to see how many people are visiting your site. Each software package may vary in terms of exactly what data you can extract from it but most of them offer the same basic stats such as number of visitors to the site, how they go to the site i.e. PPC or social media and what they did when on the site. Google Analytics is by far one of the best stats packages you can use and best of all its free. It gives you so much data but in a friendly manner meaning even if you don’t fully understand marketing and stats you can still find your way around. You can add the main information you wish to see on the front dashboard and even have the data emailed to you on a regular basis. But if you are... Read More »
Should you keep your marketing in-house?
Marketing is very important when running a business. You need to think carefully about how you are going to do it and who will be responsible for it. You have a few different options as to who will manage your marketing for you. You may want to try and keep costs low by getting staff who you already employ to do your online and offline marketing or you may decide to do it yourself. This will only work if the person responsible for it has a good knowledge and has the time to carry out the tasks needed. If they do not have the relevant skills and experience then they may end up doing more harm than good. The other option you have is to use a third party. You can choose to outsource your marketing to another individual who has experience in the area (self-employed marketing expert). This may keep costs down a little, compared to using an agency, but does mean that you... Read More »
How to establish what your marketing budget should be
Marketing is a very important part of running a business and you need to think carefully about what budget you can put aside for marketing. The amount you may need to spend on your marketing can vary drastically from industry to industry and depending on if you are a large or small business. If you want your business to grow rapidly and are in a competitive industry then you will need to spend a large sum of money on your marketing every month. Some small businesses may only spend a few hundred pounds a month on marketing where as a large PLC may spend in excess of ten thousand pounds a month. Often the more you spend on marketing the better results you will get but some business simply do not have the funds to pump thousands in each month, and have to wait a long time to reap the rewards. You need to establish which forms of marketing will give you a quick return... Read More »
Careful consideration of the format of your website can help convert sales
Your website may contribute hugely to the success of your business. Some businesses get most if not all of their revenue through a website. If customers can purchase items directly through your website and allow customer to complete the payment process then you have an ecommerce website. These types of websites should be designed very much with the customer in mind. It needs to be easy to complete the purchase and make contact with the business should they have any queries. Trust is vital when it comes to ecommerce websites. If a customer trusts your business and your site, then they are more likely to purchase through you. Adding logos such as the PayPal logo or Visa Secured Checkout, can help build up that trust. You need to carefully think about the layout of your site, making your products or services easy to find, easy to compare and most importantly, easy to buy. If your website asks the customer for a lot of information during... Read More »