With many businesses struggling through at the moment but starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, it is important that marketing is focused on. The businesses that make it through these tough times are often the businesses that invest time into their marketing. It may eb that you have not been able to or are still not able to trade in the normal way in which you are used to. For example if you ran a café you may have not been able to open your café to the public, but may of instead started to do home deliveries. In order to get the message out there about the new services you are offering you need to do a decent amount of marketing.

Depending on what industry you live in and what areas you are targeting will determine the competition for your industry. If you are a business that only serves local areas especially rural areas then you may find it easier to complete compared to those that offer services nationally or those that or targeting large cities such as London.

Marketing is important to all businesses and you may discover one avenue of marketing that works better for you than others.

If you are in the process of analysing your marketing, you may wonder if it is time to start using a marketing consultant. Many companies take on their own marketing of their business often to keep costs down. It may be that they employ internal marketing staff or often they just use other members of staff who are not trained in marketing to implement strategies. This can work for a short while but when it comes to more complex marketing, they simply may not have the skills or time to do it effectively.

If you are employing staff to work on your marketing and they have experience and or qualifications in this area then that may work well, but if you are utilising other members of staff that do not have the qualifications or experience then you are not only taking them away from the other work they have to do but also risking getting the marketing wrong.

Knowing where and when to invest your marketing budget is vital and that’s where a marketing consultant can help. Even if you do not want to outsource your marketing, they may be able to advise you on what you should be doing and even offer training to the staff that are going to be implementing the marketing.

Lots of business have a website which they pump a lot of their marketing budget in to and they may even do some social media marketing, but what is often missed is the often free local advertising that they could be doing. This includes advertising on local director websites and making sure that your business is listed on Google maps.  

Google often display map listings above organic website listings so it is a really good way to get traffic to your website. It is free to have a Google Map listing and it is another way to improve your chances of being found on the search engines, often pushing you up to the top for competitive search phases if you are in the geographical location of the person searching. Adding your business to Google maps is relatively easy but remember to add as much information as possible such as opening hours, pictures and very importantly a link to your website.  Even if you don’t have a website you can still get listed on Google Maps and add a phone number for any enquiries.

Make sure that you also research local directories which often offer free listings for businesses or a small yearly subscription fee. Adding your site to as many of these as possible cold also generate new leads.

When it comes to marketing you need to think carefully about which products you are going to market and how you are going to do it. If you sell products that are manufactured by another company you may be able to rebrand them with your own logo, packaging and name or you may have to sell them under the name of the manufacturer.

If you are selling a recognised brand then it is important to use this in you marketing strategy. If you have your own name for the products then there will not be much point in marketing this unless you have a huge budget or already have good brand recognition.

Marketing a brand new product can be expensive so you need to think of other names or phrases that people may search for which matches your products. You are not allowed to market using another brand name unless you have authorisation, so for example if you sell toy building bricks that are similar to Lego you cannot call them Lego, but you may be able to say they are compatible with Lego. Think carefully about what budget you have to spend and how you can make this go the further to increase a return on your investment.

If you are thinking of have a website built or if you already have one and find that it’s not performing very well on the search engines then you may need to invest a little time and money on SEO.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation and will help get a website to the top of Google and other search engines such as Yahoo and Bing. Many customers will come to a marketing company after they have had a website built to ask them to do some SEO work on it. This is often a little harder to do than it would of been if it was built in when the site was first designed as some sites simply have not been designed with SEO in mind. If this is the case often the whole structure of the site will need to be changed to accommodate the sections you need.

Before having a website designed, ask the programmer about SEO and if it is something they offer. If they don’t offer SEO as part of their website build then you may want to look elsewhere or find your own marketing expert that can work with the designer / programmer to ensure it is done correctly.

Many of us have smart mobile phones that allow us to download apps, make purchases through websites and opt in for notifications from certain businesses. Marketing is on the increase and this is because the number of people now using their mobile to search for products and services online is becoming greater month on month. Approaching busy retail periods such as Christmas and January sales, traffic through apps or websites surge.

There are many ways in which to target mobile customers in terms of marketing. Some companies use an SMS text service allowing them to connect directly with each individual. Other companies use an app to engage users and then send them updates regarding their company via the app. If a busy has a sale on and they want to let people know, they may send out a notification that pings up on your phone telling you about it or (if you have allowed permission) actually add the event in to your calendar. This type of marketing can work really well for many companies and once the initial cost for the app has been paid, there is often not a lot to pay in terms of running costs. 

One of the main arguments that marketing experts have with their client is to do with SEO written content. In order to get your website ranked well for certain content you need to ensure you have the correct phrases on your website, in the right places and the right amount of times. Spamming a website with lots of keywords just to get ranked will not only risk your site getting blacklisted from the search engine results pages but will also put off real visitors to the site.

As a business owner you may not want your site filled up with content that is relevant but not necessary in terms of selling products or services. But from a marketing point of view you need a certain amount of this and you also need to add fresh relevant content on a regular basis.

You need to agree on a way in which these pages will be laid out and the type of content they will have on them. You also need to agree on where they will be placed on the site and which pages will link to them.

If you find that they do not read well then you need to reword them to ensure that the balance is correct.

Your positioning on the search engines such as Google can have a huge impact on the amount of traffic you get to your website. This in turn has an effect on the number of sales and enquiries that your business receives.
If you track your search rankings then you may notice a drop from time to time. If the drops are only minuscule and other search terms have gone up then it is probably just the normal fluctuation in results but if all of your search terms or a large number of them drop substantially overnight then there is probably a serious problem.
This often happens when a website has been penalised and demoted or removed entirely from the search engine results pages. Websites often get penalised or demoted due to issues with pages not loading, slow speeds, duplicate content or if you have recently undertaken some black hat techniques.
It can be very hard to recover from substantial drops, but you need to first establish exactly why. Once you know this you need to ensure that the problem is fixed before resubmitting to Google etc. for listing. There is no telling how long this will take, so in the mean time you may wish to try other avenues of marketing such as social media or Adwords to build up your traffic.

When looking to improve the rankings of a website, many owners are confused that they are not appearing in search terms for locale areas. Although Google and the other search engines will show map listings for nearby businesses you may find that you do not rank well in the organic listings. This is often due to the fact that you do not have a mention of that location on your website.

Many businesses have a simple list of their physical locations such as showrooms but often more is needed to get ranked for these through one website. You may decide to have a mini website for each location but you must be careful not to have duplicate content and websites that overlap. Ideally you need to have at least one page on your site for each area. The content needs to be unique and should have information that is relevant only to that area such as a map, opening hours and services offered along with testimonials from local people. This will allow you to have a better chance of getting on the search engine results pages for each individual area. You may be able to mention other areas that are also nearby to get those ranked as well.

If you are looking to really get traffic to your website then you need to think carefully about the keywords you are marketing. When someone makes a search on Google, Bing or Yahoo, the search engines should them results that are best fit for their search. The more generic the phrases the more competition there is for them. For example, if you sold kitchens then the phases “kitchens” or “buy kitchen” would have a huge number of other companies that are trying to get to the top of the search results pages. Instead, you may be better to go for phrases like “fitted modern kitchens” or “kitchen companies in xxx” replacing the xxx with your location. Using more generic keywords but only targeting certain locations can again help you to get better rankings.
If you are using Adwords, the same theory applies. The more competitive a keyword the more money you will need to pay to get towards the top of the sponsored listings.
If you only have a small budget then you are better to invest it into more specific keywords and phrases and target a smaller geographical location. Once you start to achieve good results for these you can then start to expand to cover more search phrases.