It seems from these meetings potential new clients are all thinking about a new website.  The site they had done is over 3 years old (sometimes older) and some don’t have a site at all! now they are looking at the options, most seem more interested in what the site is developed in, will it be trendy, can they have a gallery and will they be on page 1 of google!!! I don’t think they read Matthews article on the difference between the various web sites on offer – and where to start?

This is sooooo important really think about what you want before going to design, or before you brief your web design or creative agency.  Have a plan, written down on one sheet of A4 on what you want the web site to do for your company and your business.  Think about objectives – what do you want to achieve with the website – and this principle applies to any marketing really.
Think about what you are trying to achieve – are you looking for more sales in which case your focus should be on lead generation.  Or are you looking to create better awareness of your brand, to disseminate information about you services or products – to seek information, are you looking for feedback?
 Or perhaps you are looking to develop a website that sells on-line in which case there are many other issues to consider such as the shopping cart technology but most importantly SEO – to be successful, you will need a constant stream of prospects visiting your site –and they need to be converted.
Write it all down as a draft design brief and discuss and agree it with your web developer or creative agency. – in advance.  The discuss this with the design agency or marketing agency, as sometimes ideas or thoughts you may feel are on target are in fact quite off the mark.

You will get a better result and spend less time and money, and it may transpire that you don’t really need that really expensive all singing all dancing CMS website (yesterday), that no one can find! it was really a re-brand or your brand awareness needed to be investigated and applied to your business! or may be it was just a simple marketing plan to help you see outside the box!

debbi
creative director
snap marketing

Watch this space with links to view.

debbi

In other words, before you make a cut you need to be damn sure that you are cutting in the right place!

Translated into marketing strategy, and especially web design, you must get the thinking straight (the measuring) first before you start spending money (the cut). Simples!

Like many of our current clients, you are thinking about a new website.  That site you had done is now looking out-dated and you are looking at the options.  Friends and colleagues give you loads of advice – and it all conflicts!  You have read our article on the difference between the various web sites on offer – but where do you start?

Really think about what you want before going to design, or before you brief your web design or creative agency.  Have a plan, written down on one sheet of A4 on what you want the web site to do for your company and your business.  Think about objectives – what do you want to achieve with the website – and this principle applies to any marketing really.
Think about what you are trying to achieve – are you looking for more sales in which case your focus should be on lead generation.  Or are you looking to create better awareness of your brand, to disseminate information about you services or products – to seek information, are you looking for feedback?
Or perhaps you are looking to develop a website that sells on-line in which case there are many other issues to consider such as the shopping cart technology but most importantly SEO – to be successful, you will need a constant stream of prospects visiting your site –and they need to be converted.
Write it all down as a draft design brief and discuss and agree it with your web developer – in advance.  He/she will thank you for it and you will get a better result and thinking about it we might just develop one for you to download – good idea?

Let us know!

Do you buy a template- based site for £1.99 per month – the cost looks very appealing and the sales patter implies you don’t need to do anything but sign on the dotted line.  But will they deliver?  Or what about a bespoke site that I can have genuine design input – aren’t they too expensive? And what about maintenance – won’t I get stitched up each time I need a change?  Well I hope that in this short article we can debunk some of the myths!

There are basically 2 kinds of site – those that you can edit – and those that the web developer has to do for you.  The sites you can edit are called CMS sites and are based on Content Management Systems – essentially a clever set of software tools that sit behind the visual stuff on-screen that the people who visit your website will see.  The benefits to you of CMS sites are:-

They are really easy to update – and you are in absolute control of this.  This can be a double edged sword – if you can change it, then the boss might ask you to keep changing it all the time!

Websites developed using CMS can be updated anywhere that has Internet connection – your office, Starbucks, or your friendly WiFi pub.

If you develop new products or run offers or want to add landing pages for your email marketing campaigns, then CMS sites allow you to add pages really easily and expand the site to site your businesses growing needs.

Want to add new features, for example an e-newsletter, a Blog (great for SEO), rolling news feed (RSS) plus a host of other features  – CMS sites can add all of these pretty much on the fly as and when you need them.  They can integrate Flash (although Matthew would say sparingly for SEO reasons!)

They are more expensive to set up because there is a 2 part process – the back end design that allows you to edit the site is separate from the work to develop the visual designs and it can mean a longer lead time.

Here’s a really great example of a CMS site http://www.stag-geological.com

Bespoke websites are developed by your Web designer using a package like Adobe Dreamweaver. If you are looking for the ultimate in creative design and flexibility then this is the type of website for you.  To your brief, your web developer can embed anything into the web pages such as Flash, RSS feeds, Forms and graphics

Depending on the design brief, these types of website are be less expensive to set up initially and will be quicker to set up and there is absolute flexibility for maximising SEO and maintaining competitive advantage here.

Other functionality can be embedded into the site such as blogs and forums but they have to be added separately as plugins; however this is not necessarily a bad thing as again this gives you greater control and choice of the technology you may prefer to use.

Bespoke websites can only be updated by your web developer, unless you have the necessary software and abilities and they tend to be serviced by your design agency or web developer. This does not have to be expensive if you do all your thinking first in terms of marketing strategy – also you can pre-negotiate these terms with your Design Agency upfront – many will agree to a guaranteed maintenance agreement for changes.  Here’s a great example of a Dreamweaver website www.Snap-Marketing.co.uk – a smaller Dreamweaver less expensive site www.gm-landscaping.co.uk

When trying to raise awareness of your brand, or even create a brand or drive more people to your site localised or nationally there are other forms of advertising and promotion that can be explored.

A small advert in a local newspaper can set you back £400 a time – why not think about other forms of localised advertising such as posters at local Railway Network, Adshell (posters at bus stops). You can get your brand displayed on 6 sheet billboards costing as little as £240 for 2 weeks advertising campaign.

Compare this to the cost of a days advertising in your local newspaper you could be adverting for a month on a billboard in your area! Or outside, dependent on the geographic area you require. Another brilliant benefit of poster advertising is that if the media sales agency has not sold the space after your campaign finishes – your poster stays up there! This can be as little as an extra, but we have had experience of our posters staying up for 6 months – FREE!

Your local Radio is another interesting source of advertising for certain businesses. Used correctly with creative thinking, it is said to raise over 50% more business if localised to an area.

Consider other forms of branding and advertising – some of these long term such Banners and exterior advertising – signage and livery, flag poles and so on – they all have a longer shelf life – delivering your message. Think about every Eddie Stobart lorry you drive past on the motorway. Have you seen the Rabbit vans (another client of Snap Marketing!) driving around Reading? That investment has been paid over and again.

Think outside the box – what about bus exteriors and interiors – what about Hotel, or Leisure Club lobbies, sports exteriors – race courses – football and Rugby grounds. Think about pooling resources with complimentary business to make your investment go further over time or to have greater impact.

Really interesting going to these types of events where we met so many different people from all sorts of different companies at different stages of their evolution. Start-ups to mature businesses all looking for help with their marketing.

Trends from the show – a lot of people looking to refresh their website design and development and LOTs of people looking for help with getting their websites ranked in the search engines – SEO in other words.  The marketing audit was also popular  – gives a useful insight into areas that need addressing.

Interesting also how much optimism there is at this time compared with 6-9 months ago.

Now comes the fun bit – following up all the leads we collected.

Matthew

Key to giving you the best chance of holding prices as high as you can, is to have a strong brand, (see our article on building a strong brand here www.snap-marketing.co.uk/articles) and we talk there about defining the value you offer to your customers. Communication of your products or services in the conext of the value you deliver to your customers gives you greater control over your pricing. But here are some other tactics you can use to make sure the sales conversation is about issues other than purely price.

Bundle your products to extend your product range and create a range of low- to high-value offerings and set pricing price accordingly. This will enable you to satisfy both ends of the market simultaneously without seemingly cutting prices.

Reducing prices to generate more sales (or to stay competitive) will not improve your business over the long term, but you can mitigate their effect on profits by control company costs and reducing inefficiency. Streamlining operations and outgoing expenses is good practice. We tend not to prioritise this when times are good but we can’t afford not to now.

Try and innovate in order to offer something unique – this applies to the products you offer as well as your business model. Increase resourcing (even if its intellectual resource if you don’t have the funds) to generate new products or ways of doing business that give you an edge either negotiating customers or in the market. Innovative products are great but don’t forget that it took 5 years for the iPod of slow sales before to become an ‘overnight’ sensation!
If you simply cut your prices just to compete sends out all the wrong messages. Getting into a price war with the competition or a horse-trading battle with your customers– will just send you into a downward pricing where no one wins, unless you adjust the value of the product in line with the price drop. Disguise any price cut or bundle an offer.

Typically high-value products priced appropriately are more price-elastic so it will be a waste of time discounting pricing – it is unlikely to change sales uptake, lower-value products will be responsive to price cutting.

If you do get into a price fight, and price-driven customers threaten to take their business elsewhere keep pressing on the unique value of your product to their business, thus justifying the price, or simply let the customer take his business elsewhere. If he is so focused on price alone, he will always do this. Relentless price-driven customers are mercenary and will not be loyal – you might cut to keep the business now but he’ll be back next year for more.

Matthew

Marketing Berkshire

A properly constructed and executed brand will convey the correct messages, ensure that none of your marketing spend is wasted, and will attract the right sort of customers – not just those who haggle solely on price.

So, as branding experts, how do we go about this at Snap-Marketing?

Crucial to building a great brand is the groundwork before a single key stroke is made in Quark, or an image edited in PhotoShop.

Researching the market and then defining the Product Positioning Statement (see www.snap-marketing/articles for a detailed framework for doing this) will enable you to laser target your marketing based on the knowledge you now have about what your ideal customers looks like, what they think, where they feel pain (that you can solve), how they behave, how your competition act.

Write all this down – what is your prefect customer (if a consumer, age, sex, region, category of behaviour, or business size, employees, type of activity, geography, behaviour etc), what are their needs (ie the pain), where do they buy your sort of stuff, what is the size of the market opportunity for you, what is the competition up to – their pricing, product positioning, activities.

Narrow your focus as much as you can in terms of defining both your perfect customer’s profile and your product positioning.  The narrower you are, the greater the opportunity there is for you to differentiate your offering from the competition and create VALUE.

This means you are not being forced to compete on price all the time and you will be able to target channels to market with precision and your marketing spend will suffer less waste. Your marketing messages can be clearer and targeted with laser-precision to receptive targets.  So you have just saved money and created a system for justifying a higher price and this means more profits!

To summarise, you need to know exactly who your customers are and what products they need.  Be different, differentiate yourself from your competition and then you won’t get into a price comparison battle.  Communicate with your target customers in the media they interact with and give them a message that is clear that they can relate to.  Lastly, having invested in the time, effort and money to create a great brand, be totally ruthless about making sure that your logo, brand-colours, brand-fonts, are used on every single piece of marketing, (internal and external) in a totally consistent and repeated fashion.

And don’t forget that creating a brand is just as important for a small local business as it is for big ones – its not just important – this days its non-negotiable. In this economic climate you need a strong brand to differentiate yourself and SURVIVE.

Matthew

Brand Development Berkshire

Lets kick off by busting the myth that Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) can ONLY be executed properly by geeks.  This is simply not true!

If you can create web-pages or even edit them then great – you have definitely got a head start and there is a bunch other stuff you can do on top of what I will outline here that will have a further impact, but the insider tips I am going to share with you today are steps that can be taken ANYONE even with limited IT skills (plus a little help from your friendly Webdesigner) – and they really WORK.

Google is the biggest search engine by user share by far, so lets assume that stuff we do for Google will work for the other main search engines – Ask, Yahoo and Bing. So where do we start?

Product Positioning – Get as narrow a focus as you can

Regular readers of our blogs and articles will know our mantra by now, but you need to kick off with your Product Positioning.  Really define your target customer by some rigorous research of the market and output this in the form of your Product Positioning Statement (see www.snap-marketing/articles for a detailed framework for doing this).  This will enable you to laser target what your ideal customer looks like, what they think, where they feel pain (that you can solve), how they behave, how your competition act.

Write all this down – what is your prefect customer (if a consumer, age, sex, region, category of behaviour, or business size, employees, type of activity, geography, behaviour etc), what are their needs (ie the pain), where do they buy your sort of stuff, and look at what the competition up to – their pricing, product positioning, activities –and most importantly where they rank on Google and for what search terms.

Narrow your focus as much as you can in terms of defining both your perfect customer’s profile and your product positioning.  The narrower you are, the greater the opportunity there is for you to differentiate your offering from the competition and create VALUE.

Keywords – Don’t go Mainstream

Having worked out your product positioning, you can now pinpoint your ideal target customer and work out what pain he feels in the area that you have solution.  The next step is to define him by what he is searching for.

Knowing this and how you solve his problem gives you the clues with which to research the Keywords he is likely to use when he searches Google for a solution.  Now you aren’t going to like this, but actually this customer really doesn’t care about you at all at this stage.  He is focused only on his pain and finding some relief.

So ask yourself what it is that the CUSTOMER will be looking for to solve the pain and not what YOU can provide.  It might be he needs more sales – and hasn’t got in-house marketing – in which case he might be searching for a Marketing Consultant in Hampshire to help him grow his business – and by the way around 70% of Google searches are for local results.  Or he now knows the value of having a great website, and is looking for Website Design in Reading.

You’ll start to get a picture here of where I am going with this.  You need to start thinking like your customer and a real great tip here is the oldest in the book – when someone buys a drill they don’t need a drill – they need a hole in the wall – the drill is the best solution for achieving this – its not the problem.

So with this in mind, write down a list of these potential search words and phrases.  A great tip here is to get a Google Adwords account (which is free – until you start advertising) and use their built in Keywords research tool.  Input your potentials and the Google tool will spit out a whole bunch of Keywords and Keyphrases that relate to your ideas. They even show you the likely traffic AND let you download it all as an Excel document!  All for free – I love Google!

Analyzing the Gaps

This is now where you start to get smart and where your SEO guy starts to earn his money, because you need to analyse all this against the competition and see what words they are getting ranked for.  Your task is to identify those search words and keyphrases that haven’t yet been exploited (fully) by your competitors.  As I said in the product positioning part – be as niche as you can get.

A home truth here – trust me, you are not going to get to the top of Google for the popular phrases without a fight and a stack of cash – and our philosophy is that its better for a SME to get good page rank, and therefore some quality traffic in a great niche (where your prospects will be actually PRE-QUALIFIED for you), than to try and compete on mainstream searches and get no traffic because your are down on page 5.

You are looking for gaps – and believe me they exist – and you will find them with the tools I have suggested.

Exploiting the Gaps

Your output from this process will be 5 Keywords and/or KeyPhrases that Google predicts will get some traffic – and think local here if appropriate.  If your customer base is all based around Bracknell – put that into the key phrase – or perhaps the county.  Lets assume you are tax accountants in Bracknell specialising in sole traders.

This is now where you need to get your web designer to do some work.  He needs to do these 6 key things.

1. Revise the copy on your website to have about 10% of the words on each page reflecting your keywords/phrases
2. Have him change the ‘Title Tags’ of each page to reflect your offering related to key words.  Each page MUST be different – something like:
   1. “Yourco – Top Tax Accountant in Bracknell” for the home page
   2. “Yourco – Taxation, and Year End Accounts” for the Year End Accounts Product page
   3. “YourCo – Taxation, and VAT returns for Sole Traders” on the VAT Product page
   4. “YourCo – Accountants – Directors – A wealth of sole trader accountancy experience and tax knowledge” on the About Us page
3. You need to do the same thing in the what web designers call the ‘H1’ fields  – the are the main headings on each page  – you need to get your chosen key words into the main headings on each page (and the sub-heading ‘H2’ fields as well if you use them)
4. And you need to add something like “YourCo Accountants provide tax accountancy services and advice – we specialise in bookkeeping, tax returns, VAT and payroll for Sole Traders” in the “Description” Meta Tag.  This is the description of what you do that comes up on the Google page underneath your URL – it needs to get your prospects attention and say exactly what you do – if you can get a phone number in even better!
5. Now he needs to create a proper sitemap – and if he doesn’t know what that is, get rid of him and get someone who does.
6. Get him to add Google Analytics (again free from Google) to each page on the website.

Do you see where I am going with this – the whole keyword/phrase thing?  Great!

There is some other stuff you can do, but if you get these things 6 right you are a long way down the track.

Getting Google to really Love you – Create Inbound Links

Now with all this new-found knowledge, you need to create content around these keyphrases and put it out there on the internet and link back to your site.

Google LOVES inbound links, and tends to rank site with lots of them highly, but it is also clever enough to make sure that the context of the 2 linking sites has relevancy.  So create as many links as you can using the 5 keywords/phrases you have chosen to create ‘Anchor Text’.  This is text that helps Google like the context of the link back to your site.

So for example, on your networking forum signature, don’t just link from your logo.  Put text, based on your keywords into your signature and link it back to your website – its even more powerful if you have a page with keywords in the URL. So instead of a signature like:

Joe Bloggs
Bloggs and Bloggs Accountants
www.BBA.co.uk

Why not put something like –

Joe Bloggs
Bloggs and Bloggs Accountants – Tax Accountant in Bracknell – link this text to the home page
Taxation, and VAT returns for Sole Traders – link this text to the VAT Product Page
Taxation, and Year End Accounts – link this text to the Year End Accounts page

Never again write “Click here to visit our Website” – I hope you understand why by now!

Now Start to Drive that Page Rank

Your next step is to list your business in free directories, release press releases to the press releases sites, Blog or comment on other peoples Blogs (with the signature).

Create articles relating to your expertise, a bit like this one, and submit them to article directories and post them to networking site – ALL embedded with your chosen keywords at about 10% density – ALL with your links attached to
keyphrases.

Join Twitter, join business networking sites and spend a day or so at first doing this.

Join Social Bookmarking sites like Digg and Delicious and use them to bookmark your content – each one will get you an inbound link.

And then keep at it – a couple of evenings a week and you will see some progress. It may take a couple of months – maybe up to 6 – but you WILL get to the top of Google for your niche if you have followed this process.

In this economic climate you need a strong brand to differentiate yourself and SURVIVE.

I hope you enjoyed this short article and that it has given you an appetite for more.

Give us a call or drop me an email if you need help.

Matthew

Website Design Reading

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