Marketing automation is one of the buzz words so frequently used by B2B marketers. Not surprising when it can be reduce time and cost, nudge leads gently along the sales funnel and increase the number of conversions. I personally relish the chance to get sophisticated and smart with marketing automation and the software tools out there allow just that, without the heavy investment you traditionally had to put into new systems, creative and processes.

Earlier this week, I attended a demo and best practice session by Marketo. They’re the fastest growing company in this sector and there’s no surprise why. I was absolutely blown away by the functionality of their CRM and marketing automation system. (Continue reading…)

Using professional SEO services is like using a professional contractor to build a storefront for your business. The way the storefront looks and functions is vital to getting customers who will browse and, eventually, buy.

A professional who is familiar with SEO requirements can help you create a virtual storefront that will do the same thing. Half the battle with creating an online business is simply optimising your website so search engines will find it. Why not hire a professional to help you do this more quickly and efficiently? Here are just a few of the benefits of using a professional service:

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Long tail keywords are normally several words long, and they’re much more specific than shorter, broader keywords. For instance, a short keyword might be made up of one or two words, for example, ‘SEO Techniques’. A long tail version might be ‘Small Business SEO Techniques’ which is made up of four or five words.

These longer keywords have different purposes and advantages. Working them into your website copy can really help boost your traffic and online business in several ways. (Continue reading…)

Utilising small business online marketing can return excellent results for a small investment. For many small businesses, budgets are tight and all marketing needs to be as effective as possible. One of the best ways to do this is to reach your potential clients online.

Why online marketing works for small business

One of the greatest benefits of online marketing is that it is cost effective. For a fraction of what you might spend using printed media such as advertisements, leaflets or direct mail, you can reach thousands more potential customers online. There is much you can do to promote your business that doesn’t cost a penny, and many campaigns that you only need to pay for on performance which means you can make your marketing budget go even further. (Continue reading…)

Marketing an online business is different to marketing a bricks and mortar business. Of course there are similarities, but there are huge differences too. Many small business owners that I speak to often think that putting up an e-shop, creating a few flyers and perhaps even adding a blog to their website, will bring in the customers, much like the opening of a high street shop. It’s simply not the case. Marketing an online business is different.

With a high street shop, you have a constant footfall right outside your door and your shop window is there to entice the shoppers in. As long as the high street continues to pull in the shoppers, you’re half way there. Online it’s different. There are billions of shops on your high street and people can’t see you. Instead, they have to look specifically for your goods or services, or you have to find them and entice them in. (Continue reading…)

These eight essential SEO techniques will help you build more traffic to your website. They’re the basic ways to help the search engines notice your website so you can be ranked higher for more keywords. They don’t involve playing to every single change a search engine makes. Instead, they’re time-tested, proven ways to steadily gain ranking with search engines so your site gets noticed! (Continue reading…)

Image search engines are exactly what they say on the tin. They’re search engines for images. If you do a search on Google for a particular product or item, you can select to search for images only by clicking the images tab in the top left corner. When you search in this way, you’ll find hundreds of images of the product you’re looking for.

Images also appear in the standard natural search results too, usually just under the first natural search result. For Google, it’s all about relevance and offering information to the end user that’s relevant, for you, it’s another opportunity to get found by your potential customers.

How do you get found in the image results?

The only way to get found in the results pages of the image search engines is to ensure that you’re correctly using ‘ALT’ tags in your code. ‘But I can’t code’, I hear you say, that’s not a problem. You can check whether your ALT tags are correctly labelled by hovering over an image. If an ALT tag is present a little box will appear with some text. This text should clearly describe the content of the image, but more often than not, it will only say ‘image1′, ‘topimage’ or something similar. (Continue reading…)

Last week I talked about the Google keyword search tool and how it can provide you with a customised keyword list for your business, for free. Here, we’ll look at how to interpret that data and use it in your website and online marketing.

With the Google keyword search tool, you can learn several things about potential keywords for your website. By typing in a broad keyword, such as “jewellery”, you can see Google’s suggestions for related keywords. Each keyword will have several pieces of information about it.

For instance, you’ll see a column for competition. This gives you a small bar graph showing how much competition surrounds that keyword. If lots of websites use that particular keyword, the bar graph will be almost green. If not many sites use it, you’ll see more white. Hover over the bar chart and Google will tell you whether the competition is high, medium or low. Your goal is to find and use keywords with lower competition. (Continue reading…)

The Google keyword search tool is a free way to find keywords for your business. This is a simple and easy way to understand what your customers are searching for, rather than you simply selecting what you think your customers are searching for. It will help you ensure your keyword choice is more accurate for your customers and be better for search engine optimisation.

This particular tool allows you find keywords related to your business. So, if you owned a jewellery business, it would give you different jewellery related keywords. The data provided shows you the number of searches in a given month for each of the different generated keywords.

From the results Google gives you from the Google keyword search tool, you can select keywords that are relevant to your business offering, services or products. Your goal when choosing keywords is to pick those that are searched for frequently but that aren’t too competitive. For example, using a keyword such as “jewellery” for the content of a page is unlikely to get you to the top of the search engines. It’s so broad that there is bound to be limitless competition. (Continue reading…)

Hiring an online copywriting expert is a good idea, even if you already use a copywriter for your offline marketing collateral. Whether you’re creating new website pages, landing pages, pay-per-click ads or optimising your social media campaigns, a specialist copywriter has the knowledge you need to really make a difference to your both your search engine rankings and your conversions.

Copy for the web is different to brochure, leaflets and print ads. There are different functions and considerations to make. Here are just a few of ways online copy is different:

* With online copy, you need to focus on a call to action. When you’re sending out a brochure or catalogue, you want potential customers to take action, of course. The difference, though, is that online copy is meant to call customers to immediate action. An online copywriting expert will excel at getting your customers to complete a form, click on a certain link or even make an immediate purchase. (Continue reading…)