Before reading this post, we recommend that you get Generate UK - Digital Marketing Blog delivered directly to your email inboxIt is still very surprising how many companies in the UK that have a website, yet do not take advantage of a Blog. For us, it is a no brainer. The business benefits of running your own blog far out weigh the concerns, it is just a matter of taking the time to understand what these benefits are and how they fit in with your online marketing objectives. Have a read through the list below and see whether your excuse is listed.
We don’t understand why we would need a blog, it is just an online diary so how can this help us? This is quite a popular excuse and one that is usually made at the top of the management tree. Once senior management understand that by blogging you are opening the door to an increase in targeted traffic to your website, they usually see the light.
I don’t want just anyone within my company making posts on our behalf This is usually said by a business owner or a managing director. It’s still very surprising how many business leaders do not trust or allow their staff to make blog posts. This is strange because it is no different to other forms of marketing. This is easily overcome with an internal blog post approval process or a blogging policy which are being widely adopted. If you’re already working with an agency, perhaps this is something else they can do for you?
Your marketing department or PR guys have said that blogging is a bad idea This is a very interesting situation and although it is happening less and less, there are a few PR guys and marketing people out there that are advising against setting up blogs. If this is happening, you need to challenge them and ask them why it would not work for your business. Test their understanding of Internet Marketing, ask them how a blog works. If they can not talk to you about RSS, pings and how important they are from a search engine marketing perspective, then they do not know what they are talking about. As a result, you can be sure that their advice is based upon them protecting your monthly payment to them and not based upon the interests of your business.
Controlling quality would be very difficult This should not be a deal breaker. Usually this excuse can be overcome with some training and an internal blog approval policy. All posts should be submitted to an approving editor before they go live, this way you ensure that quality remains high. You should also guide your staff about the topics that you would like covered, if you have a flower business, then you ask your staff to write about something that relates to flowers. If you’re really buying into the whole blog idea, then you will have articles written that relate to keyphrases you have identified as part of your keyword research. Once you’re at this level, you’ll really start to see your blog work for you.
We’re waiting for the technical department to sort this out Don’t leave the blog in the hands of the technical department, do some research or talk to people who know about the benefits of blogs and tell the IT guys to just take care of the installation. Your choice of blog software and the type of blog you go with will determine how successful your project is. This is all about understanding your marketing objectives, you’re better placed than your IT guys to do this.
We have not got anything to talk or blog about This probably should have been the number one excuse for setting up a blog. All companies have something to write about, it is just working out what it is. If you sell products or services, then you might consider writing guides for their use. If you have happy customers, then you might interview them about why they think you are so good. If there is something important happening within your industry, then the blog is a great place to have your say.
There is no one available to spend time writing blog posts So just how many blog posts are you thinking of writing? Even if you wrote one article once a week, you would only require an hour or so. If you prefer to post more, then perhaps you might want to move some of your marketing budget around. The great thing about a blog is that you can measure the success of it from a marketing perspective. At the very worst case, you can hire an English student to write some posts for you in exchange for their Saturday night money.
It is difficult to predict the return on investment, until we can be more sure we are not interested This is a tough excuse to overcome because it is used by very risk averse companies. We would look at the other forms of advertising the company may use and ask how they measure the ROI with those campaigns. If there is a performance management culture, we will compare their metrics with what can be achieved with blogs. There is always the intangible benefits of advertising, such as brand awareness, thought leadership and sometimes the expectation that you just have to be there. There is also the feedback you receive from your customers and prospects, this is great for research purposes and can help you identify new markets and opportunities.You will have access to analytics and visitor details on your blog. If you’re using the blog to compliment your SEO strategy, then you will very quickly be able to measure the impact. If your blog is a sales type of blog, your ROI will be measured based upon conversions.
Blogging is just some hype, we’re waiting for the next big thing It could be a long wait. Blogging has been around for many years now and continues to grow, it has definitely reached the stage where it is mainstream. Adding a blog to your site just to compliment your search engine optimisation strategies will ensure a return on your time and investment. That’s before you consider the potential to increase your branding, expertise and enquires from local press.
It’s just too difficult and we don’t know where to start This is really not a good excuse. Blogs can be set up so that you’re ready to go in an hour. If you’re still not sure, speak to an agency or have some training. You won’t need a lot, once you know you will wonder why you took so long to get onboard.
What to do next? Do you think we are being fair?We’d love to hear from you, post your comments and feedback below. If you would like to speak to Generate UK, please feel free to contact us on 0845 388 9185 or via our contact page.
Special Offer: If you have read this post and would like to learn more about launching your own blog, contact us immediately for details of how we can take your blog site from conception to go live. Quote the title of this blog for a 20% discount.
All this week, we have been posting about Social Media and how it can help your business. During discussions with our clients, it was clear that there were different views about what Social Media actually was. One of the more common views we hear from our customers is that they see Social Media as a tool for young people to share photos of themselves falling out of nightclubs.
Faced with this feedback and the general media coverage, it is not difficult to see why many businesses are struggling with how Social Media might help them. Hopefully, over the course of this week we have planted one or two seeds of opportunity. If you still need convincing, we’ve added some more business benefits below:
More conversations about your brand. Our Social Media Strategies are about increasing the number of online conversations there are about your products and services. The trick to this is to make sure these conversations are happening where your customers are most likely to be. We use a phrase called Internet Footprint, the larger your footprint the better and the different facets of Social Media help with this.
Traffic booster. Using video sharing techniques or social news sites, there is always the potential for you to go viral. If this happens, it is time to hang onto your hat because you are likely to experience the type of traffic that you have never had in the past. Just make sure your bandwidth is ready and your landing pages are converting.
It’s new and a bit different. This benefit is not always going to be true, however for the time being it is a little bit different. There’s growing concern about our so called “ad blindness”, where we are beginning to sub-consciously block out on page advertisements. Social Media Networking is a way around this.
Comparably low costs. A Social Media Marketing Plan, can be a very cost affective way to build your brand and company awareness. Using this form of marketing is also more measurable, so you will be able to see whether you are taking the right message to market very quickly.
Great tool for search engine optimisation. Whilst you should never take part in Social Media Networking just for SEO purposes, it is a very agreeable additional benefit. Social Media increases your Internet Footprint, which in turn means that you have the potential to be found in more places.
Instant customer feedback. A number of companies use Social Media as a way to encourage their customers to provide feedback about their service. If you’re offering great service and have lots of happy customers, then this is a great marketing opportunity for you.
Support you existing marketing activities. The very nature of Social Media Networking is that it is a dialogue that is happening online. Many successful above the line marketing campaigns have taken full advantage of this by encouraging people to use their Social Media platforms, giving them instant access to their customer base.
Become a leader. We’ve covered blogs in detail before, however it is worth reiterating. Using blogs to support your business is a great way to demonstrate your leadership and expertise within your market.
What to do now? You are more than welcome to post your comments regarding this post, perhaps you can help us add to the list? Alternatively, if you would like to speak to Generate UK, please do not hesitate to call us on 0845 388 9185 or via our contact us page.
Like all forms of marketing, the more planning you put into it the more successful it will be; this is no different when you’re starting out with Social Media. There is a huge amount of choice, different sites have different user demographies, some are niche focused, some more general. With more ways to communicate online springing up every day, it can be very confusing and not surprising that many businesses have no idea where to begin, and for this reason alone often don’t.
This is why we ask our clients what it is that they are trying to achieve from Social Media. It’s an important question and the more detailed and targeted your answer is, the more benefit you will be able to gain from Social Media. This is because it will help determine where your Social Media activities should be; for example if you’re looking to network with other marketing people, Myspace is probably not the best place for you.
Types of Social Media Platforms that Businesses Can Use
This post expands on the one from yesterday and goes into more detail about the different areas of Social Media and what they might mean for your business. In tomorrows post we will talk more about your user profile and why this is important.
Social Networking Platforms
These are the larger sites that attract huge amounts of traffic. These types of sites can be very useful from a networking perspective, especially the likes of LinkedIn. There are also industry focused sites that cater for different sectors and smaller niches, they are a great way to keep up to speed with trends within your market. If you use these platforms correctly, they could lead onto other networking opportunities such as invitations to speak at events or interviews with press. Creating the right type of profile is very important, as is balancing the time you put into the platform.
There are a number of sites (Yahoo Answers, LinkedIn Answers) that are used by people for research purposes or to ask advice. This is a nice way to contribute to a Social Media Platform as it adds to your expertise reputation. It is great to be associated with helping people and creating an Internet Footprint of your company being helpful is not a bad thing.
Blogging
We’ve already posted in detail about the business benefits of blogs, suffice to say there are plenty. If you currently have a web site and are not taking advantage of a blog, then you are missing out on targeted traffic and a whole host of other benefits.
Microblogging
Microblogging via sites such as Twitter is growing in popularity. These platforms offer a service where you can post a “small communication” (less than 140 characters) to your customers and subscribers. If used correctly, there is nothing wrong with you carefully pushing your products and services, although you should definitely not over do it. You might also consider using Microblogging as a way to build your brand and be in contact with your customers.
Forums
Forums are a great way to grow your online reputation and brand. Businesses have the choice of either running their own forum or contributing to others. Both are ways to communicate with your customers, talk about your products and services and demonstrate your expertise. We have seen some incredibly successful forum development strategies that delivered a massive growth in target traffic and high conversions.
Video Sharing
The behemoth video sharing site that we’re all aware of is YouTube. There are others, however they do pale into insignificance when compared with youTube. This is because of the incredible reach they have, which if used correctly can be hugely beneficial to your business. For tutorials, product information and tips; video sharing is something that your users will start to demand in the next 12 months.
Photo Sharing
Similar to video sharing; photo sharing can be an important part of your Social Media strategy. They are used more for driving traffic and interest. If you’re running regular seminars or events, posting the photos and videos afterwards is a great way to encourage your attendees to come back and visit you again. The trick is to make sure that as well as the photos, they are seeing a call to action they can not refuse.
Social Bookmarking
Social bookmarking is when your visitors bookmark and share the details of your web page with other members of their community. This can sometimes lead to one of your web pages going “viral”, which means that many people have began to share it, which results in a huge increase in traffic. The trick to social bookmarking is to make it as easy as possible for your visitors to share the details of your pages.
Social News
Posting your news and press releases to established Social News sites introduces your story to a new audience. It also has the opportunity to grow as a story, since the community will be able to post and comment on your news. Well written Social News pieces have the potential to be massive traffic generators, as well as an important way to build your Internet Footprint.
What to do now? You are more than welcome to post your comments regarding this post. Alternatively, if you would like to speak to Generate UK, please do not hesitate to call us on 0845 388 9185 or via our contact us page.
Posted by Mike | Under Social Media
Tuesday Sep 23, 2008
Before reading this post, we recommend that you get Generate UK - Digital Marketing Blog delivered directly to your email inboxYesterday, we posted about the different parts of Social Media and how each one of them can be of benefit to your business. Now that you know what it is that you want to get out of Social Media and where you want to focus in terms of sites; it it time to cover your Social Media profile.
This can be a time consuming affair because it is very important that you get it right. Remember that this is how you are representing your company on the Internet, this is about complimenting and improving your online brand, not damaging it.
The objective with your online profile should be to encourage people to want to find out more about you and/or to click through to your main website. Below are a few tips that will help you:
Decide on who you are. This may sound strange, however it is something to think about. If you are representing your company, you will be building an Internet Footprint. Whatever you say or contribute to will be there for all to see. There’s no right or wrong answer here and we would never encourage anyone to falsely represent themselves.
Choose your name. Decide upon a memorable name that you would like to be known as within the community. If you are there as your company, you might decide to choose your company name, which is a great way to improve your brand (as long as your contribution to the community is good).
Complete your profile. So often people will join a community in order to leverage it for more traffic and interest, yet they fail to complete their profile. This is your chance to differentiate yourself, so spend some time on your profile and use it as your shop window.
Choose an Avatar. Don’t just go along with the default avatar, put some time into it and create something unique. People will make a judgement about your profile based upon your avatar, so it is worth showing that you are serious about the community. Make sure that you test your avatar in different sizes as some Social Media Platforms present your avatar differently.
Do or don’t include your website details. Typically, if there is a place to put a link to your web site, it makes sense to take advantage of it. In the majority of Social Media sites, this is still the case, however not always. Some sites you will want to make a call on whether you should actively push your site or not. The general rule of thumb is to consider what benefit it adds to the network and what the other established members are doing.
Learn about the community. Take the necessary time to read up on the terms of services, read through the posting guidelines and establish what the senior members are contributing. If you rush in, you will not make the most of the opportunity.
Take part in the community. The hardest thing of all in terms of Social Media Networking is doing something for nothing. It is really important to appreciate this, a community has the right to make a judgement. If you’re seen to only push your products and services, then you will be seen as adding no value to the community. Try to schedule some giving time.
Present yourself well. If you’re representing your business, take care to ensure that your spelling and grammar is up to scratch. Don’t get involved in any debate or arguments that you would not be happy for them to be found in a search engine.
Be natural. The objective is to use Social Media to drive new sales opportunities and create new contacts that might be good for business. So take care to be natural when you’re contributing, have some fun and enjoy the experience and this will come across a lot better than if you’re forcing yourself to post.
Don’t be a spammy user. This is probably number one in terms of what not to do if you are considering using Social Media Networking. If you’re posting spam or seen to be only contributing in order to sing your own praises, then you will be called out. Try to make it your policy that you only mention a product or service as post of an answer to a question.
What to do now? You are more than welcome to post your comments regarding this post. Alternatively, if you would like to speak to Generate UK, please do not hesitate to call us on 0845 388 9185 or via our contact us page.
Social media or social networking are catch all umbrella phrases for the basic concept of socialising via the Internet. The concept of social networking is not new, people have used various ways to communicate with each other since the dawn of the Internet. Chat rooms for example were one of the killer applications that led to AOL becoming such an important Internet company during the nineties and forums and message boards have always been popular.
As the speed by which we access the Internet improved, so did our choices. Particularly with regards to Social Networking Communities; these include the mega sites such as MySpace and Facebook. Sites that have been able to attract millions of very loyal users. These users also happened to have the exact demographics that honey to bees to many of the worlds leading brands. The major issue for advertisers is that their crucial target market is changing their habits with regards to how and when they take in information.
Almost every child of school leaving age in the UK has heard of Facebook. Many of those will have an active account, with many of those regularly posting to their profile, the statistics are everywhere on this, television viewing is reducing, Internet usage is growing. If you take the alarmist view, you could argue that advertisers are in danger of losing touch with a whole generation of their most lucurative market. So for that reason alone, the number one business benefit of using social media is that it provides you with an opportunity to communicate with your target market, via their preferred medium.
What is Social Media and Social Networking
In our mind it is not possible to describe the business benefits of Soical Media or Social Networking without first defining what Social Media actually is. Once you have an understanding of how this area breaks down, it is a lot easier to see which parts of Social Media can have an immediate impact on your business.
Social Networking Platforms– These are larger platform sites and include the likes of MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Blogging– A regularly updated part of your website that allows you to communicate with your prospects and clients.
Microblogging– Relatively new concept of blogging, offered through sites such as Twitter.
Forums– Forums have remained popular and cover almost every niche.
Video Sharing – Very popular way to share product information, customer reviews and guides.
Photo Sharing– Share your pictures with prospects and clients, helps with branding and linking strategies.
Social Bookmarking– Sites such as del.icio.us and StumbleUpon where users share their favourite sites.
Social News– This includes sites such as DIGG and Reddit and work well for sites that are producing regular fresh content or have their own blogs.
Over the course of the next week or so, we are going to cover various aspects of Social Media and how it can help your business. We’ll explain exactly what we mean when we talk about Social Media and we will explain how the different facets of social media can help your business.
What to do now? You are more than welcome to post your comments regarding this post. Alternatively, if you would like to speak to us, please do not hesitate to call us on 0845 388 9185 or via our contact us page.
We try to keep the blog free of obvious advertising and use it more as a source of information for our readers and customers. However in the case of this post, we thought it made sense for us to provide you with more details about our pay per click campaign management solution. We’ve done this because we know there are many companies out there who are considering running a pay per click campaign for the first time. Whilst we would obviously like to have the opportunity to work with them, we would also like to provide them with information that we think would be useful to them, especially if they have never worked in this area before. The guide below is an overview of what we offer, it is also (in our opinion) a guide that companies can use to benchmark against.
Dedicated and Professional PPC Campaign Managers
The success of a PPC campaign is dependent on being able to analyse data and quickly act upon this information. This is why it is very important to have a dedicated and experienced account manager who works with you to understand your campaign objectives. Your account manager will then work within the campaign team to research and identify the right keywords and phrases to bid on, they will also create the right PPC Ad copy designed to compel people to click.
Specialist PPC Software for Accurate Tracking
We have our own in house PPC software that allows us to run multiple campaigns across multiple platforms via one console. This is very important for larger scale campaigns as it allows us to analyse and track across the different search engines and consolidate this information. This level of information means that we can measure the success of your campaign at any time of day or night; therefore you know the impact of every pound that you spend.
Campaign Management Consulting
We work with you to understand your campaign objectives from the very beginning to the end result. This means that the campaign solution we provide you is completely optimised towards your individual company goals.
Pay Per Click (PPC) Campaign Management Services Include:
Bid management
Budget management
Bid management
Keyword and key phrase research
Copywriting and landing page improvements
Tracking and measurement reporting
Click fraud appraisals
Dedicated and professional account managers
Specialist inhouse software
Analysis of competition
Summary
The intention of this blog post was to help people understand what type of service they should expect when they outsource their PPC campaign management. There’s lots of additional information and related blog posts if you would like to learn more. Alternatively, we’d be happy to hear from you, even if it is just for a quick chat about the types of things you should be wary of when you do PPC for the first time.
So whatever stage you are at with your own PPC efforts, we wish you luck. If you think there is something missing from our services, post a comment below, we’d love to hear from you.
The purpose of this document is for it to be used to outline the basic website development goals. Generate UK have a 5 Step Plan for website development, an overview of these steps are provided below. For each website development project we undertake, we would expect to work through these steps with our clients. The more information that is provided during each of these steps, the greater chance there is of launching your website on time, on budget and to your initial expectations.
Please read through the steps below as this will form the basis of our pre work scoping session. Don’t worry if you can not answer every point as Generate UK will help with ideas and suggestions. You might also prefer that Generate UK take responsibility for some of the steps and present back to you for approval. This document is all about highlighting the necessary steps and ensuring that your goals and objectives are clear in order that we can deliver something that is specific to you and your requirements.
Generate Step One: Goals and Objectives of Website
1. What do you want your website to be or do:
a. Gather ideas, inspirations, etc.
List of sites I like the look of
List of sites I do not like the look of
Reading material I have taken inspiration from
b. Analyse you current website (if appropriate)
c. Get acquainted with the tools you will be using
d. Draw some rough sketches or a rough storyboard to your site
2. Determine who your customers are and what they need or expect. For larger sites consider:
a. Ask existing customers and users
b. Ask your staff and partners what they might want from your site
c. Complete a usability study
d. For larger investments you might want to consider surveys
e. Look at your existing website analytics if they are available
3. Combine what you want your website to do with who your customers are:
a. Be clear about who your audience is, ie B2B, B2C, P2P.
b. Extend your initial research
4. Determine the elements of your website team
a. Who is your webmaster, the person with overall responsibility
b. Who has responsibility for design work
c. Will you be writing your own content or outsourcing it
d. Do you have on-site technical skills?
5. Review Generate Step One; are you clear on your website goals and objectives?
Generate Step Two: The all important site
1. Create a sitemap that outlines all areas of the site, the more work carried out during Generate Step One, the easier the sitemap will be.
a. Decide upon how deep your siemap will go
b. Draw up the sitemap and provide drawings for approval
2. What elements of your site need to appear on more than one page, for example should your privacy policy be included on your footer?
3. Agree on your labels and what you want each section to be known as.
4. If your site is to be regularly updated, do you require an archive section
5. Will you require multimedia such as audio, video or Flash? If not at website launch, might you need it in the future?
6. Will your site require a database or bespoke programming
7. Review Generate Step Two; are you starting to see the look and feel of your site come together?
Generate Step Three: The look and feel of your website
This is often the most emotive stage as you begin to explore the look of your website and the images you might use. Generate UK will be able to help you and come up with suggestions, however it will help if you have strong views on this topic. For example, if pictures of cats are a definite no, then make sure this is communicated. During Generate Step Three, we cover the following areas of your website development.
1. A basic mock up or design of your site for approval and enhancement
2. Decide how your site will be made and what technology
3. Decide on the basic structure and navigation
4. Choose a colour scheme for your site
5. Decide upon the font and logos
6. Check the sizes of your images and begin batch uploading if there are a lot
7. Work through any design aspects
8. Review Generate Step Three; The basic building blocks should be there now.
Generate Step Four: Coding and Content
During this stage you will start to see live examples of your website, which will usually be on a development server. The signed off designs will now start to be coded into a website. If your site is being build upon an ecommerce system or a content management system, your template will be uploaded. Also during this stage the following happens:
1. Creation of bespoke designs, graphics and logos if required
2. Hardcoding of HTML and scripts if required
3. Basic website SEO requirements such as page titles and meta tags
4. Check the template against the original objectives, is the site still on course?
5. Ensure that all content is signed off and delivered to you
6. Proofread the entire site and carry out extensive Quality Assurance Procedure, to be signed off by Generate UK and client.
7. Develop site to a “go live” position so that user acceptance testing can be carried out.
8. Review Generate Step Four: Are you happy with your site to go live?
Generate Step Five: It’s time to launch the site
1. Announce your site to customers, partners and suppliers
2. Submit to search engines and local search directories
3. Agree a maintenance schedule and quarterly review with Generate UK
4. Create documentation for next webmaster
5. Continuously review all steps
Summary & Beyond the Check List
The objective of this document is to share with you the development process of a website. At Generate UK, we’re keen to deliver a project that absolutely meets or exceeds your original objectives. The way to achieve this is by walking you through the process and helping you to think about the pertinent elements of your website.
As a digital marketing agency, we would argue that the website is the first step towards your online objectives. Now that you have an online presence, the question is how do you reach your target audience.
This is where the true value of having a website exists; speak to one of our consultants about our Search Marketing solutions and how we can deliver targeted traffic to your site that converts.
Posted by Joe | Under Web Design
Thursday Sep 4, 2008
Before reading this post, we recommend that you get Generate UK - Digital Marketing Blog delivered directly to your email inbox
Yes, a web site absolutely has a personality. We might not explicitly think about such a thing, however subconsciously we are forming decisions about a website based on what it looks like and how it feels. This is no different to when you meet people for the first time, good or bad you will experience an impact and likewise they will too.
The interesting point about the above paragraph is that our personalities can often lead us to a specific vocation. A quiet, thoughtful, reflective personality type might not necessarily make the best tour guide. Similarly, you probably would not want to visit a dentist who shows no attention to detail. We find a role in life that suits where we want to be, often this is subconsciously driven by our personality types.
So if certain personalities suit certain vocations, is it fair to surmise that certain web site personalities might serve different markets better than others? The quick answer is yes. The longer answer is that it all depends on who you customers are likely to be. The personality of your site should match with the people you want to encourage to visit your site and make it their home.
Take the time to really look at the personality of your own site. Are you attracting lots of traffic but not converting this into sales? Is this because the landing page does not have the right personality or image? Are you able to describe the personality of your site?
I haven’t gone mad, many people do think about their site in this way when they’re re-designing or starting from a fresh. It’s a great way to start a debate and certainly gets the creative juices flowing. The look and feel of a site will determine ‘its personality’ and the initially reaction. And this is often the key to whether the user will stay and do business or leave after a few seconds! Many people do not think in this way before embarking of their website project and I would encourage you to do so. At the end of the day your website is a direct reflection of your company so think long and hard about how you want the site to represent you?
Colour is significant and can be a key factor in determining the personality of your website. For example, red is a more dynamic colour which can represents excitement, energy, passion, desire, speed, strength whist a more peaceful colour like blue, used often with technology companies, represents stability, harmony, unity, trust, truth, confidence, conservatism, security and loyalty.
Different colour style sheets can often be used to good effect when differentiating parts of your site to represent different areas of your business so think about it and don’t just pick your favourite colour, choose the one that suits the personality of your target visitors.
Usability can play a very important part when determining the personality of your site. If your site is hard to navigate, confusing and cluttered it makes the personality of the site and therefore the image of your company as disorganised, careless and lacking attention to detail. However if your site if well structured, simple and easy to use your company and personality will be seen as a friendly, considerate and organised, a company to do business with.
The style of the site will play a big part in the overall personality of the site and the usability. Often different industries will represent and adopt similar styles i.e. the technology industry is usually blue in colour with lots of straight lines and clean layouts.
This blog post is a little light hearted, however there is a serious point to it. How your web site is viewed by others is really important. Especially if the “others” are people you hope will buy from your site. Let us know what you think via our comments section below.
There has been some interesting predictions this week, most notably from industry voice E-consultancy who have predicted that the expenditure in search engine marketing is likely to be nearly £2.8 billion by the end of the current year, an increase of around 25% year on year. That’s a fairly healthy growth prediction, especially if you believe the doom and gloom about the economic outlook.
So why are the well respected E-consultancy group predicting this rise? To start with, we are in the middle of an upwards curve when it comes to online spend. The growth has been evident for a number of years and will more than likely continue so for the next few years before finding a nice level.
The growth in online spend has not been without casualties, above the line advertising has been steadily slowing, in fact it is predicted that online spend will overtake television advertising spend in the next few years.. If a business has not had their marketing budget reduced, then they are most likely having conversations about where the best place to put their marketing pounds might be. This means we are getting closer to the real reason why E-consultancy are absolutely correct.
Businesses are making decisions to put more of their budget into online marketing strategies. The business decision is the fact that they can quickly measure a return on investment. They can quickly see the results of their campaigns and they know they have more chance of reaching their targeted audience who have money to spend. Altogether they have a more potent marketing weapon.
So it is a pretty safe bet that online advertising spend will continue to grow for the next few years. Although, we do think that the market will become more competitive. Traditionally agencies will extend their digital capabilities, design companies will introduce new services, which should lead to some consolidation in the market.
As competition grows, the agency fees will start to be eroded. This is an interesting debate that is waiting to happen. What parts of online advertising services can be commoditised? I’ve already seen companies offering email marketing and SEO type solutions for incredibly low fees. Is this good for the market or does it confuse our customers?
In summary, search engine marketing is in a very healthy position. There will almost certainly be more competition for each customer and that should should be welcomed. However, for the time being; measurable marketing and performance management seem to be winning out, this is why online marketing will continue with steady growth. It is the agencies who need to watch out for the recession, especially those who are not innovating and helping their clients to deliver winning campaigns.
Before reading this post, we recommend that you get Generate UK - Digital Marketing Blog delivered directly to your email inboxIt is still very surprising how many companies in the UK that have a website, yet do not take advantage of a Blog. For us, it is a no brainer. The business benefits of running your own blog far out weigh the concerns, it is just a matter of taking the time to understand what these benefits are and how they fit in with your online marketing objectives. Have a read through the list below and see whether your excuse is listed.