Dance2Xtreme is the online shop of an independent family run business based in Maidenhead, Berkshire. They carry a wide selection of quality dancewear and accessories for ballet, tap, modern and jazz. They also provide the latest fashions for ballroom, gymnastics and ice skating costumes.

Dance2Xtreme have traditionally sold from their shop in Maidenhead, they decided that they wanted to offer their products online as this would provide them with a new route to market. It also meant that they were able to extend their reach and sell to new customers outside of their traditional geography.

Selling products online was a new experience from Dance2Xtreme, so it was critical that their ecommerce system was easy to use and flexible. In particular adding new products, editing products and the fulfilment engine, which automatically creates emails and invoice information for their customers.

The other important factor for Dance2Xtreme was that they wanted to “future proof” their site and offer features that they may not use from day one; this included the ability to offer promotion codes/vouchers, gift wrap service, wish lists and customer reviews.

The Ecommerce system from Generate UK was the perfect fit. It is an advanced shopping cart system that was designed with the business owner in mind. It is very intuitive and runs via a simple control panel where you can manage every aspect of your store, right down to the customisation of your product variations such as size and colour.

The shopping cart scales to support an unlimited number of products and can quickly and easily be managed by anyone without HTML or other technical skills. It even integrates directly with Royal Mail for real time delivery prices, which can be rolled out across the store or changed per product.

The Dance2Xtreme website is an exciting next step for the proprietors; they are looking forward to marketing the website and welcoming new and existing customers to order online. In the future, new products and brands will be added to the store as well as a unique custom dancewear design area, where customers can work directly with Dance2Xtreme to design an exclusive piece of clothing.

What Dance2Xtreme had to say; Lin Sweeney, Director stated “Initially I was very nervous about the whole project until a friend recommended Generate UK. Their knowledge was amazing and they made the whole process easier than I thought it would be. They often went above and beyond what was needed and that I’d signed up for. The site looks great and really easy to operate, thank you for all you help! Lin Sweeney Owner - Dance2Xtreme “

Please click here to visit the Dance2Xtreme website

We can’t emphasise enough how effective a blog can be for your business, particularly when it comes to increasing your online footprint. There are so many benefits of having a blog, if done right, and this is why we always encourage our customers to consider the benefits. A blog can act as the platform for your online strategy and below are just some of the business benefits of producing a professional blog.

From an Off Page Optimisation or Search Engine Marketing purpose and by its nature a blog is usually about a specific topic and is regularly updated. This in turn encourages the search engine spiders to visit your site more frequently, once this happens you are more likely to appear in the organic search results, which means free and targeted traffic. The more experienced bloggers will target new keywords and phrases in order to rank well and manipulate the search engines. Because of the flexibility of a blog, it is very quick to launch a new post and therefore start to rank for different keywords relating to your business.

A blog provides you with a tool to form direct contact with people who are interested in your services. Most blogs provide an option for its readers to be able to subscribe to them, meaning that every post you go live with will be sent to your subscriber base. These are people who have proactively giving you and your content the virtual equivalent of the ‘thumbs up’. You should value your subscribers very highly and ensure that you continue to provide them with content and information they are interested in. Conversely, these are the people you can test new products, seek feedback and leverage to help your provide a better service or product.

There are many ways to use a blog to build your brand or even to support an existing brand. In fact a blog is the perfect vehicle to use to interact with your potential customers, advanced bloggers may also use video or viral campaigns to tease their audience into coming back.

A blog allows you to differentiate yourselves from your competitors! There are two questions to ask here; do your competitors have a blog and do they use it? And secondly, can you use your blog to add credibility to your services and solutions? For example, if you’re an IT company would it be good to have an interview with one of your customers on your blog? The answer is yes, as it adds to the credibility of your service. Likewise, you could include your views on new product launches or industry trends, all the time differentiating yourselves with other players in your market.

There’s an old adage in sales and marketing, “people buy from people”.  This has not changed and is probably even more apparent in tough economic times. A blog provides you with an opportunity to create and build relationships with clients and prospects. There is a current trend for large companies to have a “CEO Blog”, this is where the head of the company writes a blog article once a week, which is designed to bring them closer to their target audience. It provides the reader with a feeling of involvement and interaction, especially if they are able to leave comments and respond directly to the company head.

Most of the leading blog sites will have a Social Media aspect to them. They are normally visible via small graphical logos, which can be used by your readers to submit your blog post to other social media networks. The more well known Social Media sites are called Facebook, MySpace, Stumbleupon, Sphinn and Digg. However, the list grows by the day and each will be focused on its own niche market or have its own rules. From a blogging perspective, the reason to be aware of the social networks is because if your content is good then it is likely to be picked up by them. If this happens, it can mean a huge increase in targeted traffic.

The Internet has created some amazing opportunities for companies to market their products and services to a wider audience, however you could also argue that it has meant an increase in competition in almost all markets. This is why it is important as we’ve mentioned to differentiate yourself from your competitors; one way to do this is to establish yourself as the de facto expert in your area. If you are an expert, tell the world. Use your blog to communicate and showcase your expertise, in a competitive market, as this will do wonders for your sales.

Depending on your niche and your content, there is every chance that you may be contacted by either local or national press. This is a great position to be in and will help you with brand building, and of course, provide you with some free advertising. Usually this type of contact is born from the understanding that you are an expert in your field or the topic you are discussing is of interest to their publications.

Online reputation management is becoming big news and we advise our clients to be aware of it and proactively manage it. One of the ways to do this is by managing the content and using your blog to control what is being said. It is a little more complicated than just that; however it is better to be in control of the blog then letting someone else manage it for you.

On top of all the great business benefits associated with a blog, creating and maintaining a blog is very simple. Once it is set up and designed, your only challenge is creating the content and keeping it updated regularly. There are sites out there that post every day, whilst others do it once a week. We recommend that you find a happy medium that will result in a good flow of content to keep your readers happy, without it becoming a chore.

Last week I attended my first Speed Networking Event at Windsor Racecourse and thought that it was certainly worth a Blog post! Initially I was pretty sceptical and didn’t really know what to expect, but I have to say I was really impressed.

The event was hosted by Speed Networking Events who are committed to growing Speed Networking throughout the UK.

I really enjoyed the afternoon and left feeling pretty exhausted! The format involved 20 different companies and you literally had three minutes (one and a half minutes each!) to tell each other about yourself, your business and how you could potentially help each other. After only 5 mini meetings I had already met some really interesting people and a few potential business opportunities!

Whilst not all 19 meetings represented an interest for me, I did find it fascinating to hear about people’s views, hear their enthusiasm and understand their business pains, all within 90 seconds!

After 9 meetings we stopped for a break during which we received an excellent presentation from John Shenton who represented a company called BIA who helps companies improve business growth through people communications. After some tips from John as to how we should approach each of our mini meetings and some more light refreshments, people then entered into the second phase of meetings with renewed vigour.

The idea is a simple yet effective concept and the event was certainly a worthwhile exercise, it really opened my eyes to other businesses and I would recommend any person(s) who want to meet new people and engage with different businesses.

For more information about an event in your area visit Speed Networking Events

You’re currently reading Generate UK’s Top 20 Digital Marketing ideas. Over the course of the next month, we’ll be sharing our experience to help you marketed your business on the Internet.

Email marketing is now one of the most cost effective ways to market to your potential customers; as a result, it is no surprise that the UK market grew from a value of £221m in 2007 to an estimated £274m in 2008. Despite the economic doom and gloom, this growth is expected to rise further in 2009.

There are a number of reasons which are contributing to this continued rise:

• The economic climate is putting pressure on everyone’s marketing budgets, however at the same time there is a need for an increase in retention marketing, which email marketing is perfect for.
• There is an increased number of email service providers, which is bringing down the cost and adding value to the marketing department (in most cases anyway).
• We’re all beginning to see the benefit of email marketing from a return on investment perspective. This is certainly the case when measuring the cost of the campaign, however it’s fair to say that many businesses need to go one step further in terms of measuring their campaigns with the amount of business it produces.
• Most businesses recognise that they have to work harder for their slice of the cake and as a result there is a greater focus on building email lists and encouraging email sign ups from webmasters and marketing managers.
• Email marketing offers businesses the opportunity to send highly targeted and very relevant email correspondence.
• Businesses in the UK are beginning to understand the benefits of autoresponders and trigger emails.

Understanding how to send correct and effective communications is critical if this channel is going to work for you, so we would seriously advise anybody to understand this market thoroughly and carry out your research first. Seek advice from the professionals as delivering bad communications can seriously damage you brand.  Data, message, timing, creative, response, analytics….they all count!

If you’d like help with your next email marketing campaign, let us know. We’d be very happy to show you our system.

You’re currently reading Generate UK’s Top 20 Digital Marketing ideas. Over the course of the next month, we’ll be sharing our experience to help you marketed your business on the Internet.

If you’re not currently book marking your online collateral we ask the question why not? It’s free and Social Bookmarking provides you with the opportunity to share your own website content and collateral with the public, through social bookmarking sites. The main one being Delicious.com

There are over 15 billion web pages published on the World Wide Web and this is growing daily. People are using sites like del.icio.us every day to bookmark their favourite pages and check out other peoples favourites. So, by bookmarking your own content, making it available to others, increases the opportunity for people to find it.

In terms of increasing your Internet Footprint, it is a no-brainer and will help to drive targeted traffic to your site. Why not click on the social media links below and investigate how it can help your business. Alternatively, we’d be very happy to have a conversation with you on 01635 550431.

The Fish Brothers Group is a multi franchise, family owned car dealer group based in Swindon. They offer new and used cars as well as contract hire, servicing and parts. In a competitive market, Fish Brothers were keen to identify new ways to promote their annual sale and at the same time improve their communications with customers and prospects.

Fish Brothers Group were looking to promote their inaugural sale, entitled The Big Sale, this is a large scale event aimed at increasing car sales in the run up to the new registration plates. Via previous marketing activities, Fish Brothers already had a well qualified email marketing list, so they decided to embark on an email marketing campaign.

Email marketing is a fast and effective way to communicate with your customers. Segmenting your data based upon previous interests means that your emails can be highly targeted, which will increase your click through and conversion rates.

Fish Brothers’ list was split into different interest groups based on car manufacturer; it was then split down further based on Fish Brother’s own criteria which determined what type of communication the recipient would receive.  In addition, each email included a unique code and voucher which ensured that each email was unique.

The major benefit of email marketing is that it provides the ability to look at the campaign statistics, which enables the marketing department to make more informed decisions and to continuously improve their email communications.

Sara Hodkin, Fish Bros Group Marketing Manager stated “We chose Generate UK to help deliver a number of complex and tailored email campaigns to form part of a wider sales strategy. The service and execution was excellent and results were brilliant helping us drive footfall into our 12 main dealerships. Since those campaigns we have continued to work with Generate UK where they have helped us set up our own branded email marketing system, provided infrastructure and on-going support through web and email consultancy.”

Click to view the Fish Brothers Group website

A few reasons why you might like to consider our Email Marketing System

• Your own easy to use, flexible email marketing system which is continuously supported and enhanced, meaning your system adapts to your changing requirements.
• No more costs per email; once the system is installed it is branded as part of your business.
• Instant access to analytics to help your reporting and your decision making.
• Supports multi-users across different departments, so you can provide different levels of access to different people based entirely on their needs.
• Still not convinced? Give us a call on 01635 550431 and ask for a demo.

You’re currently reading Generate UK’s Top 20 Digital Marketing ideas. Over the course of the next month, we’ll be sharing our experience to help you marketed your business on the Internet.

Feeds are also known as RSS. There is some discussion as to what RSS stands for, but most people opt for ‘Really Simple Syndication’. In essence, the feeds themselves are just web pages, designed to be read by computers rather than people.  News feeds allow the user to see when websites have added new content. The user can receive the latest headlines and video in one place, as soon as it’s published, without having to visit the websites you have taken the feed from.

The big benefit to RSS is that individuals can opt-in to content of interest and totally control the flow of information that they receive. If the quality of the content in the feed declines, users simply remove the feed from their RSS reader and they will not receive any additional updates from that source. The RSS reader acts as an aggregator, allowing users to view and scan multiple content streams in a timely fashion.

If you would like to learn more about how RSS feeds can help your business, contact us on 01635 550431,