Instagram & Facebook – Why?


A few hours ago I read that Facebook had acquired Instagram for $1bn… aptly enough, this news came to me via my Facebook feed. There’s also an official release here from Mark Zuckerberg My first thought once I checked the legitimacy Read more

Return On Influence: The New ROI


There is not a single activity in business which is exempted from a query regarding return on investment.  Focused strategic planning and expenditure to optimise your e-commerce mix is known to be an investment worth making for product and Read more

••

How can Social Media Help My Business?

Posted on September 24, 2008 by Mike in Social Media | Leave a comment

Archived; click post to view.
Excerpt: Before reading this post, we recommend that you get Generate UK – Digital Marketing Blog delivered directly to your email inbox 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…


How to Create the Perfect Social Media Profiles

Posted on September 23, 2008 by Mike in Social Media | Leave a comment

Archived; click post to view.
Excerpt: 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…


Find Out How Social Media Can Help Your Business

Posted on September 22, 2008 by Mike in Social Media | 3 Comments

Archived; click post to view.
Excerpt: Before reading this post, we recommend that you get Generate UK – Digital Marketing Blog delivered directly to your email inbox 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…


The Rough Guide to Successful Pay Per Click (PPC) Campaign Management

Posted on September 12, 2008 by Mike in Pay Per Click | Leave a comment

Archived; click post to view.
Excerpt: Before reading this post, we recommend that you get Generate UK – Digital Marketing Blog delivered directly to your email inbox 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…


Website Development Check list

Posted on September 4, 2008 by Mike in Web Design | 1 Comment

Archived; click post to view.
Excerpt: Before reading this post, we recommend that you get Generate UK – Digital Marketing Blog delivered directly to your email inbox 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…


Does your web site have a personality?

Posted on September 4, 2008 by Joe in Web Design | 1 Comment

Archived; click post to view.
Excerpt: 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…


Is Search Engine Marketing immune to the Credit Crunch or Recession?

Posted on September 3, 2008 by Mike in Business Development, Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation | Leave a comment

Archived; click post to view.
Excerpt: Before reading this post, we recommend that you get Generate UK – Digital Marketing Blog delivered directly to your email inbox 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…


Generate UK Tips for Marketing Your Next Seminar

Posted on August 27, 2008 by Mike in Business Development, Seminars | Leave a comment

Archived; click post to view.
Excerpt: Before reading this post, we recommend that you get Generate UK – Digital Marketing Blog delivered directly to your email inbox There are many ways to market your seminar, it largely depends on they type of event you’re planning to run, who your audience is and how they tend to take in their information. For example, if you’re targeting people within the IT sector, it is a fair bet that they have access to the Internet and emails. If you’re targeting building site foremen, then email might not be the best way to communicate with them. 1. Leave plenty of time to market your event, usually 6-8 weeks is about right. You might want to extend this to 12-16 weeks if you’re targeting larger numbers of delegates. 2. Decide on what media you are going to use to tell people about your seminar. You should create a marketing schedule that will outline when your communication and advertising is planned for. 3. If you’re buying data in especially for your seminar, we recommend that you warm your list up first. If your target delegates have never heard from you before, they might not connect your company with their market or as a company they might be interested in. Warm your list up by submitting to it and offering a white paper or something that begins to add to your credibility like a case study. 4. Find out where your target market is likely to be. Is it worth sponsoring a web site that you know attracts the profile of delegate…


Increase your seminar attendees with our seminar marketing guide

Posted on August 27, 2008 by Mike in Seminars | Leave a comment

Archived; click post to view.
Excerpt: Before reading this post, we recommend that you get Generate UK – Digital Marketing Blog delivered directly to your email inbox Seminar marketing is an exceptional way to deliver your message to multiple qualified prospects. By attending your event and taking time out of their day, your delegates are sending you a strong message that they are interested in what you have to say. The universal challenge with seminar marketing is in ensuring that the right number of delegates attend and getting enough bottoms on seat to justify the expense and effort of creating a seminar. This guide runs through the steps we take when marketing a seminar for ourselves or on behalf of our clients. We may tweak the process slightly depending on the market sector we’re targeting, in the main though our thought process will be much the same. Whilst this guide focuses on seminars, it can be extended to other events. In fact, as a general marketing guide it can be used for any new “go to market strategy”. Considerations for your Seminar 1. Consider the objectives of your seminar. It sounds simple but is very important. Write them down and agree what will make a successful seminar. How many delegates do you want? What profile of delegate do you want? Is it a business development seminar or an educational event? 2. Think about what you have to say or offer. In our opinion the more focused an event the better chance of it being successful. Think about the challenges that are happening right now…


Stand alone SEO is dead, long live Search Engine Marketing!

Posted on August 19, 2008 by Mike in Internet Marketing, Link Building, Search Engine Optimisation, Web 2.0/3.0 | 1 Comment

Archived; click post to view.
Excerpt: Before reading this post, we recommend that you get Generate UK – Digital Marketing Blog delivered directly to your email inbox For a while now, there has been something about search engine optimisation that has been bothering me. It’s not the practise of SEO in general, it’s not even the multitude of companies popping up with their “New SEO services” conveniently added to their portfolio as the hot new thing to talk about. What is bothering me is that there are too many companies out there offering SEO in a market that does not offer an industry quality standard. They are offering a service in a market that has not really been defined. This means that there is potential for customers to get ripped off and for SEO in general to be given a bad name, some will argue that this is already happening. I don’t have a huge amount of sympathy for companies who sign up with SEO firms without doing their homework, usually the better SEO firms benefit in the long term as companies who have had their fingers burned understand the true value of what SEO is and will make better decisions next time. The lesson they learn is that SEO should form a portion of their wider marketing objectives, SEO alone is only part of the story. A defined Internet marketing strategy that incorporates SEO and a whole host of other digital marketing techniques is where the magic happens. This view and these comments are not typical of…


« Previous   1 2 ... 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24   Next »