If you think your brand is simply the logo and slogan you choose for your business, think again.  Your brand is the complete customer experience you provide.  It is one of your best assets.  It encompasses everything from your business values, how you talk to your customers, your promises and even how you answer the phone.

When considering how you want customers to perceive your business, think of your brand as a whole package.  If you are selling an organic juice aimed at kids, your logo and packaging will encompass fun and purity.  If you your company perceived this way, then keep these ideas running through everything you do.  This branding message should be communicated clearly and honestly to consumers, to build confidence in your brand and set you apart from your competitors.

Marketing Consultancy UK advise that the branding of your business should form a key part of your marketing strategy.  Objectives of a good brand should include delivering your message clearly, confirm you are trustworthy, motivating the buying and solidifying loyalty.

The benefits of branding

The brands that build up a loyal customer base and keep people coming back are the ones with a strong message which tells people exactly what to expect and sets them apart from the competition.  Think about some of the brands you are loyal to and why that is.  For example when choosing a restaurant to visit, how many times have you chosen one because you know exactly what to expect, how much it is going to cost, what the menu is like and what to expect from the service?

Really powerful branding not only sets you above the competition but can even make your brand name synonymous with the product you sell or the service you offer.  How often do you call your vacuum cleaner a Hoover?

Does a small business brand?

If you’re a small business and not sure whether you need to bother with branding, then think of it this way: Your brand is your reputation.  Whether you like it or not, you already have a brand so it seems a waste not to make the most of it.  Your brand should convey what is special about your business in a positive light.  Although you may already have made a good impression on your existing happy customers, think about how much more successful you would be with winning new customers if you developed your brand.

Branding is all about making consumers feel safe.  If you had to choose between a plumber who had nothing more than his name and mobile phone number as his brand and one who had a professional company name, slogan and logo and communicated trust, who would you choose?

Branding is important no matter how big or small your business and it encompasses everything that represents your company.  For help creating a clear and targeted brand message as part of your marketing strategy, contact Marketing Consultancy UK.

You may wonder if company newsletters are worth the hassle anymore, as it feels like a constant battle to keep on top of the promotional emails coming into your inbox. However, this is no reason to write them off. Research conducted by Exact Target shows that 42% of subscribers are more likely to buy from a company once they have signed up to receive their emails. That is too high a percentage to ignore.

To make sure your newsletter is the one your customers open there are a number of best practices to follow, which Marketing Consultancy UK can help you with. Here are just some of the reasons you should be sending out a monthly newsletter.

Reduce churn & increase loyalty

Once a customer has bought from you, it is important to keep communication live and engage with them. Adding value to their purchase by providing them with useful information on a monthly basis will increase their loyalty to your company and have a positive effect on your hit rate. Sending out monthly communications will keep you at the front of their mind when they are ready to upgrade or buy a similar product. It also gives you the chance to cross-sell related products.

Targeted and personalised communication

Email newsletters make it easy to personalise communications sent out to you customers and they allow you to target them more effectively.

Once you have information on your customers such as name, location and products they have purchase in the past, you can easily send targeted communications. This will not only add value for your customers but will improve your image in their eyes, as you are not spamming them will irrelevant or generic information.

Timing 

The frequency and timing of newsletter distribution depends on the type of business and the customers it is targeting. Doing some basic analysis of your customer base and the action you want them to take will ensure you are sending timely communications and increase your click through rate.

Some people do not like to receive emails first thing on a Monday morning, but if you are targeting business customers’ early morning emails might be preferable to them. On the other hand, early evening emails may be best if you are targeting mothers with young children, as by this time they have a chance to relax.

Monthly newsletters are a realistic target and are probably likely to get you the best response. Sending communications too frequently will irritate your subscribers and they will ultimately start ignoring anything you send them.

Monthly newsletters should not be overlooked as a form of communication with your customers and potential customers. Reinforcing your brand through email marketing and its association with the products or services you sell can only have a positive effect on your sales. Successfully managing email campaigns requires a lot of time and dedication; for help with the design, delivery and overall management of your email marketing contact the experts at Marketing Consultancy UK

Good marketing is at the heart of any successful business. For small businesses marketing is especially important as it can mean the difference between success and failure. It can show you to be cutting edge and a market leader despite the size of your operation.

However despite the huge effect this one activity can have on the success of a business, many entrepreneurs devote very little time and effort to it.  Too many people simply throw money sporadically at the cheapest advertising option available, without any thought as to strategy and outcome.

Why is marketing strategy important?

Imagine giving as little thought as many do to marketing to throwing an important dinner party. Would you just turn up at the supermarket without having thought about what you are going to serve and gathering recipes?

Imagine that once you have bought a random assortment of food which you plan on mixing together and hoping for the best, you don’t make a guest list and don’t plan any decorations. Instead, all you do is mention your party to a couple of people, including a lady from your gym and a neighbour, hoping they will spread the word for you and bring lots of fun and interesting people.

Is this going to be a really fun party with beautiful food and lots of interesting guests? No, of course not, it is going to be a complete disaster. So if you wouldn’t approach a dinner party in the manner then why would you apply it to something as important as the marketing of your business?

However planning an effective marketing strategy can be daunting for many business owners, which is why the expertise of Marketing Consultancy UK can be the ideal solution.

Questions to ask yourself

Many entrepreneurs go into business with a brilliant vision of standing out for the competition by selling the best product or service to a group of happy, satisfied and loyal customers who tell everyone they know about the business. However this is never going to happen without a plan to achieve these goals. You can’t just set up shop and hope that the right people walk through you door, want to buy your product and then go and tell more relevant people.

Ask yourself these important questions in order to outline your strategy:

What product or service will you offer?

How will you package or present it?

Who do you see as being the best customers for your product or service?

How will you promote it?

It is never too late to create a marketing strategy for your business and start attracting the right customers, who will in turn promote your business to more people like them. If you would like assistance creating an effective marketing plan for your company, no matter how big or small, then contact Marketing Consultancy UK for expert help and advice.

You may wonder if company newsletters are worth the hassle anymore, as it feels like a constant battle to keep on top of the promotional emails coming into your inbox. However, this is no reason to write them off. Research conducted by Exact Target shows that 42% of subscribers are more likely to buy from a company once they have signed up to receive their emails. That is too high a percentage to ignore.

To make sure your newsletter is the one your customers open there are a number of best practices to follow, which Marketing Consultancy UK can help you with. Here are just some of the reasons you should be sending out a monthly newsletter.

Reduce churn & increase loyalty

Once a customer has bought from you, it is important to keep communication live and engage with them. Adding value to their purchase by providing them with useful information on a monthly basis will increase their loyalty to your company and have a positive effect on your hit rate. Sending out monthly communications will keep you at the front of their mind when they are ready to upgrade or buy a similar product. It also gives you the chance to cross-sell related products.

Targeted and personalised communication

Email newsletters make it easy to personalise communications sent out to you customers and they allow you to target them more effectively.

Once you have information on your customers such as name, location and products they have purchase in the past, you can easily send targeted communications. This will not only add value for your customers but will improve your image in their eyes, as you are not spamming them will irrelevant or generic information.

Timing

The frequency and timing of newsletter distribution depends on the type of business and the customers it is targeting. Doing some basic analysis of your customer base and the action you want them to take will ensure you are sending timely communications and increase your click through rate.

Some people do not like to receive emails first thing on a Monday morning, but if you are targeting business customers’ early morning emails might be preferable to them. On the other hand, early evening emails may be best if you are targeting mothers with young children, as by this time they have a chance to relax.

Monthly newsletters are a realistic target and are probably likely to get you the best response. Sending communications too frequently will irritate your subscribers and they will ultimately start ignoring anything you send them.

Monthly newsletters should not be overlooked as a form of communication with your customers and potential customers. Reinforcing your brand through email marketing and its association with the products or services you sell can only have a positive effect on your sales. Successfully managing email campaigns requires a lot of time and dedication; for help with the design, delivery and overall management of your email marketing contact the experts at Marketing Consultancy UK.

Your website is your online shop window, and should be given the same thought and recognition as you would to your physical shop window. It allows new customers to find you and advertises your products or services. It also gives you the chance to keep your existing clients up to date, improve your customer service and offer another retail channel. What’s more, there are no geographical limits to the people it can reach, so it can do much more for your business.

Marketing ConsultancyUKoffer website design and development packages which will give your business a presence online and help you stand out. Important elements to focus on when creating your website include branding, content and navigation. It is crucial to ensure your website is optimised for search engines.

Design & content

Your website needs to reflect your branding and company identity. A poor imitation will turn customers away immediately. It is easier for a customer to click off your website and go to an online competitor than it is in the offline world, so the design of your website is worth investment.

Look to your marketing objectives when writing your content. If your website is a tool to increase sales, then it should be designed in a way that encourages people to buy from your website.

Your homepage is usually the first point of contact with your customers, so it needs to explain clearly what you do and why customers should trust you. An ‘About Us’ page will reinforce the trust issue and give further background information about yourself and the company and exactly what you do. Creating a ‘Contact’ page clearly explains how customers can get in touch with an address, email, phone number and other contact methods. If you have a physical office or shop that customers can visit then a map will be useful.

Navigation

Poor navigation can make for a frustrating experience for your customers and they are likely to leave your site if they cannot find what they want quickly. This will reflect badly on your company and give the impression that you are disorganised.

Good navigation affects usability and should be natural and effortless for the visitor. You need to think how people would logically want to move through your site. Have the most important links on your top navigation bar and then group relevant pages together. For example, if you sell electrical goods you might have a link to ‘TV’s’ from your homepage, which then breaks down into product categories such as ‘LCD TV’s’ or  ‘Plasma TV’s’.

As a small business owner, getting your website wrong whether it be the design, content or usability, can have a negative effect on your business. Your website forms a pivotal part of your marketing so it is essential that you create a great user experience. Marketing Consultancy UK can design and build your company website, no matter how big or small, to ensure you have the best online presence possible.

Ranking at the top of Google’s natural search results for your keywords is the holy grail of search engine marketing. Although there are different methods that are applied in SEO for this purpose, a blog really is one of the best ways to improve your ranking.  In short, a blog is a natural setting for relevant, unique and frequently updated content that is keyword rich and attracts inbound links and traffic.

Keywords

Blog posts are a great way of targeting long-tail keywords relevant to your business. Create a strategy for your company blog with the help of Marketing ConsultancyUKso you can easily identify the keywords and phrases you want to target. Use one or two keywords per blog post and weave then naturally through the content and the title. This will help Google to identity your site as an authority on those keywords.

As most blogging platforms are very user friendly now, it is easy to write your own H1, H2 and H3 titles as well as your own custom URL. Do not forget to include your keywords in these areas, as they are the first thing Google sees and what it considers the most important.

Unique content

One of the things Google loves is fresh, unique content, which is something that is naturally generated through a blog. By posting regularly and always writing in your own words, you will naturally shoot up the Google rankings.

Writing unique and interesting content will also entice your readers and encourage higher levels of traffic and natural links. This will in turn register with Google and further improve your rankings.

Links

Links are what Google uses to crawl the internet in order to find web pages, but they are also an indicator of authority and popularity. These are the two main criteria the search engine uses to determine where a page ranks in the SERPS for a given search term. As interesting and informative content naturally attracts inbound links, writing a blog is a no-brainer.

Although it may not seem the case at first, linking out to other websites can also put you in good stead with Google. Yes, it’s true that valuable link juice will seep out if you link to an external website on your blog, but you need to think long term. Firstly, it will show Google that you are writing posts that provide useful and informative information for your readers, which is always a winner. Secondly, if you link to someone, there is a good chance they may link to you back from their blog or website, and that is the aim of the game.

In conclusion, blogging is one of the most valuable things you can do for your SEO. It ticks all the boxes, and has the added benefit of improving the user experience your website offers. If you would like help creating a strategy for your blog then contact Marketing Consultancy UK for expert help and advice.

Blogs are a great way to improve your SEO; they provide regularly updated content filled with relevant keywords that attract natural inbound links. They also allow you to create and develop a personality for your company and build credibility. By sharing your expertise, you will demonstrate how well you know your sector and will be given the opportunity to compete with the leaders in your industry.

Marketing Consultancy UK can offer help and guidance to small businesses wanting to build a company blog into their marketing strategy. In the meantime, here are three key points to remember when blogging:

Keywords

Weaving relevant keywords throughout your blog posts will help them to rank in the search engine results pages for those terms. Long tail keywords, which are more specific and usually consist of around 3-5 words, will give you a better ROI. There may be fewer people searching for these terms, but those who are will be more likely to convert into sales as they know what they want. For example, if you are writing about washing machines then use ‘6kg Bosch washing machine’ instead of just ‘washing machine’.

Your headline is what will hook your readers in, so it needs to be enticing and look natural. If you can fit your keywords in whilst maintaining the integrity of your headline then do so. Using H1, H2 and H3 headings with your keywords in is also preferable, as are subheads through the copy to break it up.

Write for your readers

Although SEO is one of the main reasons many businesses start a blog, it is important to remember to write for people rather than just thinking about search engines. Poorly written articles stuffed with keywords are not going to do you any good. Search engines are more sophisticated than this and are aware when a page overuses keywords. Bad content is not going to attract all-important inbound links.

Links

Where appropriate, be sure to add internal links to other pages on your website within your blog posts. This will help the search engine crawlers easily find the pages on your website, therefore ensuring that as many pages as possible are indexed by the engines.

To add even more benefit, try and use your keywords as the anchor text for your internal links where you can. It is also beneficial to advertise your blog on your homepage and throughout your website. Directing more traffic to your blog will help to improve the ranking of your posts in Google.

It is also a good idea to link out occasionally to other websites. Not only will it add interest for your readers, but it helps to build connections with other websites who might in turn link back to you.

These are just a few of the important factors to remember when writing a corporate blog. For more information on creating a strategy for your company blog, contact Marketing Consultancy UK.

With the rise of the internet and the diverse range of digitals channels open to marketers, it was inevitable that traditional marketing techniques would take a bit of a hit. However, traditional channels are still employed heavily by businesses and it is more important than ever to get the mix right. Marketing ConsultancyUKare experts in all areas of marketing and can help ensure you are targeting the right customers through the best channels.

Marketing mix

It is true that for many click-only companies, print brochures are not utilised at all, but for a lot of businesses printed materials form an important part of their sales pitch. For bricks and mortar, clicks and mortar and even internet only businesses, relying on only one marketing channel does not make good business sense.

The internet has provided marketers with the amazing ability to target customers more directly and engage them. However in order to be successful this must be supported by other tools such as printed literature.

Due to the increase in communication channels available, it is becoming much harder for brands and businesses to get the attention of the consumer. It is necessary to use all different elements of the marketing mix, to reach the right people in the right place and time with the right message.

Credibility & trust

A good sales brochure lends credibility to a business. It is easy and cheap to print off business cards and set up a basic website, but supporting these elements with other sales tools, especially tools which require a heavier investment, increases trust in your company.

Internet adoption rates

Many of us forget that there is still a good percentage of the population who either don’t have internet access, or don’t use it as their main tool for information gathering. Depending on the type of business you are operating it would be a mistake to assume that all customers will visit your website to search for information.

Time

The way consumers read printed media is different to how they approach content on the internet. People do not want to be sitting at a computer screen reading huge amounts of content. They expect it to be concise, and if it isn’t they click off the site and go elsewhere.

However when it comes to print consumers are happy to curl up in a comfortable chair and read for an extended period of time. Brochures give you an opportunity to offer more information than you might do on your website.

There are benefits to both online and print marketing especially when used together. Every business, even those that are purely online, should take note of this and embrace the chances it can offer you to engage with customers. Google is the perfect of example of mixing online with print as earlier this year they launched Think Quarterly, their own B2B print magazine. For advice on how best to reach your target market, call Marketing Consultancy UK.

Search engine marketing is key to most marketing campaigns today and if it isn’t, then it should be. Even if you have the most beautiful, functional and user friendly website ever built, if the search engines can’t find it or you don’t advertise it, no one will ever know.

The search engine results pages on Google consist of two parts; natural results that appear on the left hand side of the screen, and pay per click advertising on the right and along the top. Performing well in both of these areas is equally important to the success of your online marketing strategy.

Although running a PPC campaign may seem easier than the hard work involved in search engine optimisation, it still requires time, attention and skill, which is where the services of Marketing Consultancy UK can provide vital help and support.

SEO

Search engine optimisation is the practice of optimising a web page so it is easily consumable for both search engines and visitors. Just as you would want your website to be as easy as possible for your customers to use, read and digest, the same is true of search engines.

Search engines such as Google send out spiders to crawl the internet in order to find, index and then rank web pages. Once Google finds your website through other sites that link to you, it then reads the content on your site. Based on the keywords found on each page, your website is indexed, so that when someone performs a search for those keywords, your site will be displayed.

If your website is not performing in Google, it could be for any of the following reasons:

• Poor link structure meaning Google can’t find your website
• Poor keyword implementation
• Website has been built using Flash, Frames, Java, or another format which Google can’t access
• Important content built into audio or video files which Google can’t read

Pay Per Click

Although running a pay per click campaign can provide the instant results that SEO cannot, it still requires the same level of long-term commitment. It is not something that you can set running and then leave to its own devices; it needs to be constantly monitored, analysed, reviewed and adapted.

If your PPC campaign is not performing as you expected, it could be that your keywords are too generic, meaning your cost per click is much higher and your advert is not always appearing to the right audience. Use long tail keywords for a lower cost percentage and a higher conversion rate. It is also important to show services or products that may only be available in the correct geographical location. Implement special offer links that take you directly to the offer.

Pay per click and SEO campaigns can be tedious, overwhelming and time consuming, but the ROI is high if you get it right. For expert help and advice, contact Marketing Consultancy UK.

The title is the most important part of a blog post. It is important from the SEO point of view, as it is the first part of the post Google sees when it crawls your website. It is also the first thing a person sees when they look at your blog. It needs to give them reason to read on.

SEO

Most blogging platforms are built to ensure that the title of a blog post is one of the first things search engines read when they visit a site. Part of a search engine’s algorithm for ranking web pages is that the words that appear earliest are the most important. As your title is the first thing it reads, it is vital to ensure that keywords feature in your headline and as close to the beginning as possible. Using keywords as a title is pointless unless the title reads well and entices people to read further.

It is good to check the title of your blog post with a traffic estimator tool, such as the Google Keyword Research Tool, before publishing your blog post. If you enter the keyword or phrase from your title you might find there is a more popular search term you could use with less competition that would drive more traffic to your blog.

It is also important to keep your blog post targeted to one, or at the most two, search terms. It is much better to get a higher ranking for one term that low to average ranking for a handful. There is no limit to the number of posts you can write, so create another post if there are other terms you want to target. For help with creating a blog strategy, give Marketing Consultancy UK a call.

Write for your readers

As is the case with the search engines, the title of your blog post is also the first thing that your readers see. Imagine your headline as a baited hook to entice your readers in. It is important to find a balance between creating a title for SEO purposes and one that is readable and interesting to human beings. Consider using sub-headings as well as this will break up your copy and make it easier to digest.

Blog post titles that work

Some tried and tested methods for creating catchy titles include using lists and ‘how to’. You may have noticed that a lot of blog titles feature numbers in them, such as ‘5 great ways to’ or ‘the top 10’, and this is because lists work like a charm when it comes to attracting readers. Offering a ‘how to’ topic also works well as does including buzz words such as ‘best’, ‘effective’, ‘top’, ‘awesome’, ‘easy’ and ‘essential’.

Do not make the mistake of underestimating the importance of your blog titles; just making a few small strategic changes could make all the difference to your click through rate. Contact Marketing Consultancy UK now for more information.