What a year 2007 was!
In the digital arena, most critics are saying it was the year of Facebook, and I’m inclined to agree. They were by no means the first to market however their intuitive, easy-to-use interface and clever information sharing tools meant that it was adopted by millions of people in a very short space of time. Facebook did what no other social network has ever done particularly well – they made it easy to network and share information. Such was the ease of use that viral word of mouth was one of the key drivers in making the site the success that it is today.
However, Facebook is only a tiny slice of the pie; there are thousand of other ways to share, syndicate and market key information and messages online, all of which with their own merits, so here’s my list of the things you should be doing in 2008…
1. Embrace social media
We’ve all heard the buzz about Web 2.0, Social Media, Facebook etc, however these new channels should already be part of your online marketing mix.
2. Write a blog
You’re reading this one, so that’s proof enough that they work! Blogs are a great way of informally communicating with your audience, and they cost nothing more than your time! They’ll also improve your SEO, which is always a good thing!
3. Keep your content fresh and interesting
Regular updates and site content is the key to the success of any website today – consider outsourcing your news to a specialist agency who will be able to provide daily news releases for your site. Content forms a key part of your SEO strategy, the more frequently you update your website, the more frequently search engine will index it.
4. Get into Social Bookmarking
Add social bookmarking tools to all of your news and product pages which will allow your visitors to easily bookmark and share your content with their own networks. Sites such as www.digg.com and http://del.icio.us/ are a good starting point.
5. Know your enemy
Regular competitor analysis is key to keeping ahead, look at how many sites are linking to your competitors, how regularly they update their sites, keep track of their special offers by subscribing to their newsletters.
6. Start regularly emailing your customer base
Build an opt-in email list and start sending regular emails out to your customers to keep them informed of your offers and promotions – from experience, one-off emails rarely get good results – the art of a good email campaign is to regularly broadcast to build affinity and a relationship with your customers.
7. Create a search engine strategy
Pay Per Click or Search Engine Optimisation? Ideally you should be doing both, you’ll see instant results with PPC however long-term, you’ll see more for your money from SEO – however seeing results can take many months. Look at multi-layer marketing; don’t just rely on one channel for your promotions. Look at clever ways of tying in your on and offline activities to better communicate your offering.
8. Use your own website
It’s amazing how many people don’t use their own websites on a regular basis. It may sound silly, but it’s an important thing to do – look at your site from the point of a customer and see if there are things that stand out in terms of usability – are your buttons clear enough? Is your shopping cart easy to use? Does your search engine return accurate results? If you’re answering no to these questions, you might want to look into the reasons why and correct them. Visitor to customer conversions are key to the success of any online business, therefore making your site as easy to use as possible is paramount to their success.
9. Measure your online performance using Google Analytics
It’s free and incredibly good at what it does. The web is the most measurable form of marketing, you should constantly assess your web stats, understanding where your traffic is coming from, what visitors are looking at, where they may be potential problem areas on your site and look at how to improve your content based on these results.
10. Get the right agency
Even if your agency is brilliant technically, they might not be experts at marketing, advertising or PR – it’s not uncommon for many companies to outsource different areas to different agencies, to get the best of both worlds.
To see what Evolve can do for your business online, please drop me an email: oliver@bluhalo.com
Cheers, Oliver
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