With “digital” continuing to
outpace and outperform traditional marketing methods, the question is not “should
we invest in digital marketing?”, rather “which companies should we partner
with to achieve the best results”. With AboutMatch, you can easily find quality suppliers of SEO, SEM, Social Media, Video and Mobile solutions - suppliers
that match your budget, location and specialisation, who can help you reach
your customer goals faster.
Search (SEO, SEM)
Search
engine optimisation (SEO) is the approach used to get your business ranked highly – ideally on
page 1 – of Google and other search engines. (90% of UK search is with
Google.) SEO is a specialised field where the rules of engagement are changing
constantly based on modifications the search engine companies make to their
algorithms. For this reason, most companies find it far more effective to use an SEO consultant than to try to develop core competency in SEO internally.
SEO consultants typically
charge a monthly fee, and sometimes a set-up fee, to collaborate with your
business to ensure your website is constantly optimised for a range of keywords
which you wish to target. Some keyword phrases are so competitive that the cost
to reach page 1 Google nirvana are too prohibitive, and in this case an SEO
consultant can identify variations on these phrases which might not be searched
as frequently by your target audience, but are easier to rank for and therefore
more accessible.
Some SEO consultants are
based onshore in the UK, others offshore. AboutMatch only recommends SEO
consultants with a UK presence, even if that presence is just an account
management function, with the core team in another country. We find a local
presence mitigates risk and allows the SEO consultant to get a deeper
understanding of your business through physical proximity and face-to-face
meetings in the UK.
Search
engine marketing (SEM) is where you pay per click (PPC) on an ad
which appears on the search engine’s results pages. Google’s product in this
area is called AdWords. Many companies spend a fortune on Adwords without seeing
results because, just like SEO, Adwords management is not simple, and for most,
using a digital agency to manage your SEM activity will lead to better results,
faster. While SEO takes time, usually many months, to reach full heartbeat, SEM
is a “quick win” strategy if the focus is on driving traffic to your site in
the short term as well as ongoing.
Social Media Monitoring
Businesses need to know what
people are saying about them on social media. There are companies which
specialise in monitoring your brand online and on social platforms such as
Facebook and Twitter. You then have access to dashboards, heatmaps, reports
with customer verbatim comments and more, so you can hear what the market is
saying and take actions as required - whether urgently putting out a fire such
as a celebrity complaint, or feeding input back to marketing regarding the
latest offer. Social media monitoring companies use a blend of software and
human beings to provide a comprehensive picture of your brand online, 24 hours
a day, 365 days a year. If you’d like to have
a chat with a social media monitoring company to assist, start here.
Video
With Youtube one of the most
visited sites on the entire Internet, and the trend towards visualising
information to make it more digestible to customers, video is an essential tool
in any marketer’s kit. Videos are used to showcase client testimonials, explain
a company’s value proposition, and “how-to” videos show customers how to use
your products or services. Video
animations are a cheaper form of video production than using real-life people,
as no camera-men and equipment are required.
There are also some exciting
innovations in video marketing which allow companies to produce “1-to1” videos personalised to each and
every customer. For example, a company sending out millions of bills need no
longer send by paper or as a pdf attachment, rather as a “video bill”, with a link
to a video personalised with the customer’s name and unique billing data, taken
from feeds from enterprise systems. These 1-to1 videos drive high engagement
rates which lead to demonstrable bottom-line benefits such as increased sales.
Mobile
What better way is there to
engage and retain customers than having your brand sitting in their pocket, on
their smartphone! That’s one of the core reasons more and more companies are
developing mobile apps. Find a company to develop an app for your business.
