Business man doing online marketing

Bounce back to business

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We’ve all been hit hard by coronavirus and now is the time to bounce back into business. UK government small business grants and loans have made it possible for firms to get back on their feet as quick as possible. Smart Cow is a digital marketing agency and we’re here to support businesses to help get them back on their feet and grow in these difficult times. 

If you haven’t already invested in online marketing for your business, or had to put activity on hold, it’s worth noting that research has shown that those businesses that invest in marketing during a recession grow significantly more than those who don’t. For example, insight from McGraw and Hill showed that firms who invested had 256% higher sales than those who did not invest in marketing during tough times. 

Here’s our four core steps to bouncing back to business. 

1. Strategy  

Your first step is to create a marketing strategy. Think about what you want to achieve and what are your business goals? If you had a plan in place for the beginning of the year, then it will need a review as we head into a new way of working and conducting business.  

Part of the strategy is to build a picture of your ideal target audience and start to build a campaign around them. 

2. Attract quality leads 

The next step is to create a digital marketing strategy based around your target audience that will truly attract quality leads for your business.  

Key to remember is that one size does not fit all. While there’s a host of digital marketing tactics to draw on such as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), PPC or Pay Per Click advertising, social media marketing, video or blogs, this is where it’s important to think of your target audience and what digital channels are best for them. This can then help your form the right mix of digital marketing for your target audience.  

The core of your digital marketing campaign is about connecting with the right audience at the right time via the right platform. That’s where a content marketing strategy will help.  

You want to be answering your prospects and existing clients questions in your communication. So, when you write a blog, share messages on social media or send out email marketing it’s about offering advice. You want to position yourself as a thought leader in your field and provide insight that will help your customers with their business. The type of content you communicate is about building rapport and trust that you become the go to company for your services or products.  

By having a plan in place, you can schedule your content strategically and in a timely manner.  

3. Engage  

Once you attract leads, how do you convert them to become a client?  

Using marketing automation, you can build the trust and follow leads through the sales lifecycle. 

You can monitor leads through Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools to keep track and engage at the appropriate time to increase the likelihood of conversion. 

4. Delight  

By ensuring you solve your customer’s problems in your marketing communication, by being helpful, enthusiastic and part of a community will help increase engagement and client satisfaction.  

Marketing to current contacts and customers is far more cost effective than finding new customers. 

Make sure your customers are your biggest fans. Continue to keep them engaged and delighted with your service and content. 

Smart Cow digital agency can help you bounce back to business

We understand that all businesses need a unique approach to their inbound digital marketing which is why we offer a mix and match of digital marketing services to generating quality leads for your business.

We’ll research the keywords and conduct an SEO audit to focus on to give you a boost in search engine results. We’ll identify hurdles and competition that may impact the success and then assign accountability to reach these goals and metrics to measure. 

We’re a digital marketing agency in Croydon as well as a base in London. Talk to us about your business goals and let us propel your forward. Book a consultation.

Digital Marketing written in pen

Are you embracing digital marketing?

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Your business model will have had to evolve beyond comprehension, but evolve you have!  You’ve shown resilience, flexibility and the ability to adapt to change, swiftly.  

Whilst many budgets have been slashed, marketing is a key area noted by many of you as an area that needs continued input and work on to keep your business seen, especially with an online presence.   

What we’ve noticed in general is the major shift to embrace digital marketing as advertisers have moved away from the traditional marketing over the last few months. Digital marketing activity such as social media, SEO, website updates, blogs, videos and webinars have certainly come to the fore.  

Incorporating digital into your marketing strategy is crucial now. This is how you get your voice heard without the footfall walking past print advertising. There’s an immediacy with digital marketing as your social media posts speak directly to your target audience and encourage engagement or your email marketing is personalised to the recipient.  

Digital marketing Croydon resources  

If you’re an SME business and find digital marketing a daunting prospect or you’re realising that you need to now pick up the pace with your online marketing, we’ve listed some of the key tactics that you can draw on, experiment with and work out which is right for your business. 

Not all digital marketing campaigns suit all businesses, but a mix and match approach can help.  

Key digital marketing services to create a great inbound marketing strategy that can help generate leads to your website and grow your business. Click each link to discover more. 

  1. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) 

  1. Social Media Marketing 

  1. PPC / Pay Per Click

  1. Remarketing / Banner advertising 

  1. Email Marketing 

  1. Content Marketing 

  1. Marketing Automation   

  1. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) 

When COVID-19 social distancing and ‘stay at home’ messaging came into action, while many brands expected less ad spend in 2020, research shows that many expected to increase their spend across digital channels, including social media (56%), podcasts (52%), digital audio (45%) and paid search (40%) in the second half of 2020.

We’re a web design and digital marketing agency in Croydon.

Book a consultation with us so we can tailor a digital marketing solution that’s right for you. 

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SEO croydon

4 simple steps for SEO improvement

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Time is of the essence when it comes to Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), as it is a long-term strategy. This sometimes puts people off from even starting to do anything in the first instance as it can initially be a daunting prospect. 

So, we thought we’d gather some quick steps to help boost your organic rankings in search engine results. These aren’t necessarily quick wins – as it does take time for you to start seeing the benefit of website optimisation activity. But these are easy actions that can help you in the long-run as well as set a precedence and routine each time you upload any new content to your website.  

SEO to boost your results in search engines   

1. Meta titles and descriptions

Check that your meta titles and meta descriptions are complete on the backend.  

Your meta title is the bold text you see for a website when you search for something online. To help you write the title think of it as if you are simply telling the person searching exactly what they will find on that page.  

The title is also a key indicator to Google about the page content so with an explanatory title this can really help Google find the best matched pages for that search. Keep the meta title under 60 characters. 

The meta description is the descriptive paragraph you will find directly under the title in search. Stick to between 120 and 158 characters so that the description doesn’t get cut off. Add in keywords you would want your business to be found for as this helps boost you in search too.  

Depending on how many pages you have on your website, including blogs, this may take some time to do. But, now you are aware of its importance for SEO then set goals per week of completing a certain number of blogs until you have done them all. Then once you have achieved that, make the process completing the meta titles and descriptions part of your content marketing. So, when you write a blog ensure that you also think of the meta title/description at the same time.   

2. Alt text / description 

If you have images on your website, then these will want an alt description. This describes the page design and image content. These descriptions may well have already been completed at the web design and development stage. If not, just start to add the descriptions. 

3. Fix broken links  

Internal links help Google and your visitors understand your web page and navigate your website with ease.  

However, there’s nothing worse than clicking a link that doesn’t work so now is the time to do a quick audit of your website and fix any links that are broken. If you don’t really have any links to other pages on your website, then we would recommend that you conduct this task as soon as possible. Make it easy for your visitor to get in touch with you and find useful information simply by adding in links.  

For future blogs you write remember to always think of link building when you upload the blog to your website. Again add this to your process checklist.

Don’t forget – make sure you have links to your social media channels on your website.  

4. Google My Business 

Make sure your Google My Business page is up to date. If you don’t have one, then now is the time to create this. This is a quality directory on the most popular search engine so help Google find you.   

SEO digital marketing agency  

We’ve not touched on keyword research in this blog as we wanted to really give you those quick hit wins that you can conduct yourself for website optimisation.  

Check out some of our previous blogs with more detail on SEO and keywords if you want to discover more.

If you need help on your digital marketing to kick start your SEO campaign and improve your online presence in search results then get in touch with us for your free consultation or a free website audit.    

We’re an SEO agency in Croydon specialising in SEO marketing for accounting firms and local businesses looking to grow with quality leads. 

Digital marketing for accountants

Why digital marketing is key for accounting firms

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Word of mouth is crucial for accounting firms when it comes to marketing and new business, or so it was. Now, as technology advances with automation of tasks and we can communicate wherever and whenever, incorporating digital marketing into your lead generation marketing strategy is key today. Relying solely on referrals won’t necessarily generate the business you need to grow your firm.  

Marketing automation 

A key thing for accounting firms is freeing up time. We know that accountants are time poor managing many client relationships and ensuring the client experience is top notch. So, anything that can take over everyday activity will help. Whilst we’ve seen innovation in financial accounting to free up time from repetitive tasks and manual data processing, this is adding digital marketing to the mix can enhance your offering further.  

Asking visitors to your website to sign up to a regular email newsletter or download a helpful template you already have an idea of what the visitor is interested to know more about. With automated emails and knowledge of website users interest you can create emails that reach people at the right time. With connected website analytics to your email marketing platform you can really target messages to your client base.  

You can also schedule email messages to your clients or prospects so that they don’t go too long without hearing from you. Following a download of anything from your website it’s essential for follow up and that’s where email automation comes into its own as it can do this automatically for you.  

Linking this with a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform will provide you with great insight across your firm of interaction with clients and prospect to help improve client retention and increase new business opportunities.

Website chatbots 

Chat bots are a great way of answering typical questions and fielding enquires to the right funnel. The customer experience is also a lot smoother as well as freeing up time as it fields enquiries to the right department. The chat bot can essentially provide all the advice needed that the visitor is looking for.  

It’s a truly interactive marketing tool for your website as the visitor feels like they are being welcomed to the website and shown around. Rather than being left to their own devices.  

Content marketing for accountants

These are just a couple of examples. What’s key is having good quality relevant content that can be seeded out through various channels tailored to your target audience.  

With quality content you can repurpose for various digital marketing channels. So, when you write a blog or an article it’s making sure that you shatter this information into bite size chunks for other digital channels. Therefore, it’s not just one article but perhaps 10 different tips you want to get across all originating from one source on your website.   

If there was one message we would want to get across to accounting firms, it’s that your website is the centre of your digital world. So, any activity you do elsewhere online whether that’s paid-for advertising or social media, your goal is to push viewers of your content back to your website.  

It’s also important to remember that it takes approx 7 views of a brand for a potential customer to become aware of the message. So, ensuring that digital marketing is accounted for in your overall marketing strategy is essential.  

Developing an inbound digital marketing strategy 

We provide digital marketing agency for accountants in Croydon. By offering an initial consultation we can get to the bottom of what your goals are so we can develop a digital marketing approach that’s ideal for your accountancy firm.

It’s not a one size fits all approach. So, if your accounting practice is looking to attract quality clients and qualified leads, perhaps now is the time to explore the options of digital and inbound marketing.

Digital marketing resources

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