Content Marketing

Explore cutting-edge Content Marketing insights with Croydon’s leading Web Design and Digital Marketing Company. Tailored for SME Business owners in South London and Surrey, our comprehensive guides and tips will elevate your brand’s digital presence.

Blog as part of content marketing strategy

Content builds trust

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Building trust is essential for lead generation. A huge part of building trust with potential clients is through the type of content you create and publish on your website and other digital channels.  

Your content marketing strategy will encompass blogs for your website and social media posts through to email campaigns and Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising. It is your chance to build brand awareness and through regular unique content, start to build trust as leads begin to familiarise themselves with your products and services.  

Content marketing plan  

When it comes to content, it is important to develop a schedule, this will make sure you are uploading blog posts, distributing email newsletters or sharing updates on social media on a regular basis with a constant stream of new and relevant content. 

The more you share, the more people will see what you have to offer and the more likely they will remember it. However, you don’t want to bombard potential customers with information. There needs to be a healthy balance.  

In your blogs, you can cover topics which showcase your expertise in specific areas while keeping content clear and concise. Remember do not be afraid to give away information for free, this is a great technique to bring people in. So, create tips and advice articles, publish case studies, offer fact sheets or ebook downloads.  

Content has to add value and help people solve a very specific problem. That’s why we always recommend creating an online persona of your target audience and that you always consider solving their challenges with your products and services. 

Write blogs that answer their questions. The goal is to optimise that post to appear in related searches by including keywords.  

Marketing your business, whether an accounting practice, construction firm or retail environment, needs to establish trust with your target audience. The way you do that is by providing value and repetition through creating content that is unique, timely and frequent. 

SEO 

Improving Search Engine Optimisation / SEO is key to improving your ranking in search engines helping to get your company seen online. Your content is part of this strategy. Prospective clients type in keywords relating to your business, so the more you include specific keywords throughout your content will help your SEO. 

Digital marketing Croydon  

If your company is based in South London, Croydon and surrounding areas get in touch to receive advice on creating a digital marketing campaign that’s tailored to your business. We can provide support on content for websites, social media, Pay Per Click campaigns through to emails.  

Blogs to check out: 

We work with a range of clients including accountants and accounting firms providing professional digital marketing services including content marketing for accountants.

SEO

Boost your SEO

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Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a long-term strategy but if you can get into the routine of doing a few simple tasks whenever you upload content to your website then this will support your ongoing SEO strategy well into the future. Here’s our four tips.

Internal links  

As with signage in a shop, your website layout needs to be easy to navigate. This is not just for your website visitors but it’s also for the search engine web crawlers. Always remember that these are part of your core audience. If search engines can simply find their way around your website, then this will help you rise in organic search engine rankings. 

So, how can you help people and search engines move with ease around your site? Well this is where adding internal links is essential. Always have at least three internal links from one web page to elsewhere on your website. Think of it as a signpost and remember to point people in the right direction. Adding a link to the homepage also helps.  

Keywords 

Include your keywords in your web page URL as well as an H1 or H2 header tags – these form part of your technical SEO that you’ll add when you upload your content to content management system (CMS) like WordPress. Again, these act as a guide to search engines about what the content on your web page is about so that your website can appear in search results for an appropriate enquiry.

Keep it simple and people will find you.  

Content marketing keep it fresh  

Unique content is a crucial part of your content marketing strategy. It’s about being informative and knowledgeable providing advice for your target audience.

Remember to add keywords in your website content that are relevant to your products and services. Basically you need to think about what people will search for in search engines and therefore you need to write about it and include these words in your blog post, services pages and homepage.   

Title tag and meta description  

Always complete your title tags. These show on search engine results pages (SERPs). This is what your audience will click on to your website. So, make sure you have your keyword in the title tag but keep within 50-60 characters.  

You can then give more detail for your meta description so that potential website visitors can see more about what’s on offer. Rally think about what will make them click your web page link over your competitors and have that information in you meta description but restrict this to 50-160 characters.  

SEO Croydon   

We’re an SEO company based in Croydon and London with a specialism in helping businesses gain quality leads. We work with a range of businesses including professional services such as accounting firms. We can help with setting up an SEO campaign including SEO audit.

We can also work with you on your digital marketing strategy including a mix of tactics such as social media management, Pay Per Click (PPC), email marketing and CRM – read more about our marketing services.  

Further reading  

Email marketing

How to use email as part of your marketing strategy

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With a flurry of marketing activity and communication with existing clients when lockdown started, you could be forgiven for thinking that you can start to ease up on your communication. However, now is not the time to stop your marketing.

It’s so important to keep up the informative messages of support that you shared with clients and prospect at early lockdown stages. If your last email or social message was about closing your business or working remotely, you really need to start thinking about sharing up to date news to encourage client retention and new business.  

This is where email marketing can be so effective. With so many people working remotely, email acts as advertising for your virtual shop window. Rather than strolling down the street looking at a shop or business window, the billboard is coming to your email inbox.  

Here’s three tips when considering email marketing as part of your communications strategy.  

1. Targeted email marketing content  

When you write your emails always write to your target audience. It’s always a good idea to think that you are sending your email to one person so you can make content really personal. With relevant content it will help with open rate for a more successful email marketing campaign.  

Our blog on creating an online persona for your business can help you with getting your content really targeted to your audience.  

Remember to offer useful tips and advice, industry insight as well as highlight any relevant offers you are providing that may help their business. 

2. Cleanse your email lists 

With huge changes to businesses due to COVID, cleansing your email distribution list should be high on your agenda.  

If you’ve distributed emails during this time then you’ll be aware of a higher bounce rate then perhaps you have done previously, this will be due to businesses changing staff, furloughed staff and unfortunately companies having to reduce employees.  

Monitor the bounce rate and make changes accordingly. It’s better to have a smaller mailing list of qualified and quality contacts than a large list of emails that don’t reach their recipient.  

All the while you must make sure that your emails are GDPR compliant. Ensure that you have a visible and clear unsubscribe option in the footer when you distribute your email.

If you have a pop-up box on your website to gather email addresses then ensure that you are transparent in that you are using their email for your e-newsletter updates and nothing else.  

We can help you with adding this pop-up call-to-action function to your website to encourage potential customers to sign up to receive your e-shots.

3. Keep in regular contact  

As part of you content marketing plan factor in a weekly or monthly e-newsletter. However regular is up to you. It’s about what you think you can manage to ensure that you remain consistent. If you send a monthly round up of news, then make sure you send this on the first working day of every month.    

As part of this consistency ensure you have a branded email template that you can update each time, this helps with brand awareness, a professional look and recipients become more familiar with you.

A great time saver for content is to repurpose blogs that you write throughout the month. You can edit content down for your e-newsletter. Then add a link with a click through back to the full article to read more.  

Email marketing agency London

We’re a digital marketing company with offices in London and Croydon. We offer a range of inbound marketing tactics for businesses including email marketing for accountants, professional services firms and SMEs.

Book a free consultation with us to chat about your next email campaign, growing your email distribution list and using email as a lead generator.

Exploring Instagram for business

‘Eat out to help out’ marketing tips for Croydon establishments

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From 3 August, the government’s Eat Out To help Out scheme will get underway. Restaurants, bars, pubs cafes – an establishment that provides an eat on site offer for diners – will be able to sign up to take part in the scheme. It means that on a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday up until 31 August, diners can benefit from up to 50% off when eating or drinking soft drinks in participating places.

So, Croydon restaurants have you signed up to the scheme? If not, here’s the link to the details of what to do: Register your establishment for the Eat Out to Help Out Scheme.

But, once you are signed up, it’s important to spread the word. The government has promotional items you can utilise here.

At the moment, it may be less about passing trade as many people will be making plans first before going out. Therefore, while traditional marketing like signage in your restaurant window is important, we’ve got a few more online marketing tips you can implement swiftly to help spread your reach.

Social media

If you’ve not been doing much social media up until now, then now is the time to ramp up your presence with your social network.

Make sure you’re taking some fantastic shots of your amazing dishes and share on your social channels. Instagram and Facebook are great for foodie places. With Instagram it’s all about the look and there’s nothing more appealing than a plate of tasty food.

Make sure you tell people in your posts that you are part of the scheme. Give them an insight into your menu, anything new, your most popular dishes and your specials. Be descriptive with your post though. While a good image does say a thousand words, there’s no point posting a picture of a burger on your ‘specials’ menu that day which gives no indication of what’s in it. While you want engagement with people, try and make it a little easier for them to understand what’s in the picture in the first instance. This will help prevent you answering unnecessary questions – which can be time consuming and if not replied to in a timely manner could affect how people perceive you.   

Re-confirm your opening times and update your profile with any new details.

Extend reach of your post by adding hashtags. Here’s some general Croydon foodie hashtags you might want to consider as well as some standard ones you should always think about:

#Croydon #EastCroydonCool #Croydonbar #Croydonpub #Croydonrestaurants #Croydonfoodies #Croydonfood #Croydonrestaurantquarter #Instafood #lovefood #foodstagram #foodpic #foodie

Note: don’t forget to hashtag what your food is! So, if it’s burgers or pasta – well, I think you get the picture!

What’s the story?

Don’t forget to utilise the Story function on Instagram and Facebook. This is another way to be seen by your followers as it stands out at the top of the feed.

Encourage diners to share their visit on social media and take pictures of food. If you’re on social media have your social handle visible in your restaurant and tell diners about it.

When someone shares a post and tags you in, you can use the little arrow function just below the image. This allows you to share this to your stories and you can thank the customer for their visit.

To create a story from scratch just click on ‘your story’ upload an image, then use the text function ‘Aa’ and write a brief message. For this campaign you could say ‘Eat Out to Help Out. Book Now.’ Or perhaps describe what mouthwatering food is in your image.

Or a simple way to create a story is once you have added a post to your Instagram feed, just click that arrow below your post and you can share to you story.

You can also search for the Eat Out to Help Out gif to liven up your story post. When you’re in story mode just click the square face and explore.

Website updates

If you have a website, make sure that all your contact details and menus are up to date.

On the homepage make an update to say that you are part of the scheme and encourage people to make a booking with a bold call to action button.

If you have a blog, make sure you add content to that and do so regularly. This really helps with search engine optimisation and your business being found in search engines. Fresh content is great for ongoing organic rankings.

Google My Business  

Do you have a Google My Business page? If not, get one set up – it’s free! If you do have a page already then make sure all details are up to date. The last thing you want is an incorrect telephone number.

You can also add offers and updates to this page. So, tell people you are part of the discount scheme.

Remember to add imagery to your business page, this is a great resource for restaurants to showcase their dishes.

Remind diners to leave a review. Testimonials are a great way to encourage potential and returning customers.

Our blog, ‘have you told search engines you exist’ has tips about setting up your Google My Business page.

Email marketing

If you have an email distribution list, then now is a great time to start an email marketing campaign and distribute to potential customers on your database. Remember to be clear in your message, include a call to action to book now and ensure you have contact details visible.

Look at our blog on what to check before you send your next email marketing campaign – this has a checklist of what to run through before you send your email including you have a visible unsubscribe link. You must make sure you are GDPR compliant.

Digital marketing Croydon

We’re a digital marketing agency in Croydon. We know the stomping ground and we’re here to support you. We’ve got some additional marketing resources you might want to take a look at which cover the different types of digital platforms and online advertising to help you form a digital marketing plan.

Contact us for a free consultation if you want to chat further about the different digital options.

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