Name: Smart Cow Marketing
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Why you don’t want everyone as your client

11/01/201907/25/2019 by scmarketing

Too often we hear that a business is looking for anyone as a client – “Our product is so good it will suit anyone…; we can provide a one size fits all solution…” However, what you really need to ask yourself first is who does your company identify with? Once you understand this, it can really help you formulate your marketing plan to grow your business further.

In our Practice Growth Sessions, we drill down to the details of your business to help you work out who you are best positioned to help or sell products too.

Focus on the target audience, no matter how micro that niche is, and you will fly. Try to grab the whole market and you will end up getting nothing or, at best, poor fitting clients. Your knowledge in your niche will grow and will position you as the expert and the go to person.

Creating an online persona

From these points about your target audience your next step would be to create a character or a persona. Think about the goals or challenges of your target audience. If you start with their job role, imagine their personal goals such as business growth, saving the business money or a future promotion. Then imagine what challenges they face and start to note solutions for these. So, already you can begin to see a personality form in front of you. Then think about how your service or product can help them.

By taking time to understand the needs of your target audience you can begin to understand what channels would be best for a digital marketing campaign.

Read our blog on creating an online persona for targeted sales to help you.

Book a Practice Growth Session

Setting up a persona is something you can do with a few simple steps. Equally, you can also work with a marketing agency to help create a character of your ideal customer.

Being an inbound marketing agency in London, we have Practice Growth Sessions that are tailored to businesses keen to grow and ready to invest in marketing to achieve these goals. You can book a session here for £95, or if you are an accountant, we are currently offering a FREE Practice Growth Session.

Beginner’s guide to creating great marketing content

01/30/202304/25/2019 by scmarketing

Content can come in the form of blogs, social media posts and email campaigns, in fact anything that contains information and is being directed towards the audience is content. Content forms part of your inbound marketing strategy and plays a significant role in making your business successful, so here at Smart Cow Marketing we have compiled a mini beginner’s guide to creating great content.

Know your audience

It’s much more effective when you create content you know your audience will love and be interested in. This may require some research such as looking into how competitors construct their content or marketing campaigns. Think about the type of consumers you want to attract and tailor to their interests. Characteristics to think about will be:

Age
Gender
Location
Lifestyle

This way you will know what content would be appropriate. We would always recommend creating a persona of your target audience so that you can refer back to this when drafting content. Take a look at our blog on creating an online persona to help.

Make sure content is relevant

Not only does content need to spike interest in the audience, but it should also be relevant to your product or service. Try and make blogs or social media posts relate back to you. For example, we might say; ‘At Smart Cow we are experts in the field of digital marketing and creating relevant content, hence, why we have put together a guide for new content creators.’

Always have a call to action

At the end of your blog or social media post always put a call to action. Remind the audience that your company offers a service or product they may well be interested in. A call to action may include an email, phone number, link to a contact form, or simply might state to visit your website. For a real example of a call to action see the bottom of this blog!

Sound interesting and creative

Make sure the topic you are writing or posting about is interesting and compelling, certain to grab the audience’s attention. Irrelevant blogs or posts will go unnoticed by potential clients. This means making sure content is new and shows off your voice and opinion that will capture your audience.

Content to get you noticed

It’s worth remembering that your content needs to be seen be search engines which in turn helps you rise in search rankings and found in search by your potential customers. It falls under the umbrella of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). By taking on board the tips here and incorporating keywords that you wish to be found for will really help with your business reach that all important page 1 of search.

If you need a hand with creating content which exceeds expectations get in touch with us at Smart Cow Marketing, a content marketing agency in London.

Digital marketing trends 2019

01/30/202301/02/2019 by scmarketing

With the new year fast approaching, here’s a round up of some of the top trends for digital marketing in 2019.

Video

As was the case in 2018, the year ahead will still see video content used prolifically for digital marketing. With the growth of Facebook and Instagram live and story functions, videos are the norm and a go to for all.

Marketing Automation

From business development tools through to automated tailored responses to specific emails, when used correctly, marketing automation can free up time, reduce certain admin tasks and highlight potential business opportunities. For an accounting practice it can monitor both outbound and inbound activity. By monitoring activity and aligning systems an overall view is presented thus enabling you to enhance engagement with clients and potential prospects. Ultimately marketing automation is here to stay, the tools available will grow so perhaps it’s time to explore the opportunities out there for your business.

Social Media

If you’re not on any social platform, then 2019 marks the year for your business to embark on the social media marketing journey. Why? Put simply, the channels will continue to grow. Statistics indicate that there’s over 3 billion social media users globally*, so we’ll say it again – join the conversation!

But, what will be the difference to entice you this year? Well, gone are the days of bulk following to get anyone to follow you back, it’s all about quality, not quantity. It’s also about the right content for your audience and each platform will have a different demographic. Audiences pick and choose which they prefer. So, start to target and tailor your content to get it right.
LinkedIn is also one to watch. If you’re working in B2B then you should really have a profile. Social media research has indicated that the biggest user increase in 2018 was LinkedIn, with 145% user growth.

Immersive

Getting potential customers to get really immersed in a brand will see augmented and virtual reality being in the digital marketing trends mix for 2019. We’ve certainly seen property developers using the VR headset to their full advantage with a trendy, yet practical, way to virtually visit properties at fit out stage to help push interest and potential sales through at earlier stages. VR can give additional product detail to customers.

Content is still king

We said it in our 2018 trends and we’ll say it again – keep your content fresh, relevant and engaging to not only aid Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) but importantly to attract and retain customers. Most blog content is suitable at up to 500 words, but long-from content will also become key. Why? When Search engines scour the internet, they value longer posts higher and see it is a trustworthy source. Don’t think you can write anything though. It still needs to be relevant, quality content. Think about developing a lengthier white paper or e-book for prospects to download. While this takes longer to create and will be more costly, you will then have a huge bank of information that you can then break down into smaller bitesize blogs thus repurposing content for your website.

Authenticity

And last, but no means least, be authentic so that your brand resonates with your true audience.

A London based inbound marketing agency, we’re happy to lend you a hand with your digital marketing strategy for 2019, get in touch.

Targeting made easy

07/05/202111/20/2018 by scmarketing

In a survey by Emarsys of 2,000 UK consumers, 41% of respondents said they wouldn’t purchase from a brand again if they received haphazard marketing materials, while 66% say they would ignore all future marketing if a brand sent them hit or miss offers*. With these statistics in mind, what’s key to success is targeted messaging and one of the most important things is to understand your target audience.

Persona

If you haven’t already created a persona about your target audience then now is a good time. Creating a persona allows you to identify what certain traits of your target audience, this can be related to their goals, motivation or challenges they face. In highlighting these key personality traits of your target audience, you become more understanding of what and how they will respond to you, allowing more personalised and targeted messages in your digital marketing campaigns.

Once you find you have a strong understanding of the target audience, you move onto an ‘elevator pitch’; a few lines stating how you could help this potential client, as though you were stuck in an elevator, making it relatively informal, but friendlier, appealing to their persona you have already studied.

Content

Although keeping your website fresh improves your SEO, it isn’t the only thing you can do to ensure good targeted marketing. Here at Smart Cow, we have and will always believe that content is king, therefore the idea of tailored content to audiences in a bespoke manner is clearly a productive use of marketing efforts**. This not only means making content purely for viewers, but also making it easy for viewers to see, for example don’t post an Instagram picture on twitter, as it comes up as just a link. Not only that, but quality content on your website is one of the best ways to start improving your business. An inbound marketing agency like Smart cow would be happy to help with any further enquiries on this topic.

Email Marketing

If, as this research indicates, that 66% of customers would ignore all future marketing efforts after receiving one not targeted at them, can your business really afford to not provide targeted messages? Further industry research has revealed that primarily personalised welcome emails have been 320% more likely to lead to purchases than regular monthly emails***. Therefore a targeted and well thought out email marketing campaign can be more efficient and cost effective than a random email.

If you have any questions about creating a persona or digital marketing for your business, then get in touch today.

Content marketing agency

Talk to us about your content marketing needs and we’ll guide you towards the best combination of channels and strategies to utilise to make you stand out from the crowd. A reliable digital marketing agency in Croydon, Smart Cow will be glad to answer any further questions.

Sources: *econsultancy.com ; **Smart Cow Marketing ; ***Wordstream