Inbound Marketing

Explore cutting-edge inbound marketing strategies with Croydon’s leading Web Design and Digital Marketing specialists. Gain insights tailored for SME Business owners in South London and Surrey to boost online presence and growth.

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Marketing tips for Croydon businesses

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As we wait with fingers crossed for non-essential shops to open and sectors such as hair & beauty, hospitality and leisure to resume, we thought we’d offer our local Croydon businesses some marketing tips to help increase online presence.  

Google My Business  

First things first, is your company on Google My Business? If not, get one set up – it’s free to do!

If you do have a page already then make sure all details are up to date and add as many ways for people to get in touch with you as they can.

Add any special offers you have running. Remember to add imagery to your business page, this is a great resource for the hospitality sector to showcase popular dishes.

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

How to set up Google My Business watch our video.

Social media

Start increasing the amount of social posts you share. This will remind people about your offering. Encourage people to follow you for updates on when you will be opening but make sure you always remind people that they can buy virtually. Or for hair & beauty, get your bookings up and running by spreading the word on social media.

For our wonderful Croydon hospitality businesses, we can’t wait for the restaurants, pubs and bars to breathe life into the town again. Remind Croydon folk what they’ve been missing with fantastic images of your amazing dishes.

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. Give details of anything new, your most popular dishes and your specials. Be descriptive within your post though.

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

Run teaser campaigns with a countdown to when you will open (although we’re aware that it is all tentative dates right now).

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

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

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 customers and prospects to share posts on social media.

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.

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

Website updates

If you have a website, make sure that all your contact details, products and services are up to date. For hospitality get your menus and booking forms sorted. If your website still says Christmas 2020, get that removed, potential customers will think you are not opening.

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

We’ve recently created a blog on 8 ways to refresh your website, here’s an overview of what you’ll find on that. These are great SEO tactics that you can implement yourself.

  • Check your website navigation, it should be easy
  • Review content, contact details and check links aren’t broken
  • Add new imagery to refresh the look
  • Complete any missing meta descriptions
  • Update and add new calls to action
  • Get a free website review from us!

Email marketing

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

Look at our checklist in our blog on what to check before you send your next email marketing campaign. You must also ensure you are GDPR compliant.

PPC Croydon

What is PPC and why use it? All you need is in that blog. But, in a nutshell, Pay Per Click or PPC is online paid advertising which gets its name from the fact that advertisers pay when someone clicks on an advert that they have running. It’s a great way of appearing at the top of search results pages to give your website a boost.

Digital marketing Croydon

We’re a digital marketing agency in Croydon providing digital marketing for accountants and other local businesses. Download our eBook with additional marketing resources and ideas for getting your business seen online – The Beginner’s Guide to Inbound Marketing.

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

Social Media

Social media stories

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As daily active users on Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp reach over 500 million, Smart Cow, as a Social Media marketing agency, look at the story function within social media and how this can help your brand extend its reach to your target audience and build brand awareness.

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What are social media stories?

Social media stories offer the user the ability to share videos and images in addition to their normal social media posts. On Facebook and Instagram these images last for 24 hours and then disappear.

Instagram allows you to save your highlights so that the images remain on your page in neat little collections. This means people can still view what you have posted well after the 24 hours are up.

These highlights offer a great way to section off different products and services. Or the ability to save information for a product launch as part of creating a social media strategy.

Benefits of using Instagram stories for business

Around 62% of people say they have become interested in a brand having seen it in the story function.

Design features allow the ability to add gifs, tag people and places and type a caption – with lots of lovely colour choices, perfect for keeping on brand.

These are generally known as stickers which can include options such as:

  • Donation sticker
  • Countdown sticker
  • Question sticker
  • Poll
  • Location

All of these offer a great way to enhance your small business social media marketing strategy, helping to really engage with your audience.

As the stories appear at the top of a social page it’s sometimes more visible on a feed. It’s also a great way to see who is actually seeing your stories which can help with ongoing engagement.  

You can encourage clicks with call to actions such as shop now, swipe up or discover more.

If you are creating a video for stories then do this vertically rather than horizontally as this will enable you to share it correctly on Instagram.

But in its simplest form you can invite people to review your ‘new post’ with a brightly coloured sticker having shared the post from your grid by using the little triangle icon below the image.

Be consistent

As a social media marketing agency, we always recommend that you ensure that your social media channels are consistent so that you reinforce your brand. So, make sure you choose the same font, colour and gifs to bolster the look and feel of your business.  

Can you just use social media for marketing?

Like any other digital marketing tactic, social media marketing needs to be considered within your wider marketing strategy, such as your blog post or Facebook ads to understand what channels you should be on and the type of content you should share.

Avoid thinking of social media as the only way you can reach a target audience. It’s best to think of it in a holistic way. Review other digital marketing options such as Search Engine Optimisation/SEO services, Pay Per Click (PPC) or email marketing.

Social media marketing should always use links that lead back to your website. Link building is another helpful way to help guide Google that a website is reputable and this includes links from a social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. But importantly, ensure that your website is relevant and that you keep it updated with fresh blog content. This will form part of your wider marketing plan.

To be efficient, the best use of your time is to repurpose content from blogs that you have written. While social media is fantastic for live events, launches through to promotions, you need to maintain frequency of social posts which is where a content plan will help you schedule timely and relevant posts for your target audience.

Social media marketing Croydon

We’re a digital marketing agency based in Croydon supporting local businesses with their inbound marketing. As social media consultants, we support you with social media marketing plans and real time reviews of your social media analytics. As one of Croydon’s social media marketing companies, we offer our clients cost effective social media services. Get in touch today for further enquiries.

Book a FREE consultation
BNI Sutton

BNI Sutton Featured Presentation

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Growing your business in the 4th industrial revolution

Business Networking International (BNI) meetings each week have a featured presentation, where one business showcases its services in a 10 minute presentation with a Q&A.

Smart Cow presented the two core points to grow your business as we hit the 4th Industrial revolution of digital integration.

We focused on looking at getting cost efficient high quality leads and also how to attract, engage and convert those leads into clients.

BNI Sutton

BNI Sutton meets every Thursday morning at 6:30 am. Currently online via Zoom, but normally at Oaks Park Golf Club in Sutton.

If you are interested in joining a networking group that shared over £4,000,000 of business last year then please get in touch: simon@smart-cow.com

Book a FREE consultation
Email marketing keyboard

Why consider email marketing in 2021

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Perhaps thought a little old school, email marketing is not to be underestimated. How we search for products and services has certainly shifted over the years and even more so in 2020. We’re not strolling to the shops like we were. More people have discovered online shopping and searching for the services they need. And, we’re becoming reliant on advertising that we choose to see rather than being forced upon us.  

Stop and think for a moment about all the digital marketing options at your fingertips to reach potential customers. There’s a long list including social media, website, pay per click advertising through to blogs. With this in mind it makes sense to add email marketing to the mix of tactics to help widen your reach.

Looking ahead to 2021, with renewed hope, now is a great time to get your marketing strategy in order and look for a cohesive approach to getting your message out there. Here’s some tips to help you along.

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Repurpose your content

If you’re only just embarking on email marketing, don’t think that this means you have to write more content than you have time for. Be clever with what you have.

We would always recommend a client has a blog or news page on their website as this provides a great way to add fresh content and regularly. This is perfect for a Search Engine Optimisation strategy – read more about SEO here.

You need to optimise your website to help it be seen in search rankings so with a blog already on the go, just repurpose what you have already written for email marketing. In fact, repurpose for all your marketing where you can. For example, you can breakdown content from your blogs into loads of social media posts and schedule in advance via a social media platform such as Hubspot.

The purpose of your email marketing, as with all digital marketing, is to attract people to your website. So, write a short intro based on the blog and add a bold call to action button saying ‘read more’. This entices the reader to get more information by reading the rest of the blog. What’s key is that it must be interesting to get a prospect to read on. Read our blog on content marketing to help you write engaging content.

So, think about what your target audience is interested in learning more about. Then write about it.

Email design

We’ve jumped ahead slightly, as before you can add your content you need an email template design.

All you need to do is design the initial template, you can then just add the content and relevant images every other time you distribute an email. You can either brief a digital marketing agency to create the template for you and manage the distribution. Or, you can create a template yourself using the many email distribution platforms available such as Mailchimp and Hubspot.

Frequency

Set yourself a goal of an email once a month to send to your opted in database (read more about being GDPR compliant here). What’s most important is that you keep up the regular emails so that people can learn to appreciate and trust your brand with its consistent and insightful messaging. Remember that people have to opt in to receive your emails so they are warm leads and have chosen to hear from you.

Email marketing Consultant Croydon  

As a digital marketing agency in Croydon, we’re able to offer businesses across London with inbound marketing support for improved lead generation. We use a range of tactics including web design and development, email marketing, SEO, Pay Per Click (PPC), social media management through to CRM and marketing automation.

Book a FREE consultation
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