Name: Smart Cow Digital Marketing and Website Design
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Why websites are essential for your firm?

12/22/202403/10/2020 by scmarketing

We may have become a little complacent in how we view websites these days, as they’ve just become part of life. However, we wanted to take a little step back just to remind you why websites are an essential part of your business and how they can generate quality leads and how Smart Cow can design and build you a strong online presence.

Website is your shop front

Your website is your sales pitch to potential clients, it must be appealing to the audience you’re looking to attract, providing visitors with the confidence that you will provide a good service or have a great product.

Just like a bricks and mortar shop front for your business, a website is just the same in the online world. Ultimately, it’s your shop. So, along with your shop name – or domain name in the online world – it’s worth remembering that this is something you own.

Like so many businesses today running their company on a Facebook page or Instagram account, this is a reminder that you don’t own those social channels! That’s why it’s always an idea to invest in your own website design to direct traffic to.

Website design and development

If you’re embarking on a new website or looking to refresh it, make sure you work with your website developer to design a site that will attract, engage and convert potential clients.

Make sure you have a good mix of images and video alongside your content. But also ensure that your site map is clear and call to actions are bold. You want to reduce bounce rate and encourage visitors to move around your website with ease.

We always talk about content being king. It tells the world who you are and what you do. But make sure what you write is succinct and to the point. Search engines will be looking for those key phrases you use to understand what each page on your website is about. It is important to also have links to all your social media platforms.

At Smart Cow we will work closely with you, from start to finish, and understand your needs, client base, and company goals in order to develop a bespoke website tailored to your needs.

Be seen online

Having a website is like your shopfront. And, like any shopfront, you have to get your shopfront seen to encourage footfall. In the online world there’s a few tactics that can help give you a little boost, if you’ve not already explored them.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO): From backend tech to ensure that your images are the right size and completing Alt Tags, Meta descriptions and Titles, right down to the H1 and H2 headings. These can all help your website be seen by search engines as it helps to guide search engines about what the page is about.
Pay Per Click (PPC): A PPC ad campaign can give your website a nudge in the search pages as you pay for an ad that will appear on the front page of Google. However, a word of note, make sure that the landing page you pick for your ad is what people expect to see when they click on the ad. If you’ve sent a visitor to a page with incomplete or outdated information, you’re likely to lose the lead very quickly.
Google My Business: Complete your listing on this directory – it’s free after all. It gives you options to add updates such as blogs, events and imagery. As well as the basic information about your company’s services and contact details.
Blog: Add a blog or news page to your website in the main menu. It helps keep content fresh and is a great way to position you as a thought leader in your field.
In web development make sure you factor in the smaller screens; think about creating a mobile friendly website too!

Websites for accountants

Smart cow is a web design company in Croydon, creating and designing websites for accountants and local businesses. If you think it’s time you took your website to the next level as a lead generation magnet, get in touch with us to chat through your requirements and what professional web design services you are after.

What is an inbound marketing agency?

05/29/202003/05/2020 by scmarketing

An inbound marketing agency is focused on lead generation to attract quality clients from qualified leads interested in your products and services.

Ultimately you want this traffic to lead to sales. However, as you probably already know the sales journey is rarely a smooth one stop shop as there will be many touch points required to help build brand awareness and trust.

So, thinking about how you can add context to your marketing activity that’s relevant to your audience is key to success.

Creating your inbound strategy

The sales landscape today is all about supporting the buyers’ journey in making the right purchase. They don’t want their time wasted, as much as you.

We recommend that you take time to understand who you are selling to. Think of your target audience and create an imaginary persona of your ideal customer.

Then, hone your messaging in line with answering the challenges that your target audience is facing. Empathise with their requirements and personalise your content.

It’s all about appealing to your relevant prospects to reach those quality leads interested in your services.

Armed with this knowledge and research into your target audience, your tone of voice should be consistent.

Download The Beginner’s Guide to Inbound Marketing to help you create your marketing strategy.

What does inbound marketing include?

There’s a number of inbound marketing tactics that an agency will draw on to create a strategy to generate traffic for your business. Here’s an overview digital marketing tools what can be covered.

Start your inbound marketing strategy

Your website is at the core of your business, it’s your shop window. So, a review of your current site and applying marketing methodology would be the first step to take.

Take us up on our FREE website review offer to give you insight into any possible updates you may need to make to help with Search Engine Optimisation.

Have you completed your Google My Business page? It’s free to do and is the ultimate directory to be on providing quality links back to your website.

Content marketing is also key as you need to be positioned as a thought leader in your field. So, think of adding a blog to your website or more up to date posts as this provides great new content for a website. This is another tactic to help search engines find you.

As a digital marketing agency we would look at your business, understand your objectives to then tailor an inbound marketing campaign for your firm encompassing the tactics that are right for your goals.

Why not contact us for a FREE consultation? Talk us through your current position, where you would like to be, your target audience and objectives and we can work on a proposal for you.

Ebook resources

Download The Beginner’s Guide to Inbound Marketing

It’s not just about social media

01/30/202303/03/2020 by scmarketing

We have a lot of clients getting in touch with us asking for help with promoting a product or service via social media. Quite often this is asked without any knowledge of any other marketing options that may be more relevant.

It’s no wonder that clients and prospects contact us asking about doing something on social media when this is what they see every day. You’re emailed by Facebook to let you know of one of you ‘Friends’ birthdays? You read news websites with articles using social media channels as their source. And, it’s been drilled into us that the life of a social media influencer is something to aspire to.

Of course, social media absolutely has it’s place within a marketing strategy. It allows you to engage with people and businesses. It helps build trust in your brand. It also provides all important quality links back to your website.

But, we wanted to help set the record straight about some of the top digital marketing options available to you which you can benefit from in conjunction with social media or standalone.

Lead generation

Ultimately, marketing is about getting quality clients from qualified leads. With 3.5 billion Google searches made each day (Live Stats), there’s no doubt that having an online presence is vital for a business. But where do you start?

Inbound marketing strategy

Your marketing strategy needs to support your business in being a magnet to good qualified leads. So, before jumping into any social media campaign we would recommend reviewing your current inbound marketing strategy as well as the activity that you are already doing such as email distribution to your database or attending events and networking. Then you can develop a strategy that will truly nurture leads.

To really help hone your campaign so it is targeted we recommend creating ‘personas’ specific to your target audience.

Think about how you want your content to sound and create a tone of voice document so that all staff and any digital marketing agency can be aligned with messaging.

A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system may also be an option for consideration for ensuring ongoing, timely engagement with leads and clients.

Optimised website

Before thinking of all the other digital marketing tactics, you need to think of the hub for all your digital marketing activity – your website! It should be the centre of your online world.

Think of it like a shop. You have everything in it. It’s signposted, has sales offers in the window. Has walkways that guide you through the store with a strategic wayfinding path. But you need people to find you first!

That’s where you need to make sure your website is optimised. Often referred to as SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), there are a few quick wins you can implement like making sure the meta descriptions and alt tags are completed. But the most important thing is about fresh and informative content relevant to your audience. This is why people have a blog or news page. A weekly blog including relevant keywords that you wish to be found for will help you in the organic search rankings.

Read our blog: 9 tips for optimising your website – for more SEO options.

Pay per click

If you came to us wanting to promote your latest product or services to encourage sales, social media alone will not get results.

To help your website be found and therefore your products and services, you can create well targeted campaigns with a Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign to give you a boost in search. The most popular is through Google AdWords. Although you can also conduct ads through social media such as Facebook. You can target specific geographical areas and demographics that fit your target audience.

Learn more with our 8 tips for PPC campaigns.

Remarketing

Remarketing is another way of getting you found online. Ads can show when clients are searching for your business on Google which really reinforces your brand message.

The more users see an ad, the more trust is built overtime through brand awareness. While the CTR (click through rate) generally declines over time, the people who do click are more likely to convert.

Read our blog: Understanding how remarketing can grow your business.

Email marketing

With 73 percent of millennials preferring communications from businesses to come via email (HubSpot), it makes sense to consider this as a potential marketing option alongside other digital tactics.

Once your template is set up, it’s easy to add content by repurposing what you’ve already created for your blog. It helps to reinforce your messaging, get the news out there and guides people to your website.

More insight with 11 tips on setting up and running email campaigns.

Become a lead magnet

So, as you can see it’s not all about social media marketing. This is just a little taster of some of the other digital marketing tactics out there all designed to help you generate quality leads for your business.

Get in touch with us to discuss what the best digital marketing options are for your business and we can tailor an inbound marketing campaign for you.

Man working on laptop using marketing automation

Why Smart Cow became a HubSpot agency

05/06/202102/21/2020 by scmarketing

We know that a sales journey is very rarely a one-stop shop. Your customers and prospects will have visited your competition’s website, researched your services and looked at online reviews long before they start speaking to you. As a result, you need to stand out from the competition and become a lead generation magnet.

This is why we became a HubSpot agency in London. We understand that the day to day running of your business will take up your time. So, we partnered with HubSpot so that we could provide our clients with the latest in Automated Marketing Software to help with your marketing strategy and help free up time.

What does HubSpot software offer?

HubSpot software allows you to track activity and leads from your inbound marketing such as social media, website or email marketing campaigns, and other forms of content marketing you use.

You can organise and nurture relationships to help you convert a prospect to a client in a timely manner, that’s suitable for them, this can lead to more client success.

Think about when you look at a website and you get a friendly chat bot appearing or what about the email you receive once you’ve downloaded a report from a website?

HubSpot provides the capability to automate these repetitive tasks to help you concentrate on managing your client relationships and target audiences.

All these automated touchpoints are vital for nurturing leads and can help up your marketing game against your competition. This is data driven and can show you the result of your inbound sales, and where your new customer acquisition originates from.

Discover the benefits of automation

As a professional digital marketing and inbound marketing agency in London, we’re offering you a chance to discover the benefits of the HubSpot software and how it can help your business. We’d be delighted to arrange a free test of this great sales and marketing platform.

Go ahead, book a free consultation. As well as this we discover what we can do for your business with our digital marketing services, inbound marketing strategies, social media marketing and much more.