Name: Smart Cow Marketing
Price range: $$$

Part 2: Digital marketing trends 2021

08/19/202212/10/2020 by scmarketing

Here we look ahead to 2021 and the marketing trends to consider to help with your business growth strategy to attract quality leads. We’ve already discussed agile marketing, personalisation and video in our previous Digital Marketing Trends 2021 instalment. Here we have a few further thoughts that you should look to consider in your marketing plan.

Webinar growth

There is no doubt that the way we work and live our daily lives has changed. Exhibitions and events were non existent in 2020 but everyone adapted with a significant boom in online conferences and regular webinars. This has opened doors to many businesses across sectors to reach out to their target audience in a way that would have been unimaginable before. Therefore, factoring in a webinar into your marketing plan could be a great way to reach potential new clients.

Partnering with another local business that complements your services could be a great way to reach more people. What’s key is getting the right theme for your event, make sure you are giving advice that will encourage people to sign up.

If you don’t feel confident in running your own webinar then tap into local networking groups as many have started up monthly webinars. You can then pitch yourself forward as a panellist or provide an idea for a webinar.

Content marketing plan

So, this is not quite a trend as such but it’s a big tip to help you create a marketing strategy. The goal is to be consistent with messaging and to reach people at the right time. It’s really important to have insightful content as this is not just about brand awareness it’s about building trust with your target audience. What we mean by this is people don’t want to be sold to. They want to trust that what they hear from you will help them with their own challenges. They want to read insightful blogs that mean that time and again they click on your social media posts or open your emails over any other business. The potential customer knows that they are going to read or download something useful for them.

So, with this in mind, create a calendar for the year and month on month plot out what messages you will push out there. Plan what blogs you will write and time these with product launches, events, relevant awareness days and any other occasion relevant to your business and message at that time. This will help form structure and avoid a scatter gun approach.

SEO spotlight

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is at the core of a successful digital marketing strategy. Again, not a trend as such, however the reason we have a spotlight on SEO is that digital transformation has accelerated this year, therefore understanding how you can get the best from your website is vital as it’s your shop front to the world.

If you already have a website then start to think how can you make it better or optimise it in other words!

SEO will tie into your content marketing plan too. Every blog you write will need to be engaging and include keywords or rather long-tail keywords. Keywords refer to those phrases that you type into a search engine. Think about what a customer might type in to discover your services or products? Think like that and you are a step towards developing keywords for your content.

How to improve onsite SEO with keywords has some useful tips for keyword development.

Free digital marketing resources

We’re a digital marketing agency in Croydon and we have the following resources you can tap into.

Free website review: Find out how to improve your website’s performance.

Free digital marketing consultation: Our free consultation should be between 15 and 30 minutes. The goal is to provide you with thoughts on how to start an effective marketing campaign and for us both to see if it would benefit your firm. No obligation at all, we just want the best for you.

Get in touch with us today to talk through your digital marketing campaign requirements whether email marketing, SEO, Social media marketing, video content or Pay Per Click.

Part 1: Digital marketing trends 2021

11/26/2020 by scmarketing

At this time of year many of you will be making business plans for the year ahead. It’s time to look ahead to 2021 with hope. In our series of digital marketing trends blogs we’ll be highlighting some key areas to consider that can help your business attract leads and grow.

Digital technology and ‘agile’ marketing

Digital transformation for businesses has accelerated beyond imagination in 2020. Where possible, businesses have quickly had to move employees to remote working this year. A move that you could never imagine prior to March 2020. This has therefore brought ‘agile’ marketing to the fore. While agile marketing is a specific process, put simply it’s about placing the customer first and identifying opportunities through data analytics and being able to act on the analysis in an ‘agile’ way. Many smaller businesses we work with can take the core principle of this approach for their own business growth strategy.

At a basic level this could mean the ability to test marketing campaigns and act on results such as with a Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign by amending ads, adding or removing keywords. Or with an email marketing campaign conducting an AvB test. However, at the heart of agile marketing should be the understanding of who your customers are that you want for your business and their journey with your firm.

Therefore, when you look to 2021, don’t just think that you need to get on social media because everyone’s talking about online presence and digital technology. Social media may not be right for your business, but a mix and match approach to your digital presence will be. Therefore, getting a marketing strategy in place to kick start 2021 will help your business be flexible for targeting leads that are right for your business.

Personalisation

To be flexible with your marketing, it is vital to contact your prospects in a personalised manner and at a time convenient to them.

This is where understanding your target audience is key. If you haven’t already conducted the exercise to delve into who your core customers are then now is the time to do this. This will ensure that your marketing content in 2021 is tailored to your audience therefore helping to attract the right leads.

Creating an online persona will help you in this process as you will understand the challenges and pain points of your prospects and existing customers so that you create informative blogs, email marketing or social media posts that answer their questions. This will help you build awareness and trust as well as position you as a thought leader in your field.

Video and images

Whether you embraced video content in your marketing plan before lockdown earlier this year, we’re certain you will have touched on this in some way during this year. Whether you joined virtual events with recorded videos or you’re looking more and more at social media and finding yourself drawn to video content, now more than ever video should form part of your content marketing plan.

You can make videos efficiently, simply and at no extra cost on your mobile phone.

Repurpose content from your blogs and make short and snappy videos to bring your blog web page and social media posts to life.

Read our blog on using video for business for tips on setting up videos for your business for some useful dos and don’ts.

We also have some top tips on using images for digital marketing including keeping your website engaging with images and a summary of image sizes for social media platforms including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Free digital marketing resources

We’re a digital marketing agency in Croydon and we have the following resources you can draw on during this time. Get in touch with us today to talk through your requirements.

Free website review: Find out how to improve your website’s performance.

Free digital marketing consultation: Our Free consultation should be between 15 and 30 minutes. The goal is to provide you with thoughts on how to start an effective marketing campaign and for us both to see if it would benefit your firm. No obligation at all, we just want the best for you.

Video content strategy that will help with your inbound marketing

Marketing for virtual business events

07/07/202007/02/2020 by scmarketing

We’ve all had to adapt significantly during these last few months, none more so than the networking and events industry.

In the past, we’ve talked about networking events being a really powerful place for small businesses to grow. So, as we went into lockdown you could have been forgiven for having a moment of panic about how you were going to cope without those vital networking opportunities and face to face connections.

Well, I think we can all agree that we’ve adapted somewhat. During this time, we’re sure you, like many other businesses have attended and benefited from the talks webinars and virtual events such as the fantastic accounting event – The Virtual Summit and the recent London Festival of Architecture. What they now have in common is an event that people worldwide can take part in – not just those in London.

So, the question is, do we see these virtual events continuing? If so, how do we get the message out there more widely when we’re doing our marketing so that attendance skyrockets?

Tips for marketing your own webinar

What virtual events have given businesses and networking groups is potential of a wider reach.

We love a networking group and have spent many a great session at the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) events with other amazing members.

We’ve all become much more adept to conducting business with colleagues and clients via screen. So as more and more of us look to create our own webinars as a way of talking about products and services, here’s a few tips to remember when setting up your virtual event.

Be clear on the event details

As with anything you are promoting, be clear about what your event is about. Just like any other marketing you want to be targeting the right people to attend to ensure that you have quality leads.

Promote on all digital marketing channels available

Promoting the event through all channels available to you is essential. So, from social media through to email marketing, obvious presence on the homepage of your website and reminding colleagues to all share details of the event to their network.

Create a marketing tool box

If you have other speakers on your panel then make sure they have marketing information from you. It’s one of those things you can easily overlook but it’s key to encourage people to share the relevant information. It also ensures that your event has a consistent look and feel. Make sure your panellists have the following:

Share the specific event details so that everyone is saying the same thing
Make sure all involved have the right website address for registering so they can share to their contacts. You can also ask them to use a specific trackable link
Event images / videos – keep consistent. Ask people to use the images you supply
Share the relevant social handles and hashtags to promote the event

Our client Symphony was a speaker at The Virtual Summit and the organisers provided a suite of images to use, sized per social channel as well as links. This meant that well over 40 speakers and their companies had the ability to share to their own networks at the touch of a button. This could be one of the key reasons that led to the event having over 14,000 registrations and over 4,000 tuning into our client’s session.

Segment email marketing lists

If you’re sending out email marketing, then remember to segment your lists so you know the different target groups and demographics. You can then personalise information sent so that by being targeted you are likely to encourage more sign ups.

Partner up

If you’re not too good with technology and think that working in partnership would be better for you then why not look at what networking groups such as LCCI have been doing. We’re proud members and had the privilege of running a session on growing your business through online lead generation. Therefore, perhaps you can approach a local business or join a networking group and see about getting your business on their fixtures of upcoming webinars.

Virtual events – the new norm?

Let’s address the elephant in the room, we don’t think this is the death knoll for physical events. We can safely say that the need for face to face contact and engagement still exists. However, we do see a shift occurring.

At exhibitions there’s often many streams of different talks happening simultaneously. So, you really have to pick and choose carefully. So, will we start to see seminars with more recordings being offered post event? This is a great way for marketing to continue after the doors have closed. By having information in a gated area, you can gather contact details to add to your database for ongoing communication.

However, this must not impact the numbers attending an event. So, there’s still a need for those exclusive happenings at summits and exhibitions such as the keynote speaker whose presentation won’t be available unless you attend.

Extend the reach of your business

We’ve talked about how a virtual event can help extend the reach further. This is the same for digital marketing. With 81% people conducting online searches for products and services, if you don’t already have a website now is the time to reach potential customers and clients. The website is at the centre of your online marketing strategy. This is something you own so that all your marketing can lead back to your website.

If you’re hosting a webinar a website is where you want to be holding all the details for it. By pushing all communication back to your website it helps with search engine optimisation (SEO) and will help boost your rankings in online search engine results.

We’re a digital marketing agency in Croydon, if you have any queries let’s chat further. Book a consultation.

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.