Name: Smart Cow Marketing
Price range: $$$

BNI Sutton Featured Presentation

08/19/202201/22/2021 by scmarketing

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.

10 minutes January 2021 BNI Sutton from Smart cow marketing

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

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.

Accounting firms: Kick start your inbound marketing campaign

05/06/202109/25/2020 by scmarketing

With so much happening online today, ensuring your accountancy firm has share of voice online is essential for new business and growth. While ensuring your existing clients are well looked after, in this current climate it’s no longer possible to simply rely on repeat business or referrals.

At the centre of all your online activity should be your website, but how do you get potential clients to your site?

Here we give you an overview of how to kick start or enhance your online inbound marketing campaign for your accounting practice.

Set up your Google My Business page

If you haven’t already set this up then make sure you action it as soon as possible. We’ve got a series of videos coming up to give you the ins and outs of this directory but safe to say that as it is one of the largest search engines, then having your business listed with address, contact details, opening times, web URL and services then you are already helping your optimisation strategy to lead people to your business.

Search engine optimisation (SEO)

Before starting your inbound marketing campaign, make sure that your own website is optimised for search engines. There are many tools available to run against your site to see where improvements can be made to your site is more effective. We found Semrush a great tool, although also many free options and plug-ins you can have for your browsers.

If your website design and build was some time ago make sure that is is mobile responsive. Check how the web pages look on your smart phone and that it’s easy to read and navigate.

We can provide a free website review which will highlight some key areas you can focus on initially.

Also take a look at our Boost your SEO blog for some quick fix top tips for your SEO strategy.

Create a persona

Do you know who you are marketing to? One of the best ways to understand this is to create a marketing persona. This is an imaginary character based on your target audience and current client base.

Once you’ve created a persona it makes it much easier to understand how to market to them, what language to use and what online marketing channels would be best.

Here’s our tips on creating an online persona for your firm.

Website structure

You need to make sure your website is structured to make it easier to navigate so that visitors can quickly and simply find what they’re looking for.

This makes a much better experience for your visitors and also lowers the bounce rate which will negatively affect your site in search engine results pages (SERPs).

We can work with you to review your site so that the website functionality is spot on for your prospects.

Keywords

It is worth making sure you know which keywords are appropriate to your business. Be specific. Think about what you would type in the search function to find what you are looking for to help you get a list of the right keywords.

This forms part of your content marketing strategy. Initially we recommend you review all your website content to ensure that it is up to date. Then consider adding a blog or news feed. The reason we suggest this is that it allows a space for you to add regular, fresh content to your website which will incorporate those keywords.

The more you use the keywords in fresh content, the more chances you have of being found by search engines. If you are an accountancy firm phased in Croydon then makes sure that you regularly say this on your website. But not only that, be a more specific in content and write blogs with keywords in titles or H1headings.

Take a look at our article, why blog, as this has some great tips on keywords, internal and external link building as well as Google My Business.

Inbound marketing agency for accountants

This is just a short overview of the key areas to implement to kick start your inbound marketing. Lay these solid foundations so that you can build on this for your ongoing inbound strategy. Here’s some further reading to help:

We specialise in marketing as well as working closely with many local businesses in Croydon and London area. Take a look at our digital marketing services for accountants including website design and development, social media management, Pay Per Click (PPC) and more.