Chess pieces relating to digital marketing strategy

Do you know who your competition is?

With over 1.5 billion websites you need to make your business stand out from the crowd. But how can you do this if you don’t know who your competitors are and what they’re doing?

What do your competitors offer?

Before setting out on any marketing campaign, drawing up a list of key competitors and the services and products they offer is essential. This not only means you know what you’re up against, but it means you can make your offers stand out which in turn will help increase awareness and traffic to your website.  

For example, if you think of yourself with a bricks and mortar premises, if you were opening a café you would want to know what competitors nearby are offering so you can introduce something new, or make the decision to offer a loyalty card or perhaps offer different food. Doing this research also helps you understand the type of traffic you might expect into your new shop.

So, back then to the digital world, it’s no different. Who you attract to your website is not just about putting money behind a Pay Per Click advertising campaign, it’s about understanding how you can attract customers to visit your site by clicking on that campaign in the first place. Understanding what your competitors are offering will help.

Although don’t just research your competition. You need to know your target audience, create an online persona, pinpoint your geographic areas and get a core list of keywords and phrases you want to be found for. It comes back to having brand consistency. We’ve talked about these other aspects in our blog and our overview will give you good insight into what goes in to planning your own digital marketing campaign.  

Book a Practice Growth Session

If you want some help formulating your marketing campaign, our Practice Growth Sessions are tailored for businesses keen to grow and ready to invest in digital marketing to achieve their goals. It will arm you with the fundamental details for you to be able to implement a campaign to help you grow. You can book a session with us for £95.

Read more tips for building a great website as part of a well targeted digital marketing campaign.

Source: Internet Live Stats

AdWords

Why you can entrust your Google AdWords to Smart Cow

Each year at Smart Cow Marketing we ensure that we are Google AdWords certified. This is probably one of the most important certifications there is with regards to Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and in particular Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising. It is an important credential for marketers and one that is not lightly awarded. Receiving a Google AdWords certification means that Smart Cow Marketing continues to be recognised as being experts in digital marketing and PPC.

To achieve certification, a business is required to pass a Fundamentals exam as well as exams for areas of their expertise. Smart Cow has managed to stand out in two areas which are Google Ad Search and Display Advertising.

In order to pass, businesses have to learn extensive academy content working through numerous modules for Google Ads Search and Google Ads Display which are regularly updated and completed time-based exams with a minimum pass of 80%.

Break down of the exams…

The compulsory fundamentals exam covers all the basic and intermediate concepts such as; benefits of AdWords, online advertising, the most efficient ways to manage and optimise AdWords campaigns.

Our Google Ad Search certification means we know how to successfully manage and optimise search ad campaigns in order to help businesses attract an audience.

Passing the display advertising exam means we can use advanced concepts to create display campaigns, which are advertisements on websites, apps, or social media platforms through banners and various other advertising formats.

Why don’t you try the sample quiz below to see how you do?

[onionbuzz quizid=1][/onionbuzz]

Pay per click Croydon

Being Google Ads certified means we provide the best and most professional advice for your businesses digital marketing campaigns.

We’re really proud of this achievement and are always looking out for more ways in which Smart Cow Digital Marketing can be even more qualified to help your business. Call us on 020 3137 1826 or drop us an email on saymoo@smart-cow.com.

Find out more about Google Ads Certification.

Plan post it notes

How our Practice Growth Sessions help your business

Digital marketing is now essential to the success of almost any business. Our tailored Practice Growth Sessions look at how to most effectively get your business to be competitive online and noticed by your potential clients. We tailor our sessions for businesses keen to grow and ready to invest in marketing to achieve their goals.

How we help

The purpose of this session is to provide you with a guide to the right foundation to start building a digital marketing campaign to grow your business. At the end, you will understand how to target your message and the tools available to help deliver the campaign.

Our Practice Growth Sessions are broken into three stages conducted in a 1-hour workshop. It’s these steps that will build your unique campaign:

  1. We delve into why someone would choose to do business with you, getting to know your business and what makes you special. It’s all about understanding your brand identity and target audience to help create your marketing campaign.
  2. We then look more closely at your potential clients, your competition and your target markets. This will help to build a strategy to grow your business.
  3. We then focus on the digital marketing tools available and splinter off those that are right for you to deliver your goals.

Get in touch

You can book a session for £95, or if you are an accountancy practice, we are currently offering a FREE Practice Growth Session.

Let us use our experience, skills and knowledge to create and deliver a quality digital marketing campaign for your business. Any questions do get in touch.

Website letters

Top tips to consider for your website

A website has so many similar characteristics to a bricks and mortar premises. It’s your main shop window so needs to look good, have up to date items on display on the homepage and most importantly when you step inside your ‘premises’, your website needs to be easy to navigate.

So, we’ve gathered a few tips on what to think about when embarking on refreshing your website or creating a new one.

The website basics

What type of website do you want? Does it need to be a simple brochure website that showcases what services you offer with a clear call to action? Or do you want a more interactive website with the ability to capture data, download functionality or e-commerce capabilities?

Basically, your website is your shop window – so getting this right is key. Ensuring you have a menu bar with easy navigation and clear call to actions to help your visitor and keep them on your website. Which brings us on to our next point.

Website bounce rate

Whether you already have a website or you’re looking to create a new one you’ll be wanting to manage your bounce rate and keep that low. A high percentage means that people are leaving your website very quickly usually because content is not relevant or the website is not easy to navigate. If people don’t stay on your website for long this is unlikely to lead to conversion.

This leads us on to our next point about content and having a clear call to action to help reduce bounce rates.

Call to action

Ultimately you want people to sign up to your services or buy your products, so tell people what to do when they reach your site. Make buttons, web links or text links obvious so that a visitor to your website is drawn to a specific landing page with all the key detail needed to attract them to your offering. In short. This means making sure you have clear ‘download now’ buttons or ‘sign up to our newsletter’ or ’subscribe now’ text.

Blog

Call to actions are also often used in inbound marketing activity such as through social media posts which entice people to visit a website via reading the latest blog. Blogs are a key part of inbound marketing campaigns. Blogs can help build awareness of the brand, increase traffic to the website, lead generation and position you as an authority in your field which helps build trust.

Attract and engage visitors

We build websites that are designed to attract and engage visitors as well as be the centre of your digital world. If you’re looking to attract, engage and convert your potential clients, get in touch with us and chat about your website requirements.