Category Archives: Content Marketing

Many companies have struggled to stay afloat over the last couple of years due to Covid and the lockdowns. Some companies have had to borrow a lot of money to keep going and it may be that only now they are starting to be able to trade as before. It is very tempting to cut your marketing when money is tight but this can actually make your situation even worse. Depending on what marketing you do, you may find that by cutting it right down or stopping it completely, you lose the small amount of business you have. If you stop your marketing completely then you may also find that if you do wan to start it again in the future, you will have to basically start from scratch.

If you are struggling to afford your marketing, speak to your marketing department or the third party you use and ask them if they can prioritise what is most important to continue with. It may be for example, if you do Google Adwords pay per click, they recommend that you continue doing that but pause your Facebook ads. Once you know where your traffic is coming from you can make more of an informed decision.

More are more businesses are competing for sales each year which is why you need to make sure that your company stands out for all the right reasons.

Sometimes marketing campaigns need to be a little more daring at times and those that always play it safe may not be get great results. Before embarking on any marketing campaign, you need to ensure that you think it through carefully. If done correctly it can work wonders, but if done wrong, it can take you months to recover.

You need to make sure that your campaign is memorable for the right reasons. If for example you are within the building industry, you may want to make a campaign that is linked in to something that is going on at present. You may talk about the cost of housing and how people can get on the ladder or how to move up the property ladder. Plan out your marketing campaign in detail before starting to use it and be sure that it sends out the right message. Often the best way to market your business is to use a marketing agency as they will know what will work and what wont work.

There are a number of ways to advertise your business and you may only be exploring a few of these avenues at present.

Attracting footfall into your business premisses or increasing traffic to your site is often not easy but can be very rewarding.  Postcards can be effective as they tend to stand out a little more from the standard letters or flyers that people send. They are often made from card meaning they tend to stand the test of going through the postal system better. You can also save money with a postcard as you do not have to send them in an envelope.

When creating your postcard you need to think how to make best use of the space. A traditional postcard will have a graphic or number of graphics on the front with further details on the back. You should try and combine your website with any other marketing you are doing to keep it all uniform.  You will need to keep half of one side free for the name and address to go on.

Be sure to get the most important message on the postcard as you may very quickly run out of room and find that you have not put your contact details on.

If you are looking to send out a marketing email then you need to take the time to think carefully about what you put in the email. You need to ensure that your email gives readers a reason to want to read it but also doesn’t contain spammy content that may cause it to get blocked by spam filters.

You need to take the time to think of a good subject heading. It needs to capture their attention and make them want to open it. If it just looks like any other marketing email then you may find that your open rate is poor. Emails that are addresses personally to the individual tend to have a better response rate than those that are generic. If you do have your contact sin an excel or .csv list then you can usually upload these into your email marketing software and pull through their name so that email that is sent out is personalised to that specific contact.

Emails that contain certain words or too many references of these words can also be marked as spam. They will often end up in peoples junk email and half of them will never even be seen. If you keep sending out emails that are classed as spam then you may find that your IP becomes blacklisted.

Adding fresh and relevant content to your site is a very important part of marketing. It is not only useful to the viewers who will want to see that you are constantly updating the site but it also helps massively with SEO. Google and the other search engines favour sites that are constantly adding information to them. This information can’t be low quality or spammy, so must be relevant to the rest of the site and unique. It shouldn’t just be copied and pasted from another site; it needs to add its own value.

You may struggle to know how to get relevant content on to your site every week, as you may not want it cluttering up the main pages. One way to do this is to add a blog or an inspiration section to the website. This will allow you to add new articles when needed. You can then pull extracts of the three most recent ones through on to the home page for your viewers to see. This will also help get them indexed quicker on the search engines. If you are stuck for ideas then you may want to have a lot at other sites in your industry that are performing well and see what they do.