December 2015 -

5 Ways to Improve Your Customer’s Search Experience

By John Woods | December 2, 2015

Google is now your home page and just like your website your Google search engine results page it needs investment, specifically to ensure that when people are searching for your brand term they get an experience as well managed as walking into your companies head office reception. Here are 5 things you can do within a week to improve your customers search experience:

1) AdWords – Start using AdWords

A well managed AdWords campaign for your branded search terms is akin to having good receptionist who will guide visitors to what they are looking for.

2) Complete Google My Business

If you do a brand search and a box appears on the right with a question under it “Are you the business owner?” click it! And claim your Google My Business, this will help customers find your business online and in the real world as well as ensuring your business has influence over another part of the SERP for your brand.

3) Get a SlideShare account on LinkedIn

Upload presentations to it to your Slideshare account. Make sure the content is good so people download and share. Google tends to rank SlideShare links highly for branded search terms.

4) Manage your Google Sitelinks

1: The main search result

2: Sitelinks

Google uses an algorithm to automatically select site links it thinks will be helpful to your customers, but it sometimes gets it wrong and when it does you can demote Sitelinks so Google won’t show them.

5) Get a Twitter account

Google typically ranks well managed Twitter accounts highly for branded search terms.

(Bonus) 6) Get a Wikipedia page

This isn’t possible for some companies because Wikipedia has a policy of only including articles that are ‘notable’. But if your company does qualify you may seen an uplift in your branded SEO because of a backlink on your brand search term from Wikipedia.

Ready to find out more? Please call on 01189 001920.

What Sales Needs from Marketing in B2B Companies

By John Woods |

Every organisation is different, this is a generic list designed to provide insight on the sort of activities marketing should be providing to generate qualified sales leads.

Please click here for your free printable Marketing Activities Checklist.

Daily

Respond to social media: Use a social media monitoring tool (we use Act-On’s Prospecting tool) to place alerts for our brand, our competitors brands and keywords about our offerings. It’s simple, help people find the information they are looking for and some of them will turn into sales leads.

Respond to brand advocates: When a client talks about our brand respond, it makes them feel good, us feel good and builds trust with potential clients.

Follow your customers and promote their success on social.

Don’t use automated tweets: It’s faux, be authentic.

Post upwards of six tweets a day, two Facebook and three LinkedIn responses/shares/updates.

Weekly

Post at least one blog/case study/white paper per week, but if there is nothing to write about we don’t write a substandard idea just to meet a target.

Summary report on lead generation from marketing blogs, case studies, white papers and social media. The Marketing team will need Marketing Automation software to do this.

Monthly

Detailed report on lead generation from marketing blogs, case studies, white papers and social media. The Marketing team will need Marketing Automation software to do this.

Attend networking events – not everything happens online! Aim to speak at one event every three months as a minimum. Record the talk and put it on YouTube and SlideShare. This will improve your customers search experience.

Quarterly

Review marketing strategy and amend as requited.

Set goals for next quarter, ensure goals are matched to capability to deliver, adjust goals or capability if there is a disparity.

Strategy

Implement a marketing automation solution.
Align skills of marketing department with needs of business.