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 | Email  | Office hours: Mon-Fri 8:30am - 5:30pm 

Coloured and Decorated Easter eggs

Preparing for the Easter holiday: quick tips for B2B marketers

By Jennifer Esty  |  March 24, 2016

Easter weekend is nearly here, and you’re probably  looking forward to a few days of hot cross buns and chocolate eggs, but who is looking after your marketing while you’re away?

If you have an agency helping you out, you might not be too worried. However if you’re looking after it on your own or with a small team, some of whom are also on holiday, there are a few things you can do to make sure all the hard work of the past few months isn’t compromised by a week away.

Using AdWords?

If you have Google AdWords campaigns running, download the Google AdWords app (not AdWords Express).

This handy app gives you top line campaign information including:

  • Stats
  • Bids and budgets
  • Real-time alerts and notifications
  • Call a Google expert
  • Act on suggestions to improve your campaigns

Schedule content

Not all of your potential customers will be on holiday, so don’t let your content go stale while you are away. You can schedule content for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media platforms. There are loads of tools you can use, including HootSuite, Sprout Social and TweetDeck. Check out this article by Capterra, complete with a handy comparison chart for more information.

Using Facebook?

With Facebook Pages Manager you can view and respond to comments and private messages from your phone (as well as see Page Insights) and the Facebook Adverts Manager allows you to edit your ads and budgets, get notifications of when ads are finishing and keep an eye on your spending.

Still send emails

Most email platforms will allow you to send emails scheduled for a specific time. Marketing automation platforms also allow you set up automatic email sends based on user behaviour. So you don’t need to stop your lead nurturing over the holidays or let potential leads go cold while you figure out what to do with all that leftover lamb (incidentally, the BBC do a nice list of recipes).

Think about your website

As with email most content management systems have an option to schedule content, so you don’t have to leave your Happy Easter message on your website until the 11th of April. Nothing screams ‘I’ve gone on holiday and don’t care about you right now’ like outdated seasonal content. If your website CMS doesn’t have a schedule function, consider putting your best performing content on the homepage while you’re away, or at least don’t leave up information about an out of date event (or a picture of an Easter egg) during your break.

Check with your Sales team

Finally, just before you leave, make sure there is a plan in place to deal with inbound leads. If you have a small sales team who are also on holiday, make sure someone will be monitoring the group email address and you have an answer service in place so the phone doesn’t go unanswered.

Happy Easter!

A Guide to Improving Your B2B Digital Marketing in Your Lunch Hour

Improve Your B2B Digital Marketing in Your Lunch Hour

By Jennifer Esty  |  March 14, 2016

Make this Monday’s lunch hour count.

Download our guide and take some simple, practical steps towards improving your digital marketing in your lunch hour.

Includes tips on Google My Business, paid search, competitor research, LinkedIn and mobile that anyone can implement.

Got your sandwich? Start reading.

A smiley face Icon on top of a person

Reacting to Facebook Reactions

By Jennifer Esty  |  February 26, 2016

By now everyone has seen, and maybe even ‘Liked’ the new Facebook Reactions, giving us five new ways to respond to newsfeed content.

Although users have clamoured for a ‘Dislike’ button since the beginning of Facebook, and many of them still are, Facebook Reactions have a richer and arguably more positive range of emotions: Like, Love, Haha, Wow, Sad, and Angry.

So richer than just a ‘Like’ and a more positive selection than the widely accepted six basic human emotions, as Fear and Disgust make way for Love and Haha.

But enough about the Facebook Reactions themselves, what do they mean for marketers?

First, all Reactions are created equal.

At least until Facebook can create an algorithm that accurately gives weightings to different emotions.

Which means if a user expresses Anger at a post, Facebook will consider that engagement equal to a Like or a Love.

Second, we won’t just know if someone Likes something, we’ll know if they Love it, or if it makes them laugh, or cry.

There will be more opportunity to gain deeper and more meaningful insight from customers, resulting (hopefully) in more sophisticated audience targeting and content development—and therefore more cost effective engagement.

But more choice for users also means that marketers have to be more sophisticated in, and take more time with, their content development.

After all, what does sad or angry actually mean for a piece of content and for the brand that publishes it?

In addition to demographic targeting, brands now need to consider what kind of Reaction they are looking for, cultivating, monitoring and adapting at a pace fast enough to keep up with their audience.

Brands will not only need to ensure engagement, but the right sort of engagement by the right sort of people.

Facebook Reactions will probably make us all better marketers in the long term, delivering better content to people who are genuinely interested in engaging with our brands.

But it’s not enough to count Likes and shares, Facebook marketing will now require even more analysis and monitoring—and a more sophisticated understanding of the desired audience and their engagement with a brand.

Person on their phone drawing the search results

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.

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