Internet Marketing in a Recession
It may have taken a while for it to become “official” but what was at first a `credit crunch` finally became a `Recession`. Internet Marketing London understands that for most people this means reducing expenditure particularly as banks crumble, mortgages dry out and discretionary spending reduces for everyone. The effect on businesses can be terminal, particularly in the retail and manufacturing industries that rely on the flow of tangible cash and even those that avoid administration or liquidation are still vulnerable to redundancies and a reduction in profits. Sadly in many cases businesses make the mistake of pulling back on their internet marketing spend.
In the current economic climate, just about every internet marketing consultancy source recommends an increase or at the very least, a fresh approach to internet marketing strategy. The latter is especially true of businesses that have an internet presence that has yet to be fully exploited. A website is not simply a visual platform or an electronic brochure. It should provide all of the essential information that potential customers need in selecting goods and services from a given supplier. Get it right and the potential is virtually limitless.
Internet marketing services which can easily be managed yourself include the following four principal areas, the importance of each being determined by the sector in which you operate and the degree of competition. Perhaps most importantly for businesses under financial pressure, with the exception of paid search, the primary investment is time rather than money.
1. Search Engine Optimisation
Statistics vary but there is a widely held suggestion that some 85% of all traffic to a site will arrive via the search engines, the most dominant of which is Google. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is an ever more complex set of disciplines designed to achieve visibility in the `natural` or `organic` - in other words unpaid - search results in Google, Yahoo, Bing (formerly MSN) together with a range of smaller search engines.
For too many businesses, Search Engine Optimisation represents something of a holy grail. In some sectors, the competition for relevant search terms is so ridiculous that other approaches including paid search and social media may offer a better return on investment. That said, a number of the core techniques used in Search Engine Optimisation are prerequisites for the other approaches in any case. In almost all cases, however, it is important to recognise that the results of SEO efforts will take many months rather than weeks or days to begin to materialise. That said, once the traffic starts coming, provided that you continue to keep your site fresh with regularly added and updated content, you should see it continue - and indeed rise if you continue with the campaign - so the long term return on investment is far stronger than with most other internet marketing techniques.
Firstly, you will need to ensure that the search terms upon which you plan to focus your efforts are relevant. Since almost all other activities are driven by these terms, it is essential that you identify them as well as you can. With a thorough understanding of your target audience and their mindset, you can use historical data including information from your web server logs and analytics accounts: there is a surprising amount of information available and numerous free tools with which to extract and analyse it. You can then employ further free tools such as those provided by Google AdWords in identifying relevant related search terms. There are of course better paid tools you can use i.e. Wordtracker for example and although these tools are primarily designed to allow you to identify search terms for use in paid search marketing (see below) they provide a useful view as to the terms actually used by the searching public.
This information should help in identifying a set of target search terms in the “sweet spot” balanced between search volume and the degree of competition. Many businesses fall into the trap of opting for overly generic terms which, even if ranking is achieved, may drive poorly targeted traffic which may not result in the desired increase in sales. Thus far, your only investment will have been time.
With a robust set of search terms identified, you can now optimise the structure and content of your site in support of these terms. Site optimisation is a discipline in its own right and there are many excellent online resources available free of charge which will allow you or your team to learn and apply the appropriate techniques, again with minimal investment beyond that of time. Focus on on-page content, ensuring that it supports your target keywords, with each page focused on one or two keywords which must also occur in the meta tags and in heading 1 and 2 tags at a minimum. Detailed explanations as to the best use of the various tags are readily found online. You should ideally aim for a keyword density of some 2-4% so, for example, if your target search term were “SEO London”, as a two word term it should occur once or twice in every 100 words of text.
Your site navigation and internal linking structure must also support your search terms with the relevant keywords included in internal links. There are endless other factors, all of which can make a significant difference to your rankings and for which free of charge information is readily available. These include code optimisation; use of cascading style sheets (CSS) and divisional layers; effective use of image names and ALT tags; creation of hub pages and of course the avoidance of old fashioned “spammy” techniques of which there are many. All of this should not only result in a site that is search engine friendly but will render the site more intuitive and relevant to your visitors with resultant improvements in conversion and retention rates.
The final key element of SEO is the acquisition of “votes of confidence” in the form of links from other relevant sites. The search engines are highly sensitive to these and reward them accordingly. Again this is a complex discipline in its own right and many businesses turn to specialist search engine optimisers. However, all of the techniques can be learned from online resources. Essentially linking must be about an exchange of value. One of the simplest options can be to trade links with other sites in an “I`ll link to you, you link to me” approach. Whilst there is a widely held view that the search engines are placing less weight on such links, this remains a widely accepted practice and really depends on the quality of the page you are linking from, the number of outgoing links it has already and whether you can be contextually linked from a body of relevant content.
As an alternative, you can offer something of value to a third party in return for them linking to you, creating a much-coveted inbound only link. Under no circumstances must this be hard cash as buying links is regarded as an unethical “black hat” approach and is easily identified and penalised by the search engines. There is, however, nothing to stop you from offering some relevant free of charge content (with your link already included): many sites struggle to find the time to produce decent content and will welcome this. You should also find that, over time, as the content on your site is indexed and ranked by the search engines, you will naturally attract links from other sites who consider your content to be useful to their own audience.
2. Paid Search Marketing (PPC)
Here you are optimising your presence in the paid results which are listed alongside the natural results for given searches. Paid search Marketing offers the dual advantages of immediacy (in stark contrast with the long haul seen in natural search) and the opportunity to achieve presence for highly competitive terms that may be untenable in natural search. In a pressured economy, paid search campaigns must deliver very clear returns on investment and the costs of such campaigns must be managed in considerable detail. Keyword identification and good on-site optimisation are thus of equal importance in paid search. Understanding the correct balance of terms for which you wish your listing to appear is ever more important and the data you will have previously assimilated in optimising your site will come into play here. Some degree of experimentation is needed and if budgets are under pressure it may also make sense to explore lower volume, lower cost paid advertising options.
There are also a number of free or low cost tools that will allow you to manage and track your paid campaigns in considerable detail across multiple paid search providers. The effort you made in optimising and enriching the content of your site will also ensure that you don`t pay a premium cost per click as a result of a so-called “landing page quality score” employed by some of the major paid search engines and will, of course, maximise conversions from the traffic driven via the campaign. One final key point here is to note the ad copy used by any competitors appearing above you in the paid listings. Google and Yahoo Search Marketing (formerly Overture), for example, are known to use the click-through rate as a major factor in determining your position in the paid results, rather than solely the maximum price you have agreed to pay per click - so the most effective ads will win.
3. Social Media Marketing
Another broad discipline in its own right, social media marketing has now come of age as a valid element of the online marketing mix. Once again, keywords and decent on-site optimisation are vital in fully leveraging this channel. Other key success factors include identifying the right social media sites for your target demographic (there is plenty of information available) and being seen to add real value. In achieving the latter, search the relevant social media sites, industry blogs and forums for questions relating to your industry, products or services. When you find relevant questions which will often be poorly answered, look for or add rich, relevant content to your own site which addresses the question and, if needed, expands upon it. Then post a summarised but useful answer on the social media site in question with a link to the relevant page on your site for further information. This helps all of the parties involved and establishes you as a credible and helpful industry resource. Although considerable time and effort is required, the brand reputation it can create is significant. You should also find that others will start to link to you as a valuable resource.
4. Affiliate Internet Marketing
Affiliate internet marketing is a further means by which you may be able to raise your profile in a cost effective way, especially if you negotiate a pay-per-action agreement as opposed to a pay per click. The latter can cost a great deal in popular categories, without necessarily getting results, whereas the former costs only when some agreed result occurs. Once again, there is endless information available on UK affiliate marketing programs and the financial risks can be minimal if properly managed.
There are of course, other ways in which to promote your site including press releases and content syndication but the above activity streams represent a reasonably well balanced online marketing mix. Correctly planned and executed, the rewards can be considerable and in today`s pressured environment, although there are many excellent specialist providers in each area, the primary investment is that of time rather than necessarily vital operating capital which means you should always consider managing these activities in-house instead of automatically assuming it should be outsourced. You can even engage the initial help of an internet marketing consultant to create an internet marketing strategy for your business and to train your staff if necessary.
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