These are undoubtedly difficult times for small businesses in London. Budgets are tight and increasingly businesses are looking within themselves to see where expenditure can be cut. When it comes to internet marketing this might be up for consideration but if your internet marketing is being done properly you should know exactly what value you are gaining from it and that should clearly prove that it is not a luxury but quite clearly as a necessity.

Whether you are using an agency or doing it yourself you must make sure you have the necessary metrics and analytics in place to measure the value of all of your internet marketing efforts.  If you are doing an email marketing campaign, track how many people are converting into a valued metric whether it be a sale, a registration or an enquiry for example then work out if the cost justifies your Return On Investment (ROI). The same with search engine optimisation for example; how many visitors to your site are being generated through organic search and how many of those are converting, what is the cost of that conversion and does the end result justify the means? If not, stop it and rethink! If your agency isn’t able to show you that then ditch them and find one that can!

If you’re on a really tight budget then there are few internet marketing activities that you can do which are cheap, non-technical but just require a bit of your time. A few things you can do are:

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In almost all consumer business areas the online competition for high ranking organic and paid search  non-geographic keyword phrases is extremely high. Of course, you can achieve high rankings for generic keywords but if you are pursuing organic Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) as a strategy then you need to be patient for the results and put in a lot of work or pay someone else to do it for you and if you are utlising Paid Search then although the results are almost instantaneous you need to be prepared to pay a high Cost per Click (CPC) which depending on your conversion rate could end up being very expensive.

Therefore, if you want to compete for the generic non-geographic keywords whether you’re opting for a strategy of SEO or Paid Search or indeed both, you’ll need to be prepared to invest both time (either yours or someone elses) and money - you’re objectives, resources and budget will define exactly how much of both. That’s exactly what successful worldwide, nationwide or wholly online businesses targeting the most competitive non-geographic keywords have to do.

If however, you’re primarily an offline ‘bricks and mortar’ business that relies on footfall from your surrounding area and are by your very essence targeting a specific village, town, city or county then Local Search is defnitely the route you should be considering as your starting point. Afterall, if let’s say you’re a restaurant in Notting Hill, do you really need to be promoting yourself to people outside of London? Probably not, if potential customers were coming from outside London on business or for a holiday and they wanted to find a restaurant online then they’d most likely search for something like a ‘restaurant in notting hill’. So on that basis you’d definitely want to promote yourself geographically for the search term Notting Hill but then you may also want to expand your Search Engine Marketing (SEM) whether SEO or Paid Seartch to include nearby villages like Kensington and Westborune Grove, maybe West London or perhaps even London as a whole. Either way, if you’re limited on budget and resource you stand a much greater chance of success by localising your SEM.

I’ll use a client case study and SEO to demonstrate this further.  The client is called Beautcamp Pilates and they’re credited with bringing reformer pilates over to London from LA. Their business is extremely successful due to their professionalism and quality of service and they have large studios in both East and West London. As with many ‘first movers’ that are successful you get a lot of competition surfacing after the event all playing catch-up, all searching for a piece of that success and competition is good thing so long as it is ethical…

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Hatch are please to announce to all car enthusiasts, that the Smith and Hunter website is now live.

One of the features of the new website is the ability for users to book their car in for servicing online, choosing a date and time that suits them.

Looking for your dream car?

Well now you don’t have to! By filling in a quick and easy form online, Smith and Hunter will do all the legwork for you; helping you find the car of your dreams at the best possible price. Oh and did we mention that they can sell your car for you as well?

After registering online, users will have the option to sign up for a loyalty card. This card will enable users to receive discounts on parts and labour, early notification on special offers and first refusal on service slots.

With all these features coupled together with its superb functionality, some car enthusiasts would suggest that this was another ‘top gear’ performance by Hatch…we would like to think so too.