Infinite Ideas - Successful Marketing: Simple Ideas for Building Your Sales

Welcome

About Successful marketing

Can you learn how to get to grips with marketing by reading a short e-book? The answer is a resounding YES. This book sets out all of the key issues and will give you a blueprint which you can apply to marketing just about anything!

The book is written for people with neither the time nor the patience to trawl through acres of jargon and management-speak. Successful marketing has been written in the belief that you can learn all you really need to know quickly and without hassle. The aim is to provide essential, practical advice you can use straight away.

How to use this book

The message here is Its OK to skim. Feel free to flick through to find the help you most need. This book is a collection of hands-on tips which will help you to spot any shortcomings you might have and show you how to turn them into strengths. You can become the slick marketeer youve always wanted to be.

You will find that there are some graphic features used throughout the book to help you extract key information quickly. These summarize each of the points covered by prompting you to think about an issue, and then giving you action points which are backed up with lists of handy tips to keep you on the right track.

You?

These features ask you to think about something they set the scene and identify the problems by prompting you to consider familiar attitudes and situations.

Act

With the problems diagnosed, these features give you the framework for an action plan they will help you to change your behaviour patterns in a positive way.

Tips

These features appear at the end of each chapter. They are checklists which summarize all the advice given throughout the chapter and are also a useful reminder of whats where when you come back to look at this book in the future.

Successful marketing has been written to dip into. You dont have to read it all at one go or follow every tip to the letter. If youre really pushed for time, you could skip through the book following the graphic features.

GOOD LUCK!

9. Digital marketing

Whats in this chapter for you?

• Do you actually need a website?
• Whats the website for and whos going to design it?
• Finding the right designer
• The website brief
• A little about SEO
• A little about social networking
• A little about display advertising
• Mobile marketing
• Affiliate marketing

We are not going to attempt to try to teach you all you need to know about internet marketing in just one short chapter. Its a complex subject and something of a moveable feast. What we offer here is a simple overview.

Do you actually need a website?

It is possible that you dont need a website for your business. Possible, but unlikely. If you do want to dip your toe into cyberspace, there are some good off-the-peg web creation sites out there that can help you. A good place to start might be Moonfruit .

The main advantage to the DIY site building option is that it can be very cheap. The disadvantage is that it can also look very cheap.

Unless you have nerdy tendencies, your best bet is probably to use the services of a web design business. You should be able to find some local firms easily by Googling web design [your home town]. The businesses that appear on page one of the search results would be your best starting point as they have proved they understand how to make a web site findable (a little more on the black art of SEO later).

Whats the website for and whos going to design it?

Before you approach anyone work out what you need a website for.

Act!

Does your website need to be transactional i.e. will you be selling things from it? If so youll need a secure e-commerce platform. Or is it for information only an electronic catalogue, for example? Decide what the purpose of your website is before approaching anyone to design it.

You need to think about hosting, too. If you suddenly take cyberspace by storm, its not good if your traffic causes the host site to crash all the time.

And whats the website going to be called? It can be very frustrating trying to find a suitable name for a new site (all the good ones may well be gone!) but do think about the suffix you use, whether it needs to be .com (best if youre trading internationally), something regional such as .co.uk, or whether something like .net will work. There are numerous websites that will help you generate a URL.

Your design agency should be able to help you with this and point out the pros and cons of the various options. Theyll also help you generate web addresses that will mean people find you.

We always try to steer people towards URLs that actually help their SEO. So, if its a company that specializes in cleaning offices, well look for a name that has office cleaning in it. Simple really.

Jim Begley, web designer

The website brief

Once you have a spec. for your site, speak with several agencies to compare their services and price. What are they giving you? Do they offer 24/7 service if theres an outage? Will you be able to update your site easily via the content management system (CMS in geek speak)?

The first site we had built was all singing and dancing. The trouble was it was too slow to load as it had too many features on it. It was a mess, an expensive mistake. We threw it away after two years and started again. It was all because we didnt know what we wanted the site to do and couldnt give a proper brief.

David Grant, publisher.

Tips

Developing a web site brief

• Work out what you want the site to do. Is it to inform or to sell from, for example?
• Think about the overall functionality of the site. Is it going to be static, do you want video, music and blogs, for example? More importantly, do you need video, music and blogs at this stage?
• Think how any current design branding can be incorporated into the site. Will the colours you currently use in your logo work online?
• Spend time researching websites that have design features and tone of voice that you like and that you think will work for you. When youre talking to designers, share these with them.
• Consider social networking and how it can be incorporated into your site. If you use or plan to use Twitter, blogs or Facebook, for example, ask the design team how that can be incorporated and what their expertise is in maximizing the potential of social networks.

One of the chief problems we have with new clients is persuading them that their home page shouldnt be a 10,000 word essay on their business. We always try to go with short, snappy copy, simple menu bars and a call to action of some sort. But it can be a struggle with some clients

Jim Begley

Act!

When someone lands on your website, it should be immediately obvious what youre offering. That means clear concise copy and images. Does you existing site pass this test?

A little about SEO

SEO search engine optimization is seen by many as something approaching a black art. Whats it all about? Well, essentially good SEO results in your business appearing towards the top of the page when someone searches online in your sector.

Youll receive any number of emails from strange people guaranteeing that they can get you to Number One on Google. Its up to you if you employ (and have the budget to employ) a bespoke SEO agency. It may well benefit you, but beware Google and the other search engines have some pretty tough policies on SEO manipulation. If they think youre using underhand means they will come down on you hard and that can mean you disappear from view altogether.

Your web designer should offer you SEO advice from the beginning. Good SEO goes hand in hand with good design our own book Get Into Bed with Google will give you much more information, but here are the crucial things to consider.