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Do you have control of your digital marketing?

April 21, 2017/0 Comments/in Digital Marketing Basics, Small Business Marketing /by Steve Hunter

Your digital marketing is part of your business’s Intellectual Property and you need to protect it.

“Intellectual property (IP) and other intangible assets that relate to doing business include patents, trademarks, designs, and secret processes and formulae.”

This blog covers the following topics:

  • How do I protect the ownership of my digital marketing?
  • What is the impact of losing access to my digital marketing?
  • If I lose access to my digital marketing, how to I get it back?

Digital Marketing is still a new frontier for most businesses. It can feel like it’s a big black box that is rapidly changing, which makes it hard to understand let alone master.

Most businesses, and especially small businesses, can feel that digital marketing is so complex they need to hand over everything to an expert, so they can focus on what they really love about their business.

But once you start working with a digital marketing agency or freelancer there is a risk you are handing over control of your business’s online identity and you might not get it back.

You might believe that you are always in control of your digital marketing but on parting ways with your marketer, you may discover that you neither have access to your marketing tools, the data they gathered or any way to recover them.  We’ve also found agencies and freelancers may not do the right thing once the “milk turns sour” and you want to get access to what you’ve paid for.

You’d hope these sort of circumstances were the exception, but sadly this isn’t the case. Businesses can lose access to their digital marketing when:

  • Marketing agencies or freelancers close their business
  • An exit clause in the contract states full ownership is retained by the agency or freelancer unless a fee is paid
  • An internal employee leaves either at your business or at an agency without handing over ownership

Most of our clients have either lost access to their digital marketing tools or have failed to recover or safeguard them once they’ve parted ways.

Here are just some of the examples we’ve come across:

  • Lost access to their domain as they got on the wrong side of their agency who shut everything down, ended up in court and they had to start again.
  • Different employees had used so many different email addresses and passwords and not recorded them that they couldn’t fix their issues fast enough and had to start again.
  • An agency was fired and on checking everything we found the agency was still connected to everything and logging in regularly!
  • Freelancer refused to hand-over all the finished designs, despite all the invoices being paid, until the client paid an extra $5000 as the freelancer said they still owned the copyright.

How do I protect the ownership of my digital marketing?

You don’t want to be contemplating switching agencies or running a major marketing campaign only to find you can’t do anything as you are totally locked out of everything you need.

The best way to protect your business is to minimise your risk by maintaining ownership of all of your marketing tools. You need to retain the ability to add or remove people when you want so you maintain control of your marketing. You can also get a contract written for your marketing supplier which will give you legal leverage should the worst occur.

Almost every major marketing tool allows you to give access to someone else without handing over complete control. If you need someone to manage something for you, make sure you get them to set you up as the administrator and owner first! By all means, let someone help, just make sure it’s done safely and with you in control.

If you are engaging with someone who tries to lock you into a contract which removes your ownership of your marketing tools, or copyright ownership of anything they produce for you, keep looking unless there is a very compelling reason to use them. Always ensure you get any contracts fully reviewed by a legal expert to ensure that you are getting a benefit from the contract.

There are very few reasons why you should hand over the keys to your business, so unless someone can explain the reason to you clearly, don’t do it without getting advice first.

So, let’s just get the most important thing out there first:

  • Do not share your passwords with anyone unless you have absolutely no other option.
  • Change your password immediately afterwards.
  • Don’t use the same password for everything.
  • Switch on 2-factor authentication whenever possible.
  • You can use a tool like LastPass to manage your passwords and share them safely.

You should be ensuring you have:

  • Administrative rights: You will then have administrative control of all your marketing tools and can add and remove people yourself. You should have this for everything you possibly can (e.g Google Analytics, Facebook, etc.) and there are very few exceptions where this can’t be done. If the person you are working with can’t do it, move on, they obviously don’t know enough or aren’t going to do a good job.
  • Login details: You have a username, password, and the web address of the tool so you can access it. You should have this for everything and don’t forget to store this information safely where you can get it, but others can’t.

What should you own the keys to?

  • Your domain name
  • Your website
  • Your hosting – You should know where it is, but not necessarily have access
  • Google Business and Bing Local
  • Google Analytics
  • Google Search Console (previously Webmaster Tools)
  • Bing Webmaster Tools
  • Google AdWords and Bing Ads
  • Facebook, Instagram & other social media pages
  • Facebook, Instagram & other social paid ad accounts
  • Your sales data on your website
  • Your customer email list on Mailchimp, Campaign monitor or other email marketing platforms

There are many other marketing platforms out there, but the principles remain the same.

If you are unsure of where you stand, you could get an independent consultant to review your marketing and advise you of how best to recover and protect yourself.

What is the impact of losing access to my digital marketing?

This really comes down to how much you have invested in your digital marketing and how many sales you make as a direct result of your website.

We’ll make the assumption that you are generating at least 50% of your sales through your digital marketing, either directly or due to your brand presence.

Your domain:

If you lose your domain, you may have lost your business. It can take months to legally recover your domain name and almost every aspect of your online business is tied to your domain. Your emails go to your domain, your website needs your domain, your ranking on search engines goes to your domain.

You can reconfigure your business around a new domain and get your emails and website back up quite easily, but all the equity you build around that domain will be damaged. Unless you have a dedicated team, prepare to spend a lot of time and money recovering.

You do have the option of approaching the AUDA. They were appointed by the Australian Government as the appropriate body to administer the .au domain space and can help recover your domain name. Bear in mind that whilst they have policies they can apply to assist you, you may still need legal advice or even go to court to settle the dispute.

Your website:

That’s okay, you’ve got a backup right? No?!?

If you don’t have a backup, you are going to need professional services trying to recover it. If your website is still live, but you have lost access, there is a chance you can recover it, and for an expensive website, this would be the most cost-effective solution.

Otherwise, be prepared to rebuild it from scratch.

Your website hosting:

You generally don’t have control over your hosting, and this can also include your emails. But if you need to make a change when you don’t have access to your email and your marketing team are MIA you may be in trouble.

You can try to prove ownership of your hosting and email to the 3rd party, and most have a process for doing this so it’s not quite so daunting, but you would generally be better off speaking to an expert.

At a minimum, know who you are hosted with. Almost all hosting is done by a 3rd party like VentraIP, WPEngine or GoDaddy. If the hosting isn’t with a major provider, and it’s very cheap, be very careful. Small operators can carry huge risks due to bad I.T. practices, lack of backups, not testing the backups, getting hacked or just going out of business. However, do your research or get advice from an expert; GoDaddy is a big name and can have low prices but has had numerous security issues and does not rank well for website speed or customer service.

Google Analytics:

Google Analytics is one of the most important marketing tools for your business and increases the longer you use it. As it captures information about every visitor to your website this can significantly affect your ability to evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing.

Imagine doing detailed surveys of your clients every month for a year, upon which you base your entire marketing strategy. If you lose that, what would be the impact? Google Analytics is worth 100 times this.

Paid Ads on Google, Bing, Facebook, Instagram, etc.:

If you are running paid Ads, all your ad designs and marketing data will be here. These accounts will tell you what was working, how much you were paying, where to optimise and most importantly who your target audience is.

Losing this data can put your marketing back to the beginning. Learning how to effectively market your business on Search Engines and Social Media can take months of testing and tuning. Once you factor in all the historical testing of dozens of campaigns and all the demographic data that comes with it, losing access to this could be devastating to your business.

Email database:

Before everything became digital, sales people had Rolodexes of contacts, filing cabinets with client records or little black books of phone numbers. These lists were the lifeblood of the salespeople and of the company so losing these records would be a catastrophe.

Your email database is more valuable than this.

Email is still one of the most powerful marketing tools when you use it to stay in touch with people who have willingly given their email to you. Those email addresses are from someone who has or probably will, buy from you in the future.

These emails may be in a marketing automation tool like Mailchimp or Campaign Monitor, so getting back ownership is as simple as contacting the platform and advising them of what has happened. You may need to provide information such as the payment method you used to pay for the service but software companies are used to people who have lost access to their accounts so they should have good processes in place to help.

Sales Data:

This one is self-explanatory.

No sales data, no way of contacting your customers. No way to do your forecasting. No way to judge which products are effective and which need to be reviewed. When you are running an e-commerce business, your sales data is what makes you a success and let you know if you are growing or need to re-evaluate.

If you lose your sales data, you’re in big trouble and will have to find some way to reach out to all your customers and get their information back into your system. Losing their data is probably something they’re not going to appreciate either.

How do I get my IP back?

First of all, you need to protect yourself legally. Unfortunately, this is also a new frontier from a legal perspective and finding a legal firm who is well-versed in digital law isn’t easy.

You may find that you are getting legal advice from someone who understands the laws around IP, but isn’t a digital expert. This could lead to delays or errors as they may not have specific insights into how digital platforms work to be able to put a solid case together.

First of all, you need to get any contracts reviewed to see if you have any protection. Contracts, and any Terms and Conditions to a lesser degree can help make your position clear.

There are a few law firms in Australia who are specialists in digital law, including Ian Aldridge the owner and founder of Progressive Legal in NSW.

He has the following advice for those who find themselves in the unfortunate position of getting into a dispute with their digital marketing service provider.

“You need to act fast!

Firstly, preserve any evidence by way of screenshots, saving copies of any documents that have been shared with you through onedrive/google-drive etc. and save as much as you can and if you can’t save it, take screenshots.

You may also then consider whether it’s necessary to lock them  out of various programs or documents which you have shared with them, change all passwords shared with them, lock them out of all social media accounts which they may have had access to, project management tools (if you can).

Speak to someone fast about what you need to be able to transfer the IP (e.g. if you have another developer or website hosting business) you may want to ask them what they need to transfer over urgently.

A lot will depend on what has happened with ownership but you must act swiftly and properly. Consult a lawyer that knows this area of law and can help you quickly to determine the best course of action legally. Also, consult an IT or digital marketing expert to help you obtain anything you need before they get wind that you’re going to leave as a lot of them simply lock everything down as soon as they suspect or you put them on notice of it.

This unregulated industry is unfortunately rife with people who hold clients “over a barrel” when push comes to shove. Sometimes it’s a misunderstanding. More often than not, it’s a result of poor communication and asymmetry of technical information and one-sided “take it or leave it” agreements which are heavily in favour of the provider of services – which most businesses don’t take the time to go through and amend in their favour.

You need someone to look at the terms of the agreement very quickly to work out what your legal options might be. You really have to be on the front-foot with this and treat time as being of the essence. Unfortunately, the legal process as it stands at the moment in Australia is often not fast enough to resolve disputes of this nature, which vitally need swift resolution so that a business can move on quickly to a new developer and not be hindered by IP being held-up by the old one.

All too often, a business will become embroiled in a dispute with a developer who has been paid all this money, holds all the IP to ransom and the business has to start over with a new developer and has to consider whether it’s worth pursuing the old developer to try and recoup the monies that they have paid, when it’s sure that they will fight tooth-and-nail to keep a hold of all monies paid.”

Wrapping it all up

I don’t want to be cynical about this, as there are lots of good people out there, but this is your business to protect and you need to do it properly or risk losing it.

It can’t be stressed strongly enough that the need to build a relationship with someone who has good references and that is willing to provide a commitment to release all your digital IP in the event that the two businesses part ways.

Sometimes it can be daunting trying to find someone who is reputable, trustworthy and cost-effective. Digital Marketing is a very rapidly growing sector, but this means more and more people with poor business practices or less than ideal standards are getting into the businesses resulting in more businesses getting ripped off.

If you want some legal advice, drop Ian a line and between us, we can do an audit and provide you with the advice you need to get your business properly protected.

Google Wants You to Secure Your Website with SSL

December 20, 2016/in Digital Marketing Basics, Search Engine Optimisation, Search Engine Optimisation - On-page, Small Business Marketing /by Steve Hunter

Is your site secured with SSL? If not, it’s time to fix it.

Security is one of Google’s highest priorities. The last thing they want is to provide a link to a website which leads to you being hacked.

Hacking, phishing and all of that bad stuff can lead to identity theft, propagation of malware and viruses and more. It’s in their best interest to ensure people using their search engine have the best website experience possible and they have ways of encouraging website owners to improve it.

Whenever Google and Bing decree something must change to improve their customers experience, they will penalise non-conforming websites by improving the ranking of those who do confirm in their search results. Sometimes this can be passed on to quality scores in paid ads like AdWords which can heavily impact your ad costs. This is bad for your business as it will reduce the traffic to your website: visitors to your website may well leave on seeing your site isn’t safe.

A website secured by SSL on Google Chrome web browser

You want your website to look as trustworthy as possible.

Google announced in August 2014 that having SSL on your website would be a minor positive ‘ranking signal’ for SEO but that would eventually be increased:

“we’re starting to use HTTPS as a ranking signal. For now it’s only a very lightweight signal—affecting fewer than 1% of global queries, and carrying less weight than other signals such as high-quality content—while we give webmasters time to switch to HTTPS. But over time, we may decide to strengthen it, because we’d like to encourage all website owners to switch from HTTP to HTTPS to keep everyone safe on the web.”

In September 2016, the announcement came from Google that as of January 2017 they would be deprecating HTTP (non-SSL) and increase the warnings for websites without SSL certificates. It’s fair to say that this will be also come with the increase in positive ranking signals for sites which have SSL.

What does this actually mean for your website which doesn’t have SSL?

Ranking signals improve your rank on search engines, so not having them will make your website less competitive with those which have.

Eventually, this might mean that you will no longer appear in the most effective positions on Google Search results, meaning your competitors may well get the first click, increase the chance that they get the business that you want.

The other main issue for your website is trust. When a site is secured by SSL on Chrome, it gets a big green padlock and ‘SECURE’ next to the web address, as shown in the image on the right.

If your site is an e-commerce site, people want to see this as it means their online transactions are more likely to be secure than one without an SSL certificate. For a site without e-commerce, you’d prefer to know that your privacy is assured by being secured by SSL and eventually people will come to expect to see it.

How can I fix this?

Getting an SSL certificate has been made much easier nowadays as there are free options. You may need the assistance from a web developer to put a certificate on your website.

  • https://letsencrypt.org
  • https://certbot.eff.org
  • https://www.cloudflare.com
  • https://caddyserver.com

If you are on WordPress, you can take advantage of increasing your security substantially by moving to WPEngine.

Not only do they provide outstanding security features and daily backups, you can quickly and easily obtain a free Letsencrpt SSL certificate.WPEngine Letsencrypt free SSL certificates

I got my SSL certificate but it’s not working?

Unfortunately, it can be a bit technical to get the SSL certificate to work. If you think you have done everything correctly, talk to your hosting company, and WPEngine’s technical support team can assist with this.

If you still can’t get it resolved, drop us a line and we can help you get everything working again.

P.S. It might be time to look at what pop-ups you have on your website too

Plan Your Website Project (So You Don’t Have to Pay Someone to do it For You)

November 2, 2016/0 Comments/in Digital Marketing Basics, Small Business Marketing /by Steve Hunter

Back when Clikk was doing websites all the time, we realised the landscape was shifting away from custom-built sites to template sites. The problem for us was that we couldn’t produce custom sites as fast as our competitors were building template sites.

The clients we looked after at that time were micro or startup businesses who didn’t have the capital to invest in something hand-crafted. Whilst we have continued to meet the website needs of our larger clients, we decided to stop providing websites unless it was part of a larger service offering where we could tie it all together neatly.

However, that left us with years of experience for a demographic we no longer serviced. Rather than let that knowledge disappear, I wrote this blog to help out those businesses who need to make ever dollar count for a cost-effective website project.

What are the core components of owning a website?

Your Domain Name: www.yourbusiness.com

This is the name of your business on the web. You can expect to pay at least $10/year for a basic domain name like clikk.com.au but more specialised domain names such as those that end with .melbourne are much more expensive.

If someone has already registered your ideal domain name, you still have the option to try for alternatives. For example, clikk.net.au or clikk.org, but the perception of your business by your customers might not always be as positive as a .com or .com.au.

If someone has purchased your preferred domain name and is holding it, you can try to purchase it from them as there are many brokers who buy domains for this specific purpose. If the owner of the domain is using it in a way that is likely to hurt your business, you can contact the auDA who can initiate legal proceedings to get it back for you. Note, I used the phrase ‘legal proceedings’ so expect this to cost a lot of money!

Webhosting

You need to have your website stored on a servcer and available for access on the internet. This is called web hosting. There are numerous excellent web hosting providers out there but what should be your criteria?

  1. If you’re local, go local.

If your business is based in Australia, you want your hosting to be in Australia. This gives you the best speeds for your website, which is very important, plus you are protected by Australian laws. I’d personally recommend VentraIP as they provide local services, local support, and great prices.

2. If you want to go international, spend more

You really want the best speeds possible so be prepared to spend more for your web hosting.  You want someone you can pick up the phone to and get them to fix your problems 24 hours a day, not have to wait till they open. Ideally, you want a ‘point of presence’ in every country you want to sell in. This means they have servers in your chosen country which will make sure your website is lightning fast for your customers.

3. Backups

You want your service to provide daily backups. Non-negotiable. Without backups, you might as well stop using a bank for your business and store all your money in your letterbox. If your website is generating you income and it’s down for 24 hours, not only have you lost that business but you have permanently affected your credibility with your customers.

4. WordPress? WPEngine!

If you are planning to use WordPress for your website, use WPEngine. They offer the best WordPress hosting bar none. They provide free daily backups, you can restore your website backups from an easy-to-use interface, make backups anytime you want AND they constantly scan your website to make sure it doesn’t get hacked, which is becoming a growing risk for all websites.

You also get a staging version of your website that you can experiment with without breaking your live website.

staging-vs-live

Wix, Squarespace or WordPress?

If you have no budget at all, you should probably stop what you are doing and go get some. A business without digital marketing might as well be invisible or on the moon. It’s not that you can’t get results without paying but it’s a massive investment in time to get any sort of traction.

If you see anyone trying to convince you of a cheap, quick and effective marketing solution, and decide to give it a go, I hope you like the taste of snake oil.

 

 

Wix is cheap and fast so, according to the Project Management Triangle, you’re not going to get a good quality result. It’s ideal for micro-businesses who don’t need results quickly, perhaps it’s something you are building whilst you are still at your full-time job. Free services generally limit you in some way or end up costing you dollars in a way you wouldn’t have expected when your business finally grows big enough.

If you do have a budget, you can start getting serious about your website.

WordPress

WordPress is probably the most flexible and powerful option for businesses on a budget. You would want to be planning a spend of around $3k to $5k to get someone competent to build it. The cost differential will be based on whether you go with a small/solo developer or an agency. It will also depend on whether you can accept the functionality/appearance of plugins as they can sometimes be restrictive or want a custom coded solution. Plugins can save you a lot of money in custom coding but they come with their own risks.

If you are going for a custom design, go with an established,  reputable agency.  If you choose to use a freelancer coder (nothing against freelancers mind, we did this for a long time too!),  you’re risking locking the expertise behind running your site with someone who might stop coding (or get sick, move away, etc.). If your site is down you want to be able to turn to a company that is reliable and available to fix it quickly and with minimal down-time, especially if it’s e-commerce.

Ready to Get Started?

Take your time picking your web-development team, this won’t be an insignificant investment!

  • Get multiple quotes from several companies
  • Get referrals from customers
  • Make sure they can show you work they’ve already done with designs you like and with similar functionality
  • Work with someone you trust and ideally who you can meet in person
  • If you are spending at the higher end of town, only go with someone who demonstrates clear project management skills and offers a written commitment

You New Website Must:

  • Be mobile responsive and work perfectly on any device
  • Be fully optimised – no giant images that slow loading times & lead to visitors leaving your site
  • Work on all web browsers: Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer ect.

You Should Also Expect Your New Developers to:

  • Install Google Analytics and/or Google Tag Manager
  • Submit your website to search engines so it can start getting ranked on search as soon as possible
  • Give you the keys to the website & everything else they have done. You need full ownership of everything an agency or developer does once you pay in full as it belongs to you and is key part of your business.
  • Provide fixed cost quotes.  However, this means you need to agree on what you will get from your project in advance, if you change your mind, expect afterwards, expect to pay more
  • Provide reliable technical support.  You will need to be prepared to pay a retainer for this service, but it is well worth the investment to ensure your website is always running at 100%.

A few points to keep in mind during your website build:

  • Have some example designs in mind.  Search around for websites you like so the design team has a starting point for developing your site
  • Accept additional costs if you have multiple changes for the site during the build.  You can avoid this by being as clear on your requirements as possible from the start
  • Have the written content for the site done as early as possible.  If you are not prepared to write it (let’s face it, we’re not all Shakespeare) There are many good Copywriters available who can complete the work for you, though the charges vary considerably, depending on the company or individual.
  • Make sure you have watertight Terms & Conditions for your site and a Privacy Policy. If you’re selling online, these are very important from a legal perspective and also contribute to your SEO.
  • Make sure your site includes an SSL certificate if you have an e-commerce site.
  • Expect a complex site to need regular maintenance.  Products, images, discounts and special offers don’t update themselves, and website platforms like WordPress and Magento can require regular updates to maintain security.

Hope this helps get your new site off to a great start! If you’d like more advice on getting the right website for your business, feel free to get in touch.

Top 7 Tips to Get Started with Inbound Marketing

September 19, 2016/0 Comments/in Digital Marketing Basics, Inbound Marketing, Small Business Marketing /by Kathy Hunter

It’s a common theme:

“I know I need to start marketing online, because the old marketing isn’t working so well anymore.  But I have no idea where to start!”

So in order to make it a little easier, here’s my top 7 tips for getting started with inbound marketing.

Make a Plan

If you jump into digital without some clear ideas about what you want to get out of it, you’re setting yourself up to fail.

So ask yourself some questions:

  • What do I want to achieve from my inbound marketing?  Most people would say ‘get more customers’ or ‘make more sales’ but you might also consider using inbound as a way to make people aware of your brand & what it stands for.  You could also use it to provide great customer service & support for your sales team, or as a tool to engage with your audience on a more personal level, building a relationship of trust & respect. 
  • Who are my customers & how do I attract them?  Find out which platforms your existing and potential customers are using online, how they talk, what they pay attention to, what type of content they best relate to and how they look for products and services like yours online
  • How much money should I invest in marketing online?  This is a tough question that doesn’t have a simple answer.  If you asked me this in person, I’d more than likely say “It Depends” followed by “How much can you afford?”.    The general rule of thumb is 10% of revenue should be invested back into marketing (though this varies for each company & industry).  How much of this budget is spent on inbound depends on your other marketing activities, but like anything, the more you invest in it, the more benefit it will bring.
  • How will I know if it’s working? Luckily, Inbound marketing is a data-driven process, which will allow you to measure your progress as you go.  At the planning stage, you need to set some KPI’s to benchmark your success.  For example, 10 new leads a month,  500 new fans on the Facebook page or 200 downloads of your e-book.

Get Your Website in Order!

Your website is the central hub for your business online.  Think of it as your shopfront on the web.  Take some time to look around your site and ask yourself some questions (be honest):An image of Apple's website from 1997

  • Is my website modern, clean and professional? If it looks like it was made in 1997 (or it was made in 1997) It’s time for a change!
  • Is it easy to navigate? If people can’t find what they are looking for easily, they’ll bounce outta there quicker than you can blink!
  • Is it responsive on mobile phones & tablets? 50% of all web traffic comes from mobile devices as of Q4 2015 & that number is rising daily.
  • Is it easy to update?  If you’re going to do inbound marketing, you’re going to need to create content.  Lots of content.  If you can’t quickly and easily update your site without using a developer to upload every little change, it’s
    going to add extra constraints to your workflow & possibly to your wallet
  • Is it search engine friendly? If your site can’t be found on the search engines, you’re missing out on a huge source of potential traffic to your site.

If you answered ‘no’ to any of these questions, it’s time to look at updating your site, as the success of your inbound marketing will rely on ALL of these factors.

Once your website is in good order, it’s time to get the inbound party started! Inbound is all about providing good value information to your potential customers and that means content.  The best place to start is with a great quality business blog.

Start Building a Business Blog Filled With Information That Will Bring Value to Your Audience

A well-crafted business blog provides excellent content that your target audience will perceive as truly valuable.  It could be tips & tricks, an educational piece, or maybe something that provides entertainment value (*cough* cat video *cough*).   By providing value to visitors to your site, blogs can easily and effectively lead people to your site and introduce them to your products & services.

As a bonus, building a great business blog can also help position your brand as an industry leader and build trust between you and your potential customers.

Building a great business blog can help position your brand as an industry leader and build trust between you and your potential customers.

Double bonus: Blogging also works hand in hand with SEO, providing a constant stream of fresh pages on your site, each of which can be found by the search engines that giving you further opportunities to rank in the search engines for keywords relating to your products & services.

Get involved in Social Media (If you’re not already)

The rise of social media platforms over the last 10 years has made maintaining a social media presence a necessity.  With more than 75% of adults using some form of social media, chances are, most of your customers & potential customers are too, so if you’re not using it – you should be!

To quote Kim Garst:

“People buy from people they know, like and trust and social media is the greatest tool I have EVER seen at building that know, like and trust factor both at lightening speed and at scale.”

Engage with your fans on social media platforms, share your blog posts and other helpful or entertaining content, listen to & get involved with conversations online, run competitions or polls to stimulate conversation and have a little fun!A group of people enjoying social media on their mobiles

Explore your options with Paid Ads

Whilst you can generate a lot of traffic organically via your blog and social media channels, there are some areas you will need to spend money online, and one of them is by using paid ads.  You might use search engine marketing, like Google Adwords or Bing Ads, to place your ads in the search results of Google or Bing, or you could utilise the power of Facebook Ads & get your message our there with paid ads on Facebook or Instagram.

Which platforms you choose to use should be based on who your customers are and where they hang out online: there’s no point running Instagram ads if your audience is predominately found surfing Google.

Promoting your blog posts with paid ads can generate huge amounts of traffic to your website and if they like what they read, it’s the perfect opportunity for visitors to read more of your blog posts & find out more about your business.

Build Your Email List

An email database is possibly your most important and often overlooked tool in the inbound arsenal. It is the only marketing collateral that you can truly own: all your fans on facebook are worth nothing if one day your fans all move to another new & more exciting platform and you need to build that audience again from scratch.

Building your email list by encouraging your existing fans to sign up for your email list via special offers, downloads or other incentives should be one of your highest priorities online, so that you will still be able to reach them, regardless on where they hang out online.

To sweeten the deal, email still has the best ROI compared to every other form of digital marketing online.

Measure, Analyse, Rinse, Repeat

Finally, measure everything!  If you can’t answer questions like how much traffic it took to generate a signup to your ebook, how many leads turned into customers & what the cost was to generate those leads and customers, how will you know how effective your online strategy has been?

Traffic generation, Search Engine Optimisation, Pay Per Click advertising, Blogging, Social Media & email marketing all have their own unique set of metrics that you should be monitoring to help determine the success of your inbound marketing & give you a sound foundation to improve in the future.

Once you’ve got the numbers, use them! The data will become an invaluable guide on what you are doing right, where you are going wrong and where you can improve in the future.  Make changes to your strategy based on what the data tells and you have a sound foundation for inbound marketing success!

Give Clikk a call for personalised Inbound Marketing Advice for Your Business.

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