An interesting use of digital marketing may be how high street survives in the UK. An article in marketing week points out that with proper use of new marketing strategies stores can welcome the Smartphone and computer user by appealing to their digital habits. The article also points out that help may be coming from an unusual source: Google. Google wants to help retailers understand current consumer behavior. One way is to inform retailers how people use Smartphones while they are in the store. This information could help retailers use…

The focus of all your marketing efforts has not changed – the classic idea to bring more customers in by good word of mouth still applies. Although when it comes to digital terms this effort may better described as good word of keyboard. The new Google maps function and Facebook Graph Search has opened up opportunities in an area that some companies fear to tread – sharing of reviews. The great review that a Facebook friend shares is something every location wants, almost as much as they fear that a…

The World Wide Web can be a daunting place to try and advertise your products and services for sale. The same marketing rules for other media do still apply and the web gives you new tools to accomplish your goals. It also can give you some pointers in what you may be doing wrong. First you need to use what you know about your company’s product and think of words that can differentiate your brand from the competition.  This is usually referred to as your Unique Selling Point (USP). Think…

It seems a bit ironic that the Google Panda and Penguin updates of last year had sought to find better content with their web crawler.  After all, content marketing has been a focus of some of the most successful companies for several years now. The new digital marketing strategies have been moving away from things like banner ads to get attention, just like many companies no longer advertise on roadside billboards. Effective content marketing starts with finding out what your potential customers need and want. You provide information to your…

New entrepreneurs have been working on the 4 Ps of marketing (product, price, place and promotion) ever since selling began. The first p, product, is not just about what you make – it is also about the desirability to your target customers. Price is the P that we most often worry about – Is your product priced well enough to convince the client to buy? The third p, place, has changed for many. Place is no longer about the actual proximity to your customers as now most products can simply…

There are two ways to digitally market your company and its products. The first would be the pull method – where you place information on the web using websites, blog posts and other SEO strategies to get your company noticed by customers and the search engines. The second method, the push, is when you send out messages to potential clients that are unsolicited. When done properly, push marketing can be highly effective. The correct approach to push marketing would be to send text messages and emails to potential and former…

The New Year is the time to reflect on what you did right and to focus on what you need to improve upon to make the coming year better than the last. It is also the time to think about what trends are going to continue and how to use them to get ahead of the competition. Marketing expert Rob Eleveld recently looked at some of the biggest digital marketing trends in Forbes and his writing may give you an idea on the direction you need to take to stay…

Once someone has found your website after doing a web search you want to guide them through the different stages of interaction that will ultimately lead to the sale. This can be achieved with a coherent plan of different calls to action that is very similar to what sales professionals call the test close. Consider a heating business that wants to make people aware of a service they offer to improve fuel efficiency. They might get a potential customer onto the site with a keyword focused title or blog post…

In the early days of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) the focus for many was trying to work a keyword or group of keywords into a sentence as many times as possible. That led to some bizarre reading exploits for those interested in a certain subject and found little else except creative and not so creative repetition. The Penguin and Panda updates this past year have refocused digital marketing efforts toward content, but it is important that we don’t forget about keywords altogether. Keywords are especially helpful in titles and this…

The digital marketing efforts of many small businesses were called into question recently in an article on SEOMOZ .com. Digital marketer David Mihm posted a blog on December 19th that looks at the times people who received a deal offered through Facebook actually bought the product. He says a survey conducted by Reuters on digital marketing found that only 20% of respondents followed through on buying something when they saw it advertised by a vendor they had “liked “on Facebook. This may be precisely why Facebook is adding a two-step…