This article, originally written for Orange, looks at how a good website and a targeted email campaign can help businesses boost their brands internationally without spending a fortune.
The 5-step guide to e-marketing
According to a report by Payment Service Provider Pago, e-commerce sites in the UK now receive more than half of their business from consumers outside of the UK. Are you cashing in?
There are thousands of companies carving out a living online. E-commerce giants like Amazon, eBay and Dabs.com shun the bricks-and-mortar business model in favour of infinite shelf space and long-tail selling.
Online shopping is booming: high-street retailers such as Monsoon and Warehouse are tapping into a lunchtime rush of shoppers who have found that they can browse clothes effortlessly without leaving the office.
How can your business grab a piece of this e-commerce pie?
Step 1: Get a website
You need a website. Or at least a blog. An online presence is vital if you want to engage your customers, promote your brand and encourage sales. A website can provide an unprecedented sales channel during challenging economic conditions such as these.
If you already have a website, is it the best website that it can possibly be? Do people know about it? Most Internet users find websites via a search engine, typically Google. In the UK, Google has almost a 90% share of the UK search market. So not only does your website need to be visible in Google’s search results, you want it to rank higher than your competitors. How do you do this?
Step 2: Provide good content
Content is king. If you’re selling a product, your website must provide interesting and relevant content that benefits your visitor. If you have product listings, think about what else you could provide to enhance them – think extra pictures, a video of the product, testimonials or case studies, a downloadable PDF brochure, an invitation to sign up for an e-mail newsletter (see Step 5: The power of newsletters).
The website mydeco.com, created by Lastminute.com founders Martha Lane Fox and Brent Hoberman is a case in point. It’s essentially an aggregator site for furniture stores. But mydeco.com brings the process to life for the web visitor, by offering extra services – thousands of ready-made looks to inspire you, an online magazine and a unique 3D room planner that lets you paint walls, adjust colour schemes and play around with 3D furniture.
If you’re providing information or a service, think about you can present the information in a more interesting way. Can you write a ‘how to’ article or offer “21 insider tips and tricks”? Is there an expert you can interview? A product you can review? What about a special promotion that you can exclusively offer website visitors?
According to Kieran Potts, who runs Bath-based website design company Vintage Web Works, many companies – especially small businesses – try to do too much with their websites.
“I often receive invitations to tender for websites with all the bells and whistles,” he says. “They want social networking, user forums, video galleries, all wrapped up in over-the-top Flash-based eye candy. But what almost always brings people to a website is good content, not the functionality or design. You’ve got to have original, interesting and genuinely useful content that people won’t easily find elsewhere.”
Step 3: Nailing down your keywords
Google assesses and values the content of web pages by analysing the frequency, positioning and prominence of the words on it. If you’ve built a website and you’re producing good, regular content, the next step is to point people towards it. “Over 80% of all internet journeys now start with a search,” says Lucy Allen, MD of LBI Netrank, one of the UK’s largest online brand positioning agencies. “So integrating search engine marketing into any e-marketing campaign is vital.”
Keyword research is the essence of successful e-marketing. Think about the words that describe your business. Write them down. Now what words or phrases would you use to find the same information on the web? What would you type into a search engine? If you wanted to get your bath re-enamelled, you’d probably type “bath enamelling” into Google; if you’re looking to make business cards, you might type “business card design”.
Type the keywords that match elements of your business into Google and see what comes up. Note the companies that appear on the first page – these are the guys that you want to compete with. Brainstorm some basic keywords and use online resources such as Google’s free AdWords Keyword Tool to identify extra keywords and phrases that will be relevant to your business.
Step 4: Do-it-yourself SEO
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the art of tweaking the pages of a website so they are more visible to search engines. “It’s a hugely powerful tool,”explains Patrick Altoft, MD of SEO company Branded3, “allowing small unknown companies to compete on an equal footing with the likes of Amazon and eBay. Moving a website to the top of Google’s rankings is like taking a back street shop and re-locating it to a prime High Street location – sales shoot up overnight.”
“We started working with one local client, an electric fire retailer, in May of this year. After 4 weeks their turnover had quadrupled purely as a result of search engine optimisation. At present they are on track to achieve sales of over £1 million in their first year’s trading.”
Each individual page on a website needs some form of SEO. While a website’s homepage is the front door or shop window, the majority of visitors will often parachute into individual pages as they click on links from a search engine listing. Here are some Do-it-yourself SEO improvements you can make without calling in the experts:
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Update your site on a regular basis. Search engines love fresh content.
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Use appropriate keywords in the titles of your articles. Try to add keywords, key phrases and keyword variants into the copy (sparingly), into the ALT Tags for any pictures you use and in prominent sub-headings.
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Use keywords in your URLs – I.e. www.yourbusiness.com/the-10-best-keywords. If your URL structure doesn’t use hyphens like this, consider changing it.
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Build links from trusted sites. “Today the Google algorithm is heavily biased towards links,” says Patrick Altoft. “Put simply the more high quality websites that link to your site the higher it will rank in the search engines.”
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Boost link-building by interlinking your own pages. I.e. refer to your other articles and link to them regularly.
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Submit your site to search engines and online directories.
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Send out electronic press releases using a site like www.prnewswire.com.
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Start an ‘affiliate program’ and encourage bloggers to promote your products for a small sales commission.
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Comment on other sites in your area of business. Include a link back to your own site.
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Talk to your readers. Ask them what they want, what they like, what they don’t like. Businesses often pay for this sort of market research information – you can get it for free.
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Publish an email newsletter.
Step 5: The power of newsletters
Finally, publishing an email newsletter once or twice a month is a great way to bring people back to your site. Emails are ideal for building relationships with your customers and keeping them up to date with new products.
The most effective way to get people to sign up to a newsletter is to offer them a ‘killer freebie’ in return – a useful PDF report or a money-off voucher. The aim is to attract 20% of your visitors to become regular readers.
