3 Easy Things You Can Do Right Now To Improve Your Social Media Marketing
As we head into 2024, you may be looking for quick wins you can do to get your social media marketing off to a good start in the new year. In honour of National Mentoring Month, we wanted to give you three easy things you can do to do just that. When we’re delivering social media training, we always like to give people a couple of ‘constructive nuggets’ that they can come away with and implement straight away. Which is what we hope you get from this blog post. So, without further ado, here’s what we suggest: Use authentic photo and video One of the things we see time and time again with all our clients is that when we use authentic photos and videos in their posts, they get a lot more engagement. With most of us having smartphones with fantastic cameras on them, getting quick snaps of the work you’re doing has never been easier. If what you do involves improving a space, a great thing to do is get a photo before you start work and a photo after – preferably from the same spot. This will allow your social media audience to see your work and compare the results. Which acts as a great portfolio for you and is something you can easily implement into your posts for better engagement. Make sure you’re using your banner photo space A mistake we see all too often is businesses not using the banner photo space they have on their Facebook, X or LinkedIn profiles to showcase what they do. This is something that can be easily fixed with a great photo of your product or service that will act as a centrepiece for your feed. As an example; you could use a before and after photo – as we suggested in our first tip – to really demonstrate what you do. There are free versions of image software like Canva that allow you to make sure that your photos fit in the given space. Which will ensure it crops well and is easily visible. Use hashtags properly If your business is on Instagram, X or LinkedIn, hashtags can be a powerful tool to help you reach the right people. Next time you write a post for your business, try to include hashtags that are: It’s important to make sure that you don’t overuse hashtags and keep them relevant to the audience you want to reach to maximise their potential. If you’re already doing these things and your business is still struggling to benefit from social media, it might be time to speak to our social team. They will be able to help identify where you’re going wrong and establish a social media strategy that works for your business. Give us a call on 01903 686858 or email social@constructivemarketing.co.uk.
Content Trends To Look Out For In 2024
And how your business can start maximising them now! As 2023 draws to a close, it’s important to be looking ahead at 2024. Over the last few years, the content marketing industry has been growing rapidly and 2024 will be no exception. Statista predicts that by 2026, the industry’s revenue will reach $107 billion. The short of it is, if you’re not yet using content marketing as a tool to grow your business, you’re missing out. The good thing is that it’s never too late to start and with a new year on the horizon, now is the perfect time to get going. As content marketing specialists, we understand that the term ‘content marketing’ covers a huge amount of topics, techniques and theories. So, what should a business be paying attention to most as we head into 2024? To make things easier, we’ve listed the top three content marketing trends of 2024 and how your business can make the most of them now: 1. Video marketing We know you’re probably not surprised to see this at the top of our list. Video marketing has been growing exponentially over the last few years and it’s only going to get bigger. This is mainly due to the shift in just how much video content is produced and consumed everyday. At one time, video marketing mainly referred to online content with the exception of TV ads. Now, businesses are using other channels like DOOH (Digital Out Of Home) billboards to reach their target audience with video marketing. Video personalisation We’re also likely to see more personalisation come to video marketing. In previous years, personalised content was something that wasn’t used for video, but in 2024, it’s thought that this will be explored more. Businesses will likely be capitalising on it as a way to form a better connection with consumers. Short form videos These short, ‘snackable’ videos have become one of the most consumed forms of content in the last year or so and this is only set to grow further into 2024. Businesses have rightfully begun to use this form of content as a way to reach their target market and the need to do this is only growing. How can my business use video marketing? We often work with businesses that are reluctant to jump on the video bandwagon as they feel that a video can’t be made from what they do. This really isn’t the case! Video marketing doesn’t have to be something that’s scary to do, if you’ve already got photos of the work you do or the product you make, you already have the content you need to make a video. With a few clever animations, you can really capture an audience’s attention. Don’t have the time to put it together? We can help. Even if the work your business does is very hands-on, you mostly likely have an HD video recorder in your pocket. Just taking one minute to film what you’re seeing on the job, or a quick demonstration of a completed job filmed on your phone is more than enough to be getting on with. Just recently, a client of ours sent through a video of a product they had just installed in action and it has quickly become their most engaging post on LinkedIn. 2. User-Generated Content Authenticity and credibility have only increased in importance and will continue to do so well into 2024. This is mainly due to a societal shift in being less trusting post pandemic (when the public was most vulnerable) and the economy experiencing a shrinkage post pandemic. Both causing people to be extra careful with where and how they spend their money. With more and more information available for consumers to inform their buying decision, the process is taking longer. As a business, it needs to be a top priority to build consumer trust and make sure that you’re the business that consumers choose. Which is where User-Generated content comes in; the easiest and possibly the most effective way to build trust among consumers. What is user-generated content and how can I use it? User-generated content is as it sounds, content that has been produced by a user/ consumer. The most common form of this type of content is reviews and testimonials. By managing the community engagement your business receives through its marketing channels, you’ll be able to create a sense of belonging and trust among your consumers. Customer reviews are paramount We always tell our clients that one of the most powerful things you can do is collect customer reviews. These are like gold dust and serve as a good conversion tool as 47% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations from friends and family. The amount of reviews a business has can also influence how trusted it is among potential customers. Sharing customer reviews with your target market is a great way to use user-generated content and make for a great social media post too! 3. Meaningful content Something we’ve always said is the principles of marketing stay the same, it’s the channels in which we practise these principles that evolve. Meaningful content making it on the content marketing trends list for 2024 is proof of that. While it’s always been key to produce content that resonates with your target audience, it is now more important than ever. As we’ve mentioned, consumer trust has declined so it’s never been so important to make sure the content you’re putting out builds that trust with your potential customers. That, paired with the fact you’ll need to stand out among the rest of the noise, means that meaningful content is certainly going to be a trend for 2024. How can I create meaningful content? Understanding your audience is the only way to make meaningful content that resonates with them. Think of it like giving a gift, how can you give someone a gift they’ll like if you don’t know them that well? Understanding your target audience
Our Top Tips For Making The Most From Exhibiting
We’re going to be exhibiting at the Better Business Show this year so we’ve been busy planning our new Constructive Marketing stand. Which has involved getting new pop-up banners produced (well, re-skinning the old ones!) and working out what we’re going to be giving away to help people remember us and our new branding. With all of this preparation, we realised that it might be helpful to share our top tips for exhibiting. Helping you make the most of exhibiting at the next business expo you attend. So here they are: Be memorable First and foremost you need to make sure that people remember you which we know can be easier said than done. Especially in a big space full of other businesses who are also trying to get their voices heard. But there are some things that you can do: Make sure people are drawn to your stand As we said, there are lots of other businesses competing for visitors’ attention in one room. Make sure that your stand is attractive to people – make them want to come over and say hello! When making your stand attractive to visitors there are two things to ask yourself: is my stand open to invite people in and what on the stand will catch people’s eye? It’s important for it to be easy for people to come and say hello. A common mistake is having a table on your stand because it creates an immediate barrier between you and potential customers. Instead, opt for no table and be standing up to greet visitors when something on your stand catches their eye. It’s great when the eye-catching thing on your stand is something that is to do with your business, but having something unrelated can work too. You just need something that acts as a conversation starter – a reason for people to visit your stand. Have something to give away We don’t know about you, but whenever we go to business expos we always look out for the freebies! Whether it’s a pen, mug or notepad, most stands will have something that they’re giving out and there’s a good reason for that. Having something for stand visitors to take away means that they’re going to have something to remember you by. The key with choosing what to give out is making sure it’s something that is useful and – if you can – making it something that will sit on their desk. Make sure you leave with homework to do We always know it’s been a successful business expo when we’re leaving with lots of people to chase up. So make sure that you get contact information from the people that you want to follow up with. If you have a lanyard scanner, then use it, but also get business cards if you can because they are more memorable. There are a few ways that you can encourage people to volunteer their information. The most common way at a business expo is via a business card prize draw. Another way is to make them want to give their details to you. A good way to do this is to showcase your expertise. Maybe have a show reel playing or a leaflet showing off your latest case studies. Then do your homework quickly! Although you might not have done it back at school, it’s important to do your homework as soon as you can. Getting in touch with people very shortly after the business expo will ensure the event is fresh in their mind and that they haven’t forgotten you. As the old saying goes: strike while the iron’s hot! At the end of the day, the whole point in paying to exhibit at business expos is to come away with useful business contacts and ultimately more business. Making sure you get contact information and follow up on those you meet will help you do just that. We wish you luck with whichever business expo you’re attending. If you’re at the Better Business Show on 21st September, make sure you come and say hello to us!
KIP: The Power Of Email Marketing
Find out what email marketing is, why you should be doing it and how you can implement it into your marketing strategy. Welcome to our new blog post series called, ‘Knowledge Is Power’ or ‘KIP’ for short. In this series we’re going to be diving deeper into different marketing topics, helping you to strengthen your knowledge of them and understand how you can start implementing this into your business. The more you know about how to market your business, the more it will help to ultimately grow your business. For our first post in the series, we’re looking at email marketing and the things that can be achieved when a business implements it in the right way. It’s a marketing technique that business owners often want to start doing, but they’re not sure where to start or what they really want to achieve with it. If this is you, we hope that this article is of use and that you find you can start using this amazing marketing tool within your business. What is email marketing? We’ll start from the beginning. Email marketing is a marketing technique which involves an organisation sending out a commercial message to a group of people over email. The great thing about email marketing is it doesn’t have to be a ‘hard sell’ tactic and can instead focus on building a relationship with the organisation’s target consumers. Just like other forms of digital marketing, email marketing allows the organisation to not only send out marketing communication but measure it too. So that over time campaigns can become more intuitive to the audience and more effective at achieving the goal they were set out to. The benefits of email marketing Email marketing can support any stage of the consumer journey and can help organisations achieve their marketing goals. Here’s a few key benefits a good email marketing strategy can bring to your business: Build relationships with existing customers Marketing isn’t just about acquiring new customers, it’s also about nurturing the relationship between the business and existing customers. This makes sure that they continue to see the business positively and, in turn, gives you repeat business or new customers through recommendations. Sending out regular emails to your existing customers increases the touch points they have with your business. This strengthens the relationship the two parties have and increases customer advocacy. What is customer advocacy? Customer advocacy refers to the final stage of the loyalty ladder, a concept developed by marketing theorist, Adrian Payne. The concept outlines the stages a consumer goes through to become an advocate of a brand. Meaning that they actively recommend your product or service to people and speak well of the company. A very powerful asset when growing your brand. Get customer feedback The only way to build customer relationships is to understand what your customers want and email marketing can help you do that. Through sending online surveys via email, you can gain good insight into a huge variety of things: Having these insights is invaluable and will help you to improve your future marketing efforts as well as your products or services. It can also work really well with customer nurture – how many times have you received an email that looks like this: Not only is an email like that a post-purchase touch point, it’s also an opportunity to gain customer insight. Send very specific content to target audiences While customer segmentation is possible in all marketing techniques, email marketing platforms like Hubspot make it really easy to segment your audience. Which is separating your contacts into lists based on different factors. For example; have they only just made their first purchase with you or have they been loyal for over two years? By segmenting your audience, you’re able to send very specific content to each segment. Making it relevant to them and increasing the campaign’s effectiveness as it’s much more likely to resonate with the audience. There’s no point in sending a ‘thank you for your first purchase’ email to a customer who has been loyal to you for years. In fact, it could harm your relationship with the loyal customer if you did so. Instead, why not offer your loyal customers a special discount to thank them for their loyalty? Which is possible to do with the correct segmentation Automate the nurture cycle One of the problems businesses face is not having enough time to maximise the benefits we’ve listed above. But, when used properly, an email marketing platform like Hubspot allows businesses to automate emails. So keeping on top of it doesn’t become time-consuming. Send out welcome emails, thank yous and even reminders to consumers automatically to make sure you hit all the right touchpoints and ultimately grow your business. How to implement email marketing into your marketing strategy Thousands of businesses are already harnessing the power of email marketing and using it as part of their marketing strategy, but it can be hard to know where to start. So here’s a step by step to give you some pointers. Although we would recommend getting a professional on board to guide you to making the most of your email marketing. Once you start using email marketing in your marketing strategy, you’ll start reaping the benefits we spoke about. As we said earlier, it can be beneficial to get an expert on board, not to take over your email marketing but help guide you in the right direction. When you’re ready to start using email marketing within your organisation, we recommend using Hubspot. As a very user friendly platform, it’s easy to get to grips with it – it has lots of fab free resources too! You can sign up for Hubspot here:
Telling Your Story In The Right Way
What is good content and why is it important? Over the last couple of years, the importance of good quality content has become really apparent. With Google changing its algorithm to favour helpful content and other search engines following suit, it’s important to make sure your content is up to scratch to maintain and even boost your ranking . What is good content? Algorithms are constantly changing which can make identifying good content seem like a daunting task. But there are some key principles that don’t change. So here’s three questions to ask yourself to determine whether your content is good: Is it relevant to your target audience? The age old rule for marketing is ‘know your audience’ and the same goes for content. You need to make sure that the content you’ve created is relevant to the audience it’s for. Which is what the search engines are looking for – they’re delivering the most relevant content to their users. Even if the content is ultimately selling your product or service, you need to make sure that it adds value to the audience. Is it original? There are billions of content pieces out there now so of course it is difficult to be completely original. But it is important to put your own spin on someone else’s idea to keep your content original. It’s also important to make sure that the exact same content hasn’t been posted elsewhere. This is especially important if working with AI platforms like Bard or ChatGP as these platforms mine the internet for answers to your questions. Always remember that whatever they produce, it won’t be original and it could be from out of date sources. Search engines hate duplicate content so publishing duplicate content will have a negative impact on your rankings and could see your website being downgraded. Is it focused? What we mean by that is, is it part of a bigger strategy? Moving away from just thinking about external factors, the content needs to be beneficial to your business. It should be helping you reach your business goals and align with your company’s objectives. Being part of a bigger strategy also means that it is not just a stand alone piece of content as, like with all marketing activity, consistency is key. How good content can help your business Unlike other ways to market your business, content can support your customers through every stage of the customer journey. Being such a versatile tool for businesses means that it can help your business in a variety of areas. Here’s just a few of the things we have achieved for our clients as a result of improving their content marketing: Less bounce rates and longer website session time By creating good quality content, target consumers are spending more time on our clients’ websites. Increasing their engagement with consumers and working to convert them into paying customers. Improved brand awareness Establishing a strong content marketing strategy has meant that our clients have improved their brand awareness. Making sure that the content that they put out reflects positively on their brand and firmly establishes brand messaging Built better relationships with customers Content marketing isn’t just about obtaining new customers, it’s also about improving your business’s relationship with existing ones. By creating engaging and consistent content, our clients have built better relationships with their customers. It’s these customers that become advocates for the business and ultimately refer new clients to you. Start reaping the benefits of a good content marketing strategy now. Get in touch with us to find out how our team of experts can help you achieve your business goals.
Is Marketing Really The Most Stressful Job In The World?
And if it is, what are some easy ways to give your online presence a boost? April is Stress Awareness Month and according to careercast.com research, when asked to rate their job stress out of ten 78% of marketers rated it at seven or higher. So it’s no wonder business owners find it extremely difficult to run their marketing alongside their day-to-day job. One of the main things business owners are always trying to do is use their marketing to improve their search engine rankings. So what are some easy wins that small to medium business owners can do to maximise their SEO efforts with the least amount of stress? Here are our top three: 1. Replace images on your website One of the easiest ways to give your SEO a boost is to do some small updates on your website and replacing images is a good place to start. We recommend doing this every six months to make sure your images are up to date and to give Google a nudge to rearrange your site’s ranking. Although stock imagery is okay to use, adding authentic images of your own work or staff is best. If you don’t have any photos of your own, give us a call on 01903 686858 to speak to our team about how we can help. Top tip: On top of replacing the images on your site, make sure that the new images you add have ALT text. Search engines can’t see images so using ALT text describing the image is the only way to get that image ranked. Adding new images without ALT text will flag up as an update, but adding ALT text will also allow the search engines to understand what your image is and show it in relevant search results. 2. Make sure you’re using the right title tags While websites need to be created to be helpful to your target consumer, it’s also important to make sure search engines can read your website too. We’re certainly not saying to ‘keyword stuff’ or use other black hat SEO tactics, but what we are saying is to make sure your website is formatted correctly. The main thing to do is use Headings properly (known as H1’s, H2’s and H3’s) in the right way. These are the three main types of title tags. Although there are more, generally speaking, you’ll only ever need the first three: H1 – A title and the biggest of the title tagsH2 – A smaller heading used to title subsectionsH3 – An even smaller heading usually used for subheadings Why are title tags important for SEO? Title tags are crucial for SEO as they allow search engines to understand what content is the most important. Which, in turn, enables it to understand what the webpage is about. Since Google’s new algorithm update, it is focusing more on producing helpful results to users. Making sure that your website uses title tags correctly will help Google place your website in relevant search results. So setting aside some time to go through your website and making sure that all the right headings have the right tags could really boost your website up the search rankings. Top tip: Where you can, make sure that your H1’s include a focus keyword. 3. Update and republish old blog posts There’s a lot of pressure now to always be creating new and unique content but when it comes to SEO, this isn’t essential. In fact, re-using old content can be just as effective if you spend just a small amount of time ‘top and tailing’ it. What is top and tailing? Top and tailing simply means to write (or re-write) the start and end of a piece of written content. In this context, it means to give it a refresh and potentially make it more current. In other circumstances, you may ‘top and tail’ a piece of writing to make it more effective: Top and tailing an old piece of content will take less time than writing a whole new piece of content and it can still be used as if it’s new. So, by all means, republish it as a new blog post and talk about it through your marketing channels. If you feel it’s appropriate, you can explicitly say that the ‘new’ article is an updated version of a previous article. Just like we did with our networking blog post. If you’re finding that you just don’t have the time to try these quick wins, it might be time to ask for some help with your marketing. Which is where we come in! Give our marketing experts a call on 01903 686858 or email us at info@constructivemarketing.co.uk to find out how we can help.
Why Marketers Need To Be Good Storytellers
The art of storytelling is something that goes back thousands of years. What began as the simple use of verbal instruction to facilitate survival, evolved with the use of imagination and shadows thrown up by the fire inside cave dwellings. The first documented story known by historians is the Epic of Gilgamesh, dating back to 2700 BC. With storytelling so ingrained into who we are, it’s no wonder that we respond so well to them. Most of us have childhood memories of being read stories, particularly at bedtime, and even as we get older, hearing someone tell a funny story about their day can keep us gripped. Forbes released an article at the start of this year which stated that science shows that humans have massive capacity for sustained attention and storytelling unlocks it. Which is why it’s so important for marketers to be good storytellers. Just as it says in the Forbes article; ‘although it was debunked, the statement that -humans have an eight-second attention span-, scared marketers’. Now, one of the most talked about things in the marketing world is how quickly can we get our message across to avoid losing the consumers’ attention. The fact is, while short and ‘snackable’ content becomes increasingly popular, you can keep your audience hooked for much longer with a good story. Why is storytelling important in marketing? While we now understand that good storytelling can keep an audience gripped, why is it important in marketing? Well, the main aim of telling a story is to get a message across and it’s the same with marketing. If marketers can hone their storytelling skills, they’ll be able to retain the attention of their audience and ultimately get their message across in an effective way. With the audience being able to recall the information too. Giving your information in the form of a story helps people retain the information and recall it later. A study was conducted where students had to remember 12 words. Half of the group had 2 minutes to simply study the list while the other half had 2 minutes to create a story that contained all of the words. 93% of students who created a story remembered the words, while only 13% of students who tried to just memorise the words could recall them. How to use storytelling in marketing Trying to find a way to incorporate storytelling into your marketing efforts can seem hard at first. After all, you don’t want to be starting your next Instagram post with ‘once upon a time’! Here are some simple ways you can start using storytelling in your marketing to create a better connection with your audience and ultimately ensure that your message gets across to them: Write case studies Case studies are a great way to showcase the amazing work that you do as well as how you helped find a solution to a client’s problem. Case studies also lend themselves quite well to storytelling as they can be written in a way that allows you to explain, from start to finish, how you helped a client/ customer. Why not begin with, ‘x client first got in touch with us and explained that they had y problem’? From there, you can talk about how you suggested a solution and ultimately executed that solution to give them the end result. Which you can then of course showcase at the end of the case study with stunning photos or even a video. Tell your business story At the end of the day, people buy people and consumers love to find out about the people behind an organisation. So telling the story of how your business came to be can be a fantastic way to start building a relationship with a potential client/ customer. Telling this story also provides you with an opportunity to talk about how much you love doing what you do. Helping you to stand out against your competitors. It can also help to establish key figures within your organisation as experts in their fields and even lead them to become industry influencers. Create a narrative When talking about storytelling, this might seem like an obvious thing, but narratives don’t have to be long stories as we typically think. Instead, a short and simple narrative can be all you need to explain your product/ service. This works particularly well when what you offer is something that people may need at a particular moment. Or if your product/ service solved a problem your ideal customer faces. Top Tip: If you do use a narrative, make sure that the main character in it is relatable to your target audience. I.e the character runs into the same problem and has the same thought process as your target audience. This is why it’s so important to know your audience – something we talk about in more detail in another blog post. The reality is, storytelling is a fantastic skill for marketers to have as it allows them to convey their message to the target audience in a way that resonates with them. If you feel that your marketing messages aren’t getting through to your audience, it might be time to change things up. If you’re looking for marketing support, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us. We have years of marketing experience and are specialists in the construction industry. Give us a call on 01903 686858 or email us at info@constructivemarketing.co.uk.
Improving Your Digital Marketing
As we’re sure you’ll know, technology is constantly changing and there’s no exception for digital marketing channels. So it’s no surprise that, in order to be successful at digital marketing in 2023, you need to continually evolve your digital marketing strategy. The beginning of 2023 is a good time to make some changes. Here’s what we suggest: Streamline the social platforms you’re on A lot of businesses make the mistake of being on every social media platform in fear of not reaching everyone. Unless you’re a government or global consumer brand, this is the wrong approach to take – you don’t want to reach everyone you want to reach your target audience. So ask yourself – what platforms are they on? Think of social media platforms as news channels. There are lots of different ones out there; Sky News, BBC News, Channel 4 News, ITV News etc. Each of them is essentially telling the same stories, they’re just doing it in a slightly different way. As a result, people have their preferences – some always watch Sky News and don’t like BBC News. While others prefer BBC News over everything else. So what social media platform does your target audience prefer? Once you know that, you can start removing your business from other social channels and focusing on the audience’s favourite/s. Top Tip: Make sure that you don’t leave your social media accounts to become dormant. It’ll reflect badly on your business and may make potential customers turn away thinking your business is not operating anymore. Instead, either delete the social account completely or – if there’s an option to – make the account invisible to the public. Build relationships with your customers One of the main goals of any marketing efforts that you do should be to build relationships with your customers. Very few consumers are going to decide to buy from you simply because you asked them to. What many will do is shop around, look at alternatives and ultimately choose the business that resonates with them the most. Making sure that your business has a good relationship with the consumer will give it a good chance of being the one that consumers choose. Make sure you’re consistent Whatever digital marketing efforts you’re doing, making sure you’re consistent is a constant rule. While changing things up is important, it’s equally as important to make sure that you’re giving things ‘a good go’ before deciding that they’re not effective for your business. Here at Constructive Marketing, we’ve got years of experience managing a diverse range of businesses digital marketing strategies. Whether you’re not sure where to start, or you already have goals in place, we can help. Give us a call on 01903 686858 or email us at info@constructivemarketing.co.uk to arrange a meeting with us and get your digital marketing back on track for 2023.
Here’s Why Your Digital Marketing Isn’t Working And How To Fix It
One of the most common things we hear when we discuss digital marketing with a business owner is, ‘I tried it once, but it didn’t work for me’. While it’s true that communicating online is harder for some businesses than others, it’s usually just a case of finding out which type of communication works best – both for the target market as well as for the company/brand itself. The leading cause for digital marketing efforts not working is that the business doesn’t know its target audience well enough to know how to communicate with them. Know your audience A concept that is the cornerstone of all marketing activities, and something that should be considered before any marketing activities begin, is ‘know your audience’. More often than not, the business owners who say digital marketing hasn’t worked for them have simply approached it ‘blind’. What we mean by that is they haven’t looked at who their audience is and therefore they don’t know who they’re talking to. If that’s the case, how can you expect to be saying the right things? So many make the mistake of just doing things because ‘everyone else is’ and then becoming disheartened when it doesn’t work. Just because the majority of businesses have a Facebook page these days doesn’t mean that your customers are there. In fact, most of our clients – who are B2B – find success on LinkedIn. So understanding your audience is crucial to being able to invest in the right marketing efforts. How to understand your audience There are so many different ways of getting an understanding of who your customer base is and the way in which you do will depend on a few things: Relevance is key. One of the biggest questions you need to ask before you conduct research of any kind is, ‘what is it that I want to know?’ As lovely as it would be to sit down with a cuppa and exchange pleasantries with your customers, that’s probably not going to help you market to them better or even acquire other customers like them. Instead, you need to understand why they chose to buy from you, what sets you apart from others in their mind and how they would like you to keep in touch with them. Is it through email or would they rather see your Tweets in their feed? The budget that you have. Some research methods are more thorough and therefore more costly than others. For bigger businesses with a research budget, conducting questionnaires and even focus groups is a good way to get to know the customers. For smaller businesses without much budget, there are free tools such as Google forms which could be sent to your existing clientele. . Asking questions via your social media channels is also a great way to get feedback, just prepare for it to be really honest! Sometimes simply looking at the competition can be a good indication as to what yours should be doing as you can take a more objective view on what’s working for a company that isn’t yours. Feeling a bit overwhelmed? Don’t worry, we can help! We offer an expert diagnosis service to help time-poor business owners and managers to gain focus and control over their marketing. You’ll get: Give us a call on 01903 686858 to speak to our expert team today.
What is a Google Business Profile?
And how can you optimise it? Google Business Profile (GBP) previously known as Google My Business (GMB), is an amazing free tool that allows you to be visible on the tech giant’s search engine. Making the most of this tool is one of the best ways to appeal to your local market as the information you provide on your GBP not only appears in Google search but also on Google Maps. So what can you do to optimise your GBP to improve your online presence locally? Here’s our top three ways to optimise your GBP. Location, Location, Location! One of the best ways to optimise your GBP is to include all of the local geographical areas that your business operates in. When it comes to selecting the areas to put onto your profile it’s important to be as specific as possible. Be sure to include specific town or city names, not just the county and country in which you operate. By including more locations on your GBP you will increase your chances of appearing when people search with location keywords, however, if you want to appear locally, you don’t want to include every city and town in the country. Optimise your services Another great way to improve your local reach is to update the services that your business provides. By listing all of the services that you provide your presence within the local market will be much higher as you will appear under a lot more search terms. For example, if you are an electrician, you could include services such as: electrical inspections, electrical wire repair and electrical socket and switch installation. Simply head into the services section of your GBP to start exploring the different services available. If you can’t find every service you provide, you can create a custom service. A powerful description The description of your business is one of the ways that you grab the attention of the reader, it is how you let the reader know what your business is all about, what you do and how your services can be of use to them. With that in mind, you must ensure that the description on your GBP is the best it can possibly be. The description section of your profile does have a character limit of 750 so you don’t need to write an essay on your business, just something simple that gets your point across. On the Constructive Marketing Google Business Profile, our description reads; “We are marketing experts. Our expertise includes Marketing, PR, Social Media, Graphic Design and Websites. We have the skills to cover this and more. We have extensive experience with writing content for websites, social media, award entries or print. We also create websites that combine the art of design and content optimisation along with the science of building organic SEO into every page. Contact us now to find out how we can take your business to the next level. Specialist sectors include Construction, Education and Care.” This uses 650 of the 750 allowed characters, so you can see that you don’t have to write much, just make it count!Having a well-optimised GBP is an integral part of your online presence. We work with a variety of clients from different industries to maintain a good online reputation for them. If you’re looking for help with maintaining a good reputation for your business, give our team a call on 01903 686858 or send us an email at info@constructivemarketing.co.uk. We’d love to help!