Although it may seem like e-mail marketing is a good fit for everyone – unfortunately, it’s not. Before deciding to start investing in it, it’s necessary to consider who this type of promotion is addressed to. For some entrepreneurs, e-mail marketing can be a source of great benefits.
First of all, contrary to what it may seem, mailings are simple to prepare. Mostly because there are many tools useful for the preparation of newsletters and e-mail communication in general, so you don’t have to worry about figuring it all by yourself. Creating a newsletter is then about adjusting the chosen templates and planning to send them out. In addition, you can take advantage of some basic analytics and check how many of your emails have been received and opened, and whether the recipients took the desired action afterwards. Because of that, you can get to know the recipients, divide them into segments and prepare almost completely personalized messages. E-mail marketing doesn’t have to be expensive, so it can easily fit into your whole communication strategy.
However, e-mail marketing doesn’t work for every brand. For whom, then, it is and should you include it in your marketing strategy? According to a very general rule, e-mail marketing is for any company that gathers a specific community around them, can offer an actual product or service, and uses an appropriate mailing tool that allows the recipients to unsubscribe from the mailing list. The last but definitely not least – you should own a database, or be able to collect email addresses from the users who follow your brand and would be interested in receiving messages from you. So, if:
– you run your own online store, e-mail marketing can noticeably increase the sales. 44% of the recipients of all mailings have made a purchase at least once after receiving the newsletter. For an online store it is an opportunity to attract new customers and uses remarketing effectively;
– you work in a non-profit organization that makes good use of influencers and communicates its values and projects on a daily basis. E-mail marketing allows you to create relevant segments within your target groups so that each person can get personalized content and act accordingly so that your organization can achieve its goals more easily;
– if you own a startup and want to pitch your ideas more effectively and to a wider audience, you can do so through e-mail marketing. Introducing new products and promoting them through a series of personalized emails has never been easier. You can quickly and accurately connect with investors and other people are into your target industry;
– you are an owner of a specific website or portal – thanks to newsletters, you can send your readers a summary of the latest articles and news published, from any period of time. In addition, you can derive passive income from the ads placed in your messages;
– you are organizing events, conferences and meet-ups – then e-mail marketing will help you make sure you are in touch with all the participants. You can send them the most important information and keep them in the loop. By sending mailings, you also have insight into important statistics and details about the recipients.
– you work in the entertainment industry or sell recreational equipment. E-mail marketing will be a perfect addition to your activities and will also work well as an element of a remarketing campaign, for people who have already used the service you offer;
– you run a restaurant and offer a home delivery service – you can easily remind the recipients of your business and encourage them to place an order one more time;
– you are an influencer and you want to reach your fans – there is no faster route than the direct message that will end up in their inbox immediately. Thanks to regular mailings you can keep your fans updated and build a proper community around you.
On the one hand, e-mail marketing is for specific businesses, but on the other – it seems to be a good solution for anyone who wants to share information and stay in touch with their recipients. However, the most important thing is that when sending newsletters, you should personalize your emails as much as possible. The content should be relevant and useful – this will actually increase the email opening rates. By using graphics and videos, you can also get the attention of the recipients more easily. If you plan and execute your email marketing strategy well, there’s a real chance to increase your sales.
LinkedIn is the largest business portal, bringing together professionals from around the world, and it was accepted as an employee and employer service. It’s enough to publish your virtual CV there. However, many people forget about the social nature of the site.
You can share interesting industry materials, show professional interests, establish valuable contacts with future employers and business partners. One of the less popular features of this social networking site is the LinkedIn Publishing platform – a place to create and publish content in the form of articles. How to create content at LinkedIn Publishing and how to use this tool to develop your business and build a strong personal brand?
LinkedIn Publishing is a free platform within Linkedin that allows for the publication of essential articles, in which you can also place graphic materials, videos and hyperlinks. This tool is extremely useful when building your personal brand on LinkedIn.
Regular publication of expert materials strengthens the credible and professional image of the future employee, and also makes his profile positioned higher on the website. Besides, the user’s contact network, thanks to it, can get to know him from the professional side, and thus, in the future, he can be recommended to a potential employer. The significant advantage of creating and publishing content on LinkedIn Publishing is that immediately after the publication of the article, the entire contact network of the author will receive a notification. However, there is no need to promote texts only on LinkedIn.
You don’t have to be logged in to the site to read them, so you can easily promote the content on other social channels as well. In this way, not only interesting content is promoted, but, above all, the author. As a result, thanks to the expert image, he can spread his wings inside the industry. However, this is not the end of the advantages of using the LinkedIn platform. The website also provides statistics on all published articles, thanks to which the author can make direct contact with people interested in the subject, encourage them to discuss and leave their opinion. To do this, use the “Share box” option in the author’s private profile.
An ideal article that will be real support for the business image should reflect several principles. What should you draw attention to when writing a publication?
When preparing to create content, first of all, you should focus on one specific topic. It should be related to the author’s previous professional experience and reflect his interests.
Thanks to this, the article will be authentic, and thus it will be more credible for the reader. The trends in the industry are also significant. If the topic of the article presents popular issues, showing their new approach, the text will be more popular and the probability of reaching a wider audience will be higher. Nevertheless, even the best-written article won’t succeed if it’s not given an appropriately engaging title.
It should contain the most important, specific benefits of reading the article, making that the recipient will immediately want to read it when receiving the notification of the new text. From the research conducted by Noah Kagan, the ideal length of the title is from 40 to 49 signs. How to build an article to get interested recipients? According to Kagan, the best effects will be given by two types of content:
– guide articles, the title of which begins with the question “How to do something”;
– articles containing guide check-lists.
Many people wonder if this type of content should include their own subjective opinions, especially when they don’t coincide with generally prevailing trends. Yes, an individual approach to different industry problems usually brings benefits. Nevertheless, it should be highlighted, that expressing extreme or offensive views will have an adverse effect on the image. A similar effect can appear if the statement containing the author’s opinions will have an unprofessional character.
When writing an essential article, you should remember that its primary purpose is to transfer knowledge. Recipients must know, that the content they intend to read, will bring value to their previous work. That’s why it’s so important to highlight the benefits of reading at the stage of the title and the headline. And therefore, facing the dilemma, how often you should publish content, it’s always worth asking yourself if we have something valuable to convey.
LinkedIn Publishing platform allows you to add photos, videos and links inside the article. Nevertheless, the research carried out by Kagen shows, that the best results are obtained by the publication of 8 photos, that illustrate the topic of the statement.
By mastering the basic schemes of creating content dedicated to LinkedIn Publishing and creating user-friendly content that adds value to his business, we can increase our chances of development on the most significant business website.
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Having seen initial success via Social Media and Influencer marketing, Chris and Beth at Kids Dreambox were looking to grow organically via Search as there next Marketing strategy. Having received very little reward and ROI on organic visits to the site, despite seeing some ranking position success.
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Comparing June 2019 – November 2019 vs June 2018- November 2018
Increased Organic Traffic
Increase New Sessions
Increased Ecommerce Conversion Rate
“Before Smarter Media started working with Dreambox, we were predominantly a social media business. We had reached the top page of Google for very direct searches thanks to the amount of traffic we were sending to our site via social media. Our analytics showed social media referrals accounted for 57.5 per cent of our traffic. As most business owners, we knew SEO was important, but didn’t really understand why or how it works and so we decided to let Smarter Media take the reigns and begin working on our site in February 2019. We were advised it would take 3 months to start noticing changes, and it was a concerning time as we did find ourselves questioning whether it would make a difference. Fast forward to June’s analytics and google is now our website’s biggest source of traffic – from 31.1% up to 48.9%, purely down to the work the amazing team have put in! We have climbed the Google place ladder for several search terms and have a load more key words added relevant to our industry. And whatsmore, the team are some of the nicest, friendliest bunch you’ll ever have the pleasure of working with (particular thanks to Nataley for being so patient and explaining things to us)! Thank you so much for all your hard work, it’s so nice to be able to see the results coming through.”
Beth Garrett – Kids Dreambox Owner
Business owners who are new to SEO often ask their SEO professionals how long it will be before their search engine optimization works, and when they can begin to rank #1 for the best keywords for their industry. Before an answer can be supplied, however, SEOs need to correct the question. The idea of ranking at the top for a handful of important generic keywords is a holdover from years ago when SEO worked differently.
A long time ago, SEO used to work something like this: you would identify a handful of keywords to do with your industry that didn’t have much competition. You would decide that those keywords would bring in most of your traffic, and try to rank for them.
Today, however, such a keyword strategy would be all wrong. This is because in most cases, there is no small set of keywords that can bring all the traffic that you need. Instead, there is a long list of multiple-word phrases called longtail keywords that you aim for. If you attempt to rank for just a few generic keywords, most of the people looking for you probably wouldn’t find you.
In SEO today, a significant proportion of searches is conducted using natural language. People use speech recognition engines such as Siri and Google now to speak in natural sentences as they look for search results. These multiple-word search phrases usually have very little competition, making them easy to rank for when your website contains them. Since these keyword phrases contain greater detail, they attract people looking for very specific things. Such searchers are more likely to convert when they arrive on a website. The aim then is to rank for a large number of long, natural-language keyword phrases.
Some SEO firms like to get their clients to focus on ranking high for specific keywords because it’s an outcome that’s easy for them to sell. For the client, however, ranking high isn’t the ultimate aim. What they really want is to have their SEO efforts bring them leads and sales. Rather than ask an SEO provider how long it will be before SEO delivers your company to the top of the rankings for a given keyword, then, you should ask how long it will be before it is able to deliver leads and sales.
If you want to know how long your SEO will take to bring in leads and sales, the answer can depend on a number of variables. It depends on how many years your website has been around, how much optimization has been done on it, how much content it holds, what kind of link profile it has and so on. What follows is a roadmap that can show you what the first six months of your company’s SEO involvement are likely to look like.
The first month: The SEO company researches your website, audits it, and comes up with a keyword strategy. In some cases, research of your website can complete in a week, leading to technical changes to your website. In other cases though, thorough website research can take over a month.
The second month: In some cases, a website will need nothing more than a few tweaks. In others, a major overhaul may be called for. Rebuilding a website can take months. You won’t see any improvements to your SEO situation over the time that it takes to build your website.
The third month: If the basic structure of your website is in place by the end of the second month, you should be ready to create content by the third month. A blog, articles, an About Us page, and a FAQs section, among other content, should begin to populate your website at this time. Often, budgetary concerns can limit how much content can be added to a website. Nevertheless, rankings should begin to improve by the end of the third month, even if those rankings don’t translate to better sales.
The fourth month: Content creation continues in the fourth month, along with technical improvements to the website. You should expect a better link profile by this time, and to see some lead generation from your SEO efforts. It won’t be as impressive as what you’re likely to see a year later, but it should be good enough for you to realize that your search engine optimization efforts are working.
The fifth month: Your SEO company will start bringing social media management into the mix in order to boost traffic. Building your profile on social media should begin to help you develop a good link profile for your website. You should see your lead generation improve further.
The sixth month: The average small business website is likely to see 6,000 or 7,000 visitors a month with 6 months of SEO. You may begin to see conversion rate optimization added on at this point, to improve the conversion rate of the traffic that comes to your site.
It usually takes small businesses 6 months of SEO to begin seeing improvements to their bottom line. Past 12 months of SEO, your gains should begin to level off. From that point, your SEO efforts will be about maintaining the benefits that you get from the activity, rather than growing them.
Businesses often underestimate how hard it is to come by results with SEO. Even when you do work with a generous SEO budget, significant results rarely show up before 6 months. Unfortunately, many businesses try SEO for 3 months, grow impatient, and give it up because they don’t believe that it justifies the expense. It’s important to understand that SEO is a long game. If you’re willing to stick with it, you will reap the benefits.
‘We have a brand new website designed, but we aren’t generating a ROI from the site.’ AKW Global Logistics are looking to increase the volume of enquiries through the site.
Comparing June 2018 – December 2018 vs June 2017 – December 2017
Increased Site Traffic
Increased Page Views
Increased sales enquiries to the web-based phone line in the 2nd quarter.
Working with Smarter Media on our SEO campaign has been an absolute pleasure. Rob is lovely and personable, but not only that; he has managed to increase our telephone enquiries to the dedicated web based phone line by 31% for the quarter. Coupled with a year on year average of 49% increase in site users, I think the results speak for themselves. Great work guys
Laura Hall – AKW Global Logistics Marketing Manager
Looking for an agency to initially manage a google pay per click campaign. Our team also discussed with Daniel about the organic search potential for his business. The objective of the overall campaign is to significantly reduce your overall ad-spend over the next 12 months whilst increasing the sales revenue from the website.
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Comparing December 2018 – June 2019 vs December 2017 – June 2018
Increased Organic Traffic
Increased Sales Transactions
Increased Revenue
Decreased Google Paid Traffic
Increased Organic Transactions
Increased Organic Revenue
Decreased Google Ad Spend
Increased Google Paid Transactions
Increased Google Paid Revenue
“Keep up the Amazing work team”
Dan Godwin – Amaroc owner
A central factor in any SEO campaign is keyword research. SEO doesn’t typically provide immediate results, so you need to know your work will eventually produce the desired outcomes. Targeting search terms with low volume will be unproductive, focusing your attention on keywords that audiences are not interested in. Conversely, you could choose popular keywords, but face an uphill battle trying to leapfrog some authoritative sites.
A vital part of keyword research is finding a tool that produces useful and accurate data. There are numerous keyword research tools available, designed as isolated products or integrated into broader SEO suites. The following tools are among the best options for gaining data you can use in your SEO campaigns.
KWFinder is a popular tool that shows factors like search volume, search volume trend, and cost per click, with the option of filtering by country, city, and language. You are also given a keyword difficulty rating, making it easy to asses whether a keyword is worth pursuing. While you can get limited data for free, the premium plans offer more searches and comprehensive information.
Moz Keyword Explorer is a typical keyword tool in many ways, but it has a few excellent features that help it stand out. Organic CTR estimates the number of clicks you can expect from a keyword, factoring in elements like paid ads and rich snippets that will reduce the click-through rate. Difficulty assesses the level of competition you face for a search term. Priority looks at metrics like Organic CTR, search volume, and difficulty in discovering the terms with the most potential.
KeywordTool.io covers several different search engines. You can gather information from the autocomplete feature on search engines including Google, Bing, Amazon, YouTube, and more. The tool provides a huge number of keywords, even finding popular hashtags across social media sites. You will, however, need to upgrade to a paid plan to get data like search volume and cost per click.
SECockpit is a premium product that has great potential for anyone serious about SEO. A beginner might struggle to get the best from the tool, with numerous filtering options and a higher price than many competitors. If you want to be able to gather a huge list of keywords from a variety of sources, filter them in great detail, and set up campaigns to track your work, SECockpit is an excellent option.
SEMrush is an established product that covers more than just keyword research. The tool has tracked a huge number of keywords and websites over a long period. It is then able to do more than simply provide a list of keywords and some basic data. You can see which terms your competitors are ranking for, with access to their landing pages. This data can be used to focus only on the keywords that are likely to bring quality results.
The Google Keyword Planner is aimed at advertisers, but you can still get help with your SEO campaigns. Search volume data can be found in all tools, but it is useful to get it directly from Google. Additionally, you can analyze the expected advertising costs, with expensive keywords likely to be profitable if you can gain a good ranking.
Jaaxy is designed primarily for affiliate marketers looking to get a wide variety of keyword options. Along with searching for keyword recommendations, you can also uncover new niche ideas with little competition. Jaaxy provides the common traffic stats, but also shows how many other sites are trying to rank for each specific keyword.
For anyone performing SEO with any regularity, a keyword research tool will become a go-to product. Dedicating time to building engaging content and promoting a page will be frustrating if you find you focused on the wrong keyword. Many keywords have limited search volume or are too competitive, so it is important to perform thorough research first. However, each of the listed keyword tools can set you up for success with your SEO campaigns going into the future.
Trying to find your way through the fog of SEO opinions can be tricky. There are many different ranking factors, with differing views on the importance of each. While there will never be a consensus, you can find many ranking factors that are considered vital for SEO. Focusing your attention on these factors will be the quickest way to top rankings, while you can also monitor for algorithm changes that may require adjusting the strategy. The following ranking factors should take priority when you start work on your next SEO campaign.
Page speed has grown into a significant ranking factor, with search engines wanting to offer the best experience to their searchers. Slow loading times can be a problem on mobile and desktop devices, so you need to factor this in when developing a website. Google provides tools for testing the speed of your website, providing solutions for any problems. You may need to add caching plugins to your site, reduce the image size, fix coding errors, and use a content delivery network.
The top-ranking pages typically have a high page and domain authority. The popular SEO tools like Moz, Ahrefs, and SEMrush provide details on this authority using a variety of factors like site age, backlinks, internal linking, and site dwell time. You should check your authority using one of the popular tools, with the goal of increasing the score as you develop an SEO campaign.
Backlinks are still a critical factor for SEO, but it is essential to focus on quality over quantity. The best links are usually gained through content creation and outreach. Look to create content that is exceptional, leading to shares and recommendations across the web. If you analyze what is currently working, look to develop articles, videos, infographics, and other content that meets or exceeds the usual output. Reaching out to blogs and influencers can also lead to links, but it will take longer to build new industry relationships.
On-page optimization helps the search engines to understand the content visitors will see. Optimizing a page makes it clear what it is about, but avoids appearing to trick the search engines with excessive keyword usage. You can use keywords in your title and meta description, while also adding them to the body text along with related terms. Image alt tags, URLs, and H1 tags can also feature your main keywords sparingly, but ensure you are mixing in LSI terms naturally.
Ultimately, the search engines want to provide searchers with high-quality content that meets their needs. The type of content appropriate for each search will vary, but it should leave most searchers satisfied. If you are writing a blog post based around a keyword, your content should offer more than the existing top listings. You could go into more depth, add images and videos, and improve the formatting. Creating superior content gives you an excellent argument for leapfrogging the current pages.
Site security is necessary if you want to maintain consistent rankings. One of the first steps you can take is to use the HTTPS extension, ensuring data sent between a web browser and website is secure. Website hacks can damage credibility in the eyes of users, so Google won’t want to list your site if there is a security breach. Services like Sucuri check for hacks and malware, while WordPress users should install a plugin like Wordfence. The quicker you can respond to an issue, the higher the likelihood that your SEO won’t get impacted.
User experience is a broad factor that includes several essential elements. When users visit a page, they expect to find attractive design, clear navigation, relevant content above the fold, and simple formatting. Providing these elements will increase the dwell time and reduce the bounce rate, ensuring Google thinks you are offering a great user experience. As long as you can meet the needs of the searcher effectively, you should have no problem providing a quality user experience.
If you can’t rank your pages on the first page of Google for targeted searches, you will struggle to gain consistent search traffic. Only limited numbers of sites will be able to gain prime positions in each niche, with fierce competition to be found. Focusing your attention on the most crucial ranking factors means you don’t waste time on elements that offer negligible results. Most sites are working with limited time and money, so dedicating your resources to these factors ensures you stay focused on the biggest wins.
Smarter Media is pleased to announce that we are sponsoring this Saturday’s game of our local professional ice hockey team, the Swindon Wildcats, on the 9th November!
The Swindon Wildcats club was founded in 1986 and has been going strong ever since. More recently in 2016/17, they won the Autumn Cup and National Cup as well as the 2018/19 NIHL1 Southern League Championship.
Their jersey colours differ depending on where they’re playing: red and white is for home games and red and black for away games. They have an official mascot too; he’s Willie the Wildcat and he always makes an appearance at the games!
They play all home games at the Link Centre in West Swindon, and fans from across the country come to watch every year. The Swindon Wildcats have a fantastic supporters club for all dedicated fans, and there are also a variety of businesses that sponsor the team and their games.
Over 1,300 fans are seated beside the ice rink every week to watch the thrilling action of a home game, and the Swindon Wildcat players are very talented and skilful, so a game is never dull!
The game Smarter Media is sponsoring is the special Swindon Wildcats V Peterborough Phantoms game in honour of Remembrance Day, and the Swindon Wildcats will be wearing limited edition jerseys in a red and white camo-style – as voted by fans. It’s going to be a great event with Phoebe Maddison, finalist of The Voice Kids, singing the National Anthem, and the mayor of Swindon will also be in attendance as the guest of honour.
As part of our sponsorship, our team will be using the Corporate Box which will make the night an unforgettable experience. We will have our own guests of honour joining us, including some of our clients and suppliers, who will be able to enjoy an array of drinks and nibbles with us while watching the game.
“We’re very much looking forward to taking our team, clients, suppliers and guests to experience the thrill of a professional ice hockey match!” Says our Managing Director, Karl Paul, “It’s also great to support local too. When you look at all the great things Swindon Wildcats do in and for the community, they are definitely worth getting behind.”
The Swindon Wildcats offer a variety of Corporate Hospitality packages that include VIP seating, finger buffets, chuck-a-puck, group photos with the Swindon Wildcat’s team and more!
As sponsors, we are also featured in the Game Night Program – so look out for us if you’re at the game! It’s going to be a night to remember, and we can’t wait to immerse ourselves in the atmosphere of a Swindon Wildcats game.
