Wednesday the 18th was an exciting day as I attended the CIM digital marketing bootcamp. Yay. I enjoy going to workshops and bootcamps, as it makes a nice change actually speaking to people in person, rather than sitting in front of my computer talking to other people, who quite possibly, are sitting in front of their computer.
Four topics were covered in quite a bit of detail, so here's a brief summery of each...
Email Marketing
Rechenda Smith of
little green plane, bestowed upon us the 10 email marketing commandments, the fundamental 'do's and don'ts' of running a successful marketing campaign and the key elements that could more than double your email open rates and increase revenues. Exciting right?
I learned some great little nuggets of information regarding just how mahusive email marketing is and how effective it can be. Did you know for every £1 spent, on average, your return on investment would be £42? That's enticing.
Rechenda shared few key design tips, such as making sure that you always use one prominent call to action and maintain an equal text to image ratio. Make it clear what you want your reader to do, whether it be sign up for a newsletter or book a course, make sure that you use an obvious button that links exactly to the page where they can sign up or book.
Rechenda also pointed out some of the most common email marketing mistakes; such as using poor data and not testing a campaign first. No spamming, of course, and always listen whilst adding value to your customers; don't just constantly email with how great you are, you may very well be great, but no one like a show off.
Top 5 Email Marketing Tips
- Use the opt-in approach
- Listen to your database; don't just talk at them
- Continually test and evaluate
- No spamming!
- Always aim to give value to your customer
Social Media
Yep, facebook, twitter, You tube and all that jazz. Warren Knight, co-founder of gloople, gave a really insightful talk on how to retain customers whilst building loyalty and engaging and listening with your client base, via various social media platforms.
Warren listed his 7 simple steps to building a B2B social media strategy and the benefits of using social media platforms to participate in conversations with your customers, and potential customers, online and in real time.
One of the main benefits that Warren spoke of, is the fact that social media can help you to define what your customers wants and needs are and receive honest feedback in immediately. Social media is instant, its there and it's in your face, the good the bad and the sometimes quite strange.
Social media can expand our reach to so many people on a relatively low budget nowadays, something that only mass marketing through TV or radio could have achieved not so long ago, and it's crazy that so many businesses do not have an online marketing strategy, ay ay ay.
Here's Warrens
Slide Share presentation twitter:
@wvrknight
Top 5 Social Media Tips
- Know your your target audience
- Listen, listen, listen
- Experiment
- Make everything digital
- Always aim to add value to your customers
SEO
Moving on to the wonderful world of SEO with search director at Craft media, Ian Miller. Wanting to know a bit more on the workings of SEO I was really looking forward to this talk, and it didn't disappoint.
So where do you even start with SEO? Google of course! Over 90% of online searches are made using Google, so making friends with the online giant is vital for achieving organic online growth.
After a slight hiccup with the projector, Ian hulked out and smashed it into the ground (only joking, just seen Avengers Assemble) He remained very composed and gave the room an excellent presentation on SEO's various aspects and the importance of using white hat SEO practices verses black hat (of course). His motto; would you tell your mum? Great motto. Would you be proud telling your mum what you've done, and if the answer's no, step away from the computer and take off the black hat and don't go there , it's wrong.
Ian shared with us some great sources for getting quality links for your link building strategies and some excellent tools to help make it a little easier to SEO the shizzle out of yours or your customers website, in a good way.
And here's his
Presentation twitter:
@millerian
Top 5 SEO tips
- SEO is ongoing, it should be part of your marketing strategy
- Get quality links by asking others
- Update sites with good content regularly
- Use webmaster tools and Google analytics
- Find errors with your website and fix them
Paid Search (PPC)
Well, this is where is it all got a bit technical for me! James Fairweather of coast digital, was very in depth, and it was clear that he was extremely passionate about what he does. I'm not going to pretend that I understand the maths behind PPC, because I haven't the foggiest, but from what I understood, PPC is a complex and in depth undertaking if you really want to get it right. I definitely wouldn't just 'give it a go' if I had the money, I'd invest in a specailised company who know exactly what they're doing! I would have way more to say about PPC, but my brain actually melted due to the sheer overload of information on the day; and I couldn't find my pen.
Top PPC Tips
Little bit at the end...
At the end of the day, digital marketing is all about giving the customer the best online experience that you can give them with the hopes that they will, at some point, or regularly, buy your product or service. No one really likes a hard sell, it does still work on occasions and in some industries, but no one really likes it, in the same way that no one really likes it when someone constantly tweets about how fantastic their life is or that you should buy from them, it's boring.
If you want to promote your business the right way, find out what your customers want to hear about, not what you think they want to hear, and always aim to add value. Always.
