So here are some simple, actionable tips that can help you get better at Local SEO, but before we dive in, it feels like a bit of explanation is in order. First let’s agree on some terminology – Local SEO is when someone searches for a product or service that’s normally bought locally (eg driving lessons).

Then, there are non-local searches – let’s say you just look for general information on a product, or want to find out more about your favourite film or band. For argument’s sake, let’s call those ‘Conventional SEO’, so that I can explain the differences between the two types of SEO.

Local SEO – what is it and why do we need it?

Google has always wanted to give the most relevant results to users when they search for things online. Over time, Google started to realise that certain goods and services will mostly be bought locally. For example if you’re in Leeds and urgently need a locksmith, it doesn’t matter how many good reviews you see for a locksmith in London – you need someone local!

So Google made some changes – when people searched using a keyword that hinted at them wanting to find a local supplier, Google started to present the results differently. They introduced the ‘Map Pack’ – listings from Google Maps which appeared prominently within the search results to show local businesses. At first there were 10 of these, then later this was reduced to 7, and now 3 since 2015. Along the way those Google Maps listings were rebranded as ‘Google Places’ and later as ‘Google My Business’.

Local SEO on Google begins in just the same as any other search – you simply key a search query in to the search box (or directly in to your browser). Only two things are different; the way the results are presented to users, and the algorithm that drives the results.

Below the Map Pack, there are still ‘Organic’ SEO listings. The algorithm that drives these results is slightly different from the one for Conventional SEO, so stay tuned and I will explain those differences.

Is Local SEO relevant to your business?

This depends on your business – just try searching for your product or service category (eg accountant, web designer etc). If the ‘Map Pack’ appears within the search results, then yes – you’re a local business in Google’s eyes, and you need to give thought to your Local SEO.

So, let’s get started with some Local SEO tips. They start off quite basic but get more detailed as we go on, so if you implement them in more or less the order I’ve written them in, you can’t go far wrong.

(1) SEO Basics you still need to consider

First, you need to address some SEO basics. These few are largely the same as for Conventional SEO, but it’s important you address these and you may need to tweak your approach slightly to adapt to Local SEO. 

1. Do your keyword research – This is a real bedrock of any SEO campaign, but if you’re a local business, you must absolutely make sure that you’ve researched keywords that contain your location at town/city level. For example, if you’re an accountant in Portsmouth, the keyword ‘accountant portsmouth’ is vital, whereas ‘accountant hampshire’ is too vague and too big an area.
2. On-page SEO basics – make sure that the keywords you’ve found in step 1 are prominent in all the key places on your page. So for example, let’s say you’re still that accountant from Portsmouth, so ‘accountant portsmouth’ must appear in the URL, Title tag, H1, early on in the body content, in the meta description and the alt attributes of any images.
3. Advanced On-page SEO – Make sure you do all the other things you need for good on-page optimisation. On this subject, I bow to the greater knowledge of Brian Dean at Backlinko – here’s his checklist for on-page SEO. Keep an eye on it – he regularly updates it as things change.

(2) Specific Local SEO on-page factors

Now we move on to more on-page factors, but these ones relate directly to Local SEO:

4. Location pages – You must have location pages on your website with address details for each individual premises, so don’t just dump them all on one page as a list. That page simply won’t be relevant enough when people search for a specific town or city. If you only have one location, use your ‘about’ page, or something similar to act as your location page. This will mean all of the keyword placements mentioned in point 2 should appear on this location page. 
5. Ensure you have some unique content on each location page – if you have say 4 locations and create a page for each, it looks lazy and could affect your SEO if you simply have content on all 4 location pages that’s 95% the same. Include some details of the people or some individual specialisms at each site. 
6. Embed a Google map on each location page – this will emphasise to Google exactly where you are based. Don’t take a screenshot of Google Maps and add a jpeg of the map, you must embed it properlyd. Go to maps.google.com and find your business listing (if you don’t have one, refer to point 9). When you find it, click the ‘share’ button on the profile bar on the left and then the ’embed map’ tab and grab the code to embed within your site.
7. Add schema code to your location page– Schema is code that wraps around certain items on your page (but can’t be seen by site visitors) that tells Google what the information is.  For example, your address can use Schema, just so that Google knows without doubt, that this content is your address. In short, schema code helps certain elements of your page to stand out better to Google’s spiders. As well as your address, schema can be used for your business description, opening hours, maps events, payment methods and much, much more. You can create schema code for your site, using this useful schema generator tool – all you need to do is key in your business details and it will create the schema code for you.

(3) Claim your online profiles

Online profiles on Google My Business are absolutely critical for Local SEO success. These tips will help you make sure that your profile is best-placed to get you in to Google’s Map Pack.

8. Get yourself a GMB profile – You may already have one without knowing it, so go to Google Maps and search for your business by name. If there is a listing it should show up there, with a link for you to claim the listing for yourself. If there’s not, then go to Google My Business and create one. Whether you’re creating a new profile or claiming an old one, you’ll need to complete a verification process (which includes receiving a postcard with a verification code). You must complete this process for your profile to go live.
9. Tell Google how you will operate – The way you operate will determine how your GMB profile works. For example, if you have a premises people can visit you at, you can include the address on your profile. If however, you visit customers at their premises or a remote location, you can define yourself as a “service area business”. For example you might be a personal trainer and work from various gyms or other locations, which don’t belong to you. In this case you would register as a service area business.
10. Be honest with your categories – Select the category which best suits your business. You can select multiple categories but most businesses only really need one. Google is very good at working out overlaps in business descriptions. For example if you’re an Italian restaurant that sells pizza, you don’t need to add pizza restaurant as a category.
11. Use an accurate business name – Don’t stuff your keyword in to your company name unless it’s actually part of your company name. For example a lot of accountants already include the word ‘accountants’ within their business name. 
12. Make your profile visually appealing – You can have your logo and some images on your GMB profile, so be sure to include these. 
13. Use a geographic phone number – If at all possible, use a proper, geographic phone number on your listing, rather than a mobile number or a tracking number. Whichever number you use, should match the one you use on your website.
14. Add all of your locations – If you have multiple locations for your business, GMB allows you to create a location for each of them. Link each GMB location profile to the relevant location page on your website. Don’t just link all of them to your homepage.
15. Think beyond GMB – Although GMB is crucial, you should also think about other profiles for Facebook, LinkedIn, Bing Places and Apple Maps.

(4) Citations – a powerful Local SEO signal

‘NAP’ citations are those which mention your Name, Address and Phone Number. Typically these are found in directory and listing sites. Although there are only two tips here, citations are hugely important, so you should always look to get more quality ones, and to maintain the quality and consistency.

16. Check your NAP citations – It’s vital that you not only have sufficient citations live on quality sites, but that they are consistent. Small variations in your name, address or phone number can cause problems (for example, even if you have ‘Street’ in one profile, and ‘St’ in another). Search online for your company name, and keep a list of any out of date, incorrect or inconsistent citations. 
17. Speed up the process of getting citations – Sign up for BrightLocal, Moz Local or Whitespark. These services are fairly similar and allow you to submit your business details once, in order for multiple citations to be built for your business. 

(5) Build your reputation with reviews

When you see Map Pack results, you’ll see that some of them contain reviews and a star rating. Having reviews can help you to show up on the Map Pack, and the better your reviews the more likely people are to click through on your listing. Many businesses have none, so with a bit of effort and a proper plan, it shouldn’t take long for you to get at least 5 reviews (any less than this, and Google allegedly don’t use it as a ranking factor for the Map Pack) and move ahead of some competitors.

18. Start actively asking for reviews – Tell staff about the importance of getting online reviews, and ensure that they ask customers for them regularly. If you want to make it really easy for customers though, you could create a flyer explaining how to leave you one. If you sign up for a free account, Whitespark offer a free Handout Generator. Or you could create a Reviews page on your website to explain how to leave you a review – here’s an example of a Reviews page I made recently for a client.
19. Target customers with GMail addresses first – Now the reason for my tip above is that the process of leaving a review on Google My Business is neither easy nor intuitive. Also, to leave a review, you have to have a Google account. If any of your customers have a GMail (or Googlemail) account, then they will definitely have a Google account and can therefore leave you a review. So, you should target those users in particular to ask for a review.
20. Automate your review process – If you interact with a lot of customers regularly, using a service like Get Five Stars can help you get reviews in a quicker, more efficient way.
21. Don’t incentivise reviews on Google – You may be thinking you could get reviews by incentivising customers – for example by offering a discount or a freebie. Don’t do this – it’s against Google’s Terms of Service and has even got some businesses in legal trouble.
22. Don’t write fake reviews on Google – Stupid as it may sound, I have seen staff blatantly leave reviews for their employer! Obvious fake reviews can be flagged to Google by anyone – including your competitors. This could have big consequences for you, so just don’t risk it. 
23. Don’t let customers leave a review from your premises – Google is now very smart at knowing where people are at all times. So when they’re leaving a review, Google will know if they’ve logged on at your premises. Yes, it’s good to ask for a review while you’re fresh in the customer’s mind, but if they do it from your premises, Google may choose to ignore it.
24. Reply to reviews – Whether they are good or bad, reply promptly and ensure that your response is well written, honest and not a ‘copy and paste’ bland statement. The golden rule with any complaint is to offer to ‘take it offline’ before the complaint gets worse. 

(6) Find local links

Local links can help you show up in the Map Pack and the organic listings that appear below it. Getting links can be easier than you think, and they don’t even need to be on the biggest and best websites – good quality local ones will do. Even basic sites like schools, churches, local directories and sports teams can be beneficial.  Here are some ways you can get local links.

25. Look for local links from organisations you already deal with – If you already sponsor or partner with any local organisations, they’ll probably be only too happy to link to your website from theirs.
26. Find ways to partner with new local organisations – look for other opportunities to get links from local organisations, such as speaking or exhibiting at events, sponsoring a local sports team or 
27. Create a blog category for each of your locations – If you have a blog or news page on your site and use a tool like WordPress you can easily create a category for each town or city you operate in. Use that category to write local content such as guides, event listings or reviews of local businesses. Then you’ll actually be part of the local community, and you’ll have some quality, useful content for those local websites to link to. 

(7) Measure and manage your Local SEO efforts

This is a really detailed action plan, so imagine putting all that work in and not knowing how effective your Local SEO efforts have been. For example, Google Analytics is a brilliant free tool used by website owners everywhere, but without a bit of work, Google Analytics doesn’t tell you all that you need to know about your Local SEO traffic.

28. Add a new Local Search channel to your Google Analytics account – It’s a little-known fact that when users click on your Map Pack listing and go through to your website, this won’t show up as organic search traffic. Instead, it shows up as direct traffic. This is not ideal – traffic from the Map Pack results is something you’ll really want to measure to see how effective your Local SEO strategy is. What I do to fix this for clients is to create a new ‘custom channel’ in Google Analytics and call it ‘Local Seaarch’. You can do this by following the instructions in this post on Analytics Custom Channels. 
29. Create tracking links on your GMB profiles – To get traffic showing up in your new Local Search channel, there’s one more thing to do. You need to create tracking URLs and add these to your Google My Business locations, where you link through to your website. You can create these tracking links here at the Google URL Builder.

That’s it – you’re ready to get serious Local SEO traffic!

These tips are all very actionable, and the more you implement, the better you will do at Local SEO. Like all aspects of Digital Marketing, Local SEO changes regularly, so it pays to keep up to date. Here’s the latest edition on the Moz Local Search Ranking Factors – keep an eye on this list, which updates every year.

Contact Me if you need help with any aspect of Local SEO. 

The post The Ultimate Guide to Local SEO – 29 actionable tips you can start today appeared first on Click To Sale.

There are many reasons why it’s difficult. In this post I explore some of the main ones, and offer ways that you can help overcome them and make things easier for your business.

(1) Small Budgets
Naturally a small business won’t have the same large marketing budget as that of a large global company. That can make growing a business seem impossible at times, but there are ways of making a small budget go a long way.When I work with a small business, one of the first things I do is make sure that they’re already making use of all of the free and very cheap ways of marketing themselves.

For example, networking events (especially if you offer to be a guest speaker) can be very effective, and you should make sure that you are asking existing customers for referrals and recommendations before you spend any money on marketing.

(2) Narrow Audience
This is another problem that large, global businesses often don’t have to contend with. When the potential market for your product is very small, you need to market it very precisely, and you don’t have the cost efficiencies that you sometimes have when you mass market a mainstream product with broad appeal.

For that reason, it’s really important for you to get to know ways you can reach your prospective customers. Understand what issues they face, how they network with other people, what groups, forums and social media they use, and anything else you think might help you target them effectively.

(3) Complex Products
This next challenge is common for companies who sell a product or service to other companies, especially if you sell very technical products, or a service that people don’t understand. We’ve already said you probably need to reach a narrowly-defined audience with a small budget, so this is yet another challenge.

If your product or service is complicated, the same can probably be said of all of your direct competitors. When people struggle to tell the difference between one supplier and another, or understand what’s being offered they tend to stay with their existing supplier or do nothing (unless they absolutely need to buy).

This is a great opportunity for you to be different, and provide customers with helpful content such as free guides or instructional videos on your website. This will differentiate your business, help your customers and help you to avoid a hard-sell approach.

(4) Long Sales Cycles
Not all customers will be ready to buy straight away. In fact it’s highly likely that a typical customer will be exposed to several marketing or sales communications from you before they’re ready to buy. So given that you probably have small budgets, how do you stay in the minds of enough prospects, for long enough to turn them in to paying customers.

To begin with, you need to do everything you can to make them feel comfortable to contact you – or at least give their contact details to you – to enable an ongoing dialogue. Using helpful content and a soft-sell approach makes them more likely to end up on your database.

By then following up regularly, through cost-effective means like email campaigns or sales follow-up calls, you can keep prospects ‘warm’ until they are ready to buy, without exceeding your budget.

(5) Hard to measure
Ultimately, the biggest measure of success for your sales and marketing efforts is the sales revenue – and ultimately the profit – that you make. If you’re profitable, then it’s clear that not only are you attracting customers, but also that they are the right ones. However, it’s highly unlikely that all of your marketing is equally effective, and there’s even a chance that some of it could be wasted completely.

So how do you know what’s working and what’s not? Well, in my experience small businesses very often don’t keep a record of where sales and enquiries come from. Often this is because they assume that customer-facing staff will be reluctant to ask. However, most staff at small businesses know that their employers work on tight margins and have to be competitive, so they’re often very willing to help out and help you ensure that your marketing is effective.

Nowadays, digital marketing techniques can give a high level of visibility and analytics data, but it’s important that you still remember to use simple, offline techniques like asking customers how they found you, and keeping a record of it.

So, if you’re finding it challenging to market your small business, here are some thoughts for you to take away:

1. With the right approach you can market your small business effectively. By looking at the avove points and digging deeper in to each, it’s suddenly much easier to come up with a marketing plan, or improve your existing one.
2. Don’t spend money on marketing until you’re sure you’ve exhausted all of the free or very cheap opportunities first.
3. As and when you do embark on marketing your business, make sure that you know what you want to measure in order to know that it’s working. Ideally, you’ll be able to measure the sales revenue driven by each campaign, but failing that you should be able to track quotes, enquiries or sales visits, or even smaller marketing measures like email signups.

The post Why is marketing a Small Business so hard? appeared first on Click To Sale.

As your business grows though, you and your key people get more stretched and might have multiple areas of responsibility. There may come a time when whoever handles your marketing needs to get some help from a marketing specialist. That might mean hiring in someone to do in-house marketing, or it might mean working with an external consultant like myself. Either way, the signs that you need help are the same, and here are a few of them….

(1) You’re not working to a plan.

Do you have a plan that you’re working to for your marketing? One that tells you what you’re trying to achieve and how you’re going to measure success? Many people don’t – especially in small businesses, so if you haven’t, you’re far from alone. Businesses often dabble in a few bits of marketing activity just to see how it goes. Then they try different things but never get round to writing a plan. You don’t want 100 pages of detail, but you do at least want to know what you’re working towards, and to know that your key people within the business are aware of this.

(2) You have no idea what your ROI is.

For any form of marketing – be that digital or otherwise – you should know your Return on Investment (ROI) or you’ll never know if it’s working. On paper, this is simple – to work out ROI you just need to know your marketing costs, and how much business you got as a result. Real life isn’t that simple though. Tracking your costs can be complicated – especially if you invest a lot of time in marketing, which can be a big hidden cost. And do you really know how much business has come from your marketing activity? Most businesses I speak to don’t – it’s surprisingly hard to track where enquiries came from in the first place. Tracking the ROI of marketing with 100% accuracy is a pipe dream – in 16 years in Marketing I’ve never seen it happen. However, that doesn’t mean you should give up completely – there are many simple steps  you can take to give you greater visibility and at least know when things aren’t working. The more clarity you can get the better, even if you never reach perfection.

(3) You’ve run out of ideas with your Social Media.

Social Media is a big deal – even if you sell to businesses in a niche market, your customers and prospects are likely to use it. It’s important to get yourself set up, claim your usernames and get your accounts going. Many businesses though, then start to struggle for regular content ideas and accounts can start to get out of date and don’t really do anything to generate leads to their site or give people a reason to contact them. Social Media is not a quick win, so once the ideas run dry it gets forgotten about in favour of things that are known to work quickly. This is understandable, but you could be missing out on building a long-term source of new prospects.

(4) You can’t remember when you last updated your website.

Can you remember? Or did you need to look to remind yourself? I recently visited a site where the homepage was promoting an upcoming event……in 2012! I didn’t even bother to contact them, as it left me wondering whether or not the company was even still going. A site that looks good and feels like it has been updated regularly (and if you have a blog or news page, people will know how regularly you update it) is good for your business. It gives a better impression to visitors, and because search engines like sites that are regularly updated, it could even mean that you get more visitors in the first place.

(5) You’ve lost track of all the recent Google algorithm changes.

I work on Search Engine Optimisation daily and I can vouch for how difficult it is to keep up to date with. Tactics that worked fine in the past can now get you penalised by Google. Keeping up to date with all of the changes can be a full-time job, but it’s important not to be left behind when things change. In many businesses, the person responsible for marketing may have several other ‘hats’ to wear throughout the week to fulfil their role. I may be biased, but I think that Search Engine Optimisation has now reached a level of complexity where it needs to be handled by a marketing specialist (with no other responsibilities). That person may be in-house, or it could be an outsourced consultant like myself, but either way you need to be working to a plan and be flexible to changes when they happen.

(6) You’re not generating leads.

For any marketing activity to be successful it should generate either sales, or leads that later turn in to sales. That’s obvious right? Generating leads gets harder than ever though as the digital world gets more crowded. Are you getting found by potential customers online? And are they contacting you or do they leave your website without enquiring? If you’re not getting leads from your website and your online presence you probably need a different approach and some new ideas.

(7) You don’t know where leads come from.

Or maybe you are getting leads but you don’t know which activities are bringing leads in? The great thing about digital marketing is the granular level of feedback you get. Let’s say for example you place an ad on five different external websites at once. You get a decent amount of enquiries overall, but you’re not sure which brought in the enquiries. That’s easily fixed once you know how to set up your tracking and analytics. Once you know what you’re doing, it’s relatively simple to get much greater visibility so you can hold each piece of marketing activity to account. That way you can stop doing the things that don’t work, and do more of the things that work, making your overall efforts much more effective.

It doesn’t need to be difficult….

So, if you’re experiencing any of the above signs, it’s a good time to reconsider how you market your business, to ensure you have a focused, well-planned approach. You may have been lacking clarity on what exactly you do want, so hopefully the above list has given you a clearer idea of what you should be achieving.

Now you can start to think about whether you need to recruit an employee, or find an external consultant. If you need help, contact me and tell me more about your business and I can help you figure out what your marketing activity should look like.

The post 7 Signs it may be time to outsource your Digital Marketing appeared first on Click To Sale.

Well firstly, both are live streaming video apps for mobile devices. They allow you to take live video and share it with the world in real-time. Both are available on iOS and Android and also allow you to view (but not record) footage on a desktop, laptop or any other device with a web browser.

Both of these apps integrate nicely with Twitter – you actually log in to both using your Twitter credentials. Periscope integrates slightly better though, and with very good reason – it was recently acquired by Twitter. Naturally, as parent company they are favouring Periscope, but that’s not to say that Meerkat’s integration with Twitter is flawed.

The main difference between the two is that when you log in to Periscope it lists all of your Twitter followers and tells you which of them are on Periscope, allowing you to easily follow them on there too. Meerkat still has a suggestion tool for people you may know (much like the one on LinkedIn), so not showing your Twitter followers is a pretty minor downside.

It’s showtime!

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Screenshots of Periscope (left) and Meerkat (right)

So what happens once you start to view footage? Well, the apps remain remarkably similar. Both show you live or nearly-live footage, and as you watch you can post comments and questions, and also show your appreciation with a Facebook-style like on Meerkat, or a ‘heart’ on Periscope.

Once you finish watching a Meerkat video, it’s gone – for good. This is a continuation of the trend for ‘perishable’ content that’s been created by Snapchat in recent times. These apps combine the visual impact and ease of use of YouTube, with the short shelf-life of Snapchat conversations.

With Periscope, you can view the videos again, but only for up to 24 hours. You can however, download videos to your phone – which admittedly I haven’t done as part of my research, so I can’t comment on how easy that is. Meerkat also lets you record a video and schedule it for later (but once launched, it can of course only be viewed once).

My verdict on Periscope and Meerkat so far

So far, the way these apps are used is pretty poor, and a lot of what I’ve seen has been utterly vacuous! As with most forms of Social Media, the bulk of the content is purely that – social. Among other things, I have seen a video of some shop staff in Norwich having their lunch in the staff canteen, a lady having her hair cut and some drunk people arriving back from a night out!

Does that sound harsh? Well, I am reserving judgement, because I think the value of these apps will take time to materialise – that too is the same with any Social Media. I have no doubt that my experiences on these apps will improve as more of my Twitter followers sign up for them. Right now there is a great sea of content out there, and I can’t easily navigate my way through it as none of my followers are on there.

How might these apps be used for Marketing?

Well, it’s not difficult to see how these apps can be used for Marketing, because already, some people are using live streaming very well. In time, if these apps catch on, more people will learn to use them well, just like they have done already with other Social Media tools.

One thing that won’t change about these apps is the slightly rough and ready feel of them both. Clearly, these are only ever intended to be mobile apps. That means that to use them, you prop your phone or tablet up, press a button and sit and talk to camera (or walk around with it if you’re intending to show viewers something on the move). There is no way of importing in any graphics, captions or canned music like you see on some YouTube videos – and for me that’s part of the charm of them.

When used well, these apps effectively give you the means to do a basic, stripped-down webinar at little or no cost. Just like a webinar, you can get instant feedback on how well-liked your video is, and you can also get comments and questions to respond to. Compared with a ‘proper’ webinar, you can’t incorporate a slide presentation, but you can demonstrate a product or use other visual aids effectively.

Hootsuite are one such example of a company already using it well. They recently used Periscope to explain their new Social Media ad management platform and invited questions from their followers. It helps that their target audience of Social Media managers are naturally early adopters of Periscope (like me), but in time I see no reason why Periscope can’t become mainstream.

Having watched the Hootsuite clip, I feel it would be easy for a small business, or even a sole trader to make use of Periscope. After all, all you need is a mobile device, a quiet place to film, and a reasonably confident presenter. If you make mistakes, and your office doesn’t resemble a film set, no problem – live streaming is about personality, not perfection, and remember – the shelf life of the content is very short.

The future for these apps?

By now you’ll probably know from my comments that I think there’s a place for live streaming. For long-term content, YouTube is probably still best, as it seems a shame to create great content that only lasts 24 hours. For very topical content though – let’s say you wanted to comment on something that’s relevant to the news that day – it’s potentially a very powerful medium.

When I look at these two apps, I see remarkable similarities. That means there’s little point in being on both for the long-term, so this looks like being a head-to-head battle for survival – the Betamax and VHS of live streaming if you will (or Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD if you’re slightly younger).

If I have to predict which will win out, I would lean towards Periscope. It already integrates slightly better with Twitter, and as owners of Periscope, you have to wonder what else Twitter have up their sleeves to nudge people towards their platform.

For now though, if you have a Twitter account, I highly recommend that you download one or both of the apps and take a look for yourself. Then, keep an eye on how the take-up of these apps progresses, as they could be a great marketing opportunity for you in future.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

The post What exactly are Periscope and Meerkat and how will they change Social Media? appeared first on Click To Sale.

This time last week the dust was only just settling on the results of the UK’s General Election. Voters’ reactions varied, but one thing that got widespread agreement was that the result was quite a surprise.

And as is often the case with current affairs, there were some useful learnings that can be applied to the world of digital marketing.

(1) Don’t always trust research.

Opinion polls taken just days before the election suggested a very close fight between the Conservatives and Labour, with possibly a marginal lead for Labour. In truth though, Labour were well short of a majority and suffered a disappointing night. Exit polls on the other hand – which focus on people’s actual votes rather than their intentions – were considerably more accurate (and were collected by the same company).

The key lesson here for digital marketers is not to believe research. For many reasons, people often don’t behave the same way they say they will. Reasons might include these:

• People often respond based on how they’d like to be perceived, not how they intend to act.
• They may prefer to keep their views to themselves if they might be unpopular with their peers – in the election we heard much about so-called “shy Tories”.
• As society becomes more diverse, it becomes harder to find a representative cross-section for research purposes, making research difficult and/or potentially flawed.

So what should digital marketers do instead of research? The answer is simple – test. I’ve always been of the opinion that testing is like research but without the lies! The great thing about digital is that it allows you to deploy and measure a test quickly and meaningfully and see how customers react to it. Then you can keep the good ideas, and ditch the bad ones and keep testing for more improvements.

On your website you can test elements of your copy, such as your headline, or your ‘calls to action’ (like ‘download now’ and ‘request a quote’ etc). If you’re running email campaigns you can split-test different subject lines, and for Google ads you can split-test just about any element of the ad content.

The only word of caution is to make sure you don’t test too many things at once, or you won’t know what’s made the difference. Good testing is easier to arrange and will give you more truthful insights than research.

(2) Vagueness will work against you

This election featured live televised debates – but these were nothing new. What was new, was that these debates included representatives of up to 7 parties at once, rather than just the 3 main parties, like in 2010.

In 2010 on a live debate, Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats commented that the more he listened to Labour and the Conservatives, the more they just sounded the same. So imagine what it’s like when 7 parties all give their opinions at once on the same subjects! Although each of the leaders enthusiastically stated their case, many people still felt very unclear as to the differences between each party after the debates.

Like them or not, UKIP were the party that received the biggest increase in votes between 2010 and 2015. Although their policies were controversial, they were arguably the clearest and most specific in what they set out to do.

The lesson for digital marketers? Make sure you stand out from the crowd and offer as much specific detail about your product or service as you can. Don’t assume that your customers and prospects know anything about you. Even if you sell something quite vague and generic, where you tailor the actual product to the needs of the customer (such as consulting or training) there will still be specifics you can talk about. It might be something like your qualifications or credentials, or maybe even some detailed case studies.

If you just rely on general benefits like saying that you can add value or tailor your service to your clients’ needs, these won’t differentiate you – these are the sort of things that everybody says. So remember, people buy on specifics not on generalisations.

(3) Slinging mud impresses nobody

At times the televised debates got out of control, with candidates talking over each other and arguing with each other’s policies. They were so keen to make their point to each other and to counter any attacks that they forgot about the electorate!

One of the debates didn’t feature David Cameron, which was an opportunity for the other parties to be heard and present an alternative for the electorate. However, they simply made the most of the opportunity to belittle Cameron’s non-appearance, during and after the debate.

The lesson for digital marketers is that your customers and prospects are simply not interested in your little gripes with your competitors. They are interested in themselves, so you should talk about what benefits your product or service can offer them. Don’t take potshots at your competitors, because they don’t help your customers make a decision (even if what you’re alleging is true) and could make you appear unprofessional.

Focus on your prospects and what you can offer them. If you must offer comparison against competitors, keep them factual, and preferably verified by a third party (eg a market report on your industry).  Or you could present what you offer and invite customers to compare you against their current provider (without naming any names).

However you choose to get your message across, just make sure you do it without making digs at your competitors.

(4) You don’t need to please everyone to succeed

It’s been clear in the days that followed the election, that not everybody was happy with the result, as is often the case after an election. Dissenting voices were heard among the electorate and opposition politicians. There has also been the customary call for a reform of the electoral system, as some parties’ share of the overall vote was not reflected by the number of seats they won.

So with patchy popularity and competition for media attention from 6 other parties, how did the Conservatives manage to win a majority and not have to resort to another coalition as widely expected? Quite simply, they won the right battles. As with any election, this one was won and lost in the marginal constituencies, where a small swing in their favour often resulted in them winning a seat they hadn’t held before.

So, what can we learn from this to apply in the world of digital marketing? Well, very simply, you only need to appeal to the people that matter, and not worry about those that don’t. Segmenting your audience is one of the most important steps in the marketing process, but is one that’s often overlooked.

Too many websites I see fall in to the cliched old trap of trying to be “all things to all men”. Consider your business’s target audiences and what you can offer them, and make sure that you segment out your content and your marketing accordingly. For example I recently spoke with a life coach who works with both individuals and businesses. His website didn’t give a clear impression of who his services were for, so visitors to his site had no way of knowing whether it was right for them and offered what they were looking for.

We spoke about his customers and it transpired that he rarely wins business unless the enquiry comes from the MD or owner of a business. So he will now be sharpening his focus on these key people with specific content which he’ll target to these segments.

Conclusion: Look far and wide for ideas

The UK General Election was just one example of how current affairs can teach you things about how to be successful, which you can then look to apply to the way that you market your business.

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