They spoke to numerous agencies, each offering solutions which sounded amazing. For example:

• We will get you to the top of Google for all your keywords
• We will double your income in 3 months…
• We will manually build your links…

It sounded awesome, the company decided to choose a local SEO company near them called ABC.

The marketing manager at the SME and the agency representative both agreed the objectives. These included:

• Increase traffic to site via search engines by 150%
• Increase the quality of landing pages to increase conversions
• Work on social media campaigns to raise brand awareness.

A month into the campaigns, the marketing manager at the SME realised the lack of contact from the SEO agency. Doubts began to creep in his head about ABC, he had already paid £1000 for the first month and wanted to give them a chance.

Another month went by and very minimal work had been done. The promise of getting them in the top 10 for the initial 2 keywords hadn’t been fulfilled and emails were being ignored. Serious doubts were running through his head, ‘have I made a mistake by signing up with this agency’. They had now paid £2000.

Some of you may be familiar with this story. Unfortunately, everyone is claiming to be an expert in digital marketing. They promise the world but deliver very little. From web design companies to media agencies, they are all claiming to be specialists in the art of SEO.

So how do you spot a rogue SEO company:

• They will promise you number 1 position for your keywords on the search engine. Not even the best SEO agency can guarantee a top position.
• They promise to deliver instant results. This is not possible without dodgy black hat tactics which can damage your website’s credibility on the internet.  A good company will tell you that digital campaigns are a process that requires hard work and dedication.
• They don’t provide reports. A good SEO company will be able to provide well thought out and understandable reports on a monthly basis.
• The lack of original content on their site. A lot of these rogue traders don’t have content or it’s just rehashed gobbledegook from other sites. A good digital agency isn’t afraid to share knowledge.
• A good SEO company is willing to walk away. The top SEO companies won’t be pushy with the selling. They will be patient, ask questions and listen to your problems. Sometimes, they will even decline a job if they believe that they can’t help.

Neil Desai

Due to the nature of search, search marketing is able to deliver better conversion rates than traditional marketing strategies.

Search is demand fulfilment, direct marketing is demand generation

Trying to get the attention of your audience and deliver a compelling argument in only a few words is difficult.  This is the difficulty of direct marketing. Not only do you have to create the demand, you are unable to by the product immediately so you have to offer such a compelling argument that your message is remembered.  That is why conversion rates are far lower with direct marketing methods.  Rarely would a viewer of adverts such as banner adverts, see an advert and go and buy the product.  The main value of banner advertisements is brand awareness.

Search is unlike traditional advertising, users are actively searching for your product, and you just need to fulfil their needs.  Being at the top of search engines achieves both brand awareness but also high conversion rates. Users are likely to choose a company from the first page of the search engine results pages (SERPs), so to gain the most value from digital marketing; you need to be on the first page of search engines.

Make sure you prioritise digital marketing in your marketing strategy so that you are maximising your marketing budget and gaining optimum value.

Jack Willis

To get a high quality link back to your site, make sure that the page you are linking from is relevant.

If you are selling spare parts for tractors it doesn’t make sense to advertise in Vogue… You can put all the effort and money you want into the ad, but it is highly unlikely that you get any return on investment.Linking from really random websites has a similar effect both on direct sales and ranking.

Sites that are relevant to each other mean higher quality links which in the end means better rankings.

Sorry, I don’t think so (disagree if you like – comments are most welcome). This is unfortunate for anybody who feels they don’t have time for marketing, but the reality is that before you or I can even start to judge the quality of the offering we need to know that the product exists.

I’m not suggesting that companies forget about improving the quality of products and services, but I think we can all agree that everybody needs to factor in a reasonable marketing budget, right?

Get personal

Personal recommendations are worth their weight in gold. I even bought something from a Russian website that looked more than permissibly dodgy, and the payment  process turned out to be painfully slow but I was still happy to go ahead, because I knew that my friend had received her shoes and there were no subsequent signs of fraud.  Now, if I’d stumble upon that website through an ad, the page design and the location of the business would have sent me running in other direction…

Lesson learnt?

Do we assume that business A automatically gets repeat custom by being good? Sure, sounds reasonable, but it doesn’t automatically follow that you get new customers.

Incentives that don’t cost your business anything and still drive sales.

Cocosa.com is a good example of a company that gives incentives to its customers. The incentive doesn’t cost them anything and it builds a positive online reputation.

You can send invites to people that I think would be interested buying , and the beauty of it is that I get vouchers for the first purchase that my friend makes. New customers spends and old customer is encouraged to spend again!

Because any sane individual would only send invites to their friends, the credibility of the website is automatically boosted through personal through a personal recommendation.

Oh no!!! This really grumpy person is unhappy with us and now the whole world knows…

Laziness to the rescue. Correct me if I’m wrong, but experience in search marketing shows that people are generally quite lazy and won’t go past the first page when they are looking for something. This works to your advantage if you have something to hide, for instance a bad review, embarrassing pictures or plain lies about you. Whatever it is, there are ways of making that content escape the radar of the average internet user. You just need to bury it on the web. Very deep!

Don’t bury your head in the sand,

bury the bad content by flooding the internet with positive content to protect your brand. Make sure that meticulous SEO work goes into showcasing all the great content that you desperately need people to see. Search Engine Optimisation is one of the most important tools in the online reputation management toolkit, but remember, a reaction has to be swift and needs to be implemented on a grand scale, otherwise you might as well not bother, as you’ll be paying for the services and not get gain anything from the exercise.

It’s a bit like going to the supermarket and buying lots of things that you like, only to come home and realise that you have half the ingredients for a sponge cake and half the ingredients for a Greek salad, so you end up with neither dinner nor dessert in the end. So knowing what you want to achieve is essential.

Where do you start?

Before you start a marketing campaign you must be absolutely that you want X and Y to happen as a result. Without a clear idea about what you want to achieve your campaign has no chance of succeeding.  At Marketing Grin we have found that the involvement of the client is crucial in the opening stages. Now I’m sure that there is more than one marketing professional out there who has a different idea about how to approach campaign strategy – if you are one of them, do share your thoughts here!

How do you get from A to B?

Having a set goal means that you can take steps towards that goal.  Admittedly, the goal posts are moving in the fast-paced world that we live in, but we have all had to learn to take it in the stride.

So, once you (or your client) have decided what you want to achieve – use facts and data to decide how to best reach the targets. This approach will in general give good results, but truly remarkable results stem from combining insightful analysis of data with a big scoop of imagination and innovative thinking. Some may think it’s best to err on the safe side and stress the data side of things, and there are surely as many opinions on this matter as there are digital marketing agencies…