In today’s fast-paced world of constant communication online, businesses need great digital marketing strategies to capture and keep their customers’ attention. With clients on the move and accessing their information and products via mobile phone or tablet – as well as their desk-based laptop – it’s vital for businesses to adapt their traditional marketing approach and bring it up to date.

With increased opportunity comes increased challenge, and for pre-generation-Y, the profusion of new digital marketing terms now in common parlance can be like a whole new foreign language that must be quickly mastered in order to keep up with the pace. The crucial point is that digital marketing is not just about reaching new audiences, but about measuring engagement so that ad campaigns can be effectively targeted and budgets don’t go through the roof.

With that in mind, here is our handy glossary of common digital marketing terms that crop up most in our conversations with clients on how best to present their online shopfront. We hope it is useful!

PPC – Pay Per Click

This is a method of internet marketing whereby advertisers pay a set amount each time an advert is clicked. This may be seen as a “bought visit” to your website as opposed to what we would call an “organic visit” – one where a customer enters a word or phrase, into a search engine and clicks on a website link that has appeared as a result of the words entered.  As the name suggests, you pay a sum of money every time someone clicks on your advert.

AdWords

AdWords is a service offered by Google and is a form of PPC advertising. AdWords targets adverts against specific searches in search engines.  When a prospective customer searches on Google, ads appear above the organic results in the top 3 positions, and also at the bottom showing 3 more ads. Through the display network, Google also uses advertising space on thousands of websites who have signed up with Google to display Google ads on their sites.

SEO – Search Engine Optimisation

This is a hugely misunderstood technique in the digital marketing world.  SEO enables the growth of organic search engine results.  It involves elements of improving rankings, driving traffic and increasing awareness of the site across search engines. A good SEO strategy will mean that a business’s website will achieve a better ranking on search engine results pages for a wide range of search phrases.

Responsive websites

Responsive website designs are sometimes also referred to as mobile-friendly designs and to a large extent the terms can be considered interchangeable.  Being ‘mobile friendly’ is a big part of getting part of the SEO right for your website, since Google will mark your website down a notch or two for not being mobile friendly.  Responsive designs are simply a website design that will work well for your customer whether they are viewing it on a mobile screen, a tablet or on a laptop. The design ‘responds’ to how the customer is viewing it, making it a good experience for the user.

CTR / CPC / CPA

These are all mainly advertising acronyms used to describe how successful an ad campaign is performing.

CTR means “Click Through Rate” and is expressed as a percentage. It indicates the number of visitors clicking on an advert as a proportion of how many times the advert was seen.  Low CTR means a poorly performing ad!

CPC means “Cost Per Click”.  This is the cost of a click on an advert for a particular phrase.   Some phrases cost much more per click than others which is dictated by how popular those phrases are.   Paying attention to similar phrases that cost less is a way of getting more value out of advertising campaigns.

CPA means “Cost Per Acquisition”.  This is a means of calculating how much advertising spend it costs to make a sale.  With a 1% conversion rate for instance, it would take 100 clicks to make one sale.  Taking the CPC for all of the 100 clicks and adding them together gives you the CPA.  If the CPA outstrips the profit you are making on the sale itself, your ad campaign needs a rethink.

CMS

A CMS is a “Content Management System”.  Most websites should be run on a Content Management System these days and if yours isn’t, then give us a call!  Once upon a time, websites were hand crafted page by page.  This quickly showed itself to be a problem when someone decided to make whole site changes such as to change the logo or the colour of the website. It also soon demonstrated that it was costly to always get a web designer to change small pieces of copy on one page, or to add a new news item.  Content Management Systems allow you to edit the content of the pages of your website without touching the design, which also makes it easier and cheaper to keep your website up to date and in good order.

eShots and Email Newsletters

Email Marketing via email newsletters and eShots will be something anyone with an email address will be very familiar with.  It is the modern day equivalent of direct mailers.  A good eShot should capture the readers’ attention by being eye-catching and easy to access.  Due to Data Protection laws protecting people’s inboxes, you need also to be careful in how you acquire your email addresses and you need to ensure you stick to the rules in allowing opt-outs too.

Hashtags and tagging

The younger generation has been raised with social media and so social media related phrases come naturally to younger people. Hashtagging and tagging someone are two very different things though.   Hashtags are a word or a phrase preceded by the # symbol.  Introduced originally on Twitter to help people to filter out conversations on this platform hashtags are now widely adopted on other social media websites such as Instagram.  They are also now considered to be marketing tools for getting a wider group of people to join in on a single conversation online.

Meanwhile, tagging someone is when you add your friends and connections on social media into a post so that they notice it in their notifications.  Widely used on Facebook and Twitter to cut through the noise on these two busy websites.

LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter Ads

Just like Google, large social media websites also allow you to pay for ad space on their websites.  Because people are signed into social media, this makes it much easier to target audiences demographically.  After all, on Facebook you enter your date of birth, where you live, where you work, check into restaurants, bars, airports, cinemas and museums. This demographic information across everyone who has a Facebook account allows highly targeted advertising to take place.  Twitter and LinkedIn also target although less specifically than Facebook.  When looking at advertising budgets, don’t discount social media advertising.

As we have said before, the Internet is not a mysterious force.  It is published by and then used by people, just like you and me. Therefore, when considering and planning a digital marketing strategy, it is always a mistake to forget that customers are still people who have the same characteristics as they do when they walk into your shop.  Your digital presence should be helpful and convey your marketing message quickly and effectively, but not bombard the customer with loud, shouty messages that will simply turn them away. We hope this article will help you navigate the constantly evolving digital world.  While it may seem different from that of previous business generations, you will come to realise that it is in many ways just the same.

Coverage

• First published in Business Matters – February 2017

Now is the time for businesses to think up some great resolutions as to how to achieve better marketing results through adoption of different techniques for 2017.

Here’s my contribution. As the co-founder of a digital marketing agency, there are lots of things I’d like to see less of in 2017 when it comes to how businesses are putting their message out there in the great big world of the Internet.

We are now well into the 21st century but in my view, there is still a serious lack attention to detail when it comes to implementing digital marketing, and understanding the impact this can have on general business. With almost every actively trading company now having a digital presence – whether it’s their website, a LinkedIn profile or an online directory listing – there is just no getting away from the fact that companies are now interfacing with the public in many more ways than via their physical shopfront.

But despite this, it seems that many are not quite getting the importance of how a company comes across on the digital airwaves. A business profile is now multi-faceted; fail to pay attention to any aspect of how that’s transmitted – whether it’s with poor photography on the website or an overly brash social media sales pitch – and you may well start to see a negative effect on your bottom line. The digital age has brought with it many new subtleties to traditional marketing messaging and you overlook these at your peril. As with any aspect of business, the key is to think things through carefully and pay attention to detail.

Bad websites

A business website is so important. It must not be shoddily put together. This doesn’t mean flashy graphics or lots of clever pop-ups; it means the site should be easy to navigate with clearly written content. Watch out for the simple things; nothing will put customers off like a grammatical error or a typo that interrupts the flow of what the customer is reading. Also, think carefully about what your customers will want to know, and create a site that leads them where you want them to be with the minimum of effort.

Websites that can’t be viewed on a mobile or tablet

As I’ve written before in this column, careful thought must be given to how your site will be viewed on mobile phones or tablets. Maximise customer engagement by ensuring the site works across multiple platforms. A site that isn’t mobile friendly will seriously annoy everyone who tries to use it while on the go, which, let’s face it, is pretty much all the time these days for a vast proportion of the population.

Sales pitches on social media

There is a golden rule that is worth bearing in mind when we talk to people on social media – the 80:20 rule. This means you should split your social broadcasting efforts to avoid pushy oversell. Spend 80 per cent of your posting efforts giving out information that is useful to your audience or sharing ‘fun stuff’ related to your industry. You can then spend the other 20 per cent on promoting your products and services.

Every brand has a story and channels like Facebook and Twitter are very powerful tools for talking to customers.   If you continuously put out messages that are out-and-out attempts at selling all the time you will turn people away.   Rather than reaching out to people, you’ll quickly get ignored online as all that sales broadcasting will show the world that you aren’t conversing, you are just ‘telling’.

If you want to engage through social media, you need to provide sparkling content that offers readers something.  So for instance, if you are a cook shop, you can share recipes and info on seasonal ingredients to keep your potential customers coming back to your brand because they find your shared content useful.  Then, when you push out your special offers or news of an in-store sale, you will find you audience hasn’t already tuned you out.

Failure to measure up

It’s no good spending time and money on digital marketing if you don’t then measure how well it’s doing. Lots of people seem to view the Internet as a rather sinister shadowy entity that can’t be controlled.  However, what we all need to remember is that this is just a tool operated by actual human beings. In the same way you would measure response to a leafleting campaign, do so with your digital campaigns. Google Analytics and social media stats will help you find out how many people are looking through your online shop window, and you can then think about how better to target them. Always remember that for every click, view or like, there is a person at the other end. A lack of focus on digital marketing is often caused by a mindset that sees all things digital as technology rather than people.

Sales pitches masquerading as blogs

This is similar to the earlier point made.  A blog is categorically not supposed to be an out-and-out sales pitch. Selling and telling are different, and if there are any golden rules in the shifting sands of the Internet age, this is one of them. A blog should be informative, engaging, and, if possible, provide some insights into you and your company. People like to read about other people, so if you stories that brings your staff to life for customers, or you have stories about how your brand has touched the hearts of your customers then your blog readers will love it.

A blog which tells everyone how fantastic your business is will just make your target audience switch off. Think of it as you would talking to a friend: no-one likes a show-off.

Bad photography

Digital media demands great images; it’s often what makes us look twice. The amount of bad photographs that get put on company websites is depressing, it’s just a real turn off. Investing in great photography will pay dividends.

Won a prize at an awards event? By all means, shout about it on your site, but don’t put up the badly lit photo of your company directors with their eyes shut that someone took on their mobile. It will just make you look amateur.  If you have a range of beautiful products, then treat them in the way they deserve by shooting product pictures professionally to do them true justice. Similarly, if you have products that aren’t… ahem… let’s say, the most photogenic of products, then enlisting the help of professional photographers can really help you present your products in the best possible way.

E -newsletters with bad subject lines

These can be great tools in getting news about your company and products across to customers. Unlike a blog or social media posting where sharing ‘non-sell’ messages and keeping an authentic voice is improtant, this is a forum where you can perfectly and legitimately advertise new products to your clients.  They have after all, signed up to hear about your special offers so they will be expecting to hear from you. However, you should also beware of a “look at us, we are fantastic” approach as this can put people off.  Be clear in your message and take time to think about how the subject line will appear in people’s inbox. You want clarity, not confusion to get maximum open and click rates.

Lack of engagement

If you meet someone after you have spoken at a conference or an exhibition and they say to you, “Hi, I really liked what you said in there,” it would be the height of bad manners, not to mention terrible business, for you to just walk away without a word.   It’s the same with social media, email and web form contacts.   If someone gets in touch with you, don’t ignore them.  Answer comments, whether it’s on TripAdvisor, Google+ reviews, in your ‘enquiries’ inbox or any where else where you invite interaction, and you’ll reap the reward in engaged customers.

Don’t give too much information

In this complex world of digital, we are all on the verge of content overload.  Don’t add to that negatively with your own digital publishing efforts.  It is important that you don’t just write words on your website for the sake of filling blank space. As I said before, always be aware you should be offering value to your customer and seeking to connect with them, not just finding 300 ways of saying how amazing you are.

The Internet and the digital age isn’t going anywhere, so it’s time to engage with it properly. Do it well, and I predict that 2017 will be a year of growth!