SOURCE: DIGITAL CREATIVES

1. Optimize Your Website For Mobile

With 80% of Inter­net users reg­u­lar­ly brows­ing the web on a mobile device and Google’s recent deci­sion to reduce the search engine rank­ing of web­sites that aren’t opti­mized for small­er screens, it’s become essen­tial that your web­site is mobile-friend­ly. You can test here if your web­site is con­sid­ered mobile-friend­ly by Google.

We recent­ly noticed that a client of ours gets 80% of their web­site traf­fic from blog posts that were more than two months old. This find­ing, that the ‘Long­tail’ of blog­ging could be where most of your traf­fic will come from, seems to be lit­tle under­stood or heed­ed by SMEs. Next time you look at how much you’re pay­ing for pay-per-click traf­fic, bear it in mind.

 3. Use Ads Manager To Manage Your Facebook Ads

If you’re using Face­book for mar­ket­ing, adver­tis­ing is now essen­tial to achieve any kind of reach. And if you’re using Face­book Ads prop­er­ly, i.e. test­ing dif­fer­ent ads and seg­ment­ing your tar­get mar­ket, you’ll get bet­ter results using Ads Manager.

Ads Man­ag­er is a free Page and ad man­age­ment tool from Face­book that is opti­mized for use in Google Chrome. The ben­e­fits of using Pow­er Edi­tor include opti­mized bid­ding, easy to use cus­tom audi­ences (see ‘remar­ket­ing’, below), more accu­rate device tar­get­ing and a cen­tral image library for your adverts.

4. Make Your LinkedIn Profile Stand Out

This one’s not for every­one, but adding a few sym­bols to your LinkedIn pro­file can real­ly help it stand out from the crowd. You don’t want to over­do it, but putting arrows or bul­let points next to your core skills or abil­i­ties can point poten­tial clients to what you want them to read. There’s a great list of sym­bols here that you can just copy and paste.

5. Use LinkedIn For SEO

This is a cheeky one, but by cus­tomiz­ing the web­site links from your LinkedIn Pro­file to your web­site, you can add valu­able back-links to your site.

When you add your web­site LinkedIn uses the default text ‘my web­site’, but you can change this text to what­ev­er you want – for exam­ple, mar­ket­ing agency – giv­ing your web­site a lit­tle SEO boost. To do this, edit your Con­tact Details and select ‘Oth­er’ for web­site, then edit the descrip­tion text.

Use LinkedIn For SEO

6. Create Auto-Responders To Thank Email Subscribers

If you ask peo­ple to sign up for your email newslet­ter or bul­letin, it’s best prac­tice to con­tact them quick­ly (imme­di­ate­ly, even) to say thanks and give them some­thing of val­ue, to show you’re com­mit­ted to help­ing them.

Email mar­ket­ing tools, our­selves includ­ed, enable you to cre­ate mul­ti­ple autore­spon­ders, so you can send a tai­lored wel­come email to sub­scribers – per­haps with a coupon – with dif­fer­ent inter­ests soon after they’ve signed up to your list.

7. Twitter Ads Help Build Your Following/Awareness

If you want to build your online pres­ence with­in a spe­cif­ic indus­try, Twit­ter Ads might be just what you need. You can tar­get your pro­mot­ed Tweets at the fol­low­ers of your com­peti­tors, lead­ing indus­try fig­ures and media sites to either attract new fol­low­ers or get clicks to your website.

We’ve man­aged to get the cost per click of Twit­ter ads down to two pence for some clients, though the costs tend to be more for hard­er to reach or B2B sectors.

8. Use Remarketing – It Works

If you’re not famil­iar with the term, ‘re-mar­ket­ing’ means adver­tis­ing direct­ly to peo­ple you already have a con­nec­tion with. This might include vis­i­tors to your web­site, your email data­base, Twit­ter fol­low­ers or fans of your Face­book Page.

All of the major adver­tis­ing tools offer re-mar­ket­ing (though Face­book calls it Cus­tom Audi­ences) includ­ing Google Ads and it’s proven to offer high­er returns than nor­mal online adver­tis­ing for low­er costs. The Con­stant Con­tact mar­ket­place offers sev­er­al tools that aim to make retar­get­ing your email con­tacts easier.