So you've got a website – now what?

Having a website is all well and good but what are you going to do to help promote it? The days of SEO being the be all and end all of website promotion is well gone, and some would say “Thank goodness!”

Marketing your website is no longer just about creating and keeping your own audience. By creating a buzz online through other websites and social media sites, you are able to access other audiences, who you may not have done previously.

Social Media and the internet has taken off in a big way; 80% of the population work and play online, so it has never been more important to step up and start being social online.

Here are just some of the ways you could promote your website:

• By uploading material to YouTube, contributing to online discussions and creating podcasts – on a variety of topics, you have the ability to connect with audiences and customers who may not have been within your initial ‘target market’
  
• A blog gives your company a voice, pretty much like this one. It allows you (the customer!) to read and experience the ethos of the organisation. By regularly talking and engaging with your customers it allows them to feel part of the brand or organisation.
  
• Social media – become active on Facebook and Twitter. That is where your customers will be ‘hanging out’ so you should be too. Engage with them, don’t just create a profile and update it – use it. Talk to your customers and ensure that you add value, join in with conversations – give your opinion and provide links to your website.
  
• Your LinkedIn profile is essential for those B2B relationships – make sure your profile is up to date and relevant. Link it to your brand’s Twitter profile as well as your personal one. Let people know what you are about as a person – and link them back to the company website (see the theme here?!) LinkedIn is also a great platform to raise awareness around your work experience, by listing how many years’ experience you have in a field or any awards you may have won will allow both your peers and your customers an insight into your professional life.

These are just a few ways in which you can promote your website externally – having a great website is a great start, but if you're not promoting it then what's the point?

At Whype we not only design fantastic websites, we give out free information such as this to help our customers make the most of their new promotional tool.

Need a free website appraisal? Contact us now!

What Do Your Email Communications Say About You?

We send and receive emails every day, some we read and take note of, others we open and delete.

You want your email communications to be the former. There is so much noise and hype in the marketing world; you need to understand how to make your communications worth reading!

Here are our top tips on how to create eye catching, relevant email marketing communications.

Drive site traffic through customer reviews

Remember all those satisfied clients who have given you great feedback? Put it on your website!

These are not only a great way of engaging with your audience but they are great for SEO purposes. You can also drive site traffic through promotion. Create an email communication with a link to a product review – including customer reviews and feedback. After this, step up your game by dividing your audience into segments so that customers receive content that is relevant to their purchasing behaviour.

Engage with social media

There’s that phrase again, social media. There is no getting away from it. Use your email marketing to increase your twitter following, place a link on your emails to your profile encouraging people to follow you. The more people you have engaging with you online, the more you can involve them with your brand – allowing them to feel a part of it. Someone once described it as creating a corporate family, letting the man on the street have a say in your brands decisions, this will have an impact down the line, after all – the customer’s always right, right?!

Increase activity through a targeted and personalised approach

• When a new subscriber signs up to your email communications, send newcomer communications;  welcome emails, introductory offers – this gives them an incentive to return to your site. Highlight key areas of the website that may be of interest – i.e. special offers, customer reviews etc.
  
• Take a note of what email communications are particularly effective. After you send each communication keep a record of who has contacted you and about what. See if sales have increased. Also, the opposite, if you have sent out a communication and sales have dropped and calls have stopped coming in, maybe it’s worth looking into why.
  
• Separate your database into sections, who is going to be interested in what? Personalise the communications you are sending them, will a 65 year old retired gentleman be interested in half price bikinis?! Hopefully not. (Unless of course, that’s the type of market you’re in!)
  
• Have a look through your customer database, reward regular customers with retention deals, % off items, for example. Similarly, through incentives to those who have not purchased in a while. What did they last buy and when. Send them a special offer to entice them to come back. They may be thinking of going elsewhere so it’s important to engage with them and let them know they are still a valued customer even if they haven’t purchased for a period of time.

Refer a friend

Ensure all your communications have a ‘share this’ button, allowing your database of customers share your news with their friends. Similarly, a ‘tweet this’ button or a ‘share this on facebook’. The more platforms you can get FREE publicity on, the better, especially as these recommendations are coming from one of your existing customers, people will take more note.

Eye catching design

Don't just use plain text, or a standard template – make sure that your email communications stand out by having a custom design that matches the rest of your marketing materials. Think about it – would you send out your brochure as a black and white photocopy? Of course not! So don't treat your email communications as if they don't matter – in some cases it could be a person's first impression of your company – make it a good one!

For eye catching email designs and bespoke newsletter templates, see our main website or drop us a line at info@whype.co.uk.

Tell us how you make your email communications stand out in the comments below!

Using your website as a route to market.

It takes seven seconds for people to form first impressions – so you make sure those seconds count. The same should go for your website. More often than not, your website is the first thing people see. It needs to act as a marketing tool for you but also as a source of information for your customers.

Here are a few items that we believe your website should have:

• A compelling introduction – tell me that I'm in the right place in the first two sentences,because if you don't, I'll be pressing that back button and visiting your competitors instead.

• The ability to collect visitor information – people are much more likely to enquire if you provide some sort of contact form on each page of your site, with a strong call to action encouraging them to get in touch.

• A user friendly interface – if people cannot find what they’re looking for then they’ll leave and go elsewhere. It’s as simple as that. Make sure everything can be accessed within a few clicks.

• A blog – not only does it show visitors that your website is consistently up to date, it provides extra content and brings the search engine spiders in, thus being good for SEO – win win all round we say!

• Compelling, interesting copy. Your website is one of your strongest sales tools – it gives you the opportunity to communicate directly with your consumers. Copy should be based around your core USPs – what do you find yourself telling potential clients at new business meetings? Is that on your website? It should be. Your web copy needs to read well, it needs to set you aside from your competitors and it needs to make your customers want to pick up the phone.

• Easily accessible contact details. The top right-hand corner is a good place to put them, after all – you do want people to call or email don't you? If they can’t find the details then, well, they won’t!

• Links to your social media profiles. You do have social media profiles such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc., don't you? Then let people know – give them the chance to follow / friend / contact you in the way that they feel most comfortable.

• Free info. It seems paradoxical but by giving away free information (checklists, tips, hints, reviews, etc.) you actually inspire loyalty and confidence. And where will those loyal visitors think of going when they need your products or services? Guess!

• Link Building. By seeding the downloadable content on other (relevant) sites and linking this back to your site, you automatically gain more traffic to your website – and if you’ve followed all the tips above the phone should be ringing in no time!

Not sure whether your website is up to scratch? Let us give you a honest no technobabble review – for free! Post your website address in the comments box below and we'll be in touch!

Did you know you no longer own your brand?

Your brand no longer belongs to you - really it doesn't. You probably think it does, and consider yourself in full control of your brand, but put bluntly, you're kidding yourself.

In the past, yes, you would have 'owned' your brand and would have been able to influence the way you were seen. Corporate guidelines, careful advertising, strict policies and more would have made sure that the outside world saw exactly what you wanted them to see.

So what if you were losing customers hand over fist because of your inability to deliver on time or your prices were wrong? It didn't matter because your website told everyone that you 'deliver on time and under budget'.

So what if you were only 2 cheques away from bankruptcy? No-one would know because you told everyone how well you were doing when you went to networking events.

So what if you had a high staff turnover because they were dissatisfied with the company? Who would ever find out? You made sure the people who mattered knew your high turnover of staff was because you expected the best and nothing but.

Yes, in the past, people saw what you wanted them to see, and probably believed it.

But that's changed now. In this day and age of Social Media, YOU don't own your brand, everyone else does. Your customers. Your staff. Your suppliers. Even people you probably don't even know right now.

See, in the past there were limited channels to express satisfaction or dissatisfaction with a company. Even if you were seething with anger at some of their claims, you could only really tell your friends and contacts, and maybe write a letter to the local newspaper, hoping that they had the guts to publish it. Similarly if you were ecstatic with a company's services, your chances to express that satisfaction were limited.

Not now. Now there's Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and various online business forums, GetSatisfaction.com and other online review sites, and more. There's email, blogging and easy to set up websites.

You've wronged a customer? Within a few days it can be all around the Internet and almost every potential client of yours will hear about it.

You've provided excellent service? Again you could be reaching potential clients through the power of the Internet.

But the scary thing about all of this is that YOU HAVE NO CONTROL OVER IT. 'They' do.

You can't stop people Tweeting, blogging and writing about you, whether that be positive or negative.

So what to do now you don't own your brand? Well the best thing you can do is be the best that you can - think of every potential contact as someone who could be an advocate or an aggressor towards your company. The saying 'do unto others as you would have others do unto you' is trite, but true.

Don't let your brand suffer at the hands of the people who now control it - think carefully, think Social Media.

==

Michael Storey is the founder of Whype, a firm of branding experts, web designers and graphic designers based in Bristol.

7 Instant Signs Your Website Could Need a Revamp

It's easy to look at your company website and think it 'looks OK', it 'stacks up against the competition' or 'it'll do for now'.

But more than ever now, the first place people look for information on a company is their website, and if yours isn't up to scratch then they're probably not going to stick around!

Here are 7 signs your website may need a revamp:

1) YOU can't find information on the site. You know that there's a page on blue widgets SOMEWHERE but you've got no idea where it is! You even resort to Google to find it, until you have to go back to your webmaster and ask them for help. If you can't find info on your site, how do you expect your clients to?

2) You have a clip art / stock image / flaming logo. Once upon a time it was OK to have all of these things (although we're not to sure about the flaming logo, it has to be said!). Now, customers expect to see a professional looking site that's not stuck in the early 90s.

3) You don't have a CMS. A Content Management System means that you can update your website's text yourself at any time. No waiting for you web designer to stop playing World of Warcraft and no having to stack up updates until there are enough to justify them. Adding and changing content with a CMS is child's play – you NEED a CMS!

4) You have no images at all. Dull dull dull.... next!

5) The message of each page isn't visible in the first screen of text. It may be obscured by a huge flash header, or you may just have garbled your way through 500 words. I want to know that you can do what I want in the first 2 paragraphs, and I want to see them quickly!

6) You don't have any contact details on your site. Apart from this being against the law in some cases, what makes you think I want to give money to someone when I don't even know where they are based?

7) You don't give a phone number. In much the same way I want the comfort of knowing I can call you if I need to. Chances are, I won't need to, but I'd like to know that I can.

There are many more ways to tell that your website needs a revamp, but how many of these 7 sins are you committing?

Are you on a mission to give benefit with a competitive edge?

What a mouthful!

So let me explain a little further.

The web, and Web 2.0 in particular, has given the power to customers in a way that has never been seen before.

Before the web, brands were simply 'presented' to customers – no interaction, no real method of feedback, and sometimes without a care for what the customers think!

That's all changed – customers are now blogging, tweeting, Facebooking, posting messages in forums, making videos on You Tube, and even making their own websites to talk about brands – both in a positive and negative way.

Customers can shape your brand as much as, and indeed probably more in some cases, than any advertising campaign or marketing drive.

Which is great if your customers are behind your brand, believe in what you offer and wan to put out good messages about you.

However – if you don't handle your brand properly, you've got problems. Those bad statements made about you on the web are there for everyone to see, and for everyone to watch how you handle them. That's the power of the Customer vs the Brand these days.

So how do you get your customers to enthuse about you? Well in the days of the Social Web, it's about more than making money. It's about giving your customers something to believe in, something they can get behind and something that matters to them. And most of all it's about being authentic. As long as we are authentic in the messages we convey, we will have a very strong chance of being provided with Word of Mouth Positivity.

So how to do this?

• Mission
• Benefits
• Competitive Edge

First write a simple and honest Mission Statement that tells your customers what you stand for and want to achieve.

Then sum up the benefits you bring to your customers. Show them how you've improved the lives or fortunes of others, and how it can be done for them.

Then make sure you're competitive. This doesn't mean being the cheapest, it means having a compelling message that makes that customer choose you over someone else. Because they believe in you.

And then make sure that you and your employees push these messages at all times. Live them and breathe them, because if you don't believe in them, how can your customers?

We'll talk more about Sales Messaging in future blogs, but in the meantime, protect your brand and make it your mission to give benefit with a competitive edge – you never know who might be talking about you!