With over 2 billion monthly active users worldwide, Instagram is one of the leading social media platforms out there. It’s a platform adopted by many users for sharing high-quality, eye-catching photos and graphics with friends and potential customers. Many marketers believe Instagram is heavily biased towards the B2C market, but many B2B businesses also use the platform. With continuous growth in popularity and improvement in features, you should seriously consider using Instagram for your business if you’re not doing so already.
Instagram launched in 2010 as a photo-sharing app and was acquired by Facebook in 2012, now Meta platforms. It remains a trusted marketing tool, and the platform has since evolved into a photo and video content sharing app. You can also use the app for advertising through the Facebook Ads management platform.
Key areas on Instagram include:
Instagram has around 600 million daily users worldwide, and 50% of the UK population have an Instagram account. The highest percentage (30%) of these users fall in the 25-34 year age range, often regarded as one of the best consumers to target as they tend to have more disposable income. Hence, the platform provides a massive potential reach for businesses.
It’s not just the potential reach and the age of users that makes Instagram perfect for business; it’s the platform's capabilities. Below, we highlight some of the benefits of using Instagram to reach new customers.
Instagram is a fantastic word of mouth platform for businesses. A well-rounded Instagram profile indicates legitimacy, enhancing consumer trust. User generated content (UGC) is important for businesses. By sharing imagery from your users, you build a community and trust. Engaging with comments and feedback from individuals also reflects your business values, so you must keep everything professional yet personal.
Instagram makes sharing content easy. Users can tag brands in their own post, to maximise reach. Encouraging people to share your content through entertaining and educational posts increases your chances of gaining visibility.
Instagram doesn’t allow links within the caption of any post. However, for B2C customers, you can integrate Instagram shopping into your posts using the online shopping option. It provides users with a click-through option to buy products.
In 2021 Instagram started allowing links in Stories for every user, and it's now possible with one click to direct your audience to the exact page you want them to land on. Before this feature, you needed a verified account – a bonus if you are a business trying to sell or promote their products on Instagram – or over 10,000 users before you could add links to Stories.
Your competitors are already likely to be on Instagram, and using the platform to monitor their strategies provides insights you their engagement tactics, helping you build on your current organic social media strategy to benefit your target audience.
Hashtags are very popular on Instagram, and users can follow hashtags that they want to see more content about. One of the best competitor analysis approaches you can use when starting on Instagram is looking at your competition’s hashtag usage and seeing how popular those hashtags are.
Your Instagram profile showcases your company’s culture and values, which serves as a magnet for potential employees. Highlighting your team and workplace environment allows you to attract new talent and customers to your business.
Influencer marketing is very popular on Instagram, brands across all industries make use of influencers in order to enhance their visibilities. Companies like IMB, Microsoft and Amercian Express all have successfully engaged influencers for B2B campaigns, proving that influencer marketing isn’t just B2C.
The Instagram Business tool allows you to have complete transparency over how well your posts are performing, which will help you understand what works best for your business and what resonates with your audiences. Key metrics to consider include engagement rates, traffic to your website, and sales or Conversation rates.
As well as using Instagram for organic, consider Instagram ads to enhance your profile and conversions. Using
Facebook Ads Manager allows you to benefit from highly targeted campaigns and develop creative, eye-catching adverts. You also have complete control over the budget and duration of your adverts, and it offers in-depth performance insights so you can track what works and what doesn’t for your brand.
Develop a great Instagram strategy, post regularly and make use of the features the platform features , so your business can thrive on Instagram.
If you need assistance developing your Instagram presence or understand more about the platform’s features and what it can offer your business, we can help. As a social media agency, we have plenty of experience building client engagement through Instagram and other social networks.
Enquire today, and we can get your business in front of the right audience on Instagram in no time.
Since its beginnings in 2003, LinkedIn has become a popular business growth tool with over 830 million users worldwide, and it is an excellent communication tool for businesses to reach their customers. Whatever your industry, LinkedIn can become a vital part of your long-term digital marketing strategy, whether your marketing objective is brand awareness, driving traffic or recruitment.
In a nutshell, yes. LinkedIn can be used for any business with clear goals in mind.
Business to Business (B2B) marketing campaigns can benefit significantly from using LinkedIn. It can be a place to discuss industry updates and share news that others may be interested in. In addition, you can connect with professionals who may be interested in your products and services or with other businesses in the same industry. With clever targeting, messaging and making the right connections, it’s also a valuable sales platform for B2B companies when used organically and via paid advertising.
Business to Consumer (B2C) users should approach LinkedIn differently. You can use LinkedIn to target potential customers based on their interests, especially business owners or professionals who would more likely be on LinkedIn. Also, B2C companies may benefit more from a LinkedIn brand awareness campaign. You can showcase and highlight the people behind the brand name and network with businesses like yours to create collaborations that your customers will enjoy. You can also engage influencers who can help get your products in front of the right audience.
As part of a well-thought-out social media marketing campaign, LinkedIn can help inform customers throughout their journey and enable other aspects of your marketing campaign to perform well.
You can set up a LinkedIn business page in a few simple steps.
If you have a personal profile, navigate to “work” at the top and choose the “Create a Company Page” button. If you don’t have a personal profile, you will need to create one first.
Next, choose the right page for your business based on its size or type. You can choose from
A showcase page is a page to present a separate division of a company, and an educational establishment would cover a school or university, for example.
Next, fill out your details, add your logo and tagline and create the page. Once it's created, you can optimise it by completing your company description, website URL, industry, cover photo and a custom button. Remember to add hashtags related to your page and keywords into your description, as LinkedIn pages are indexed by Google, which can also help your company's SEO efforts.
You should also make sure you add your company branding to your page. For example, use your profile picture to display your logo and cover image for further branding, so your page is easily recognised.
Finally, share your company page using your personal profile; encourage your connections to follow the page and share it. You should also ask your employees to update their profiles to add the company page as part of their work history.
It’s also important to share a link to your new profile directly from your website; you should do this for all social pages, including Facebook and Instagram.
Once you have a functioning LinkedIn company page, you can use it to help hit your business's goals.
Your overall marketing strategy should include a LinkedIn campaign. To put this in place, you should answer questions such as:
The answers to these questions will help you develop your strategy. Pick one or two goals to get started. We suggest creating a calendar to build your posting schedule; this could be an Outlook Calendar or a simple spreadsheet template. There are plenty of free templates available to download online.
There are four common goals that we’ve found companies want to work towards on LinkedIn, and LinkedIn provides more benefits due to its background as a place for professionals to hang out. These include recruitment, networking, becoming a thought leader and advertising.
If you want to attract new talent to your business, LinkedIn is a fantastic resource. When you post jobs through your business account, individuals using the LinkedIn jobs section can easily click through to your profile.
If you’re posting regular updates showcasing what it's like to work for your company, people interested in working for you can get a feel for your company culture, and you’re more likely to attract the right people to your business.
While the jobs platform has an additional cost attached to it, you can use your company page and even your personal page to list vacancies, and by using hashtags and your connections, you can get the advert in front of the right people.
The more engaged your company is on LinkedIn, the more likely it will be followed by people interested in your industry and those who want to work for your business. Also, if your employees are happy to share your business' content, ask them to! A Management Today study found that candidates are 29% more likely to consider a job if they have a LinkedIn connection who works for, or works with, the company.
LinkedIn makes it easy to network with people in your industry; there are countless industry groups where you can find people with similar interests. You can use the hashtag features to find posts about specific topics, and if you know of other businesses in your industry that you’d like to collaborate with, LinkedIn makes it easy to connect with them.
Networking tends to be linked to personal profiles rather than the business profiles on the platform, but there’s no reason you can’t use your business profile to find networking opportunities. First, check out who likes your page and then look at their profile; chances are, if they are interested in your company, they’re likely to be linked to your industry, so connect with them.
Then finally, once you have a network of people linked to your industry, start interacting. The more you comment on posts, engage with polls and share the content of the people and companies you connect to, the more you put yourself out there as someone to talk to within the industry.
Suppose you have a website where you share a lot of information about your industry and products. In that case, this content is perfect for repurposing as LinkedIn articles to establish your business as a go-to source of knowledge. According to LinkedIn, 45% of the readers of articles on the platform are CEOs, VPs or have positions in the higher levels of businesses, so you can get your content seen by some key decision-makers.
You can also use the platform’s “skills and endorsements” section to cement your expertise in specific areas and ask your colleagues and connections to endorse you where possible. Again, while this is connected to your personal profile, if you want to be seen as a thought leader for your brand and industry, you’ll want your profile to look its best.
Stay ahead of the game in your industry, keep on top of relevant updates and movements in your sector and be sure to offer comments about these. Use the articles space to write long-form opinion pieces about any changes, whether good or bad and offer tips on how others can navigate these updates.
Most social networks come with the ability to target people through advertising, and LinkedIn is no different.
There are a variety of options for advertising on LinkedIn, from sponsored text ads that appear on people’s feeds to sponsored messages that go straight to individuals' inboxes, photo carousel ads, dynamic ads and more.
The advertising platform within LinkedIn offers heavily targeted marketing and an excellent engagement rate with the right ad and audience. As mentioned, many of the users on LinkedIn are in senior positions within their company and have buying power. So, using specifically targeted advertisements can quickly get your business seen by the right people.
Once you’ve created your LinkedIn marketing strategy and are ready to start posting to the platform, you can create a content calendar for the posts you’d like to publish. The types of posts you publish could include:
Your calendar should reflect everything you want to communicate through LinkedIn and how often you would like to do so. When you’re ready to post to the platform, head to the home page and create a post using the “start a post” box.
You can add a related photo or video to make your post more engaging and shareable. You should also add related hashtags, making your post more discoverable by the relevant people. You can create a job post or a thought leadership article from here, depending on your goals and communications highlighted in your plan.
The work on LinkedIn doesn’t stop after you have posted. It’s essential to analyse your performance against your initial goals to help improve your posts and strategy moving forward. You can look at engagement, including post likes and comments, follower improvements, brand tags, job applications and website traffic.
LinkedIn provides an internal analytics tool to show you some data, including visitors, updates, followers, competitors, leads and employee advocacy.
You should look back at your initial goals to see if you have met these, creating benchmarks based on your performance for the future to ensure continual improvement. If you haven’t hit your goals, it’s important to find out why. For example, is your messaging reaching the right people, or are you posting at the right time of day to suit your audience? You can test different types of content to ensure you’re posting the best content to engage with your target audience.
If all this sounds a bit too much, and you feel like you need a little help with getting your business profile out there, we can help. As a LinkedIn marketing agency, we’ve helped many businesses with their LinkedIn advertising.
Our social media marketing team are on hand to post regularly to your business profile or offer insightful articles to your connections.
Get in touch with our team on 01524 580777 or send us an enquiry today.
When used effectively, Instagram can be an invaluable marketing platform, particularly for small businesses that don't have a dedicated marketing team or a significant budget to play with. All you need to get your business up and running on Instagram and start building a loyal fan base is a smartphone with a good quality camera and a little bit of know-how.
You can choose to manage your Instagram business page yourself, have an employee look after it or use a digital marketing agency. In any case, it's important to understand why the platform is so influential and how you can use it to grow your business and reach new customers.
With over 1 billion active monthly users as of 2022, Instagram is on par with Facebook as one of the most effective social media marketing platforms. However, the one thing that sets Instagram apart, aside from being the most visual platform, is that Instagram users are actively interested in connecting with and following brands.
The vast majority of Instagram users follow at least one brand, and over half of those people have purchased a product or service after seeing it on Instagram. Users' willingness to seek out brands that create engaging visual content and the high conversation rate make Instagram a must-have for small businesses looking to grow their brands.
Success on Instagram isn't limited to specific industries either. As long as you're producing engaging content that people want to see, and you know how to optimise your posts to make sure the right people see them, you could be onto a winner.
You can read more about the reasons to use Instagram here.
Before you start investing time into your business's Instagram page, you'll want to research and find if there is a crossover in demographic between your ideal customers and Instagram's userbase. There are a couple of ways to do this:
1. Compare Target Audiences
Different people gravitate toward different social media platforms. Age, income, gender, location, personality types, and personal values influence people's social media preferences, so it's important to pick the platform your target audience frequently uses.
Instagram's largest user age bracket is 25-34 year olds, who, as of 2022, make up 31.5% of the active user base. The millennials are followed closely by 18-24 year olds (30.1% of active users), making nearly two-thirds of Instagram users under 35. The gender slip is almost 50/50, with 49.3% of users identifying as female and 50.7% male.
If your business's target audience overlaps with Instagram's biggest demographics, you're in an excellent position to see success by using the platform for your social media marketing. However, if you have an older customer base (35-44), don't rule out Instagram completely - 16.1% of their users fall into this age bracket, which is still a large audience.
If you're unsure how to use demographics to inform your social media marketing strategy, it may be worth getting advice from a social media agency.
2. Do Some Competitor Research
By taking some time to scope out your competitors on Instagram, you'll be able to find out if the platform works for your industry. For example, suppose you find businesses similar to yours on Instagram and see that they receive engagement. Your target audience is likely to use the platform and look to interact with companies like yours.
If you can't find your competitors on Instagram, or you can find them but see that they're not receiving much engagement, this could be a sign that the platform isn't suitable for your company.
Understanding social media marketing is also knowing when something isn't right for a specific business.
3. Ask Your Customers
One of the quickest ways to figure out if your audience uses Instagram is to ask them. You can send out a survey via your email marketing and ask your existing customer base which social media platforms they prefer.
If Instagram features highly on your customers' list, it will give you the confidence to set up a profile and start posting; even if your competitors aren't utilising the platform – you could be the first!
Once you've decided that Instagram is the right platform for your business, it's time to plan a social media marketing strategy and set some goals of what you want to achieve by investing time into the platform.
If you're just getting started on Instagram, pick one or two realistic and measurable goals and focus on creating content that helps achieve those goals.
Sticking to your selected set themes for your Instagram will help guide your content and keep your posts on brand and working towards your goals. The type of business you're running will most likely influence the theme you decide to adopt.
For example, an SEO Agency offering services that help people improve their business's online visibility in search engines will focus on informative and educational posts. These post types demonstrate that the company is an expert in its field and willing to share knowledge with its audience. They will also include regular posts that show culture-focused or behind the scenes content that showcases day to day life within the business or how the company is involved in the local community. These informal posts help to humanise the business and build trust with followers.
On the flip side, a business offering a physical product would benefit from posting aspirational content showcasing its products in high-quality photographs. They might structure these around giveaway posts, product demos and new product launches.
Once you've set your goals and chosen a theme, you're ready to start posting content to Instagram. There are five different types of Instagram posts to choose from:
1. Standard Instagram Posts - These are typical, evergreen posts that stay on your page unless you manually delete them. They will show up on your follower's feeds.
2. Instagram Stories - Posts that are 15 seconds long and disappear automatically after 24 hours. They are best suited to reactive, informal content.
3. Instagram Reels - Videos up to 60 seconds long, which you can edit within the Instagram app to add music, sound effects, and visual effects, much like TikTok.
4. Instagram Live - Live videos that your followers can interact with in real-time. This type of post will appear in your follower's Stories feed.
5. IGTV - Longer form, pre-recorded videos suited to product demos or short Q&As.
You can use a combination of all or just some of the different types of Instagram posts, whichever works best for your goals, theme and business.
There's more to Instagram than just your posts. Make sure your profile is up to date, in line with your business branding and contains all the relevant information potential customers need to know about your business.
Use the following best practices to set yourself up for success:
So, you've got your profile up to scratch, and you're posting relevant content that aligns with your brand and themes. It's now time to start engaging with your followers, which will help build brand awareness and loyalty.
You can build brand awareness and loyalty by following people, liking their posts and starting conversations by responding to comments on your posts. The more you interact with your audience, the more likely they will engage with your brand and convert into paying customers.
Raise awareness that your business has an Instagram account by adding your Instagram handle to the bottom of your emails and other physical or digital marketing material you use. Getting your existing customers to follow you is the first step to building your audience on Instagram.
No matter how tempting, don't be lured into buying Instagram followers. Business growth on Instagram is best done organically by attracting the right people genuinely interested in your brand; they're more than just numbers that will make your metrics look good.
Hashtags in your post captions are a great way to make sure your posts are getting seen by people interested in what your business has to offer. It's a good idea to brainstorm relevant hashtags as part of your strategy to make sure you're using tags that your target audience is searching for.
Searching for a hashtag on Instagram will show you how many posts have used it and allow you to decide whether it's right for your posts. It's also a bit of a balancing act, as choosing hashtags with millions of posts associated with them means your post is less likely to be seen. You want a healthy middle ground where you're using popular hashtags that aren't too competitive for your industry.
Consistency is the key to gaining traction on Instagram and keeping your posts appearing in people's feeds. Post regularly, and the algorithm will reward you by placing your content at the top of your follower's feeds.
Remember, it's not just about the number of followers you have, but whether they see your posts and engage with your business. A consistent posting schedule will help your audience understand when they can expect new content from you and is more likely to be seen.
Developing an Instagram marketing strategy and posting regularly may seem daunting, especially if you're an SME. Building a following on Instagram takes time, so be patient and keep at it.
If you want to grow your business on Instagram but feel like you lack the time and knowledge to do it justice, SQ Digital can help. We can manage your social media campaign as part of your broader SME marketing strategy.
If you'd like to know more about how we can help, get in touch by filling out our online enquiry form today.
Your company's branding is an opportunity to concisely demonstrate who you are, what you do, and why people should engage with you. It's your identity and usually the first interaction a potential customer will have with your business. Your brand forms the building blocks from which you'll construct your physical and online presence. It'll inform your goals when starting a digital marketing strategy and help guide your business decisions as you grow.
There's a tendency to assume branding only applies to large corporations that can reach worldwide audiences with their marketing strategies. The reality is that business branding is just as important to SMEs, particularly across social media, your website, and any other marketing channels you use to influence how your customer base perceives your company.
Your brand is much more than just your company logo, colour scheme, or visual elements you want people to associate with your business. It's an identity that encompasses your company values, summarises what customers can expect from interacting with you, and helps you stand out in an increasingly competitive digital world.
Successful brand identity will include most of the following elements, no matter how subtle, and they should all work together to define who you are and what you're for.
Your brand positioning determines where you sit in the market compared to your competitors. It's the niche your company occupies and will be used to inform all other branding decisions, and not just the visual ones. Correctly positioning your company will help inform your SEO agency when optimising your website to attract the customers you want.
One of the most important aspects of branding is your logo, a simple, easily identifiable image encapsulating your brand identity.
Colours have meaning and personality. The colour palette you pick for your branding will define your brand in the consumer's eyes, helping them understand whether you're playful or serious, youthful or mature, or even expensive or affordable.
The shapes you use for visual assets across your branding, website and social media further help guide people's perceptions of your business. For example, soft, rounded organic shapes feel friendly and unintimidating, whereas people often perceive angular shapes as powerful and authoritative.
Your tone of voice is your unique personality, a set of guidelines you'll use across all written content to ensure your branding remains consistent and that you're speaking to your customers in a way that agrees with them. It includes everything from sentence and paragraph length to active and passive language and how casual or formal you want your company to sound. Your content marketing agency can help you develop your tone of voice if you don't already have one.
Imagery includes any visuals you use that aren't your logo: photos, website graphics, the pictures in your newsletters, the images used by your PPC management agency for your Google and Bing adverts. Whether you choose stock or custom photos, it all contributes to your overall brand identity.
Your branding forms the basis from which all your marketing efforts will grow. If you work with a digital marketing agency, like SQ Digital, they will use your brand identity to make sure they're targeting the right people for your business with written and visual content that your audience wants to see. But what is the purpose of being so thorough when it comes to branding?
Good branding sticks in people's minds. Great branding sticks in people's minds with the desired impression you want them to have of your company. By staying consistent with your branding across all visible online platforms and in any physical location, people will begin to familiarise themselves with your company.
Customers are far more likely to interact with a company and use their services or buy their products if the company has consistent, professional branding. A well-curated brand shows people you're serious about what you do, even if your brand identity is playful and casual.
It's much easier to convince people to part with their hard-earned money if they perceive your company as legitimate and trustworthy. Branding is the best way to do this – particularly if they've discovered you via social media. There are many benefits to social media for small businesses. It’s a fantastic way to garner attention, generate interest, and create an open dialogue with real potential customers. Still, if your visual and written branding across all your platforms is not aligned, people are less likely to see you as legitimate or experts in your field. Inconsistent branding could be anything from missing logos or cover photos, different colour schemes or even variations in your company name across platforms.
We talked about positioning and finding your company's niche, and your branding is how you'll show that to your customer base. It's all very well you knowing that you're cheaper than your competitors, that your products are more eco-friendly or that you offer something the competition doesn't. But none of that matters if your customers don't know. You can use your branding to convince people to choose you over others quickly and clearly explain what sets you apart.
Brand loyalty is key to customer retention and goes a long way to ensure people pick your product or service over a competitor. You want people to be loyal to your brand and its values, not just your products. The chances are, there's someone else offering similar products or services to yours, so use your branding to start building an emotional attachment between your customers and your company.
So you've decided on your brand identity, now you need to make sure that branding is cohesive across all your online channels. This includes all social media platforms, your website, PPC Google and Bing adverts, newsletters, and any other online space your company is visible.
Once you've decided on all the elements that make up your brand, create a set of brand guidelines that you and your employees can reference whenever they're producing content for the business. Brand Guidelines would usually include a visual style guide to ensure visual elements are consistent, a tone of voice document and information on how you want your target audience to see your company.
If you're going to make sure branding remains consistent and effective across all aspects of your business, you first need to get your team on board. To do so, ensure all internal documents, visuals, messages, and training align with your brand guidelines, so your employees see and hear the same message as your potential customers.
Once everyone in the company is on board with your brand, it's time to roll out the guidelines across your marketing platforms.
Get your web design agency to refresh your existing website, or use the brand's guidelines to build one from scratch if you're just getting started. Your website is your core online presence and the place all your marketing channels are feeding into, so it needs to be a true reflection of your brand. Use your tone of voice to guide any written content on the site and your defined target audience to inform any SEO optimisation.
If you regularly send email marketing campaigns, create templates that align with your brand guidelines to make sure recipients recognise your company when that email lands in their inbox.
Get your in-house or social media agency to optimise all your social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest and TikTok. Of course, each platform has its own image dimensions, word count limits and requirements, but keeping branding consistent across all platforms is the best way to build recognition and trust.
Once you've successfully implemented your brand across all your online marketing platforms, the most important thing to do is keep it up and don't drop the ball on your branding. Any blogs, social media posts, newsletters, paid ads, and even customer enquiry responses should align with your brand guidelines. In our article on top marketing tips for SMEs, we talk about why you shouldn't neglect your digital marketing, and your branding is a big part of this.
We understand how daunting branding can be for SMEs. Even if you have the best intentions and a clear vision of your brand identity, you may not have the time or in-house resources to effectively implement all this into your digital marketing. If this sounds familiar, it may be time to enlist some help.
SQ Digital is a digital marketing agency with over 20 years of experience in maintaining brand identity across all platforms as part of a digital marketing strategy. If you'd like to know more about how we can help your SME, don't hesitate to contact us today.
As the digital world evolves, many small businesses find digital marketing intimidating and often don't know where to start. Digital marketing covers various services, including SEO, content marketing, PPC, social media and more - all of which, when used in conjunction, can form a solid digital marketing campaign.
One of the most important aspects of any digital marketing campaign is Search Engine Optimisation (“SEO”). SEO refers to the practice of increasing the visibility of your website or landing pages on search engines (such as Google or Bing) and driving organic traffic to your site through a variety of methods.
As an expert SEO agency, we understand the importance of SEO for small businesses and how it can transform a digital marketing strategy, bringing in new, relevant customers and enhancing overall brand awareness. This article discusses the top reasons why SEO is essential for small businesses and why your business should implement SEO into a digital marketing strategy.
There’s possibly nothing more important for a website than user experience. Having a poorly structured website is similar to a messy high street shop where it is hard to see where to go and find what you are looking for. With a well thought out website layout and structure and a good page experience, you can expect your online customers to hang around and browse your website.
As a technical SEO agency, we are constantly improving the technical aspects of small business websites. Staying on top of technical SEO is vital for a small business as a good page experience can bring customers back to a site and increase brand loyalty.
Fixing technical SEO issues such as 404 error pages and broken internal links and images is essential in enhancing the user experience. It can be very frustrating for users if they come across these and will most likely leave the site prematurely.
Technical SEO also focuses on issues such as page loading speed and optimising this to reduce user frustration. Page loading speed is a significant contributor to conversion rates. If a page takes longer than 3 seconds to load, 40% of users will abandon the site. Also, 52% of online shoppers have stated that a quick page loading is essential to their site loyalty, making them more likely to buy.
SEO can boost conversion rates by driving targeted traffic to the site. We use SEO to target potential customers at each sale/enquiry funnel stage. By regularly publishing SEO optimised blog content, we can help small businesses attract new customers who are still researching products, services and suppliers. You should produce content that provides relevant information to the reader and potential customers.
You can also optimise product content to target potential customers who know what they want. The content can attract users to your specific service or product. It also means that you are more likely to receive conversions in the form of enquiries or purchases as the initial user intent is to use what you have to offer.
SEO focuses on improving search engine ranking positions using keywords and optimisation. Search engine rankings can vastly improve with a successful SEO campaign, with keywords ranking on the first page of search engine results.
If your site ranks on the first page of results, it increases the amount of trust that potential customers have in your brand. High rankings from reputable search engines such as Google show that they have confidence in your brand, which increases user trust as the search engines have a lot of influence on customers.
Also, if your search engine rankings are higher, it helps increase brand awareness as a more significant number of people will see your brand name when searching. Higher rankings also mean that your brand is easier to find when searching for the key terms, which ultimately means that your site is visible to more customers, hence increasing traffic.
Using SEO techniques can also boost the physical visibility of small businesses with a brick-and-mortar store. When typing a query into a search engine, the searcher's location is also considered.
Search results can vary when searching from different places. When you search locally, maps and addresses of local businesses are typically displayed on the right-hand side of the page. This is one of the first features that users see when searching. A Google My Business account can be created for small businesses and optimised to appear in local results and maps. As an address is listed, it can also drive people into the physical store rather than just increasing online traffic.
Search engine optimisation can be a very powerful tool, and with the right optimisations, your website can start to rise in rankings and surpass competitors that do not utilise SEO. As a small business, it can feel overwhelming when up against larger competitors in the same industry. However, many more prominent companies online are still not using SEO services, which can put your smaller business at an advantage.
Using SEO competitor research, we can identify gaps between small businesses and competitors, whether that be through keywords or content. We can then develop a plan to level the playing field and ensure that smaller firms have the same advantages as larger competitors.
One of the primary practices in SEO is to carry out keyword research, which forms the basis for any optimisation campaigns. We use keyword research to highlight the specific terms that users search for to find relevant products and services. We also consider the search volume of keywords to ensure we optimise sites for frequently searched terms, thus increasing the chance of being seen.
As sites are optimised for key terms, it ensures that only potential customers who are actively looking for a product or service relating to the business are being directed to the site. This eliminates traffic from those looking for unrelated services or products and ensures that the traffic to the site is relevant and can lead to conversions.
With online advertising, the results can often only last as long as the investment. However, with SEO, the results are long-lasting, as long as you continue to use On-site SEO techniques to build up a solid optimisation of your site.
Once higher ranking positions have been achieved, you can use SEO to maintain these positions. Over time, with increased brand awareness, customers will become familiar with your brand and re-use services if satisfied.
Although results can be long-lasting, it’s essential to stay on top of SEO as your competitors will not stand still and will constantly update their site. Furthermore, the search landscape is constantly changing and should be considered in optimisations.
As an award-winning digital marketing agency, we have over 20 years of experience providing SEO services for small businesses. With a successful SEO campaign, a small business can expect an increase in targeted traffic and conversions, along with further digital and physical visibility.
To find out more information on how SQ Digital can help your small business grow with SEO or other digital marketing services, get in touch with us today.
Over the last two decades, especially in the previous few years, online marketing is becoming crucial to help your business succeed.
However, knowing how to start your digital marketing campaign can seem daunting, let alone keep up with the latest trends and best practices. Nowadays, it can even depend on your industry to know what you should do and what you should avoid; it can get complicated!
Here, we'll help you understand how to start your digital marketing campaign as a B2B (business-to-business) operator.
If you want to learn about what you can do ahead of launching your campaign to improve the chance of success, we recommend you read this guide from the beginning. However, if you want to skip straight to the “How to” guide, use the links below.
The ecommerce (commercial transactions conducted electronically) market is something we can all relate to since most of us have bought something online at some point. The buyer journey usually begins with research, often on a search engine such as Google or Bing.
With the B2C buying journey, the purchase decision is often driven by emotion, and the sales process can be quick and impulsive. The consumer will search for product information, which tends to be followed by market research looking for the best deal. This stage of the buyers’ journey can be influenced by adverts such as social media retargeting or Google retargeting banners on other websites.
For B2B, sales tend to be influenced by budgets, ROI (return on investment), and a logical mindset - the sales process can take months, and we will see how this impacts your strategy later.
On different platforms such as social media, you can advertise products to a given demographic and potentially prompt sales from people who initially had no intent to buy online. This tactic usually only works for B2C and is not viable for B2B.
You can begin to understand what may and may not work for a B2B marketing campaign by understanding more about your target market. Before you can do that, you should also understand your company’s purpose. Sharing your purpose with your target audience will lay the foundations for true success in marketing.
Building a brand is just as important as selling a product or service. Customers will return time and time again to a brand they can trust.
Before launching your marketing campaign, it’s essential to establish your brand values and proposition. Determine what products and services you provide and what the benefits are. Invest time to understand your customers' expectations, values, and what they deem important.
Trying to market everything you do to a relevant target audience can be time-consuming, costly and lead to thinning resources. The best marketing strategies will line up with a company's goals. For example, suppose the company wants to increase revenue for a new product. In that case, the marketing should primarily focus on the product launch and make it visible across all marketing channels and platforms. The focus of resources and effort will see more success than a broad but thin campaign across all products and services.
KPIs (key performance indicators) break down and clarify company goals into bite-size and digestible objectives to help teams understand their targets and how they fit into the broader company objectives.
For instance, if the aim is to increase revenue by attracting new customers, the KPI target for the Sales team could be to increase the number of calls with new customers. On the other hand, a Marketing team may have a KPI of growing customer sales leads through the website. The KPI could be website metrics such as new vs returning visitors, number of contact form submissions, email subscriptions, and so on.
KPI’s should be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-Bound) and be able to identify real improvements. The same is true for a marketing strategy – define the KPI’s, so success is measurable.
You know your target market is a business that needs the products or services you offer, but knowing who you are trying to attract specifically is even more insightful. A few factors you should consider are;
Knowing who to approach will undoubtedly change your marketing messaging. Remember that you will often be looking to identify two to three different client personas’ depending on your industry.
An established B2B business will have established USP’s. These are the factors that will set you apart from the competition. For instance, perhaps you offer an initial free consultation or a volume discount that increases when order number increases? Whatever it is, use it in your marketing strategy, shout it to the hills to get your target market to come to you and not the competition.
All businesses are unique and specific methods will work better than others. However, we’ve listed tried-and-tested methods that are best suited for B2B marketing. Use these tools in your B2B campaign to achieve your set KPI’s
As a B2B business, email marketing is something you really should be doing. It can offer the best ROI of all marketing channels when done correctly. When planning your emails, you should segment your email list into different persona’s to target your audience more effectively. You should automate the process to plan for scaling your email marketing.
Also, think about your audiences’ needs and not yours. It’s great that you have a new service or product, but that won’t necessarily catch their eye. Focus on how it will help your customers and what benefits they can expect. Create a catchy subject line to get their attention. Don’t forget to measure the success of your campaigns and tweak them accordingly.
B2B businesses tend to have less success with social media marketing channels such as Facebook and Instagram. LinkedIn offers an alternative platform to engage and connect with other businesses. There are almost 50 million business decision-makers active on LinkedIn.
Create engaging content using a social strategy that forms connections and interacts with your target audience. Aim to build beneficial relationships to help generate leads and referrals.
From our own experience and that of our clients, often personal profiles do better than company profiles, but both should be used synergistically as part of your LinkedIn marketing strategy.
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is the practice of optimising a website to appear higher in a search engine, such as Google. Unlike paid ad listings using PPC (pay-per-click), these are organic results. A successful SEO campaign will help you bring in new customers and is an excellent tool for expanding your online reach.
Most user’s regard organic listings with greater trust as they are selected to rank higher based on merit. The keywords you target with your SEO campaign must be relevant and match the correct intent of a potential searcher. This will mean fewer irrelevant leads down the line.
The main thing to remember with a B2B SEO campaign is to be patient! Improvements in rankings can take months, depending on how much time you invest in your website. Coupling this with longer lead times for B2B, seeing a ROI can take time.
Launching a marketing strategy for your company is exciting, but regular check-ins with KPI metrics for each marketing channel must be a pillar of the strategy itself. Make sure that you are recording what is important for each channel.
As an SEO service provider, we monitor Google analytics and click data in Google Search Console and Google Business Profile metrics (formerly known as Google My Business). Calls and directions, for example, can be monitored, but the actual value of the SEO work is measured by the value of a lead, not just lead number.
For B2C businesses, it is easier to track a transaction value and is usually instant. As a B2B business, take the time to match up your marketing channels to lead value. This will improve your strategy and save you money in the future.
Often overlooked by B2B businesses, content marketing can offer numerous benefits. Webpage content explaining your products and services and what sets you apart from your competition is key.
A website is a modern-day substitute for the initial face-to-face contact with a company. Instead of being able to tell someone directly why they should buy from you, you will need to use content marketing to do this for you. Guiding the reader through the website and explaining what you can offer is essential. You should highlight your technical capabilities and expertise.
B2B webpages often lack content and don’t provide the user with much information to make a decision. This can be frustrating and results in a poor user experience and a potential client will go elsewhere.
Blogging regularly can improve your SEO and target clients who are still in the research phase of their enquiring journey. It is a simple technique that can expand your online reach. This could be your secret weapon!
One metric we track, is the device type used to look for our clients’ products or services. We regularly see that more B2B target audiences use desktop devices more than mobile, however this gap is narrowing and both platforms need to display a good user experience. A website must load quickly and efficiently across all devices. On average, if a webpage takes 3 seconds to load, 40% of people abandon the page and use a webpage from a competitor website. Effective B2B website design is one of the most overlooked parts of most B2B marketing campaigns and such a simple concept as page experience can impact lead generation significantly. A fast and responsive website works hand-in-hand with SEO, it can encourage PPC conversions and yet, without it, your marketing strategy can go down the pan. We would recommend you consult a website design agency, if you are not sure whether your website meets these criteria.
This is aimed at B2B companies who have a local presence or a physical address. Optimising your Google Business Profile with the correct information, photos, opening hours, service category and regularly posting content, can help you appear higher in local map pack results (please see an example image of these results below). For localised searches, these results capture most of the traffic available and so you need to appear here. In addition, good review ratings and review count, impacts advocacy and your profile’s rank. Ensuring that you have the infrastructure in place to encourage reviews from clients will help you out and increase the conversion potential of prospective clients. [insert image below]
The benefits of a PPC campaign are plentiful. Before investing in a long-term SEO campaign, PPC can ensure that even very niche B2B businesses can succeed and bring in relevant online traffic. PPC is an immediate form of marketing that can bring in leads fast. It can also verify the need for an integrated SEO and PPC campaign to maximise your leads. This marketing platform is a conversion driving tactic and involves using a budget to bid for advert placement at the top of Google search (we focus on Google in both our SEO and PPC campaigns due to the search engines 92% global market share). PPC for B2B companies can be expensive but focusing on long-tail (generally less competitive but more specific) terms can be rewarding. It can also help with brand awareness.
Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) is another branch of your B2B marketing strategy, which without, can make it all pointless. Every single channel used links in one way or another to your business’s website as a central resource, but if the structure, layout, or any element of the website is confusing, unhelpful, or messy, then people just won’t enquire. Think of this as having a high-street shop but with bins and boxes cluttering the sales counter, very few people will make the effort to break through. A bad website user experience can unfortunately make your strategy destined to fail. You need to have a slick and easy to navigate website with an easy contact option. This involves minimal effort on the user’s part, but maximum information and slick design on the website’s part. It is not easy to know how everyone interacts with your website, but tools such as Microsoft Clarity are a great place to start.
This channel was traditionally considered as a B2C technique, however, increasingly B2B businesses are finding value in remarketing. Also referred to as retargeting, Google’s remarketing platform, allows adverts for your business to follow a website visitor across the internet after they have left your website. They can be set up so that they follow people who did not enquire on your website. This can be help you stay present in the minds of potential customers as they evaluate multiple different companies. Retargeting on Google’s Display Network has a lower cost per lead than other non-branded campaigns such as PPC.
Now we have looked at the top 10 B2B marketing strategies for 2022, it is important not so consider these different techniques as isolated campaigns. Every single branch works with the other channels and so you must approach your strategy in the same way. Remember, think SMART, regularly review progress and adapt based on your results. SQ Digital are an award-winning digital marketing agency who work with several B2B businesses. If you need any assistance in launching your B2B marketing campaign, then please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
There's been a significant shift in how small businesses use marketing, and traditional marketing efforts, such as print and billboards, are taking a step back. More and more businesses are realising the benefits of digital marketing and are investing more resources in digital marketing services, such as SEO, PPC, Content Marketing and Social Media. Business owners now have a wide range of digital marketing methods at their fingertips that can be adapted to suit their objectives, budget or industry.
It’s fair to say that digital marketing has entirely transformed how businesses connect and engage with their customers. With more consumers searching and buying online than ever before, digital marketing has become crucial. In essence, it allows businesses to effectively put their brand in front of their target audience at the right time and in the right place cost-effectively and measurably.
So, what does digital marketing have to offer you as a small or medium-sized business owner?
Investing in digital marketing services is crucial for your business; if existing or potential customers can’t find you easily online, they will likely go with another business. This is the nature of business today. If someone wants to learn more about your brand, they will probably research you online; perhaps they’re looking for reviews to see whether or not your company is a good fit for them.
As of last year, around 36% of small businesses were operating without a website. Without an online presence, potential customers may assume that you’re not legitimate or may not take you seriously. The result is that they will choose a competitor instead.
Consumer expectations have changed in today's digital world; the average customer tends to search for a product or service online, likely starting with Google. If you don’t have a website or social media presence, it will be next to impossible to compete.
Digital marketing helps to promote smaller businesses in a way that allows them to compete with well-established brands.
Unlike traditional marketing, digital marketing gives you the ability to monitor the performance of your campaigns in real-time. You don’t have to wait until your campaign ends to gather the data and analyse the results. By accessing timely data through tools like Google Analytics, you can review the effectiveness of your strategy and make changes accordingly.
Being able to gain these invaluable insights into your digital campaign allows you to respond quickly. You can adapt and refine your digital marketing strategy in line with your customers’ requirements.
It’s also much easier to measure the success of a digital marketing campaign. You can easily track metrics such as engagement and conversions, which is much harder to pinpoint for traditional marketing, such as print ads. With digital marketing, you can see results within a matter of hours, whether it be the number of visitors to your website, the number of people clicking on your ads or the level of engagement you’ve had on your social media posts.
Gaining additional customers is essential for growing your business in terms of revenue and profitability. There are several ways of reaching customers through digital marketing, from websites to video marketing and social media.
It also helps you to attract mobile customers, which is a huge and rapidly growing market. At the end of last year, in 2020, mobile devices (apart from tablets) generated 52.6% of global website traffic; in 2009, this value was 0.7%. Digital marketing helps you to capitalise on this traffic to ensure you’re not missing out.
Digital marketing offers a platform to explain why your customers should choose your business and why your products and services help them.
Rebranding a small business that you’ve been growing can be a daunting decision and task. You may hesitate at the idea; however, even though rebranding can be overwhelming, it can also offer many benefits, from breathing new life into your business to changing the way your target audience perceives you.
There are several reasons why a company might consider rebranding, such as transforming a brand that may have become outdated, further distinguishing a brand from its competitors’ or reflecting a change in your product line.
Such was the case with ROCCIA, the largest independent retailer of tiles in the North of England. The Company wanted to transition from Tile Mart into Roccia to reflect the high-end services and products. The challenge, however, was to ensure they didn’t lose the reputation they’d built over 20 years. To accomplish this, we created a content marketing strategy aimed at the new audience ROCCIA wanted to target, and a Digital PR campaign picked up by many publications.
After a 100% retention of authority and rankings and a 254% increase of traffic to blog posts, it’s fair to say that a well-thought-out digital campaign can help a business to follow a new vision by transforming its brand.
For a small or medium enterprise, keeping within budget is essential. Investing in staff to promote your services and products can be costlier in the long run; while you may have to spend some money on sales efforts to grow your business, having a strong online presence can help you boost sales and reach your audience more efficiently.
A well-designed website will ‘work’ for you every hour of the day, every day of the year, allowing potential customers on the other side of the world to easily browse your services and products outside of office hours. This means that, while your sales team is off the clock, your website is still hard at work and helping to bring in more business.
Many small businesses don’t have the budget available to utilise costly traditional marketing services such as TV and billboard adverts, putting them at a distinct disadvantage to competitors with larger marketing budgets. Only well-known brands can adopt this approach regularly, which meant that they could dominate the market with ease.
Luckily, digital marketing is an affordable and cost-effective option for all businesses. A well-executed and effectively targeted digital marketing strategy can reach potential customers at a much lower cost than traditional marketing. By only targeting users actively looking for your services or products, you save money and time.
This puts smaller businesses back in the game. By giving them resources that were previously only accessible to larger corporations, these businesses now have the ability to compete for the same traffic as those with much bigger marketing budgets.
For an example of this, you can read about the work we do for Electronic World. The trick is to be ‘strategic’ about your marketing campaigns; by clearly understanding the results of your data, you can increase your revenue without spending a lot of money.
We created a valuable asset for our customer Morecambe Metals; in this case, a well-researched infographic supported with creative content based on the popular TV show Game of Thrones. We succeeded in getting this featured by The Express newspaper, securing a link from a high-authority website and generating brand exposure nationally.
This only serves to prove that you don’t have to spend big money to get big results.
The reason why companies invest in marketing is simple: they want to maximise profit. Return on investment is the ultimate goal, whether it be through traditional or digital strategies.
We’ve already mentioned that digital marketing is cost-effective. Still, for business owners who want to achieve a high ROI, digital marketing has also proven to be successful without a shadow of a doubt.
We can track almost every aspect of our customer’s campaigns, rankings, conversions, leads, or traffic with our digital marketing services. Analytic tools allow us to focus on what is and isn’t working, enabling us to utilise the available marketing budget effectively. Simply put, we can stop spending money in areas that aren’t working and focus on what is most likely to drive enhanced ROI.
When it comes to paid advertising, ROI – or, more commonly, ROAS – is often the main KPI, especially for e-commerce businesses. ROAS (return-on-ad spend) is found by dividing ad spend by the revenue generated by ads.
Not only does this assist in identifying areas for optimisation, but it also allows decisions to be made using the data provided, such as how much money needs to be assigned where. ROAS essentially measures how much of your advertising spend you get back in revenue.
Digital marketing has completely revitalised the way businesses engage with both current and potential customers. It has made them at once accessible to new customers and familiar and recognisable to existing customers. So How Does Being Accessible Help with Brand Awareness?
Firstly, digital marketing has become an incredibly effective tool for building trust and fostering long-term relationships. It’s important to take advantage of social media platforms when it comes to connecting with your audience. By posting regularly, answering questions and queries quickly, and responding to reviews and comments – positive and negative – you are fundamentally improving brand loyalty and therefore increasing brand awareness. You are showing customers that you care about what they say and think.
Alongside this, you can also improve brand awareness through strategically planned content marketing that reflects your brand’s personality and motivations.
Content created with your target audience in mind can ensure that your brand is reliable and approachable. Writing articles and blog posts that reflect and address their interests and pain points will encourage more engagement and highlight you as an expert within your industry.
This is an approach that we have taken with our customer, The Aesthetic Skin Clinic. We have carefully developed a content strategy that has established them as an authoritative voice within the cosmetic sector, achieved through well-researched and well-written blogs, which have helped build trust among potential patients by educating them on their own health.
Traditional forms of marketing once meant sponsoring an ad during the break of a prime-time TV show and hoping that it reached the right audience. Fortunately, digital marketing allows for much more specific audience targeting. It’s no longer “one-size-fits-all” when it comes to marketing campaigns; it is now possible to become a lot more personalised. You can tailor campaigns to specific demographics, such as age, location, interests and gender, making them more effective.
With our client Axess2, a company that specialises in lifts, we targeted homeowners, architects and interior designers to establish Axess2 as a reliable expert in their industry. To amplify the reach of our content, we also created a targeted Digital PR campaign. This led to publications in important industry magazines, such as the Chartered Association of Building Engineers, and on websites such as the Durham Cathedral (after installing a lift in this UNESCO World Heritage Site building).
Specific audience targeting doesn’t restrict you to local campaigns either. In fact, you can realistically target people worldwide with just one marketing campaign. You can access a global audience through effective but specifically targeted strategies.
Social media platforms, in particular, have the ability to target ads to almost anyone; by using information collected from their users, they can target people according to their behaviours, lifestyles, interests and connections.
By using this insight into your customers’ interests and preferences, you can easily tailor and personalise the marketing messages they receive. This is often considered digital marketing’s biggest advantage over traditional marketing, as personalised messages make customers feel much more valued.
One of the best things about implementing digital marketing is that people no longer need to come to your physical store for you to make a sale. It now takes a matter of clicks to convert customers online. Your website is your store; it should offer potential customers everything they need to know about your product and services so that they can make informed decisions on whether to purchase and enquire.
Whether you’re spending money on sponsored Facebook ads or Google Ads, you can embed unique codes that allow you to track who, when and how people saw your ad, as well as what they did after this. Did they visit your website? And if so, which page did they view? Did they download content? Place an order? With digital marketing, you can monitor your conversion rate to see which leads turned into revenue.
With our customer Banks Lyon, we have executed a paid media strategy that utilises Google Ads and Google Display Network, creating a seamless user journey, from remarketing at the initial customer touchpoint through to enquiry and purchase. This has allowed us to track them every step of the way.
To make digital marketing really work for your business, you need a strategy that uses the resources available to you. Many businesses experiment with digital marketing services, e.g. using social media and posting a few Facebook posts here and there or spending a bit of money on SEO. To really benefit from the power of digital marketing, you need to adopt a more holistic approach. An efficient digital marketing strategy means tying in all digital channels and creating a collective and collaborative campaign. Integrating all the platforms available will go a long way to achieving your set objectives.
Without an online presence, it’s now impossible to compete and grow your business. We work with our clients to develop digital strategies that are an innovative blend of analytics and creativity. We work together to seamlessly create and implement innovative and robust digital marketing strategies that help grow their business.
You can view more of the fantastic work we’ve carried out for our customers on our case studies page.
You can also get in touch with us if you want to learn more about how we can help your business reach its potential online.
Do you have social media questions? As an experienced digital marketing agency, we aim to answer your questions about promoting your business on social media and making the most of your online presence. Take a look below at some of the questions being asked and see if we answer your questions too – if not, get in touch, and we'll be happy to answer them for you.
Social Media Marketing refers to using social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter to reach and engage your target audience online. You can use social media to promote your brand, boost traffic to your website, get more customers online, and more.
Social media platforms are an excellent way for people to connect and chat. People also use it to research new products or services and learn about a business they're looking to buy from.
As a business, not having a social media presence could mean you miss out on potential sales. Worst case, some people may even think you're not in business anymore.
One of the great benefits of using social media marketing, especially if you're a small business, is it helps you compete online with larger companies and brands.
Of all the social media questions we get, this is the most common. It's also an excellent question. Before creating your social media strategy, it's essential to define your target audience and the social media platforms they are likely to use. This initial research will make sure you get in front of the right audience. It is most likely that your existing and potential customers may prefer to use specific platforms, and you should tailor your strategy accordingly. If, for example, they hang out on Instagram and Facebook, focus on these instead of pouring time, money and effort into channels that may not work for you.
Setting a social media strategy requires you to implement goals in line with your business goals, whether you're searching for brand awareness or more sales leads. You'll also want to track key metrics that'll allow you to understand if your campaigns are working.
If you're looking for brand awareness, focus on the number and quality of followers and the engagement you get in your posts. It's a good way to measure the success of your campaign. On the other hand, if you want to convert more people, a boost in newsletter signups and a higher click-through rate are metrics to keep an eye on.
Another crucial part of any social media campaign is being aware of what your competitors are doing. It will help you stay up to date with the latest trends and determine if anything is lacking in your marketing campaign.
While this may feel overwhelming at first, a social media agency can help you by discussing your goals and implementing a social media strategy that complements the rest of your digital marketing campaign.
One platform is not necessarily better than another. The best social media platform to use will depend on your specific audience and the channels they use. Facebook might not work for you while Twitter may hit the sweet spot for your customers; and, if your products appeal to a younger audience, then a platform like TikTok can be your best option.
Again, it's all about understanding your target market and where they spend their time online. Once you find this out, you'll know which platforms to focus on to deliver results. Don't waste time trying to make a platform work for you just because you feel you should be on it. Spreading yourself thin across several channels only to see a small return may not be worth it. Spend your time on platforms where your target audience is. It may also help to know the times you should post on each platform too.
You will reap the rewards by investing your time in researching your target audience to answer social media questions like this one.
Social media campaigns are more specific and targeted than the general social media content you post every day. A good marketing campaign will focus on particular goals and outcomes. For example, if you want to raise brand awareness, you could implement a social media campaign to get more customer reviews and testimonials.
An impression is when a user sees your social media post or story. The number of impressions is how many times users have seen your post or stories. It's worth noting, impressions are not the same as interactions. Interactions are when your audience engages with your brand by, e.g. sharing, commenting on or liking your posts. Impressions can also help keep you on track with social media ads as you don't want to keep showing the same ad copy to your audience.
Social listening may be a familiar term, as it has been around for a while. It means paying attention to any feedback you receive and all useful keywords, conversations and topics connected to your business. Using the insights gathered, you can create or adapt your social media strategies.
The information you collect is especially helpful when you want to perform A/B testing. It can also help when you want to know how much you're spending on social campaigns versus the return on investment (ROI) you're getting.
According to DataReportal, there are currently 4.48 billion social media users worldwide. By not taking full advantage of this number, you may miss out on many opportunities. People will continue to use social media to interact with businesses. Make sure you have a social media account for your business as part of your overall digital marketing strategy. Make the most of your online presence to maximise your potential.
Social media is so versatile businesses can use it in many different ways. The options are endless, from shouting out about your services to talking to potential clients and posting behind-the-scenes videos of your business.
If you have products to sell, you can also use Facebook or Instagram advertising to promote your products online.
We hope we answered your social media questions and if you want any further information don't hesitate to get in touch.
As well as Social Media, we also provide a full range of digital marketing services, including SEO, Content Marketing and PPC, which allows us to create bespoke, integrated digital marketing strategies to help you promote your business and brand online.
Whether you’re a start-up or have already established your brand online, continuing to develop your content marketing should be at the forefront of your business.
Content marketing is all about communication. It’s about engaging, listening and building a relationship with your customers.
We’ve put together a simple guide to content marketing and developing your brand online.
In today’s digital society, we spend an average of 6 hours and 42 minutes per day online. This increased time browsing the web is an open opportunity to communicate and engage with your customers. It’s important to represent your brand online with rich content and strong marketing copy, no matter your marketing budget.
The best content for a smaller marketing budget would be well optimised on-site content, blogs, tutorial videos, collaborations with other companies and a strong social media presence.
Whether you’re sending a personalised email or posting a ‘how to’ video on Instagram, you can grow your business by speaking directly with your customers and listening to what they have to say.
Marketing copy is generally written with a specific goal in mind, often to compel the reader to do something. It could be to sign up for your newsletter, become a follower of your social media accounts, or make a purchase – we call these ‘conversions’.
There are lots of different ways to create compelling marketing copy, depending on your goal. A digital marketing agency can help you generate more valuable conversions using expertly written marketing copy.
A great place to start is by making sure your on-site content speaks to your target audience. On-site content generally refers to everything you write on your website. This includes help guides, FAQs or web page copy.
Good on-site content should speak your audience’s language. If you're unsure where to start, read our article 5 ways to strike the perfect tone in your content.
There are many benefits of writing blogs; they’re a great way to showcase your expertise and help build relationships with your customers. But writing an effective blog is about more than just sharing your thoughts or business updates with your audience.
Applying a robust SEO strategy to your blog content can attract more visitors to your website, which ultimately means more customers. A well-optimised blog will appear in search engine results when people search for the terms (or keywords) your blog addresses. Your blog will attract visitors who are more likely to be interested in your products or services.
Blog writing is a key part of any content strategy, so if you’re not already doing it, you probably should be.
As well as speaking your audience’s language, the content on your website also needs to speak Google’s language – this is where SEO comes in. SEO (search engine optimisation) will enhance a good content strategy. It ensures that the right people can find all the great content you’re creating.
By including keywords, meta-data, images, links and alt-tags in your blogs and articles, you can start to increase your website ranking on search engines like Google. Posting relevant, well-optimised content regularly is the key.
You can read more about how to optimise your content in our 10 SEO quick wins article.
Posting content about your business online helps you build a clear brand identity and share your company ethos with your followers. If you only have a limited marketing budget, it’s still a good idea to build a portfolio of blogs or videos and use your social media channels effectively to share your content.
By creating this online identity, your customers have a chance to get to know you better and communicate with your business. By being clear, visual and unique, you can set your brand apart from others. Applying a well-thought-out content strategy will establish a brand reputation, tone of voice and return business potential.
While it can take some time to see an impact from your content marketing efforts, PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising, as well as paid social campaigns, can deliver more immediate results.
PPC advertising puts your business in front of people who may already be interested in your products or services. In return, you pay a small fee whenever your PPC advert is clicked. The goal is for the revenue generated from the increased visits to your website to be higher than the cost of the clicks. So, there is a risk to running a PPC campaign, and it needs to be right for your business. Why not check out the pros and cons of running PPC campaigns?
On the other hand, a paid social media campaign can give you more options for targeting your audiences, like age demographics, location, and specific interests. This means you can be much more specific about who sees your ads, ensuring you get the best return on your investment.
If you’re interested in finding out more about developing your brand online from a content marketing agency, please get in touch. We could talk all day about the benefits of content marketing!
With around 3.6 billion people using social media in 2020, which is expected to rise to 4.41 billion by 2025, social media has become an integral part of any successful marketing campaign. A social media presence allows you to connect with your audience and strengthen your brand, not to mention it can help you build trust among your customers.
As a social media agency, we know just how important it is for you to reach the right people, but where do you even start?
Check out our tips on boosting your social media presence and take advantage of the benefits it offers.
Facebook still has the largest number of users, with over 2.6 billion monthly active users worldwide, which is why small or large businesses shouldn't ignore this platform’s potential for increased visibility and brand awareness.
One way to improve your presence on Facebook is to optimise the tabs section to fit in with your brand. Your tabs are part of your Facebook page’s prime real estate, so don’t underestimate their importance.
Think about the tabs you use and don’t use and get rid of anything redundant. While you may have needed a certain tab in the past, e.g. Videos, if you’re not using it anymore, take the opportunity to declutter the page by removing it entirely.
Instead, take advantage of those you haven’t used yet. For instance, if you’re hiring personnel, what better way to attract attention to postings than by including the Jobs tab on your page? And, if you sell products, you should consider the Shop tab.
In short, streamlining the tabs section on your Facebook page can help you to draw attention to what really matters to your brand and your audience.
To make the most of Twitter, getting involved in the conversation is a great start. Use the search bar to find niche terms or discussions that you should be a part of, and check out industry-specific hashtags too. If your business is all about interior design, you don’t want to miss out hashtags like #InteriorDesign and #HomeDecor.
Take a look at what’s trending and see if anything catches your eye. Get involved in threads that have large numbers of commenters. By chatting and commenting on anything that would interest your target audience, you raise your chances of being noticed by them.
Keep in mind that Twitter, like other social platforms, isn’t just a numbers game. Focusing all your efforts on getting followers without paying attention to the quality of those follows won’t help you grow your brand.
WHO’s following you is more important – you want people who are engaged and interested in what you have to say, who contribute to the conversation, and who share your posts with others.
It’s one thing to find hashtags and use them, but are you engaging in them? Hashtags are important to promote your Instagram page, so spend some time deciding on which ones you should use to get the most value out of them.
For example, if you sell clothes, you have many hashtags at your disposal, such as #fashion, #OutfitOfTheDay, #ClothesForSale and #StreetWear. However, if you only sell women’s clothing, #MensFashion isn’t that relevant to you.
People engage with hashtags, so part of your strategy can include:
One of our latest posts on Instagram is all about SQ Digital’s 20th anniversary and the work we do for our clients, so we’ve made sure to highlight hashtags like #DigitalMarketing, #SEO and #WebsiteDesign.
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Pinterest is a brilliant platform that allows you to promote your products and services – and attract attention to your brand – in a visually interesting way. This gives you plenty of opportunities to tell everyone what you do, which is why you should have a brand board where you save your own pins and showcase your brand.
Creating niche boards is another way to grow your traffic. They help show off your brand, helping your audience understand what your business is all about.
A small business that offers interior design to its clients could create boards like ‘black kitchen ideas’, ‘tiled kitchen ideas’ and ‘botanical interiors’.
LinkedIn helps connect businesses and people, so this platform is great to forge professional relationships and raise your brand awareness. Your company’s headline is the perfect place to show your target audience what you’re all about.
Keep your headline current by not only adding up-to-date information but also including keywords relevant to your brand and speciality. Let people know you can design great modern kitchens or offer superb banking services to your clients.
Selling your brand is vital, so review your headline often to ensure it’s always relevant to your business and what you do.
SQ Digital’s LinkedIn headline, for example, says everything about us!
Social media is an essential part of digital marketing and should be considered when a business is developing a strategy. As a small or larger business, it’s important that you make the most of your social accounts and, at SQ Digital, we’re more than happy to help with that.
Established in 2000 in Lancashire, we’re a digital marketing agency helping many SMEs grow their business over the years. Get in touch with us today to chat about how we can help your social media strategy.
Trust plays a vital role in the customer buying journey; if your business doesn’t highlight that its products or services are ahead of the competition, it can be difficult to persuade customers to buy from you. That’s why reviews and testimonials play a vital role in your business’ marketing strategy.
A few of the many reasons you can’t afford to miss out on those all-important reviews, and why they plan a vital role in your business’ success:
We've put together some of our tips on how to gain more reviews and testimonials by using your existing social media channels more effectively.
You know how the old saying goes… If you don’t ask, you don’t get!
The same is true when it comes to reviews and testimonials, as most customers will simply receive their product or service and carry on with their busy lives. Take the time to incorporate regular social posts designed to attract reviews from your customers – it could consistently earn you plenty of testimonials.
You should also consider writing a bespoke message to each of your page’s new followers across all of your social platforms. Something as simple as a brief ‘thank you’ and a friendly reminder to write a few words about their experience can secure a fantastic review.
Outside of social media, we’d recommend that you spend some time building a robust automated email marketing campaign designed to gain customer reviews. Sending an email shot around a week after your customer receives their product or service, with a reminder to leave a review, can vastly increase the chances of securing a positive testimonial from your customers.
If you do receive a review on any social media platform, it’s essential that you reply as soon as possible to thank the customer. A little bit of gratitude goes a long way, so taking a couple of minutes to reply to a positive review could mean you’ve earned a repeat customer.
While positive reviews are great, don’t shy away from the negative ones - they’re part and parcel of being in business. Always reply in a considered and professional way, address the issues they’ve raised, and reassure the customer that you’re managing their concerns. It may even be worth asking the customer to message you privately to discuss their review in more depth. Customers will see that you actively listen and act upon feedback, and this goes a long way to building trust and increasing your reputation among your target audience.
Great customer service and client engagement help to build a genuine relationship between your business and its customers, so don’t neglect those reviews.
Once you start seeing some reviews coming in, don’t let them hide away in the shadows – get them out there for everyone to see!
Research has shown that including an image in your social post can increase engagement by up to 40% across most channels, so don’t be afraid to include them. If anyone within your business has experience making custom graphics, then why not put together a template for sharing testimonials on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or LinkedIn?
Including social posts with testimonials not only increases your brand’s trust and reputation among followers, it also encourages other customers to write a review of your products or services so they can be featured on your page.
When it comes to choosing where to post your testimonials, take the time to fully consider where most of your potential customers spend their time on social media and focus your efforts on that channel.
If your product is particularly visual, Instagram may work best; on the other hand, if you provide a service to corporate clients, LinkedIn is best suited for the majority of your posts. That being said, don’t neglect any of your social channels, as you may well pick up customers from an unexpected source.
If you want to learn more about gaining reviews and testimonials, get in touch with us.
As a social media agency with over 20 years of experience in all things digital marketing, our dedicated team of experts has all the know-how when it comes to gaining a glowing customer review.
We’re ready to help you build your online presence through reviews and testimonials, so feel free to contact us.
Whether you’re a small business or a large company, your business will benefit from adopting the perfect tone to suit your audience. Tone expresses your company’s values, shows clients who you are, helps you to build trust and attracts people to your products and services. Striking the right tone makes your content more readable too, which will improve user experience and page rankings.
So, it’s clear that communicating with your audience with the right tone of voice is important – and finding it isn’t as difficult as you think.
Your brand personality is unique to your business and striking the right tone will show it.
If you’re a fun brand, your tone will convey that to your audience; you can rely more on light-hearted and quirky content, for example, and you should be chattier when you engage with people - choose a more active voice, shorter sentences and contractions as well.
Many brands do it right. Virgin, for example, is a massive company, but its personality and tone are centred on being bold, chatty and fun – and it works. People appreciate that a big brand like this is approachable and speaks their language.
If you’re struggling to find your tone, consider your personality so you can promote your best self.
For a great example of how tone can help your business’ personality come through, take a look at Wendy’s, a US fast food store. The brand is fun, bold and cheeky, and known for its ‘savage’ comments against competitors. Wendy’s also makes use of puns and made-up words (as well as emojis) to convey its messages on social media. Wendy’s is clearly not shy about letting its personality shine and this has been a successful strategy because people enjoy engaging with the brand.
Spicy, spicy! Very nice-y. Score yourself one FREE Spicy Chicken Sandwich with mobile purchase in the Wendy's app! 🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/wIYUkeVVJA
— Wendy's (@Wendys) April 30, 2020
A good tone of voice is also consistent.
By ensuring that everyone who represents your brand communicates in the same way with your audience, your message will be in the same tone at all times. This leads to consistent branding and to a boost in confidence that your brand is steady and dependable.
Whether you’re writing blogs, sending out newsletters or creating company videos, your tone must remain consistent if you want it to be recognisable by your audience.
Another way to find the tone that best works for you, is to make sure it fits with the social media platforms you’re using.
While your tone should be consistent, it should also adapt to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or any other channel. This is because platforms have different audiences and different expectations, and they also work very differently.
You can add up to 30 hashtags on Instagram (though you should pick only a few to avoid looking spammy) while you’re better off not adding any to Facebook. Instagram is highly visual, so images work better there when compared to Twitter, for example. Twitter has a post limit of 280 characters, so brands aren’t expected to write huge blocks of text. Being concise and straight to the point is preferred.
When adapting your tone to each platform, keep your target audience in mind and what they expect to see from your posts.
First of all, think about who your audience is. If you work with corporate clients, you should adopt a more formal tone; if, on the other hand, you own a clothing store, it’s better to choose a tone that connects with people on a more personal level, so aim for friendly or chatty.
So, knowing your audience will help you to find the perfect tone and whether or not to cut out jargon or techy language. It helps to know exactly what you want to say and the image you want to present. Remember that your clients might not speak your language, so keep it simple and easy to read – and understand!
Once you have this nailed down, you then want to make sure that the tone sets your brand apart from your competitors. It needs to be distinctive and unique to you so that your customers (and potential client base) can immediately recognise it. This, in turn, will build trust and help you to develop stronger relationships with your audience.
Greggs does this very well. Its tone is fun and chatty and refers to British culture with a great sense of humour. People enjoy replying to Greggs and re-tweeting its content, which is fantastic for brand awareness. Another thing that Greggs does well is to engage with public figures, as was the case with Piers Morgan and the famous vegan sausage roll ‘controversy’. The public banter actually helped to sell the product!
Top 10 romantic texts from my other half:
10. You
9. Can’t
8. Rank
7. Them
6. Because
5. They’re
4. All
3. Equally
2. Special
1. I’m going to Greggs do you want anything?
— Greggs (@GreggsOfficial) February 14, 2020
It goes without saying, the best thing you can do for your brand is, to be authentic and honest. Your tone should reflect who you are. If you’re not a quirky brand, don’t try to be! Choose the tone that reflects your values as they are, otherwise, you will risk turning your audience away.
People have certain expectations. If you work with lawyers, the language should be formal and authoritative, but if you’re targeting teenagers, you want your content to be fun and conversational.
Don't try to be something you’re not.
Dove is a great example. Its values focus on responsibility and on empowering its customers, and that’s easy to see in its tone. Dove is all about positivity and building self-esteem and confidence and uses language which reflects that ethos.
The tone of voice you use can be a powerful tool and it shouldn't be overlooked. Find a recognisable tone that will personify your brand’s values, and keep it consistent across all your marketing efforts – your audience will find it easier to follow your brand this way.
As part of our approach, we define the brand and tone of voice of our clients to ensure all our content marketing efforts are consistent with the clients. SQ Digital helps clients find the perfect tone that connects with their audience. Feel free to get in touch to find out more.
