5 Steps to Better Online Marketing Sunday, 12 June 2016 Nick Martin eBusiness Advisor

e-Solutions Centre at Invest NI Demonstration centre located in Bedford Street, Belfast Offices Highly skilled staff, offering impartial ICT advice Service available to any business in Northern Ireland & free of charge Contact details: »e-Solutions Centre Bedford Square Bedford Square BT2 7ES –Tel: –

Benefits of Online Marketing Making you website work for your business: –Access to new markets and customers –Reduce traditional marketing costs (e.g. print media) –Conduct business without barriers of time and distance –Reduction of overheads and operating costs e.g. staff costs –Potential increased profits

Step 1 – Get the best website Set a realistic initial budget Do your research, look at other similar websites Plan your website well (structure, key features, look and feel) Select a domain name and appropriate hosting solution Get a number of quotes from different developers (seek impartial advice) Develop a plan to market and promote your website Once completed, submit your website to a range of search engines

Step 2 – SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) Search engines love original, well written, keyword rich content. Considering using a CMS (Content Management System) for your site Use images, but keep their them relevant (ensure ALT Tags are used)ensure ALT Tags are used Ensure each of your web pages has an individual, unique titleunique title Use search engine friendly URLs (example)example Use video clips where appropriate to enhance user experience Keep usability in mind – make you site logical and user friendly Use reciprocal linking: –Page ranking – get popular relevant websites to link to you

Step 3 – Analyse Web Traffic It is important to get the right type of targeted traffic to your website (not just large number of hits). Conversion rates should be monitored Use Google Analytics (or a similar package) –This will give you number of hits over a period –County of origin of your visitors –How long they stay on your site & the pages they visit –Measure the success of marketing campaigns e.g. marketing –Conversion rates Use this intelligence data to drive your websites improvement

Step 4 – Use Marketing Collect relevant address e.g. existing customers, website signup form Ensure you have a privacy policy and use unsubscribes Use dedicated marketing software rather than Outlook (e.g. Constant Contact, Dotmailer). Benefits: –See the number of people who open the , forward it, click on links –Measure conversion rates and the success of your campaign accurately. –Measure your ROI

Step 5 – Use Pay-Per-Click What is pay-per-click (e.g. Google Adwords) This technology is easy to setup, but more difficult to get a reasonable return on investment. Advantages: Guaranteed listing, targeted website traffic, good conversion tracking tools There are a number of established strategies for using Adwords It takes a reasonable commitment to be successful (can be outsourced to an external company)

 Summary Checklist  Plan Formulate and execute an achievable plan to develop your website  Optimise SEO is a relatively low cost way of improving your ranking within search engines.  Link Improve your page ranking by getting relevant popular website to link to your site.  Monitor Use a tool (e.g. Google Analytic) to monitor your traffic and drive improvement.  Market Targeted marketing can be an effective way to increase business. Pay-Per-Click advertise can be extremely effective, if used correctly.

Questions

ALT (Alternative Text Tags) for Images << Back

Search Engine Friendly URLs << Back

Individual Title Tags << Back