Neild & Co Digital Marketing ebook

Transcription

1 Neild & Co Digital Marketing ebook

2 Ten years ago Facebook was still in its infancy and small business marketing tools stretched as far as a few ads in the local paper or perhaps an ad on the local radio station. You may have also put flyers and posters in shops or sponsored community events. It was all locally based and small businesses could build a community of regular shoppers through good customer service and word of mouth alone. Things have changed. Digital Marketing has, and still is, revolutionising marketing by offering a variety of low cost tools that small businesses can use to connect with potential new customers. It is a completely new field which has developed over the last 10 years and encompasses a broad range of skills from web development to graphic design to copywriting - and all things in between. Due to it being such a new and varied field, the challenge for any small business is to know which tools are the best ones to use for their business, how to use them, where and when to invest and how to track the success of these endeavours. The purpose of this book is to give you the knowledge in order to start and develop your digital marketing with confidence. It has been written specifically for Neild & Co customers and is tailored to butchers and small grocery shops based in New South Wales. First we will look at terminology, as this is often the first hurdle when you first start using digital marketing: Backend of a website, where you build it, plan the layout, work on your SEO etc. The frontend is what your customers see. Conversion when one of your marketing tools produces a sale it has converted. CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation) - using data to calculate, and then improve, the conversion rate of your website and social media. CTR (Click through Rate) the % of impressions that click through, i.e. from an ad to your website. Domain Name also known as a url, it is the www of your website. Engagement when a visitor to your social media likes one of your posts, or posts on your wall for example, they have engaged. Hashtag the #... you see in social media. Users can search for content based on specific hashtags. Hosting your website and associated data need to be stored on a server, your website builder will often include hosting in their price. Impression a single view of your ad or a specific page. Organic/Inorganic - The traffic and engagement you create from your social media is often called organic if you have not used PPC. Once you use PPC it is often referred to as inorganic. Mobile responsive when a website automatically adjusts its layout and content to suit a mobile phone or device. PPC (Pay Per Click) - advertising that you have paid for through Facebook or Instagram (for example). ROI (Return on Investment) - the dollar amount you get back as a multiple of the dollars you invested. SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) - this decides where you get placed in the Google search. SEM (Search Engine Marketing) - using the Google tools to promote your business. Traffic the people visiting your website and social media pages.

3 UX User Experience, theory on how a person uses your website, and how to improve their experience using this theory. The front cover of this ebook shows the main digital marketing tools available to your business but in the rest of this document we will only discuss the tools we believe are relevant to your business including some tips and suggestions on how to use them. WEBSITE & SEO Having a website can be a fabulous tool, but it s not necessarily a worthwhile investment for every business and it is worth weighing up the pros and cons for your business before committing to a website. Try to think about what information you would want to include in your website? How often would you be able to update it? And do you supply this information already somewhere else? Promotions are often better facilitated through social media channels and your business contact information can be stored and updated in Google My Business. If that is pretty much all the content you would want to include in your website, you don t necessarily need a website, but you may want to build one anyway. If you have specific content that you want available to your customers at all times, for example recipes, other shop locations if you are a chain etc. then a website would be an ideal tool for that. You might also want to consider that a website can position your business ahead of your competitors. If you do decide to build a website you can often do this yourself using tools such a Squarespace and Wix. These are both template based, drag and drop website builders that also host the site and are mobile responsive (although you do need to manual check the mobile layout in Wix). Before I build a website I usually make a list of what I want to include in the site, for example: contact information, description of my business, whether I will be taking sales through the site? From this I can organise the structure and where all that information will sit from the homepage, and plan the navigation for the user (to optimise the UX). If building your own website feels like a waste of your time, and it can take a long time if you haven t used these tools before, you might want to consider hiring someone through Upwork.com or Freelancer.com to help you. I would expect to pay $150 for someone to build a simple 4 or 5 page non-transactional site, and remember payments through these websites are in USD not AUD. Once you have your website up and running you might want to consider working on your SEO. This is the data used by Google to decide who gets placed in what order in their search engine. You ideally want to be on the first page for your primary purpose and location. For example, at Neild & Co we want to be on the first page for butcher suppliers NSW amongst other terms. Your website builder will have tools for the SEO, and you can google where to find these in the backend. As a jumping off point your SEO is built on Title, Keywords and Description, where the Keywords are hidden in the search: Title Description You want to make sure the Title and Description clearly define your business and why customers should click on your site in the google search. You then want to make sure the keywords are searched regularly (more on this later) and align with your business offer. SEO is a house of cards, often changing and being updated by Google. Beside the interaction between your SEO and your competitors, which affects the search order regularly, Google also change the algorithms regularly, near enough annually, to ensure they remain accurate and hackers are unable to manipulate the search order. As this is a house

4 of cards my suggestions on how to optimise your site will likely be out of date in 2019, if you are reading this in 2019 onward I would suggest you google search recommendations for how to manage your SEO in that year. In 1996 Bill Gates wrote an article titled Content is King and two decades on this claim is as true today as ever. The current Google search algorithms will prioritise websites that regularly post relevant, useful content. It is worth having a blog on your website where you post recipes just for the purpose of SEO, plus they will add value for your customers in this competitive grocery retail market. SOCIAL MEDIA The only social media platforms you really want to consider are: Facebook Instagram YouTube For all forms of social media you need to have clear goals and a solid content strategy in order for your efforts to be effective. Are you trying to attract new customers? Do you want to engage your customer base with your brand and products? Are you informing people of your current promotions? It can also help to think about what your customers aspire to. Do they want to learn more about slow and low BBQ? Do they care about ethically raised meat and where your meat is sourced from? Are they health conscious and follow trends such as gluten free and paleo? Are they time poor and need dinner suggestions regularly? If you use these suggestions and think about what your customers regularly ask for, or the location and community your business is based in, you can create relevant content that will engage existing and potential customers, build awareness and ultimately sales in your business. Facebook is a juggernaut. With the highest levels of engagement and participation of all social media platforms it is the obvious place to start in your social media journey. To understand how your customers will interact with your Facebook page think about how you interact with Facebook. What sort of post usually draws your attention? What content do you like to see? Facebook is great for promotions, giveaways and updating your community about things happening in your business. Instagram This ebook is being written for release in January 2018 and in the current market conditions Instagram represents a massively under-utilised resource, and as such it is a great opportunity for our customers. It is a highly visual platform, you need to have good aesthetics i.e. high quality photos and also theming/branding in your account for it to be effective. Butchery, and meat, can be very visually emotive content, people engage with photography of food in general, so butchers are well aligned with this platform. Current levels of social media usage in Australia indicate 93% of brands and marketers use Facebook, where as 36% use Instagram, so by using Instagram you are facing into less competition. Furthermore, ecommerce sites with sales generated through Instagram average at $65, and Facebook generated sales average at $55, which indicates Instagram generates slightly larger sales. Both of these factors plus the visual backbone of Instagram makes it a fantastic platform for our customers. A top tip for Instagrammers is to use links in your Instagram bio as part of your sales funnel. Referring back to your website development and planning how your user will navigate the site to optimise the UX you also want to plan how your users will navigate your social media. You can use tools like the bio link to communicate your point of difference in the market and also direct the traffic to your website in order to convert the sale.

5 This is your Instagram bio YouTube if making videos aligns with your brand, and you enjoy making videos, go for your life! But make sure you think about how much value it will add for your customer. You will be well aware in grocery retail your customers are generally time poor, and as such you need to imagine how your customers will use your content, again this is part of your UX. For example, if you create a video for a recipe which could have been equally well serviced by an Instagram post, use Instagram. It is far easier for your customer to access the ingredients through that platform and so a video would probably be redundant. If, however, you wish to share specialised knowledge or a technique which warrants a video over just a photo, then use YouTube. POST THEORY There are a number of theories around whether to align your content across all your platforms or use different content for each platform, what time of day and which days to post, how frequently to post. The best way to figure this out is just to start posting and track your engagement at different points in time to work out what works best for both you and your customer. For posts relating to regular promotions, i.e. your weekly Meat Tray, it is very worthwhile to post this sort of content at the same time, and on the same day, every week. If you can find the time it is also great to post to social media every day. Brand Managers usually plan their content for the week all in one go and then set up scheduled posts in order to manage their time and content better. Consistency is the key in all social media so a one post a day habit will add a lot of value to the development of your digital marketing. CREATING VISUAL CONTENT Our favourite website tool for creating graphics for our website and social media is Canva, it is fantastic, free and very easy to use. Canva also offer a design school with heaps of tips and useful information regarding graphics and branding. If you are looking for an app that lets you write text over photographs you have taken, check out Wordswag, Typorama and Phonto. Research has shown customers are more likely to read the text if it is within the image, rather than below it, and this is still a relatively new marketing tool in Australia. If you are looking for some free photos, check out Pixabay and Pexels. GROWTH TACTICS Once you have your social media accounts set up and you are posting regularly, you ll probably start thinking about how to grow your audience. The following four are generally considered to be the most effective tools to drive growth:

6 Use hashtags users find similar content through hashtags, here are some common food ones to get you started: #food #foodporn #foodie #delicious #yum #yummy #lunch #dinner #eat #beef #chicken #pork #steak #bbq Do competitions and giveaways an obvious and effective tactic. You could ask your existing audience to like and share in order to enter your competition, thus your post can be viewed by the network connected to your existing audience. Post viral types of content for example humorous or emotional posts, content relevant for your local community, or connected to current trends will all engage your audience. If the content is really good, your audience will like and share, and this will increase the awareness of your business and brand. Network with influencers this is a significant and growing area in digital marketing. Influencers are people who have large followings, and can give personal recommendations of products and services they like in exchange for product or payment. Australia is still very much in its youth regarding influencer marketing on a large scale. You may be able to connect with a significant person in your community though and offer them product or support of a community event in exchange for a post to their social media. PAY PER CLICK (PPC) When done well, pay-per-click advertising is one of the largest drivers of growth for business. It can also be a huge waste of money if not done properly. There has been a significant amount of research into whether PPC creates a convertible audience, i.e. customers who are ready to purchase your products, rather than just builds your audience. If you are not building a convertible audience you won t get ROI for the investment. A small amount of PPC, at specific times and with specific purpose can be useful, but without a large marketing budget I would be hesitant to use PPC regularly without a clear purpose. PPC is facilitated through Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads or Google Adwords. GOOGLE (SEM) With 82% of total search engine traffic in 2015, Google pretty much dominates Search Engines so if you are short on time you can focus all your efforts on the Google suite of tools and still have a great impact. Furthermore, marketing today is data driven, and it is often said that a campaign or marketer is only ever as good as the data collected. Google provides a huge number of tools which can assist you to engage your target market and track the performance of your digital marketing and campaigns. Here is a summary of the main tools you will need to know about: Google My Business make sure your business information and logo are correct and up to date here, as a customer who searches for your business in Google will see this information. Google Analytics one of the original tools and still one of the best. You ll need to connect your website to Google Analytics using a Tracking ID. This is quite simple to do and there are lots of tutorials online. Once Analytics is collecting data on your website you will be able to see a wealth of statistical information on whom, when and how users visit your website. Google Trends using this tool you can learn more about keywords and trends, how many people search for certain term, by date and region, as well as related topics. This can be very useful for you to use when working on your SEO or looking for campaign ideas.

7 Google Adwords the PPC tool within Google, and when you have Adwords in place you will appear at the top of the Google Search. You can identify the Adwords listings by the symbol. You pay a fixed amount per impression, so can budget a certain amount per day or week, then Google will include your ad in searches most closely aligned to your keywords. Google Keyword Tool part of Adwords, used to help you select Keywords which Google uses to decide where to place your ad. In Keyword Tool you can see search volume per month, you want to get this above 1000 while keeping the keywords very relevant to your purpose. MARKETING marketing is still viewed as one of the most effective forms of marketing, despite it having a comparatively long history within digital marketing, so it is definitely worth considering. One of the best marketing tools is MailChimp which is free up to 2,000 subscribers and 12,000 s per month. In addition it is extremely easy to use with drag and drop templates and a step-by-step process to make sure you have it set up correctly. marketing has a tendency to build, and customers will come to expect s with certain information that you have included in the past. If you do decide to use marketing you will want to commit to using it consistently, even more so than any other digital marketing tool. BLOGGING Blogging can be part of your website and an opportunity for you to share longer pieces of content with your audience, such as recipes. You can then share your blog posts through your social media to build your audience outside of your website. Beware though, blogging can be time consuming and laborious and even more so if you don t enjoy copy writing. However, if you do and this tool is aligned to your brand and target market it could be a great way for you to build relationships with your audience. In short, when deciding which tools you should use for digitally marketing your business it is a similar process to using any other tool: decide what you are trying to achieve then select the tool accordingly, not the other way around.