Site Marketing

As you can imagine, trading as Independent Web Marketing with a top level domain name of www.web-marketing.co.uk we are asked about site marketing rather a lot!

Although basic optimisation of a site – title, description, keywords, relevant text on page etc – is a common sense start and serves a useful, initial  purpose on the long road to being found through the search engines, there is no doubt that if you want your business to develop and grow you have to be more serious about marketing your web site. Search Engine Optimisation and Web Site Marketing is now a highly specialised field. With so many web sites coming on-line each day, and more and more people relying on the Internet to access up to date, relevant information and be able to act on it there and then, it is a highly competitive market.

There is no quick fix. For example, no matter what anyone tries to tell you, NO ONE has a special relationship with Google or any other search engine. If you are currently using conventional media, in the form of magazines, newspaper, TV or radio, you wouldn’t expect to place one or two adverts in a magazine and conquer the world – you’d work with someone who knew what they were talking about, understood your business, explained what would be possible, and the expected results, in language you could understand – and tailored a budget and a campaign of activity to your exact needs.

The Internet is just the same. The successful businesses are not just spending money on site marketing, they are actually spending it on doing the right things! The businesses that get good on-line results employ a good SEO firm to do this for them. It is such a skilled and time consuming business, it is simply not possible for any small/medium sized business to undertake in-house. There is too much to know and too much to analyse.

It means “letting go” to a degree and trusting someone who really understands this ever changing, highly competitive market - and who knows what to do to get your business to grow on-line - with your on-line promotion. It also means committing a budget to an ongoing campaign, but the good ones have a proven track record and take the time to understand your business and put in place a programme of activity designed to generate business for you – and your budget.

1] We undertake a full analysis of your business and your web site. We use analytical data to see what the best course of action is for you. For example, we will see what relevant keywords are actually being used on the Internet – which may differ totally from what you think people will type in to find you. For example, if you sold a specific brand of kitchen knife but only 5 people searched for it, yet during the same period 20,000 people searched for “stainless steel kitchen utensils”, there is no point on concentrating on words that people are not using.

2] You have a dedicated Account Manager who will put a proposal together for you and work with you to finalise an exact programme of activity and a budget.

3] Our marketing service is totally transparent. You have access to a control panel and can see all activity on your account. This fantastic, easy to understand analytical info enables you to see your business rise up the rankings of each search engine with RELEVANT keywords that people will actually use to find businesses like you.

4] We can also set up and manage a CPC [cost per click] campaign using Google Adwords etc, as part of your campaign. If you want to go down this route we’ll come up with a budget specifically for this – married to what you could reasonably achieve.

The first question everyone asks is “what does it cost?” The answer is “Well, it depends” – which is not very helpful. It depends on what you want to achieve and your budget, but as a guide, you would be looking at a set up fee of between £1,500 - £2,000 and then a monthly commitment of anything between £400 per month and £1,200 per month for a minimum period of six months. It’s important to stress that you would not be getting a “poorer” service for the lower amount, the quality would be the same but you would just get less time dedicated to your campaign. Of course, you can start at the lower end of the scale and then up the budget when you see the results over a few months – but it does take months to build this kind of campaign. The results come as a result of actual people working manually on your behalf!

A detailed analysis takes approx a week to put together and normally forms part of the set up fee – although it can be set up in such a way that you pay for the initial analysis and can then decide whether to proceed or not.

There is no hard sell involved in any of this. As you can imagine, it’s not easy to suggest to clients that they should pay a lot of money for a service that they don’t fully understand – especially when a high proportion are small businesses who are simply not used to investing [or can’t afford to invest] in ongoing campaigns, unless they really work and will help a business to grow. We are also fully aware that our reputation is on the line with our clients – many of whom we have built up a trusting relationship with over a decade or more.

However, we can only tell you how it is. The Internet is the way forward.

Call us on 01526 352919 and we’ll be pleased to tell you more.