Ten essential marketing tips for everyone

Follow these ten easy easy wins for an instant marketing boost...
1. Understand your customers
Getting to know your customers is the most important stage of marketing process. The more accurate your information and knowledge, the more effective you will be at selling. Use all the information at your disposal to understand customer's behavior, demographics, and requirements. This information should steer your major business decisions and allow you to write a marketing plan.

2. Observe the marketing environment
Knowing your customer is vital, but there may also be business opportunities which emerge as a result of changing global circumstances. For example, in recession budget brands such as camp sites or cheap food stores tend to flourish as people dial down their annual spending. Emerging technologies may make new products possible, and new legislation may shift consumers behaviors - a good example is the reduction in road tax for low polluting cars. Make sure you regularly 'scan' the external environment for opportunities (and threats).

3. Design your product or service around the customer
Once you have a marketing plan in place, you need to make sure your product or service is tailored to your customers - from the packaging to the way it is promoted. Entrepreneurs often fall into the trap of making the product they want to sell, rather than designing and presenting things in the way the customer wants.

4. Ensure you are smooth and efficient
The process of conducting your business is almost as important as the product itself - make sure delivery is quick, returns are dealt with courteously, your staff greet customers with a smile and a cup of coffee. Surprise and delight your customers by going above and beyond the call of duty for them. Word of mouth is a powerful selling tool and this is exactly the way to generate it.

5. Design targeting advertising & customer communications
Placing a few ads just isn't enough to get noticed any more. Consumers are bombarded with hundreds of marketing messages every day of their lives and take less and less notice. You need to do something pretty special to stand out, so make sure your messages are clear and appeal to exactly the people you are trying to sell to. Use both emotional and rational arguments to demonstrate what you are selling and why they need it.

6. Invest in your people
Your staff are your most precious asset - look after them and give them the training they need to do their jobs well. From your receptionist to your salesmen, make sure they are motivated, have the tools they need and understand their role in the business plan. If everyone works together, your business will look after itself. 

7. Make sure your shop front is immaculate
Good presentation is a huge influencing tool, it generates trust, motivates your staff and makes customers comfortable with their decision. If your front of house is messy, what does that say about your warehouse or filing systems? Even if things are chaotic behind the scenes, never lower the standards of your customer facing areas

8. Have a pricing strategy
Don't just set a price based on production costs plus a margin. Pricing is a powerful tool to achieve your goals - decide what you are trying to achieve and what message you're giving out by setting your price at a certain level. High prices mean you're likely to sell less, but can give the impression of a premium product. Low prices can allow you to break into or dominate a particular market, although this may mean low profitability in the short term. Ensure pricing is part of a greater strategy, and include this in your marketing plan.

9. Respond to complaints well
Every complaint is an opportunity to turn around a dissatisfied customer - respond quickly and positively. Remember your brand is easily damaged, and the last thing you want is for people to be actively spreading bad stories about your business. A complaint that is dealt with well can often result in a loyal customer, they will have refreshed trust in your brand and the confidence to buy again knowing that if things do go wrong they will be sorted out quickly.

10. Write a marketing plan
Develop your strategy in the form of a written marketing plan, as this will ensure all members of your business understand the company direction. The plan is a comprehensive and well researched document which covers all essential aspects of taking your products to the customer, including the points listed above. When developing the plan, ask yourself the following questions.
Where are we now?
Where do we want to be?
What opportunities exist in the environment?
How will we get there?
Who will do what?
How will we know we've arrived?

Below is the list of some of the useful keywords analysis tools:

• Topsy : Top links being shared on Twitter or Google+
• Google Trending Searches : The hottest Google searches happening right now
• Google Trends : The relative interest on a given search over time
• Yahoo Trending News : The hottest searches happening on Yahoo News
• YouTube Trends Dashboard : Today's top videos by country, city, age, and gender
• YouTube Trends Blog : Data-driven research behind different video trends and why they happen essential to understanding what makes a video viral
• BottleNose : Real-time social analytics tool, first of its kind, and too cool to describe in a one line snippet
• popurls : All of the top stories from all the major news aggregators such as Digg, Reddit, Huffpo
• These tools will help you to prepare the strategy and the marketing ideas.

We can help you to run and manage campaigns efficiently, considering the geographic, social and economic mindset of the target audience. ICampaigns are essential for promoting any business. You need to make your customers aware of your offers. Campaigns need to be well planned to get maximum returns on the investment. It also needs to be timed well to expect good response. CMPT has always been in the forefront for adopting and championing the new tools and technologies in campaign management and have successfully combined different medium to provide 360 degree promotional solutions for its clients. Campaign Management includes planning of campaign, planning of creative, planning media for reaching out the message and collecting the response to measure the effective of the campaign. CMPT provides reports to measure the success of any campaign that it handles. We undertake the complete responsibility of Campaign Management of your business and help you to gain maximum benefits leading to higher market share.

Digital marketing has existed since the frequency modulated radio era where shortened attention grabbing voiceovers were advertised.With the advent of television it has grown into a robust industry until the internet's advertising revolution powered by Google AdSense which has re-defined the digital advertising landscape in an irrevokable and streamlined manner.

Google's AdSense is uniquely tailored where in a outwardly simple system, google uses worldwide internet logistics to give massive value to the customer and the smart and successful advertiser.It uses a pay for clicks system where the individual placing the ad gets to pay only for the clicks incurred by the ad and the purpose it has been deployed.When adequate and more people have clicked on the ad in lieu of relevance, it rises in ratings and is more likely and widely available to an audience it can potentially reach and improve the lives of. Google in most cases charges no more than what has been bid for , or they sequentially reduce the price for each click. 

This model deployed by google is streamlined for efficiency and it unconditionally rewards relevant,successful ads placed which enriches the value of google's AdSense simultaneously with the customer experience and the individual placing the ad even makes an excellent deal and ends up paying a fraction of the price of ads through other media and have a much higher percentage of people satisfied by answering to the ad over a much wider demographic than it was imaginable to reach before internet marketing.

 It is safe to say there are countless marketing strategies employed by multiple organizations across the world by carefully calculating and considering the potential audience. Eventually, in the cloud of digital marketing, Google's system is perfectly tailored to achieve the maximum efficiency and most models adapting to this malleable and proven framework and focus on improving the quality of the ad placed is a win-win scenario for all.

If you like this article and would like to get more insights on digital marketing, you can get in touch with us at info@mediapulsetech.co.uk

Whenever Google updates its algorithms or, as in the case of the most recent Hummingbird algorithm, introduces a brand-new one, there is much concern over whether it has killed SEO.

Hummingbird has, at least according to Google, improved search results already and it looks likely that it will improve mobile search and voice search for users too. While it is a new algorithm and is being billed as the biggest algorithmic change in 12 years, it is really just an evolution. It takes Knowledge Graph and turns Google's results into a more conversational, more semantic, and even a more sentient search solution. Far from killing SEO, it has served to ensure that those willing to put the effort in will get their just rewards.

Knowledge Graph

Knowledge Graph is a Google project that has been available for some time, but few casual searchers have really used it. It attempts to identify and highlight the connections between people, places, and things and then offer insight into these connections through its results. It essentially offers much more complex and more knowledgeable responses to users; responses that you would normally associate with having come from a human rather than a search algorithm.

While Knowledge Graph may not be the first choice of the majority of Google searchers, it is widely used by those that are doing more in-depth research. Writers, marketers, and researchers can use it to great advantage while power searchers will almost certainly find it has uses too.

The Hummingbird Update

The Hummingbird update can be seen as a natural progression from the Knowledge Graph. It combines Google's undoubted search capabilities with the interesting and invaluable information provide by Knowledge Graph.

Rather than attempting to identify the individual keywords or phrases that are found in a search query, the new Hummingbird update looks at the query as a whole. It considers the whole sentence and then looks for the most relevant results. More than this, though, it provides a more rounded list of results that give background information as well as supporting information too.

Long-Tail Keywords and Conversational Queries

Hummingbird concentrates on whole queries rather than individual words and this means that it will have obvious implications on pages that utilise and include long-tail keywords.

Long-tail keywords have always been considered beneficial because they typically have a high conversion rate from highly targeted visitors. However, it has proven difficult to benefit from much traffic as a result of their being found on a page. Hummingbird will be looking at search strings of three, four, five, or more words and rather than breaking these down it will provide results for the whole search string.

Long-tail keywords, which are normally added to pages during the natural process of writing high quality content, may generate more traffic for a website in the future.

Authority

It has long been known that Google considers the authority of a page, and even the authority of a page author, to be extremely important. With even greater emphasis to be placed on page content, authority will become even more relevant and pertinent.

Hummingbird will help ensure that Google delivers users to the most appropriate page of a website, rather than to a home page or top level page. As such, every single page should be closely targeted to potential visitors. Not only will this help improve conversion rates as part of a conversion rate optimisation campaign but it may also help to drive traffic to the pages of a website via Google results too.

Mobile Search and Voice Search

Analysts believe that these changes are heavily influenced by Google's desire to become more mobile. As well as their mobile search engine pages, Google also owns Android which even has its own voice search capabilities.

Voice search naturally tends to mean more conversational and more natural language. Rather than searching for a one or two word phrase, people will be more inclined to use whole sentences, questions, and more complex queries when they speak. Hummingbird will be well placed to determine the most relevant and highest quality pages that meet the needs of the searcher. Websites that place well under the new algorithm changes may also experience an increase in their mobile traffic as a result.

Concentrating on Quality

Google has long bemoaned poor quality sites and has advocated the introduction and use of high quality content on websites. Hummingbird can be seen as another step by the search giant to ensure that they offer the best pages in their search results.

Website owners need to ensure that their website is built on quality. This is not only beneficial to search optimization campaigns but to online business in general. Conversions will increase, bounce rates drop, and average sales value will also rise. For the business owner this represents an opportunity to ensure that they make the most of every single website visitor while the market will benefit from naturally generated links and a greater authority rating in the eyes of Google.

Your Content Marketing Campaign

Google is ensuring that the content of a website is placed front and centre. They are effectively promoting those sites that offer a general and well-rounded approach to a particular topic and providing this level of content will help ensure the best results for your site.

Content marketing means providing high quality content both on and off the pages of your website. It means producing content on a regular basis and then placing it so that others not only see it and enjoy it but link to it, like it, share it, and discuss it. All of these factors will help improve a search profile so that the pages they are related to will perform better in search.

Hummingbird Has Not Killed SEO

Every new upgrade brings with it new cries that SEO is dead. While search optimisation has certainly changed over the past few years, and again following the Hummingbird update, it is far from dead.

Website owners and marketers should concentrate their efforts on a well-rounded content marketing plan. Website owners need to find ways in which to cover the different aspects of the topic their site is related to. They need to find ways to regularly implement new content and they also need to be able to do so in such a way that will make them appear more authoritative with readers, users, and the search engines.

The Future of SEO

SEO evolves in line with new releases to algorithms and as Google is constantly looking for ways in which to provide its users with access to better quality pages, this means that the search optimisation techniques site owners need to use continue to change evolve.

Site owners that rely on the provision of high-quality content, that steer clear of black hat techniques, and that look to build multiple traffic streams using a universal marketing approach are those that will enjoy better long term results. Some flux is to be expected in search engine ranking positions but by sticking to the Webmaster Guidelines provided by each of the search engines it is possible to stay ahead and to enjoy continued, long term benefits.