If you work in online marketing, then you will know the importance of software to help you do your job. You often need to use different types of software to not only carry out certain marketing techniques but also to access how well they have worked.

It is quite common for an online marketing person to use multiple different programs daily to get a true picture as to what is going on with a website. They may use analytics as a way of accessing the traffic to the site and what is happening with that, but they may then use different programs to check where a site is raking for certain phrases and what their competitors are doing.

It can be hard to find good, reliable software to use as there are so many different options out there but ideally you should try and get a free trial to ensure that it does what you need it to and that it is accurate before tying yourself in to a contract with them. You may want to speak to other marketing experts to get their recommendations as to what they use and find the most useful.

When running a business, it is important to keep your overheads down and cut your costs where possible whilst still ensuring you can do your job well.

Software is often a huge cost to businesses, especially those that are within the technology or marketing industry. You may feel that you have to subscribe or buy a certain amount of software for your staff to use and this is often not cheap. For example, if you need to use Microsoft Office then you will need to purchase a business package with the required number of licenses needed. This can quickly add up in to the thousands.

Often the self-employed of small business owners simply cannot afford to buy software outright. You may be able to do some savvy research and find similar software that can be obtain at a much cheaper price or shop around for discount codes.

Adobe Photoshop for example, is a great bit of accounting software but it can be pricey especially if using the complete design package. Instead of buying it outright you may look for another photo editing software package or set up monthly payments which can be cancelled at any time should you need to.

During these strange times it is easy to get distracted with day to day tasks and forget to put time in to your marketing. If your business is still able to trade then you still need to be investing money, possibly even more than before, during this time. It may be that you have had to start to run your business differently, in which case you may need to tell your customers how they can still access your products or services.

Just because you cannot easily meet face to face with your web agency or marketing personnel, doesn’t mean that you cannot still have meetings with them. Often meetings are better this way anyway as it means no one has to factor in travel time and you usually find that the meeting stays on topic so doesn’t last longer than it needs to. There are a number of different platforms you can use for video meetings such as Zoom and Microsoft teams. Try and arrange a short meeting once a week or once every couple of weeks just to have a quick catch up on where you are with everything and what you are planning going forward.

It is important to keep a close eye on your website and be sure to have system in place that allow you to find out quickly if there is a problem. There are a number of different tools you can use which will help you notice errors before they cause too much of a problem. If your site is regularly indexed then you can set it up to get notifications from Google about crawling issues. This will usually be done through emails to the people who manage the Webmaster Tools account.

Within the Webmaster tools software, you can also see which pages are returning error codes, have elements that are not working correctly (I.e. mobile elements too close together) or hat are not indexed in the search engine results.

Looking at analytics, you can see what your traffic is doing. It may be that you notice a sudden drop in traffic which needs investigating quickly. IT may be that your website server has gone down and so your whole website is offline or possibly that a certain page has been corrupted and therefore not loading. Once spotted many of these issues are often easy to fix.

As you embark on the adventure that is running your own business one of your main fears will be whether you can promote your business in such a way that it will grow your target client base and maximise the profit that you hope to achieve. An online marketing strategy will be essential to your business if you want to achieve growth and develop your company’s potential but what are the main issues to consider and how do you decide where best to spend your marketing finance?

Creating a successful business website is probably the most effective marketing tool for most new companies as once it is effectively optimised a website should attract clients to your business and convert visits to sales. Employing a web designer and developer to ensure your site is successful at promoting your business is a worthwhile way to start your marketing journey.

It is important to remember that social media marketing is a fast-growing platform that can be used to boost your marketing potential and links should be built into your social media business page so that visitors are directed to your website for more detailed business information and links should also be on your website to your social media page.

When it comes to Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), content is key.

SEO can be a tricky subject to master and the fact that Google and the other search engines are constantly changing their top secret algorithm, means that you will have to be prepared to keep up to date with the latest advances.

One part of SEO that has always been important and probably always will remain important is fresh content.  The search engines like to see websites that are actively being updated regularly with new and relevant content. This shows them that the business is sharing content that is up to date and that they are keen to ensure that they only have relevant current content on their site.

Historically some sites used to just add an RSS feed from another website to theirs to get the fresh content element on their site, but this is no longer anywhere near enough and the search engines are now looking for a lot more. Ideally you need to be adding a new testimonial, news article or product / service at least once a week to notice a big improvement and see this reflected in the keyword / phrases rankings of the website.

Online marketing is made up of lots of different elements. Link building is one of these elements which many people believe is vital to improving search engine rankings.

Links can have a huge impact on the rankings of your site, with sites that have many sites linking to them often ranked higher than those who don’t. This is because links to your site can be seen essentially as a vote from another source to recommend your website. The more of these you have the more popular your site is seen to be therefore the search engines will push it up the rankings as they want to give their users the best experience. Google and the other search engines state that these links should be organic and should have been built up natural, they very much frown upon paid for links which can be bought in bulk.

Although they frown upon paid for links, it is very hard sometimes for them to find out which links are genuine and which are paid for, so many marketing companies do use links that have been paid for although this can be risky.

The links need to be from sites that are relevant and good quality to really have any sort of impact.

Many businesses have had to put their trading on hold due to the UK being in Lockdown. They may have had to switch to online trading for a while or if they do not have an ecommerce site, they may have had to cease trading altogether.

During this time it is important that all businesses continue to do some sort of marketing if possible. It may be that you have spent a long time working on your website, trying to get it to the top of Google. If you stop all marketing now then you may lose all the hard work you have put in and have to essentially start again with your marketing once you start trading again.

If you were doing Pay per Click advertising such as Google Adwords then you may decide to pause it but continue with your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) work. This will allow you to build up your organic listings ready for when you can start trading again. If possible, it may be worth trying to offer your visitors another way of getting in touch with you. If for example you sell carpet but are not able to work at the moment, you may want to allow them to register their interest to book an appointment as soon as you are open again. You could then add these people into a list to contact when you are trading again.

When you are deciding on the most effective way to market your business you may consider using video as a medium to promote it. Without a doubt video has become a commonplace feature in most successful advertising campaigns but how important is it for your business and what are the costs involved?

For years television advertising has been the key to promoting businesses to the masses, but it is a costly undertaking that your company may not be able to justify. In recent years with the growing number of social media platforms available to us there is a more cost-effective way of using video to stimulate business growth.

Dependant on the business you are in will determine the sort of video that you will need. If you are selling a product then a product demonstration would be worthwhile whereas if you are selling a service, then video customer reviews would be more suitable. In either case the most important thing to remember is that the video needs to capture the prospective client’s interest without being too long.

There are many online applications that can provide you with the software to enable you to produce your own advertising videos without the need to employ someone to do this for you. By practising and viewing footage objectively a suitable advertising video can be produced.