Improve Your Exhibition Success!
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So, your website is ready to go live!
All the brand guidelines, content and images are in place, the project plan is on target but inevitably, the run up to the launch of a new website can be sometimes prove to be stressful, for the client and to a lesser extent, the design agency. But, it shouldn’t be like that. Here are some tips on what you can do, to ensure a smooth and successful launch.
As part of the production process, it is important to think about how you will drive traffic to your new site, as part of the overall project plan. The more competitive your industry and the most established your existing website; then the more work that will be required to attract traffic, retain and increase traffic levels.
Within the website itself, there are many “in-situ” things that can be done to attract visitors and search engines. Without question, the website needs to be built in an SEO friendly manner, the content on the site should be informative, well written, relevant and keyword rich.
Unless you have internal or external SEO trained resources available, then the most effective method of ensuring SEO-Optimisation of your new site, is to use a premium content management system, such as iQ Core. With iQ Core, the content is automatically optimised for search engines, ensure the efficiency of your content throughout.
Content – Content – Content
The content on the site should also be informative, well-written and keyword rich. To collate, identify and target a range of broad range of relevant keywords for your products or services, then a blog is an extremely beneficial tool.
A blog offers a great opportunity to publish keyword-rich content – content that search engines thrive upon. However, a blog shouldn’t just be written for the benefit of Google or other leading search engines. It should be written for the reader. Information on your website should always be interesting and informative and hopefully, will prompt readers to revisit for further news and updates.
Depending on the sector within which you do business, then pay-per-click campaigns can be effective for buying traffic to your website. Obviously there is a cost involved but it can be a sound initial investment to drive visits, especially if you are launching an ecommerce website. As your website becomes recognised by search engine optimisation activity, by natural search then you can reduce your pay per click activity. However, all website data should be reviewed, to ensure that you are achieving a return on your spend and the required level of traffic and ultimately enquiries or sales via your website, on a regular basis vs. original targets set.
In the hectic lead up to a new website being launched, the importance of measurement can very easily be overlooked. Before launching a new website or redesigning and restructuring an existing site, you must clearly define what your objectives are, how will the new website be judged to be a success – in terms of traffic, enquiries, newsletter sign ups, or time on the site itself.
5-4-3-2-1 – Blast off!
Once your site is live, there are a number of ways to announce this. There is not a one size fits all approach, as ultimately it depends upon who your audience is and as part of your overall marketing communications strategy. And of course, budgets available to support the launch of your new website.
In simple terminology, in order to herald the launch of your new website, you need to think about the people who you want to tell, your audience and what you want to tell them. By further segmenting your target audience, for example in relation to buying patterns, geographical location, age etc, you will reach the right people, in the right way. You could let your existing customer base know by using a targeted email newsletter, which is branded in the same style as the new site, such as iQ Media’s iQ Mail e.campaign platform. Wherever possible, you need to ensure that there is synergy; recognisable brand elements across all marketing communications activities. This way, you achieve optimum brand awareness, via utilising your existing brand palette. Plus, this type of activity is traceable, so you can see who has received your newsletter and more importantly, who has opened and read it.
Other platforms which can be used are promotional giveaways highlighting the new website url or work with your PR agency, to produce a launch story and rationale behind the new website.
It’s good to link!
Natural back-links or reciprocal links are a good way of promoting your website, within relevant websites. This also has a positive effect on search engine visibility.
Once your website is “up and running”, it is important to continue and build on the initial launch momentum. The range of marketing communication activities undertaken will have formed a sound foundation on which to continue. Good quality search engine friendly content, with continued back-linking will help to maintain and improve upon your rankings and visibility online.
As with all marketing or promotional activities and campaigns, evaluation is key! Post launch, you should continue to refer back to your objectives for the launch of your new website, to identify your performance, achievements or areas where improvement is needed.
By continuously testing new content, refining existing and evaluating the website performance as a whole, you will continue to improve your websites performance, and its ability to achieve bigger and better results.
For more information regarding iQ Core and iQ Mail, please contact iQ Media.
Social Media Tips
Is your business using social media effectively?
Here are some thoughts and suggestions we hope you find useful based on some recent campaigns we have undertaken for clients, which has sighnificantly enhanced their use of social media.
- All social media platforms should ideally be professionally branded the same as the website to reinforce the branding and have a consistent, familiar approach.
- Social media channels are an opportunity to engage with and build a following with a wider audience of influencers, as well as key decision makers.
- Use social media to drive traffic to your website
- Build an audience of useful followers who can be targeted directly through social media communications . i.e. announcements of new cranes and their features, prestigious project, business successes etc
- it is worth considering methods to incentivise users to contribute content e.g.. best photo competitions with a prize – in our experience this doesn’t have to be an expensive prize, we have used branded t shirts with a natty / appropriate message, umbrellas and iPad for clients who were feeling particularly generous. Competitions should be promoted by other channels – website news, e marketing and e signatures etc
- It is important to develop a clear plan of how the social media channels are to be used, in terms of what the content is going to be and how will you engage the audiences. Consider carefully what are the desired outcomes, share the responsibility of generating content but provide clear guidelines.
- Encourage and ideally incentivise your followers to generate useful content that you can use and recycle – for example photos and videos of projects entered into a competition – these can be retweeted and recycled , plus used on the main website for case studies etc.
- Make sure you follow your followers back – monitor what they are publishing and tweeting on a regular basis – so that you can like and retweet, link to etc.
- Related to the above point it is important to follow you major customers and suppliers – so that you can recycle and use their content , which help to reinforce your market credibility .
- You need to monitor the different channels on a regular basis – typically this requires 30 mins a day.
- The website will be linking to these, and social media has a big impact on search engine performance now, if you link back to the website.
- In addition to twitter and facebook, it is important to have a good presence on You Tube with video content as this is the second largest search engine after Google and greater weight is placed on video content than image and text on website.
We often say to clients there are now 3 important pillars for good search engine performance – website content , video and social media.
We hope you find these ideas on how to improve your social media performance useful.
IQ Media is an experienced marketing communications agency, which focusses on digital media content and applications to deliver significant and measurable results.
If you would like to find out more and explore how we could assist your business to improve your online marketing please do get in touch.
+44 1625 4188667 or email simonpoyser@iqmediagroup.co.uk
New website for Capula enhances market presence
IQ Media has just designed and developed a new online presence and website for Capula a leading independent technology company that implements control, automation and real-time IT solutions across multiple sectors.
In addition to a strong presentation of the brand mark and proposition, key content and landing areas on the homepage includes an animating video banner of images showing a range of impressive projects to grab attention, wow the visitor, whilst showing the consultation, automation, IT and support services on offer.
A key objective of the new website was to help Capula to promote and attract key target market projects. This was achieved by iQ Media focusing the content on market rather than product and service orientated solutions.
In addition to the main navigation menu and video banner the home page contains visual landing areas to promote their key services, technologies, latest news, key statistics and a twitter feed to provide up to the minute updates. The website is fully responsive and this combined with the home page and sub pages incorporating prominent call to actions helps to drive visitor engagement, with an effective presentation of the content across all devices.
IQ Media developed a number of bespoke modules for the website and a vacancies portal that allows Capula to easily promote regional and sector career opportunities on the site. The site content is now maintained and updated on a daily basis by the Capula Communication team, through an easy to use CMS system.
Mark Hardy Capula’s Managing Director commented ‘We pride ourselves on being an independent system integrator offering first-class solutions and the new website allows users to share details of our specialist solutions and pages that interest them with others across social channels including Facebook, Twitter, Google+ LinkedIn and more.
The new website allows visitors to have a very informative experience and it provides an excellent platform to showcase our technologies as we continue to grow and increase our market presence.’
Please contact us for more information and to find out how iQ Media can help enhance your digital communications and online presence.
Sticky Digital Marketing works for F Ball & Co
IQ Media has worked for F Ball & Co for over 18 years helping them to develop their market leading position through innovative and effective digital communications which include – responsive websites ,web applications, corporate videos, numerous training and product launch videos , Recommended Adhesive Guide apps, their own content player the iBall Player and effective use of social media channels, supported with an effective SEO campaign..
We first built and launched their very successful Recommended Adhesive Guide (RAG) App in 2011, this has been updated quarterly with over 5000 downloads since launch and over 300 interactions each week. The RAG App is used regularly by architects, specifiers and contractors.
We have used the above to develop targeted highly effective lines of communications with contractors, wholesalers and specifiers that drive sales significantly from launch and promote products, reduce costly returns through incorrect product usage, whilst providing a high level of customer service through valuable training.