Marketing as an Art

The art form of marketing involves many non-verbal communication processes involving subtle and subliminal messages addressing specific audiences. The art form of good marketing consciously and unconsciously creates connections by playing on emotional ties and utilising certain aesthetics, creating involvement between consumers and the advertising. For example the Andrex brand uses some fundamental tools to create emotional ties to their adverts. Their image of a golden Labrador puppy connotes cuteness, playfulness and loyalty, initially from the dog but this symbolises their brand, so ultimately from the company as a whole. This results in unconscious and conscious emotional ties being developed between the consumer and the brand.

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As well as brand recognition and exposure, having a podcast of your own can bring some unique benefits to your business. These include gaining trust and influence, engagement with a focused community of enthusiastic listeners and establishing your business as a trusted advisor, leader and expert in your industry.

Here are four questions to ask yourself to see if podcasting could be a good fit for you in your marketing and communication strategy.

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From a journalistic point of view, search marketers can come under a lot of lexicographical fire when it comes to writing copy. However, I strongly believe producing keyword rich content does not have to come at the sacrifice of quality prose.

Writing is a craft, as is optimising content to perform well in the search engines and it’s fully possible to have the two working in perfect harmony. Just before I started an SEO internship through Wired Sussex all those fateful years ago, I was doing some research and came across an article on search marketing written by Charlie Brooker. Now I don’t want to join a cult but if Charlie started one just show me where to sign. In his article the self-confessed ‘miserablist’ warned against prose manipulated for Google and the dangers these new trends posed for quality reportage. And although his points had a faint whiff of truth, anyone in the industry knows that it’s quite possible to write content that not only is picked up by the search engines, but it also enjoyable and informative to read.

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Background – do some research with Google Analytics to discover where the visitors of your video are coming from as well as what percentage of your video traffic is arriving from search engines and what percentage of your traffic is coming from referring sites such as video sharing services. These matrices inform your decision of whether to host your video content or to share it. Hosting it puts you in control of the keywords, metadata and monetization of the content, however sharing is an easy technique to get maximum views.

Video content is a great way of generating interest from the online community, whether it’s for driving direct traffic to your site or gaining those all important inbound links, however the search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing are still not quite able to read video content. But fear not, because below are some quick and easy techniques you can employ in order to successfully optimise your video material.

Title Tags and Meta Data: Google, Yahoo and Bing can’t yet read video content therefore you must inform them what it is via the title tags and meta data. Ensure your in-file metadata is keyword rich as well as including the word ‘video’ in it – this will tell the search engines what the content actually is and so makes it far more likely that it’ll be picked up by their algorithm. Create video sitemaps so that the search engines can easily find the content, and thoroughly optimise your video landing pages including all your targeted keywords.

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The key to this is thorough research, coupled with good old fashioned trial and error.

Target one or two keywords per page. Potential customers will be searching a range of different keywords, and no site targets only one throughout, unless its product or service is extremely limited. So, you need to gage what are the most precedent keywords on each page of your site, and then rewrite the copy and start to optimise the meta data around those specific targets.

There are many keyword research tools available online, I prefer to stick to the trusted main players – Google’s AdWords, Wordtracker and the fairly new Google Search Based Keyword Tool, beta version. Although it’s primarily for pay per click campaigns, AdWords is awesome because it provides you with a range of metrics that tell you the average search volume of the keywords, their competitiveness and their cost (were you bidding on them for PPC). With this data you can judge if it’s worth targeting certain keywords for organic search, or going for the long tail and spying a gap in the search market.

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As more businesses become aware of the value of links from an SEO perspective they are less likely to link to your site for free. Now they typically ask for reciprocal links, but as we know there’s little value for either party in reciprocal linking – Google knows it’s a whole ‘you scratch my back link and I’ll scratch yours’ affair. So how do we go about link building these days?

The Lowly Link Request.

I think this is a fairly outdated method however there’s a lot to be said for the classics and if performed correctly, it can still be a successful strategy for link building. After finding some sites that you think are suitable take the time to research them thoroughly. Do they seem like the site to link out? Is their content relevant to the client you want them to link to? And finally what is the tone of the site? – Use this to dictate your link request email.

When composing the link request email keep it short and sweet. Explain who you are, where you’re working from and why you’re contacting them. Speak in plain English using as little jargon as possible. When researching the prospective site, try to find a name or personal email address as this is almost invaluable when sending the request. The target is a lot more likely to take heed of the email if it is addressed directly to them.

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1) Get me to the top of Google

The seven words every optimizer hates. Fortunately at White Hat Media we have very understanding clients who listen well when we inform them about the basic practices of SEO. However, anyone in the industry can tell you that some clients think it’s as easy as pie to get to the top of Google’s results page for any number of keywords. Of course this is not the case, no matter how many meta tags you perfect or how much link building you execute there’s no way of guaranteeing first page top rankings. Depending on the sector your client’s in, it is very likely that their competitors also employ an SEO agency and the two of you are battling it out – which is where much of the fun comes from.

2) SEO’s a one time thing

Many people are under the impression that once the site is optimised and you’ve submitted a few articles, you can sit back and reap the… impressions. Unfortunately this is not the case. Search engine optimisation is a long and on going process, it’s not necessarily arduous but it does require hard work and patience. Clients are keen to see swift results, which frequently you can give them, however to steadily move up the search engine’s results page and maintain a top position requires constant onsite maintenance and regular link building activity. As soon as you relax you’ll see that traffic ebb away and your conversion rates start decrease as your competitors creep ever closer to your coveted number one spot.

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Are you not entirely sure yet what SEO and PPC are about and how they could make a fundamental difference to your business?

If you are based in London and around on October 8th, you may want to look at Getting The Most From Your Search, a workshop hosted by CIM, and presented by Jeremy Spiller.

Jeremy will cover the principles of SEO and current best practices. The workshop is meant to help marketers understand the potential of their sites for search and how to get the best results.

View the full program and register

This seminar counts for 3.5 Hours in the Chartered CPD Program.

Getting The Most From Your Search, hosted by CIM in Reading, will be presented by Jeremy Spiller on October 6th.

Covering the principles of SEO and current best practices, this seminar will help the audience understand the potential of their sites for search and how to get the best results.

To view the full program and register, visit: http://www.cim.co.uk/Events/EventDetail.aspx?ObjectID=28862

This seminar counts for 3.5 Hours in the Chartered  CPD Program.

Tactical SEO is often overlooked by both search engine optimisation (SEO) agencies and internal marketing teams. What is tactical search engine optimisation and how can you use it to drive more traffic to your website?

Tactical SEO is making use of search opportunities by dynamically, targeting key phrases, often short term for higher relevant traffic. When looking at SEO, many people often only consider strategic search, that’s to say the words they want to be top for on a long term basis and how to achieve those top positions. However tactical or short term SEO can be used very effectively to attract more relevant and targeted traffic to your website. (more…)