Taking Digital Marketing to WordCamp London
Teaching at WordCamp London
Last year at WordCamp London, I gave a talk on digital marketing. As part of the WordPress community in Manchester and beyond, I’ve been involved in WordCamps. Speakers and guests attend WordCamps from all over the world to listen in on various topics about the web and business.
I felt, though, there was a missing piece of the puzzle. Most people who launch websites do it because they want to be found. Visibility is still a mystical dark art, and whilst not everyone is a seasoned expert, there is a lot you can do to help yourself with a bit of know-how.
Eleven Steps To Online Success
In my talk ‘So You Have A Website, Now What’, I spoke about eleven steps to online success. The talk, delivered initially with Enterprise Nation, was aimed at small business owners. It enabled them to learn how to build a website, excel on social media and know their SEO from their PPC.
Choosing A Domain
Firstly, I advised on choosing domains. A domain makes up part of your website and email address. It’s wise to base it on keywords people will be searching for when looking for your product, e.g. hatsforboys.com.
The domain name doesn’t matter as much in today’s market, but the URL structure is critical.
Hosting
Next, I advised on hosting, specifically how to choose good hosting for your particular business needs. I work a lot with WordPress and personally recommend Siteground as my host of choice.
Web Design
A small business may not be able to
As a bespoke WordPress Agency in Manchester, I know starting on a platform like this can help you down the line when you are ready to take your business to the next level.
Social Media
I looked at the various social media options for growing reach and the tone of each one. It’s essential to know the subtle nuances between the platforms and which kind of message works best with each platform.
My top tips for social media were:
- Choose your network wisely.
- Paid Ads, a little goes a long way.
- Never do paid ads without targeting.
- Start broad, then refine with remarketing.
- Create secondary audiences for people who interacted with previous ads.
- Implement a lead funnel.
- Know where you want people to go and what you want them to do when you get there.
- Be engaging – nobody shares boring content.
Email Marketing Tips
My email tips were:
- Keep in touch with existing and potential customers through a regular e-newsletter powered by tools such as MailChimp, AWeber & More.
- The secret to email marketing is to keep things simple and relevant, always adding value.
- Keep email designs clean – making it easier for your customer to make buying decisions in a snap.
- Use your data. Find out what people click and create new segmented lists based on behaviour.
- Be compliant! Opt-out, opt-in, no spam!
Climb Up The Google Ladder
For this section of the talk, I gave the following advice.
- Home Page: provide
high-quality text-based content on your pages, especially your homepage. - Think about the words users would type to find your pages and include them on the site.
- Make contributions: Identify influential bloggers and sites, contact them and offer to write posts.
- Be well-connected: improve the rank of your site by increasing the number of other high-quality sites that link to your pages;
- Keep content on your site fresh and maintain a dynamic social media presence to keep your rankings high!
Technical On-Page SEO
SEO is one of our main specialisms. On-page SEO can be done by any savvy business owner. Unless you really don’t have the time and need to pay an SEO Agency, always take care of the following:
Title Tags and Meta
Title and description of what search engines usually display
There are plugins for all major Content Management Systems. These will guide you through the process. WordPress? I love RankMath. If you use a service or product in your blog posts, link it to the page, it’s helpful to the user and search engine.
External Links
Always go for quality: Schools, Government, News Papers, PR Agencies are excellent places to start, so are influencers/bloggers.
Content is King
As with all web, your content matters. Be regular, be up to date. It will give you ammo for your other networks!
- One piece of content will guide your strategy.
- Splintering / Atomising (everyone has a term).
- Take the “golden nuggets” from your article, Make appealing creatives & posts & Share them on Social Media (using platform-specific creatives).
- Share them on mailing lists.
- Link back to the article/service page. This Keeps your content, and social media strategy aligned, Keeps your site fresh, and your audience listening.
Pay Per Click (Google Ads)
If you are looking to dip your toe into Google Ads, I recommend speaking to an expert. We are Experts in PPC and Google Partners. Here are a few tips.
- Start small, and watch it grow – it isn’t scary.
- If you’re new, ads can be great for building an initial audience. Don’t see your non-converting spend as wasted.
- Work out your spending based on your conversion rates.
- Create laser-focused campaigns, very little waste, maximum exposure vs traditional media, and are eco-friendly!
Measure, Measure and Measure again!
Reach
How many people are you hitting every month? This is a quick identifier of your brand awareness over time.
Traffic
How many people are visiting your
Conversion
How many sales/leads are you getting from your outreach?
I’ve led a series of workshops for Enterprise Nation & the business growth hub on this topic, so I decided to deliver my tips for online visibility at WordCamp London 2017. Tune in to find out what I had to say.
Andi Wilkinson is the
