Category: Digital Marketing

It’s no secret that competing in the online world is difficult. In fact as years go by it’s becoming seriously hard to do well online, especially if your starting a new business. The online space and the digital world is so competitive that standing out and being seen is in fact, near impossible.
If you think that you can create a website and be successful then your in for a rude awakening. It’s not going to work! You are wasting your time, money and good intentions. We get phone calls from far too many businesses who have tried to get away with little or no digital marketing and are now wondering why there are no sales or phone inquiries.

So following are 7 great tips that all businesses can use to help them be competitive online and smash the hell out of their competition. I follow these tips regularly and it’s helped us last & thrive for well over 20 years in a really competitive environment. We are up against some aggressive web and SEO agencies but we are always getting inquiries.

SEO is a must

If you think you can launch a website with no future SEO planning your in for real trouble. SEO or search engine optimisation is the on going technique of getting your website ranking on Google. SEO is now a must and if you want to have any chance of survival online then you have to be starting your SEO when you meet with your website design agency.

An important point to note is that SEO commences from day 1. SEO should be an integral part of the planning process of your website. It’s much better to do it at the start as opposed to doing it once the site has been launched.

Have really creative website copy

When people find your website they have to like what they read. Therefore your website copy has to be attention grabbing, straight to the point and clearly articulate what that specific page is about. The copy has to persuade them to make contact with you and this is the tough part. Consumers must be motivated and convinced to make the call or email & without copy that’s sells they will simply look elsewhere. One way to smash your competition is to have much better copy. Plus and I need to stress this point: if people like what they read they will look around your site and stay longer. Google will notice this and you will be rewarded with better online rankings as Google likes to push popular sites.

Don’t use cheap n nasty website templates

As tempting as this maybe because they are so cheap, free websites ( like WIX) and cheap web templates do not work. If your on a really limited budget and don’t care what your website looks like or how it performs online then fine go for it. But, if you want to beat your competition you will need a site that has been where planning and some form of strategy has been done. In the online space ‘you get what you pay for’. Expect to get little online traffic or great results if your not prepared to invest in the future of your online presence.

Know your audience

Know what your audience wants and give it to them. No point in designing a website with loads of copy if your selling clothes. In this instance you need visuals. Conversely, if your in the medical field (ENT, physios, medical specialists, cosmetic surgeons etc) your going to have to provide lots of great content that answers questions. Give the readers what they want and they will buy from you. Don’t design for designs sake. Be clear about the purpose of your website and cater to the needs of your consumer base.

If you want to drive sales on your eCommerce site make sure you have clear buying pathways and easy to see buy now buttons. If you want to get the phone ringing have your number prominent and make sure that your audience doesn’t get lost in pages of content. Images, videos, and testimonials are a great carrot to dangle in front of your customers.

Understand Google Analytics

For most businesses this is a frightening concept. Getting your head around Google Analytics is hard enough for people like me who have been in this industry for years. But for the average business it’s going to be too hard. Unfortunately, you have to understand GA as this will tell you how well your website is performing and what people are doing when they land on your site. My advice is to do this in baby steps and not be afraid of it.

After a while, you will get the hang of it and soon be able a whizz at Analytics. It’s a great tool in understanding consumer behaviour and you can adjust your site based on the information you obtain. It’s probably best to leave this to your web designers who can refine and retune based on the analytic data they have. It’s part of your SEO strategy so don’t just bury this point because it looks to hard. It is vital to the success of your website and digital marketing.

Facebook, Instagram, You Tube

Make sure that you keep updating your social media. Know where your audience hangs out and cater to them. Are they on Instagram or Facebook or both? If you have a fashion label then Instagram is a must. If you have a service offering then Facebook is the area you should be focusing on. Whatever it is, make sure social media is part of your marketing plan. Remember, you can compete with the big boys here. Just do it smarter and better.

Websites are never a set and forget

You can’t launch a website and do nothing for the next 5 years. Websites have to evolve with the digital landscape and this means you have to be constantly fine tuning it. Never for one minute think that you can leave your site untouched. At a minimum you have to be updating it with news or blogs every month or so. Remember, your website may look great now but in the online space it will date very quickly. Be very aware of this.

If you want to learn more about ways to beat your competition please cal us here at Hopping Mad Designs on 02 9360 8514. Make 2019 the year you really invest your energies into your website and see the fantastic returns you will get.

Why do you need a full service digital agency?
To answer that you need to understand what a digital agency actually is and what they can do for you. The word digital, from a design, marketing and communications perspective can mean hundreds of different things, making it hard to define what it is and why you need it.

Digital begins with websites, emails, blogs, search engine optimisation and search engine marketing and is positioned alongside agencies and services that provide traditional communications. But now a digital agency can encompass everything that you need to kick-start your business and help grow your business online. At Hopping Mad, we know that content marketing, encompassing social media and forward thinking design are the best way to succeed in the digital sphere and what we use to help our clients achieve goals for better returns on their marketing spend.

Previously, agencies would be hired to make a stunning advertisements and help you put it in front to the right audience, now with the emergence and growth of digital, media placement and creative have become seamlessly intertwined and content marketing has become one of the most effective methods.

Content is growing at an unparalleled rate and by doing so has disrupting traditional advertising. Audiences are responding to entertaining content rather than advertising. Content marketing often seems like it doesn’t have a particular view or purpose, but brands are definitely getting return on investment. Content marketing spans from engaging social media posts to viral videos and it is often about more than just a product of service to inspire and engage the audience. It’s all about getting in front of your customers where ever they are looking online.

We are your digital marketing & content marketing experts

It is most effective when users find it on their own accord rather than have it presented to them- like traditional advertising. Audiences are seeking useful, inspiring content making content marketing a must in the future of digital and digital agencies.

SEO has become an aspect of content marketing, with Google making it increasingly difficult for manipulative SEO tactics to be successful, so what does this mean for digital marketing? It means that the quality and importance of your content is crucial for successful rankings. This also means incorporating SEO best practices into our content marketing strategies.

Digital Agencies will always need to have a focus on creative and design and what is coming next in design. Responsive design is at the forefront, with consumers browsing across multiple devices, often almost simultaneously. Websites need to be designed for compatibility and constant change to be able to keep up with changing technology. The key area of focus in responsive design is navigation and is a key to the accessibility of the site and instinctive user experience. The changes and advancements in digital will always need to be reflected in design for success, yet since digital is constantly changing and evolving, it can be hard to keep up.

Much like design, digital is becoming simpler and anticipating the needs of the consumer – whether it’s a relevant remarketing advertising or a suggested television show on Netflix. Digital stays relevant by forever reinventing itself to become something simpler. The evolution of digital over the coming years will come down to individual experience, in which every action a user takes will be dependant on the users personalised data.

Ultimately the content will seek out the user rather the user seeking out content. The ultimate goal is to get to a place where the user takes a few steps as possible to achieve what they want. This is beginning to happen in data driven news feeds, which eliminate the need to click or search, the user is simply shown content that is relevant to them. More and more are shifting to this method. Facebook has been using user based algorithms to create personalised news feeds over a couple of years now and recently twitter has also switched.
This means that your news feed, now on both twitter and Facebook, automatically sorts the content from what it thinks you will be most interested in.

Instagram is the exception to this style algorithm as it still ops for an unfiltered feed, yet over the past 6 months they have rolled out an email digest called “highlights” featuring the most popular and relevant content from your feed.

This is why at hopping mad we place a large emphasis on content marketing and by predicting future trends in the digital space we’re helping your business stay relevant and inevitably reach more customers on a more regular basis.

Google is honestly the best place to be seen online. If you have your website on page 1 for all your high traffic keywords then this is seriously the very best thing that you can do for your marketing. Just see what happens when your website starts to hit those coveted page 1 rankings. You are going to see a huge increase in website inquiries plus you will notice the phone start to ring. The only BIG problem with this is that Google has only 10 spaces on page 1 and to get your website there for some niche or competitive keywords can be extremely difficult if not impossible. This is why we need to look at other online digital spaces to get more web traffic. Goole is really only 1 option. The following article will explain how a digital agency like Hopping Mad Designs can deliver extra web traffic that you may not have thought of.
Google is seriously competitive. Getting to page 1 is half the battle and the other half is the constant struggle to keep your rankings stable and maintain them. This is why businesses need to look at partnering with a digital agency that can boost their profile online and source web traffic from areas other than Google.

Let’s look at a few of these:

Social Media is a great way to expand your reach and the tools at your disposal are easy to implement and they are FREE. The issue here is that most businesses do not have the time nor the expertise to fully leverage the benefits that social media sites like Instagram, Facebook and Pinterst can bring. Tweeting, posting, getting genuine followers is extremely time consuming, but believe me when I tell you this, the rewards are there. To achieve mesurable reults in the social media space is not as easy as it looks. This is why you need ( and this goes for all sized businesses) at least some type of social media planning. It doesn’t have to be much, but you should be active in this space.

If you want to really dominate your niche you have to be writing and publishing content. In other words you need to be blogging. Getting content out there online via your blog posts will ensure that your website is kept fresh, up to date and being indexed by the search engines. Blogs on topics that relate to your business position you as authoritative source which will bring traffic to your website once your blogs are picked up.

What about the other search engines Yahoo and Bing? In my 20 years here at Hopping Mad no one has ever wanted to rank on these sites. Saying that, they do get traffic and businesses need every lead they can get their hands on.

Long Tail SEO. When I said that there was other ways to get web traffic, I still think that the very best place to be is Google. If the traffic for your main keywords are too hard to get or it’s simply going to take too long, think about the ‘long tail’ options. Other easier to rank keywords that admittedly do not have the volume of traffic you would like but there are still some searches for this every month – go for this – you will be surprised by the type and number of leads you can get.

Start looking at videos. People search on YouTube almost as much as Google so this is another lucrative area that you can look for new business. Videos are an extremely powerful way to get your message out there and all you need is you iphone and you can have that video up on YouTube that same day. YouTube is not all about videos of crazy animals and people doing stupid things. Promoting your business on YouTube can bring in massive amounts of traffic. If you want to have a more professional edge to your videos, speak with us as we have a great relationship with a corporate video production team that has done some seriously good work in the past.

A Hopping Mad Designs Review from a happy client is going to go a long way. Ask clients if you can get some reviews and post them on your social media accounts. This will reinforce the whole trust factor. If you have any negative reviews that you can see online, this can really have an impact on website traffic so make sure you have these looked at by a reputation management team. Again Hopping Mad Designs review team are reputation specialist and can help eliminate those nasty comments quickly.

Hopping Mad Designs is all about implementing successful digital strategies. We do this through a detailed stakeholder engagement process. We seek to understand the organisation, it’s objectives of each department and the KPI’s that we are delivering to. From there we can implement practical, multi channel strategies to ensure that we are getting real results. For Hopping Mad it’s really all about building long term relationships with our clients, helping them evolve their business by delivering positive measurable results.

What is unique about Hopping Mad Designs is our in house capabilities. We can help you implement your strategy end to end all under one roof! One of the main points of difference at Hopping Mad Designs is our search and digital marketing expertise. As soon as you become a client of we are able to hit the ground running and get some quick wins on the board for your business. We are able to develop and implement successful search and social media strategies. What this means for you is that we can come up with the design, develop this into a cohesive digital strategy and get this to market for you. ULTIMATELY, our integrated solution is a lot more efficient and effective for your business.

Google ultimately is king. But, if you want a digital agency that can cover of all areas of your online marketing ( including Google) , then get in touch with us now on 02 9360 8514.

If you are feeling overwhelmed by the amount of new technologies out there and all the places that your business needs to be seen online, don’t stress. We can handle all of this for you. Our digital agency can cover off all areas from web design, SEO, social media, graphic design right through to content marketing.

It doesn’t matter who you are or how big your company is. We would love to work with you and bring in tons more web traffic and revenue.