Month: February 2015

If your business is not up to speed and not connecting with the tech savvy, mobile consumer base, then the future looks grim I’m afraid to say. This is why its vital for the survival of your business that you start thinking about using the services of a digital marketing agency. An agency that is immersed with the latest trends online and knows what it takes to connect with a new generation of consumers. Businesses in Australia now have a great opportunity to really engage with their audience but firstly they must hook up with the right digital marketing agency to make this a reality.

What is a Digital Marketing Agency?

A digital marketing agency, simply put will help your business grow online. They have a thorough understanding of all online marketing platforms that are at their finger tips to help push, promote and drive your brand digitally online. These platforms are extensive and growing all the time, but the most common and popular digital marketing platforms are: search engine optimisation or (SEO), Google Adwords, Retargeting, Web Design, Conversion Rate Optimisation, Social Media Marketing and Content Marketing (blogging). This may seem like a huge shopping list but this is really the main areas that businesses need to focus on if they are to stay ahead of the curve in this very fast evolving digital age. This is where a company like Hopping Mad Designs can step in and help with your entire digital marketing strategy and campaign.

We have the perfect blend and mix of designers and tech people that can look at your business holistically and see how it is positioned in the digital space. We then come back with a complete marketing digital marketing framework that you can put into place so that your business becomes increasingly competitive and attractive online. This is not an overnight solution but one that needs nurturing time and constant attention. I would suggest calling us on  02 9360 8514 to learn more about Digital marketing and the massive benefits it can bring to your business, company or organisation.

Why Do You Need to Work with a Digital Agency?

Like any part of your business you need professional advice and help from only industries best. You would never have a DIY approach to legal or accounting matter and the same goes with your digital marketing. Let me break this down for you and give you an example.

Probably the most complex, yet profitable thing you can do with your digital marketing is search engine optimisation. For anyone who doesn’t know about SEO or has never done this in the past, it’s really all about getting your website on the first page of Google. There is so much literature and information about this online that people tend to try and have a go at it themselves or use a friend or go with a recommended company that has no experience in this space (this last point always baffles me). The point I am trying to make is that SEO is a risk / return marketing medium. By this I mean, make the right choice, go with the best digital partner and the rewards will be huge. Risk it and go with a dodgy providor and the downside is huge. Cause SEO makes up the fabric of so much of the digital space I have seen businesses have to close their doors cause they chose poorly from the get go.

Again, I really want to emphasise here that it is imperative and absolute MUST that you find the right digital agency as the consequences for your business of a poor selection are too horrific to contemplate.

4 Tips to be on the Lookout When Selecting Your Digital Agency Partner.

Tip # 1: make sure they can prove to you past performance and online digital marketing work they done in the past. This is all about measurable results and return and investment and you want to see physical proof. Without this it can be a case of all smoke n mirrors and a bunch of cheap sales talk.

Tip # 2: Watch out for those SEO or Digital agencies that will do your internet marketing for free till your websites keywords are sitting on page 1 of Google. These guys are a bunch of rip off merchants and are out there to completely scam you of your money. The tactics they use to rank: really underperforming, easy as hell to rank keywords….just to prove their worth and sign you up) are going to come back and bite you later on once Google sees the linking activity with your website. This can get technical and I do not want to bore you, but just stay well clear of these agencies. They are easy to spot and even advertise themselves using Google Adwords….BE WARNED! Seek out the best and the rewards will be huge.

Tip # 3: Use an agency that will do all your work in house. You want to find that right digital agency that has the perfect mix of web design, copywriting, SEO and social media skills. This is very hard to find as most companies then to pigeon hole and specialise in 1 area of work. Be on the look out for this as you DO NOT want to work with a digital agency that just focuses on SEO or web design.

As an example if you browse our own portfolio of work you will see that we are able to easily straddle of types of digital marketing including web design; which is really a strong point for us. Needless to say, check our own SEO rankings and how good they are. This should give you an idea of what we can do for your company. Not only does our own website look great but it’s ranking on the search engines for all of our keywords.

Tip # 4: Content marketing takes on many forms but now should be an essential and vital part of your digital marketing. Consumers, internet users and your client base, need to be informed about your business and the best way to do this online is through blogging and using your social media platforms. Whatever you post, tweet or publish will be read by the masses. This means that your content has to have a plan, a strategy behind it, so having an agency with team of copy writing specialist is a huge advantage for your digital marketing – make sure you do not forget about this point and be very u8pfront with whoever you interview to see if they can provide this niche service.

I just want to say here that this is not a self promotion, or a cheap plug for hopping mad designs; this comes directly from someone who has been there and done that in the digital space and has seen first hand how awesomely good things can be, if they are done properly. I have also seen, unfortunately what can and does eventually happen to businesses that base their decisions purely on the marketing dollar and are always on the look out for the cheapest option on the table. It’s a bloody disaster – take my word for this.

 

I think the best way to approach this is to give a real life example of what I mean. Let’s say for example you are a cosmetic surgeon and you have many part to your business. That is your services include liposuction, rhinoplasty, breast enlargements and even face surgery. Ideally, you want all those individual services to come up on page 1 of Google when someone types in those keywords.

So for example, if I am looking for a cosmetic surgeon in Sydney who can provide me with a liposuction procedure, all I am going to do is type in the words ‘cosmetic surgeons liposuction’ into Google and I will probably base my choice on the websites that appear on page 1. I will probably click on say 5 or 6 websites and base my decision on what looks and what reads best.

Herein lies the beauty and power of your content marketing and what Google loves so much about it. Let me delve into this deeper to make my point clearer.  Google will rank those pages (and you can use the liposuction page as an example) that have fresh, new relevant content that is specific to liposuction. This means that the pages must be all about liposuction and provide me with as much information as I can possibly want about it. This does NOT mean that you can write some basic content of just a few hundred words and expect it to rank. It needs to be a meaty article with lots of content that all web browsers and potential liposuction customers could want. Once you have done this properly and the article has roughly 1000-1500 words, then it should rank on Google.

I want to add a note here that is very important. Yes the page will rank, BUT if it is in a very competitive area like liposuction there will need to be an SEO campaign implemented to boost the authority of this page. So once you have all your ducks lined up neatly all you need to do is wait for the Google magic to happen.

This in a nutshell is how is works and how one can get their content to be loved by Google and in turn give that individual web page the best chance of getting as much online exposure as possible. It’s not rocket science it’s just common sense and if you follow these rules you can’t go wrong.

Saying that I want to list a few DONT’S when it comes to content writing:

1. don’t try and stuff as many keywords as you can on these pages in the hope that search engines will favour it. This just makes the article page unreadable and will just turn people away – not what Google likes.
2. Don’t copy and paste from other sources and think you can get away with it. PLAGIARISM IS A massive no no and your page will never ever rank.
3. Don’t vary the topic. Stay relevant, be consistent and don’t waffle on about nothing just to fill space. Make sure what you write is going to be interesting enough to make people want to stay on the page. The longer they stay the better the chance they will make an inquiry.

If all this sounds too confusing and you want to learn more about how writing effective web content can help with your SEO and rankings, then get in touch with us here at hopping mad designs.

So What is a Responsive website?

Simply put, when you are on your mobile phone and you find yourself pinching and scrolling on the screen to see the tabs, the site is not responsive. If it is mobile friendly you will find that when it displays on your screen it fits neatly on the screen. All buttons are visible and easy to tap on. Once hit they then go to another internal page. You will know what I mean when you arrive at a website and you are on your iphone and you think ‘ what a pain’ cause you can’t use it properly. The navigation looks miniscule and the text is tiny. Most people will simply exit a website that has not been optimised for the iphones and androids.

This is where Google has stepped in and thought, why should we rank a website that offers this bad experience for our users. Remember, Google wants to display and showcase search results for their users that are not only relevant for the keywords but also for the experience. Sure a website may have high authority and may be ranking well on desktops, but why should Google rank this site on mobiles if the whole end experience is poor.

The proof is already there and the wheels with Google are in motion. Here’s an experiment. Pick up your iphone and search for anything. You will see that in the description next to each individual result the works ‘ mobile friendly’. Now I am not saying with 100% certainty that this is going to have an effect on the rankings moving forward in 2015, but Google doesn’t do anything in half measures.

They have even contacted webmasters via their web master tools to alert them that their web site has been indexed and is not mobile optimised.

By connecting the dots I can say with a certain level of authority that 2015 will be the year that if you have not got a responsive or mobile site, then watch out. The consequences can be dire. Whilst you may rank well for the desktop version of your site, your rankings are likely to tank and be hit hard for all other devices.

OK, before you panic, I would say you have a bit of time up your sleeve. Cause, Google will give businesses ample time to make the necessary adjustments to get the designs and coding sorted. I would say that you have until May, June or July to get your house in order. After this period, who knows what will happen. But as a business owner myself all I can say is that when it comes to Google and SEO, prevention is so much better than the cure. So act now – get a responsive site asap!

So What Do You Do Next?

The best thing is to get in touch with your web developer and see if they can convert your website to responsive. If you have an open source CMS, like WordPress, Joomla or Magento, then this may only take a couple of days. For example we have been able to make sites responsive in a couple of days. It was a quick fix. If on the other hand your website has been built using a proprietary or some obscure CMS, you may be in a bit of trouble if you cannot get in touch with the people that built your site. In any case its best to deal with someone who can make all this happen so that the end result is all very search engine friendly.

This is where a company like Hopping Mad Designs can help. We can manage this whole process for you with a minimum of fuss and hassle. It’s really a no brainer, putting aside the whole SEO aspect, why would you not want your website to be consumer friendly? After all the mobile search market is only going to get bigger and either you are going to go with the tide or swim against it. It’s your call but you have been warned well in advance of the ramifications of ignoring this.

OK, so how do I find that elusive SEO and web agency that will be able to deliver the kind of measurable results I am looking for and help my website get found on Google? Well, it’s not easy and there are many traps and pitfalls to avoid, and be on the look out for. Make 1 false move and it could spell disaster for the unsuspecting and trusting business person. Don’t be a sucker and loose out on the full potential a great Google ranking can bring to your business. Be savvy, be smart and NEVER compromise on quality when it comes to SEO and Web design – this is the only way you are ever going to get found online.

So, following are some tell tales signs that you need to be extremely wary of when engaging your digital marketing and web strategists.

Watch out for those SEO companies that say they don’t want any money upfront for their service and they only want payment once they can prove they have got you a ranking. This is a BIG warning sign and there are heaps and I mean heaps of SEO shonky companies out there trying to sucker you into this. It’s a massive scam and the worst thing about this is that their sales people are so convincing and backed up by fake, bogus, fabricated, call it what ever you like testimonials, that many businesses end up getting duped. It’s really prevalent out there so be careful? Why, I hear you ask? Cause these guys will use very dodgy trick in the book to rank you and once they have you confidence they then lock you into a contract. Once Google ( and this may take a few weeks), indexes these crappy, insanely dodgy back links, your site is going to get slammed hard and be hit with a Google penalty or manual action. This is real nasty and it will all be too late for you to do anything as you will have already signed that very tight contract. I see it all the time and have witnessed businesses with great products and awesome service offerings get hammered online because they ended up using these incredibly shift SEO companies.

 

Be on the watch for web agencies that tell you that they can design and build you are great website that is custom designed for a really cheap rate. Whilst this may sound all well and good when you are starting out and looking to save some money upfront ( and I appreciate that all businesses want to save as much as they can), but when it comes to your website this aint going to work. Again, there are companies by the hundreds out there online looking to fleece you of your money by pretending to offer customised design when all they actually do is give you a stock standard template. The consumer researching online is less likely to engage with a dull, ‘same as’ style website if they have been systematically bombarded with these over time. They want something different, they want something that is going to wow them and a site that is going to implant your brand in their mind. This unfortunately, will not happen if you get a website that has been designed and built on the smell of an oily rag. I know this sounds harsh and you may think that I’m just trying to prop up and sell our web services at Hopping Mad, but all I am doing is trying to highlight the online environment and how difficult it is to succeed. Truth is you have to be bigger and better than the next company. This is just the way it is and I’m here to telly you that it’s only going to get harder.

THE BEST OPTION for YOUR BUSINESS

Honestly, the very best option for business start ups, established companies looking to get a bigger market share, organisations wanting to attract more members, is to go with a digital agency that can straddle all your design and internet marketing needs under 1 roof. This means that you should not spread out and give 1 job to 1 company and 1 task to another. Go with a credible studio that can sit down with you. Look at your business at a macro level and offer constructive proven advice and strategy based on years of previous performance. When I see potential clients for the first time I never concentrate on 1 particular area of their business. I tend to look at things in a very holistic and integrated manner, and come from the perspective that we need to tackle all marketing platforms evenly; web, SEO, content marketing, social media, remarketing and Adwords. Everything is interrelated and this is why you MUST spend the time doing the research and go with someone who really knows what they are talking about.

 

I’m so serious when I tell you that the internet landscape is a dangerous place to be if you are left in the hands of people who are just out for the fast buck…they are going to try and blind you with statistics, charts, fake testimonials, and even videos of themselves really looking honest, decent and sincere. WAKE UP people this is all a con and a scam.  Don’t be the next victim.