Tag Archives: Marketing

What comes first – marketing or design?

There are very often blurred lines between understanding the difference between ‘Marketing’ and ‘Design’ and how they work together.

Marketers and designers possess very different skills, and often have a very different sense of humour. However, when working together these disciplines provide one of the most effective collaborations of two professions to create business growth.

We all work in competitive industries where marketing and design thinking is expected to be well defined, well understood and well appreciated on the whole. But more and more frequently I come across clients who have asked a design agency to help them with their marketing and vice versa.

Design is not just good marketing and good marketing is not just design.

Read the full article by Sharon Stevens-Cash on www.essentialconsultancy.co.uk

Why You Shouldn’t Abandon Email Marketing for Social Media

Social Media or Email Marketing – what works better for online marketing? Should they be used together or are they purely mutually exclusive? The question to these answers is not as simple as it may seem. More and more email marketers are joining the social media bandwagon to cope with digital marketing revolution. I believe that to be a successful online marketer, you need to use the best of both worlds – email marketing as well as social media.

Why Email Marketing Rules?

I believe that Email Marketing provides massive untapped potential to reach out to prospect customers in a more private and intimate way than most social networks. However, there’s a thin line between effective email marketing and spam marketing.

Email is the ‘tried-and-tested’ technique of online marketing and it will be difficult for any social network (be it Facebook or twitter) to completely eliminate Email Marketing.

Read full article on smedio.com here

Why is SEO and online marketing important to your Marketing Strategy?

Internet Marketing can be a complicated business and is rife with jargon that can put people off who are new to this industry. It is also an industry that is, in many respects, still evolving. One certainty is that the Internet has made its mark on the world of business and is here to stay. And so, Internet Marketing needs to be a part of your Marketing Strategy and a part of your Business Plan.

Internet Marketing is not difficult but it can be a minefield of jargon, buzz words and unnecessary cost. It’s no longer good enough to just have a decent website – your website needs to be structured to take on the competition and to rank well in the Search Engines. But your website also needs to give your audience what they are expecting from an online experience – and you will find that your online audience is increasingly web savvy and more demanding.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is one of the keystones of internet marketing and is a phrase that encompasses many different aspects of making your website work harder for your business as a part of a wider Marketing Strategy.

The techniques employed in an SEO strategy will make your website rank higher in search engine results pages. Higher ranks (preferably on page one of Google and the other search engines) will lead to a greater chance that you will get a click from customers looking for your services.

Because the internet operates on an international platform, SEO if left unchecked, can leave brands finding themselves suddenly operating in circles which they are unaccustomed to. For instance, on a national or international scale, when they have been used to controlling their message on a much more local level. And so, alongside SEO there should also be an element of website traffic analysis to help with managing unexpected outcomes of a brand’s online presence as well as responding to those that are expected.

SEO, along with Social Media, Website Design, Content Development, Content Management, Web Analytics, e-commerce and eCRM systems are all elements that can be included in an Internet Marketing Strategy. By integrating online and offline marketing techniques, dramatic changes to the performance of your brand can be achieved.

Knowing what should be included is the trickier part. Whether we like it or not, the power of the Internet is here to stay. Enlisting the help of a proven Online Marketer to help integrate your online plans with your traditional marketing plan is no longer an added extra but a necessity.

This article was contributed by Deborah Porter, Essential New Media, Derby based SEO and Marketing Company.