digitalmarketing Archives

08/12/2021

Why post on Google My Business?

Do you manage your business online presence across Google? That’s exactly what a Google My Business (GMB) profile lets you do.

The dashboard is user friendly and you want to make sure your profile is set up and optimised with the latest details.

While your customers can view reviews and see photos on your GMB, they can also see your public posts. You can publish posts about your brand, offers, events, products and services.

These posts appear in two places: Google Maps and in a search under your business’s information section in the sidebar.

When creating a social media plan or posting on your social media channels you should include your GMB. The only difference compared to social media posts is that your audience cannot share, comment or react to the post.

Why you should post on GMB:

Brand awareness

Just like social media, your posts on GMB are great for communicating directly to your audience. They’ll be able to get a feel for your company and what you're about with the content you post.

Reach a wider audience

When you post on your GMB it increases your visibility which means more people will find you. Posting on GMB is another method to market your business on Google - take advantage of it!

Improve local SEO

Provide easy access to your business information including opening times, address and updates through GMB posts, this will help strengthen your local SEO. Also, since GMB is tied to search and Google Maps, you’ll rank better for local keywords.

Cost-effective

Creating and setting up a GMB account is free for businesses. It allows your audience to quickly view your business information and other details.

Promote for free

Posing on GMB doesn’t cost and is quick and easy. A lot of scheduling tools also allow you to connect your account to their platform making posting across all your channels more efficient.

REMEMBER: post regularly and keep your GMB details up to date.

Every business should be utilising GMB. It helps you build authority online and is another outlet in which you can reach more people who can potentially become customers.

Make sure the posts you publish are high quality and remember to use their CTAs to give people direction on your posts. With all content, it’s also important that your posts add value and make sure the posts are succinct (they're not blogs!).

Bear in mind to attend to the other features on GMB including replying to reviews, posting answers to frequently asked questions and uploading images.

google maps with a pin point on a local butchers

22Group

If you’re looking for help with your SEO or social media posting, we have an experienced team to help you achieve your goals.

22Group specialise in branding, website design & development and marketing for every industry. Whether you are starting out for the first time or looking to update, we can help.

To find out more about our services or ask any questions, we’d love to have a chat with you - get in touch.

Published by twentytwo in Marketing & Analytics

Tags: digitalmarketing, gmb, google

26/10/2021

Haunting marketing mistakes

Don’t wake up screaming in the night because you’ve made a haunting marketing mistake that could cost you.

When you market your business, service or product you want to stand out and be seen. Taking risks is all part of marketing but making sure they’re the right ones can be challenging.

To help you avoid any haunting mistakes, here are 10 marketing mistakes often made by businesses:

1.Not using social media

Whatever industry you are in, you should be using social media. Not necessarily every single platform out there but definitely have an online presence. It’s expected and standard these days.

2. Making it about yourself

You want customers to buy your product or service, right? Then you need to listen to them and sell them what they need, don’t make it all about you and what you can do. This goes for your marketing content too, provide valuable content.

3. Not shouting about your USP

Your USP is what makes you different to your competitors, make sure you’re shouting about this through your marketing.

4. Not willing to invest

With any investment, you put money in to receive more back. It’s the same with your marketing, if you don't put any money into it you can’t always expect high returns.

5. Targeting everyone and anyone

Not defining your target audience could mean your marketing is all over the place and you’re sending mixed messages to your audience.

6. Not publishing blog content

There’s no doubt blogs should be in your marketing plan, blogs are useful in so many ways. From SEO to content for your social media, make sure you’re writing them.

7. Forgetting videos

Video content is on the rise due to popularity. They don’t need to be long, they can be short and snappy but it is important to include videos in your marketing plan.

8. Not utilising email marketing

Email marketing is an incredibly cost-effective method of marketing and to this day is still a valuable marketing tool. Don't underestimate it.

9. No call to action

Your goal is to achieve more sales, if your marketing activity doesn’t have a call to action how will your customers know what to do?

10. Unwilling to adapt

Change is inevitable, if you’re unwilling to adapt or change when something happens you’re going to be left behind and seen as outdated. Take the pandemic, for example, a lot of companies had to reevaluate their online presence.

After reading through that list, we hope you’ve managed to identify that you don’t do any of them or you realise this is somewhere that needs improvement - mistakes happen.

22Group are a team of talented web designers, branding experts and marketers. We offer bespoke solutions and can help you achieve success. We’d love to help and have a chat with you - get in touch.

Published by twentytwo in Marketing & Analytics

Tags: digitalmarketing, halloween, marketing

15/10/2021

Importance of videos on social media

Whatever social media platform you’re browsing, you're bound to come by a video. Especially with the introduction of TikTok and the lockdowns we had when staying in was the new going out, more and more video content became available.

Have you noticed or maybe you’re already familiar with the button at the bottom of your screen when you’re on the Facebook app where it says ‘Watch’ or on Instagram where you can go straight to watching Reels.

Have you found yourself scrolling on TikTok for hours or watching YouTube video after YouTube video? It’s been a long time since social media was just text or images.

Even out of the lockdowns, video content is still a big hit and there are several reasons why businesses are jumping on the bandwagon and producing more and more of it.

Importance of videos:

Grab your audience’s attention

Videos are great for capturing attention. The start of your video should indicate what it’s about and leave the viewer wanting more.

Also, video content on social media is great for turning your information into digestible content - easier for the audience to consume.

They encourage conversation

When you provide content that is on-trend or about a popular topic you’re encouraging conversation, opinions and people to engage with your video.

Humanise your brand

By personifying your brand and showing your audience the people and processes behind your business, you’re gaining trust.

Videos are popular

Even pre-pandemic, videos were gaining popularity across all social media platforms. Video is one of the most effective ways to deliver engaging and entertaining content.

Appeal to the Gen Z audience

Gen Z has very much been connected to the internet compared to others and use it for not only entertainment purposes but education as well.

The introduction and growth of TikTok has become incredibly popular due to this. The user-generated short videos have a great appeal and it’s why many businesses are hopping onto this platform as well.

Can be repurposed

Quality videos may be more of an investment in terms of time and money but they can be used across all social media platforms, shortened to be put onto Instagram or Facebook stories.

If you haven’t started creating video content, it’s time to start planning now. It’s a great storytelling tool so share your brand, product or service, industry knowledge and provide entertainment.

There are some category ideas you can use!

About 22Group

22Group are a digital agency providing all your website, branding and marketing needs under one roof.

Our fantastic team of experts are on hand to help you deliver successful results. We’re happy to answer any questions or have a chat about any projects - get in touch.

Published by twentytwo in Marketing & Analytics, Social media

Tags: contentmarketing, digitalmarketing, Facebook, instagram, socialmedia, tiktok, video, videocontent, youtube

01/10/2021

What is a landing page?

Have you been hearing “Landing pages are great” or “You should be using landing pages”? If you’re not in the digital industry, it's probably a foreign term to you.

So, what is a landing page?

A landing page is a standalone web page that a consumer can land on by clicking a link. It is designed to convert visitors into leads.

It’s common for a landing page to have no navigation bar, it ensures the visitor is not distracted and led elsewhere. Along with no navigation bar, there is typically a form to capture the visitor’s information.

person at a laptop about to fill in their credit card details online.

How do landing pages work?

A user sees a call to action, clicks it and ends up on a landing page with a form.
The user fills out the form and becomes a lead.
You receive the information the user filled out and have it in your database.
You can now market to the lead.

Once they have filled out the form, they should be redirected to a ‘thank you’ page.

What should be on a landing page?

Start with a compelling heading to keep your visitor on the page and then a brief description of what is being offered.

The content on the landing page should be concise and encourage the visitor to fill in their information - identify their problems and mention how you can solve them while benefitting them.

As well as the informative content, you may opt to have trust building elements like testimonials or professional industry logos.

It’s important to keep the consistency of the content so that it matches the visitor’s previous source. If the message is not the same, it can confuse the visitor and they’ll most likely hit the back button thinking they’re in the wrong place.

Why use a landing page?

Now you know what a landing page is, these are the reasons why you should use them:

Drive traffic

By having concise, straightforward information you’re enticing visitors to your landing page and encouraging conversions.

Improve SEO

When creating a landing page, using targeted keywords and SEO best practices will help drive organic traffic to your website.

Great as a PPC strategy

The dedicated content will target what your potential customer is looking for and quickly meet their needs, leading to a conversion.

Target your audience

By having content for a specific audience, that touches on their pain points and offers a solution unique to them, they will first find your content more interesting and secondly, they’ll be able to relate more.

Generate leads and conversions

Landing pages help to generate qualified leads. You can bet the person who has just clicked through to your landing page and filled in your form is legitimately interested and ready to have a chat.

Direct and to the point

Landing pages are designed to be free from distractions with no navigation bar and a focused message, this increases the chances of conversions.

Are you interested in landing pages for your business?

At 22Group, we are a team of talented web developers, branding experts and marketing pros. We can help you create a landing page, design it in line with your branding and write captivating copy.

We’d be happy to help answer any questions or discuss further - get in touch.

Published by twentytwo in Campaigns & Creative

Tags: conversions, digitalmarketing, landingpage, leads, marketingstrategy

29/04/2021

Benefits of email marketing

Some people think email marketing is dying out, but how many times do you check your emails? How many times have you clicked on an email that offered a promotion? Or opened an email because it contained some useful information about new store policies due to COVID-19?

With an abundance of devices at our disposal - smartphones, tablets, laptops - we’re checking our emails daily.

A major benefit of email marketing is that it’s an incredibly cost-effective method of marketing. It really is still one of the most valuable and powerful marketing tools a company can have.

bag and man looking at his emails on his iphone

So, what are the benefits of email marketing:

Create targeted content

The content you put in your emails can be very specific and relate to the targeted audience. For example, if you have a promotion for UK Mother’s Day that would not apply to your US customers as their Mother’s Day date is another month.

Nurturing leads

Email marketing allows you to build up a relationship and share information with the customers that are sitting on the fence. By keeping in touch with them you’ll hopefully, one day, turn them into your loyal customers.

Sharing company news

Keep your audience up to date through email marketing or share a new marketing campaign to build interest. Do you have new opening times? Or are you going to be sponsoring a charity that means a lot to your business? Let your audience know.

Build your brand

Email marketing allows you to build your brand image as you’re sharing content. While you share relevant and valuable information, trust increases amongst your audience. This trust is so important for turning them from leads to customers.

Increase traffic to your website

Lead customers from your email marketing to your website by CTAs, this increases traffic and improves SEO. Maybe you ended up reading this blog because you opened one of our emails!

Reaching people at the right time

Your email marketing allows you to reach people at the right time. You’ll be able to learn a lot about your audience through your email marketing, including the optimum time they will open and click on their emails. This is great to know for specific marketing campaigns, like a new product launch.

22 employee drawing our lead nurture journey for email marketing on a whiteboard

Provide valuable content

By providing valuable content to your audience, you’ll keep them coming back. Even those who aren’t actively your customer will see the value and pay attention to you.

Hopefully, you found the above benefits of email marketing useful and understand why it’s important to utilise it as part of your marketing.

If you need help or simply don’t have the time, 22Group can help. We’d love to have a chat with you. We’re a Manchester based web design company that also offers branding and marketing all under one roof.

Get in touch and discuss a project!

Published by twentytwo in Marketing & Analytics

Tags: campaign, digitalmarketing, email, marketing