We’re all different, aren’t we? Some of us need a tight deadline to focus the mind. Some of us just need a clear ‘to do’ list to work our way through and feel good about as we start to tick things off. Whatever it is that gives you the boost you need to get stuff done, be aware of it so you can try to harness it on the days the motivation isn’t coming quite so naturally.
I’m writing this blog on the back of a productive session – one more tick on the list before I finish for the day. I know I’m affected to a degree by the weather. It’s not warm but the sun is shining today and that in itself helps my productivity. Admittedly that’s a tough one to control but there are other things I know I can control that helps me to do what I need to do.
Make a list
I’ve always found lists helpful. I have a list for everything and if I don’t have my list handy when something pops into my head, I write it down or even e-mail it to myself, so I find it when I next log in. We can all hold a certain amount of information in our heads but when it starts to get overloaded it’s only natural that things start to slip.
Delegate
Sometimes we have to admit that we can’t do it all ourselves, so we have to delegate. This can be hard for some people but there are lots of tools that can help you hand over control gradually and in a way that you are comfortable with. Whether you are delegating to in-house members of your team or outsourced freelancers you can maintain full visibility of delegated tasks via regular communication, or via tools that are dedicated to precisely such visibility. Trello (www.trello.com) or Asana (www.asana.com) are just two examples of the kind of software that is available to help you manage your projects in the most efficient way.
Track your time
If you’re not yet sure which areas you need to delegate, it might be useful to track your time for a week or a two. We all think we know where we spend our time, but often our perceptions are wildly out of kilter with reality. It’s also very easy to focus on the jobs we enjoy and leave the tasks we don’t by convincing ourselves that what we are doing is important. By tracking your time, you might find that you are spending too much time in areas that are no longer adding value. And perhaps there are more important areas of the business that are being neglected.
Increase productivity
To increase productivity, it may simply be a case of being more mindful of what motivates us, how we spend our time and which behaviours we can adjust to become more productive without burning ourselves out. Or it might be time to delegate. If you are spending too much time on an aspect of the business that could be handed over to someone else, or if you don’t have time to do the things you know you need to do to drive the business forward, it is probably time to delegate.
Once you have identified the areas you need to delegate, you can set about delegating them. This could be to various in-house fractions, or perhaps to an outside resource. A company’s marketing is one area that often gets left when things get busy and top of the list of things to get forgotten, is your business blog. Smart businesses know they need to blog but getting around to doing it regularly is another matter. By delegating this and any other aspects of the business that you know you are simply not giving the attention they deserve, will free up more time to boost your productivity in other areas of the business.
Whether you’ve thrived or suffered in the last year, the uncertainties and market changes have put a new emphasis on the concept of value, requiring agency owners, team members and investors to all think differently.
Creating, protecting and realising value demands more rigour, better planning and greater attention to detail. And if you’re not adapting to these new standards, your personal, team and business prosperity could well be at risk.
But please don’t think these challenges only apply if you have an imminent desire to sell your business. Whatever your eventual destination might turn out to be, you’ll want to nurture and safeguard your value in the meantime, keeping your options open for the longer term.
So, to be sure that you’re on the right value track, ask yourself if you have:
We explain these new standards and how to achieve them in our Future Positive Value guide. Find out more about what it will take to optimise value in the next era, with no half measures and nothing much left to chance.
Do you have a small business that you are trying to grow? There are a lot of balls to keep in the air when you’re just starting out, or when you are in the first couple of years of running a business. You need to market yourself, get the leads coming in, keep existing customers happy, have an eye on the finances, and of course try to enjoy yourself! After all, that’s probably the reason you set up a small business in the first place! But as the business grows, it can become more and more difficult to keep all those balls in the air.
The tipping point
There is often a tipping point that is reached and sometimes breached, before we accept we need help. Sometimes because we want to keep every aspect of the business under our own control, or sometimes because we don’t realise how much we’re struggling, until it gets so bad our body or mind give us away.
Perhaps you’ve realised you need help, but you can’t really afford to take someone else on a sustained full-time salary just yet. Perhaps it just feels like too big a task to let anything go. If this sounds like you, this is where outsourcing to freelancers can allow you to have your cake and eat it!
Changing priorities
Marketing is a common outsourced discipline. Some larger companies use big agencies to take care of all their marketing needs, but a lot of smaller businesses retain control of managing the overall strategy, while outsourcing some of the ‘doing’ to a freelance writer, social media expert or marketeer.
Company blogs are a good example of how things can start to slip as business gets busier. A new start-up sets up a blog to gain new business. They grow awareness, position themselves, and achieve their search engine ranking and then as the leads start coming in, the blog diminishes. It’s not a criticism, it’s a time-consuming aspect of any marketing campaign that can be incredibly hard to stay on top of once the business is doing well. And your priority must be focussing on the customers that need something from you day to day. However, it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. If you have a business blog that was bringing you inbound leads and improving your SEO, you don’t have to let it go.
The business blog you want, without the work
The aim of the Blog Write Blog is to be a source of tips and advice for small to medium businesses who want to build and maintain a blog. However, I completely acknowledge that once your blog is up and running and doing what you wanted it to do, it can be difficult to stay on top of it for the long term. Particularly as your venture grows. Small businesses or start-up companies that want to grow an online presence, but don’t have the time to do it themselves may be able to find an affordable helping hand from a local freelance copywriter.
Find the best fit
Different copywriters will work with you in different ways, so take the time up front to find the best fit for your business. For example, you may be ready to hand everything over from the beginning, in which case you’ll need someone who once briefed, can come up with topics and write the blog for you to sign off. Or, if you would like to keep a little more control, plenty of freelancers will happily take a list of topics you would like to cover and a brief for each one and work their way through the list.
A good copywriter won’t be precious about their writing either, so just because they’ve submitted a blog post to you doesn’t mean you’re obligated to post it immediately with no changes. Particularly in the beginning you should expect to make a few changes while your new copywriter learns your voice. But, if you are prepared to build a working relationship with one person, they will soon be producing content that you would have been proud to write yourself.
If you have a small business that’s gathering pace to the point you don’t know which way to turn, drop me an e-mail today at [email protected] for more information about my blog copywriting services.
The West of England has a strong legacy as a creative industries hub attracting major broadcasters, film companies and digital industries alike to our vibrant towns and cities. Like all industries, however, COVID-19 has hit creative companies hard and the West of England Combined Authority (WECA) has been here to support the creative industries as they work to get through the impact of the pandemic.
To support this, WECA has launched a new business support programme for businesses and individuals working in the creative industries, as part of its Regional Recovery Plan. The programme is aimed at small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) working in the creative industries, including creative freelancers, and is designed to build resilience and support change in response to COVID-19.
There is also a grant fund for creative freelancers that will give self-employed people the opportunity to become more resilient by developing their own creative product, practice or service, in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Grants for creative businesses will fund creative projects that support recovery and resilience, employ freelance creatives, engage local communities and advance diversity and inclusion.
The business support programme has been designed in consultation with members of the creative and cultural sector. The programme also fits with WECA’s ambitions to establish a West of England Cultural Compact, an initiative jointly funded with Arts Council England. This will involve the creation of a new strategic cultural partnership which will lead on the development of a Cultural Strategy and new activities to help increase investment across the creative and cultural sectors in the region.
WECA recently announced a £11.8m investment to boost creative jobs with the expansion of Bottle Yard Studios, which plays host to a wide range of productions, including drama, children’s TV, feature films, gameshows and commercials. Bottle Yard’s growth will also help to support other businesses across the region which rely on film and TV production opportunities.
Almost 60 companies from a range of creative industries across the region have also benefitted from WECA’s Creative Scale-Up programme. This two-year pilot helps creative businesses access finance and peer mentoring through an intensive six-month minimum sustainable growth support programme. WECA has opened applications for the fourth cohort of the programme
Here’s a snapshot of some of the businesses that have benefitted from the programme:
Since joining the Creative Scale Up programme in January 2020, Bristol-based independent development studio and games consultancy Auroch Digital has secured a new publishing deal and taken on 15 new members of staff.
“The Creative Scale Up programme, particularly the mentoring process, was great – we were able to pick mentors targeting specific needs we have. We got direct support with business questions as they arose and that helped us deal with them and move forward.
“As a result, we’ve been able to advance some key areas of the company. We’ve landed one big publishing deal for a new IP game and are circling a second big project, and that mentoring advice has been part of the mix of positives getting us there. Information provided by the Creative Scale Up team also led us to a UWE Digital Innovation Fund grant.” Dr Tomas Rawlings, chief executive, Auroch Digital
Noiser, which specialises in history and drama storytelling with immersive sound design, used the WECA Creative Scale Up £2,000 business grant to develop a sales team and define a clear strategy to drive sales.
“For Noiser, we are not looking for generic business support; I liked how the scheme’s supervisors made us aware that we could find our own mentors and they were able to help connect us with pertinent professionals they were in touch with. This was crucially important.”
Stornaway.io accessed grant funding to re-invest in the creative development of the business.
Having identified a gap in the market for a collaborative web application that lets media producers write, test and publish interactive films easily and affordably without coding, the team was, understandably, wary about how to effectively promote and launch a new product in lockdown.
To showcase the product’s capabilities, Stornaway.io used grant funding to commission and produce a short film called “A Little Hungover”, which would premiere as part of the Immersive Encounters Festival. In order to help futureproof the business, the team at Stornaway.io also made great use of the peer mentoring aspects of the Creative Scale Up programme.
“Launching this new product in the middle of lockdown, the Creative Scale-Up peer mentoring programme was an invaluable community of practice. It was fantastic to meet and develop connections with the leaders of such a wide range of creative businesses in the South West. We have developed a number of ongoing relationships with our peers which we hope will continue to be mutually beneficial.” Kate Dimbleby, co-founder, Stornaway.io
Creative scale-up support includes a £6,000 grant to spend on mentoring support, a dedicated Peer Support Network and sector specific business development training. Businesses are also supported to consider their future finance options and are supported to learn about investment and engage with investors.
Creative businesses wanting to find out more about the new business support programme, grant funds and the Creative Scale Up programme should visit WECA’s Growth Hub page.
The West of England Business Support Guide can also help you navigate the range of support available via the combined authority’s dedicated business support service, the Growth Hub, which provides tailored one-to-one advice and access to finance, support and expert guidance.
Advertising in 2030 will be fundamentally different to how it has been for the past 10 years.
Of course, we accept that for the most part, the same tried and tested methods will continue to work for a while yet – entrenched approaches don’t change overnight.
But individuals and organizations that fail to adapt over time will gradually fade out of relevance. They will slowly become less equipped to support and grow their employees, to help them in their careers and, therefore, the business they are part of.
As customers increasingly embrace digital platforms, the challenge is on.
The challenge is on for business owners to embrace the changes in advertising over the coming years. Doing so enables us to remain relevant and able to foster enduring relationships with customers in cost-efficient ways.
“All failure is failure to adapt, all success is successful adaptation” – Max McKeown
The one thing I will say before I get into these trends is that they are exactly that…
It is critical we monitor how advertising evolves, but a lot of these topics are fueled by folklore.
These topics change as the facts become clearer. We are in danger, as an industry, of creating that folklore through loud herd debate, which then becomes misunderstood fact.
It is our job as an agency to monitor these topics, contribute positively to the conversation, establish our own stance through investments and ensure we can support our clients as the future becomes clearer.
But be in no doubt – these trends and topics are driving the future of advertising and we need to embrace the conversation.
Marketing clouds will become indispensable elements in the advertising processes of the future. They control the creation and management of marketing relationships with your customers and manage campaigns.
This is already best practice, but it will become standard to integrate solutions for customer journey management, email, mobile, social, web personalization, advertising, content handling and analytics.
AI is ubiquitous in the advertising space. It supports our decision-making and analyzes consumer behaviour.
Enriched with data about how consumers interact with advertising, it substantially optimizes campaigns to perform better. Implemented consistently and to its full extent, AI understands consumers better than they do themselves.
This is very clearly tied to the performance improvements that we have seen in recent years by increasing our adoption of AI within campaigns.
The large tech vendors will continue to embrace artificial intelligence because of the opportunity to scale and, in the future, perform better than humans.
As an agency, we will spend less time in the future on the implementation of administration (eg search query reports) and more time on strategic conversations with our clients to support their business growth.
Programmatic will be standard for digital advertising. It is also the future of more traditional advertising methods.
Think first-party data collected through radio stations (like Sonos radio) and how that could be used over time for programmatic purchasing of audio.
It’s already used for TV and outdoor. Expect to see this more.
Digital advertising is predominantly contextual. This will grow – cohort advertising, for example, is still contextual.
Ads will be selected and placed by automated systems, based on ever more detailed user-profiles and the content displayed. There will be a continued increase in mobile and location-based advertising, which will strengthen this trend.
The fragmented supplier landscape within adtech will consolidate. Large adtech players will acquire almost all their smaller but highly specialized competitors that manage to evolve.
Alternatively – and more likely in my view – is that these smaller vendors will be rendered redundant through policy and legislation evolution.
The desire for improved services, additional scale and more first-party data will be the main driver behind any M&A activity.
The agency model is changing and the type of people we need in our agency will change over time too. Client-side, supplier-side, agency-side – everyone will be competing for the same kind of job profiles.
It will create a battle for the best talent and create a requirement to deliver the best training.
Employers will compete for experts with scarce, specialized skill sets.
As is the case now, agencies and vendors will be breeding grounds for some of the best talent and we have a responsibility to embrace that change and train people in their careers to create the best outcome for clients, but also the best opportunities for our colleagues in the future.
Demand for data scientists, analytics experts and creative minds is huge at present and will remain high or become more competitive in the future.
After print, traditional linear TV will lose its importance.
Large digital platform companies generate similar reach through video-on-demand, social or messaging functionalities.
This reach combined with first-party data and artificial intelligence will create incredibly efficient opportunities to reach audiences at scale through digital platforms.
The UK’s creative industries have been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, but there are also many examples of innovation and successful pivots.
The sector is vital to the UK economy and as Britain looks to recover, the government has set out its vision in the ‘Build Back Better’ strategy.
But how do the creative industries feature in the plans?
Gail Caig is a freelance consultant currently working as an advisor to the Creative Industries Council. She also joined the Bristol Creative Industries board earlier this year. Speaking to Dan Martin, Gail highlights the key measures for the creative businesses and freelancers in the government’s 2021 Budget and wider recovery plans.
“Many businesses in the creative industries have been incredibly hard hit by COVID-19 but that experience has not been not universal. Elements of the creative industries that depend on footfall and live experience have suffered a great deal, but some parts of the sector, like games companies for example, have been thriving and attracting new audiences.
“We have seen a huge amount of innovation and entrepreneurial activity in the sector. In their response to the difficulties during the pandemic, many organisations have looked at new ways to engage audiences, they have embraced technology like AR and VR and have done their storytelling in a different way. Innovation is a huge positive that has come out of all this but I think it’s less clear how you can viably get ongoing revenue from the new innovation. Venues, theatres etc have been very successful in reaching audiences and finding new ways to share content, but that’s no replacement for a live audience and many of the traditional business models.
“There has been support from the government. The £1.5bn Cultural Recovery Fund was a huge vote of kind of confidence and belief in the sector by the government. It hasn’t been a panacea and it hasn’t protected every element of the sector, but it is a very substantial investment which recognises how important the government sees the UK’s cultural and creative infrastructure.
“On the negative side, the pandemic has highlighted the vulnerability of freelancers which make up a third of creative industry workers. They can’t access the furlough scheme in most instances, and a big section of freelancers, particularly new entrants to the creative industries, can’t access the Self-employment Income Support Scheme. I think there’s a real concern in the industry that the new generation of talent could be irretrievably lost.
“That has been a real priority for organisations like the Creative Industries Federation. They’ve been lobbying the government about the need to recognise the freelance workforce.”
“In the Budget itself, and a series of documents published alongside it, the government is demonstrating that it recognises the importance of the creative industries and its capacity to bring communities together and regenerate. That’s really good news for the sector because it means that government policy going forward should be shaped in a way that will help and support the creative industries. That’s not a given. It’s a situation that has evolved and developed over the last 20 years when the creative industries were first recognised by the government as a specific, important and valuable sector.
“In the government’s Build Back Better strategy, the creative industries are featured throughout. In his forward, chancellor Rishi Sunak says: ‘We have an international reputation for science and world-class universities. And we have strengths across many sectors, from financial services to creative industries.'”
“The government announced in the Budget a consultation on the definition of R&D tax credits. The creative industries are innovative because they are constantly reinventing their products and services and they do a huge amount of R&D. But because a lot of that R&D doesn’t happen in a traditional industrial way, it’s not recognised as R&D. That has a business level implication because R&D tax credits as they’re currently structured are not accessible to the creative industries. The sector has been lobbying for a long time to get the R&D that happens within the sector recognised. This new consultation references the creative industries which is very positive.”
“The £1.57bn Cultural Recovery Fund has been extended by £300m.
“The government also put in place previously the Film and TV Production Restart Scheme that has supported productions in carrying on despite COVID. The scheme has been extended.”
“There has been an ongoing problem with apprenticeships in the creative industries. The vast majority are micro businesses with a very small number of employees. They don’t have the capacity to take on an individual for a long period of time and provide training. Many are project-based such as TV production companies. When they have big periods of activity they’ve got work to offer but they can’t guarantee 12 months.
“Also for micro businesses, the admin involved in taking people on is a really significant burden. Making apprenticeships work across many tiny businesses is a very different proposition to one big car plant. The apprenticeship scheme was set up with things like a big car plant in mind. However, big employers in the creative industries have been paying the Apprenticeship Levy, but not benefitting from it. That’s been an ongoing challenge for the sector and the Budget recognised that.
“There’s a £7m fund to be introduced from July this year to help employers access the apprenticeship scheme. It will also look at making the apprenticeship system more flexible so that it works better for creative industry businesses. The Budget document that talks about the new fund specifically references the creative industries.
“The government has also launched a consultation on flexi-job apprenticeship schemes which could help the creative industries.”
“The government has committed to setting up its own domestic replacement for when European funding ends in the UK as a result of Brexit. Between the EU funding stopping and the new UK scheme starting, they’ve launched the Community Renewal Fund.
“It’s £220m for programmes for 2021. The bids of up to £500,000 get submitted to the government via a combined authority or a local authority. The deadline for bids to be sent to the government is 18 June.
“There are two kinds of government funding – revenue and capital. Revenue funding can be spent on people, business support programmes, skills development, training, community arts practitioners, events etc. Capital funding is for building things like roundabouts, railways etc.
“For the creative industries seeking support and skills development, revenue funding is very important. There are examples of big cultural infrastructure but generally, that’s much harder for the sector to access. What the sector really needs and wants to access is revenue funding. The Community Renewal Fund is really important for that.”
“This is capital funding. The scheme is for bids of up to £20m and it runs over a series of years. The deadline for funding in 2021 is 18 June.
“It has three priorities – transport, regeneration and cultural investment. That’s really important for the creative industries as it’s a direct name check in a big capital programme. It talks about ‘maintaining, regenerating or creatively repurposing galleries, visitor attractions, heritage assets, as well as creating new community-owned spaces to support the arts and serve as cultural spaces.'”
“Networks and intermediaries are absolutely crucial in the effective running of creative clusters. Creative industries come together and group in clusters because they are a collection of interdependent small organisations that have specialisms. For example, one of the specialisms in Bristol and Bath is television. To make that clustering and networking work effectively, organisations like Bristol Creative Industries are absolutely fundamental. That’s why I wanted to be a BCI board member!”
Top image credit: HM Treasury.
Celebrated International voice actor, Melissa Thom, has today launched Bristol Academy of Voice Acting (BRAVA), working alongside some of the most prestigious names in the industry to offer personalised online training in the art and business of voiceover.
With over 20 years’ experience as a voice actor, Melissa counts Amazon, Facebook, Google and Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft Auto V among her global clients. She began her career in local radio in the late 90’s and went on to launch her award-winning podcasting platform, Radio in Schools, across 33 Heart stations in 2005, in partnership with Global – the UK’s largest commercial radio group.
BRAVA is specifically aimed at individuals who want to add voice acting to their skillset, or performing arts organisations who wish to offer their students training in the commercial world of voiceovers. Commenting on the launch of BRAVA, Founder & Director, Melissa Thom, said:
“Lockdown has been a difficult time for many, but the voiceover industry has adapted quickly and remains strong. The explosive growth of online gaming during the pandemic and projected healthy recovery and growth of the UK ad market by the end of this year means there is an imminent demand for highly trained voice actors.
“Although I have coached VO privately for a while, it soon became clear there was a large appetite for training and now felt like the right time to bring together the very best experts I’ve worked with over my 25-year career, to create BRAVA. We’re looking forward to helping students learn about the voiceover industry and supporting them to add this growing artform to their skillset.”
Melissa has taught voiceover, radio and presentation for a wide range of education providers, including Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and Ravensbourne University, and produced a number of educational digital learning resources and media study aids. Carol Fairlamb, Head of Voice at Bristol Old Vic Theatre school said:
“Melissa is an inspiring teacher with a huge range of highly relevant expertise. She works regularly with our MFA Professional Voice Studies students and provides them with the tools they need to develop their work further”.
Joining Melissa at BRAVA is a team of acting and voice experts from the UK and US, including voice actor & communications specialist, Elaine Clark, from San Francisco and experienced audio engineer, Euan McAleece from Brighton. Bristol based coaches include Shakespeare actor, Chris Donnelly, vocal health coach, Gary Owston and singing teacher, Pam Rudge. Specialist guest coaches will also work with the school throughout the year.
At Bristol Academy of Voice Acting (BRAVA) all learning takes place online, meaning students can learn at their own pace, wherever they are. Training is offered as personalised 1-1’s or group sessions and covers a wide range of topics, including Getting Started in VO, Corporate, Commercial and Narration, Characters, Audiobooks, Performance Techniques, Home Studio, Marketing, Vocal Health, VO & Shakespeare and Presentation Skills.
To find out more about BRAVA go to www.brava.uk.com
*https://econsultancy.com/stats-roundup-coronavirus-impact-on-marketing-advertising/
Trying to maintain healthy relationships in our personal lives has been a key focus in the last year. Some have been tested and some have flourished. And the same can be said for professional relationships too.
But what has the power to make or break a relationship when it comes to you and your clients?
It’s all a question of commitment. To maintain and grow client revenues, agencies should match what they expect to gain with what they are prepared to give. Authentic, mutual commitment is the glue that bonds agencies with their clients.
As in our personal lives, having relationships doesn’t guarantee successful ones. They take work and now more than ever. Good times in the past won’t mean business in the future. Clients may have played it safe during 2020, with little switching, but they’ve now seen new agencies and ideas, found better ways of getting things done and changed the standards they expect.
So, when it comes to your business, ask yourself how committed you really are. And what real commitment means for your business and how you work with your clients.
Real commitment starts with transparency, which underpins all good relationships. Being real, showing who you really are across your proposition, personality, people, processes, pricing. It demands a genuine willingness to actually invest in your clients; always going above and beyond and choosing or even recruiting a team better matched to the needs of your clients. Finally, taking a long-term view and setting the foundations so that your relationships grow in line with the growth of your business and theirs. Create a joint vision of where you and your client want to be in three years’ time. It may be hard to do, but don’t fall into the trap of only focusing on a few months ahead.
You can read about overcoming commitment issues and more in our Future Positive Clients guide.
eCommerce sales in the UK have continued to rise over the years, growing from a market value of £513.5 billion in 2014 to £693 billion in 2019. The pandemic forcing more Britons to stay home has massively accelerated this growth, pushing retail eCommerce sales past 30% of total retail sales in 2020.
In the uncertain world that we all live in today, to say that promoting your online store is important would be an understatement. Capturing the attention of a digital audience, however, requires digital marketing know-how, and when it comes to getting a foothold in the search engine results pages (SERPs) there really are only two main marketing channels to explore: organic SEO and paid search or pay-per-click (PPC).
In this mini-guide, we’ll briefly explore the main tools at your disposal to help push your eCommerce sales and grow your brand online.
eCommerce SEO is the practice of improving the search rankings of your online store for a whole host of related search terms so that potential customers are more likely to find you whenever they use a search engine to look for relevant products. It includes tactics such as creating intuitive, navigable site architecture and using well-researched keywords in product and product category pages, as well as creating a whole host of informative supplementary content and guides to really demonstrate your industry expertise.
Whether it’s your home page or any of your product pages, all have a better chance of ranking high in the SERPs of search engines like Google if you apply eCommerce SEO.
eCommerce SEO is vital for any business with an online store, as it drives organic search traffic and is an investment in building a brand’s digital presence.
Google Ads is Google’s advertising platform which allows you to display advertisements on their platforms, including Google Search Network. You have to pay Google for every action users take such as clicking on your ad (hence pay-per-click), but only then and not before.
As with eCommerce SEO, your online store will benefit from Google Ads by appearing high on the SERPs, specifically in Google Search, with increased site traffic and potentially improved conversions and sales. The key difference is that paid ads are shown before organic search results, so they can get more immediate attention from people who use Google Search.
You get what you pay for with Google Ads, and you have to keep investing money into it if you want your ads to stay up. In this way, the ROI is very transient as it’s entirely dependent on you maintaining your click budget (unlike organic SEO where the investment takes longer to materialise but will give you longer-lasting results).
Google Shopping shows ads of products for sale on various Google channels, including Google Search, from online stores that take advantage of the service. People who click on a Google Shopping ad are directed to the product page of the seller’s online store where they can complete the purchase.
Convenience is one of Google Shopping’s major benefits, as you only have to submit product info and a picture for your ad. Google will take what you’ve provided and show your ad to the most relevant audience.
A Google Shopping ad shows the product’s price and aggregate user rating for products with reviews. Such info is useful for qualifying leads, as those who click on Google Shopping ads already have set expectations and are more willing to make purchases.
Google Shopping falls under Google Ads, so it’s PPC that you also have to budget for to keep your Shopping ads running.
SEO and PPC are good on their own, but when they are both done together, the results can be outstanding.
You can use Google Ads to test out keywords that you’re thinking of targeting for your eCommerce SEO efforts. Paid ads can quickly drive significant traffic to your site, which you can then check if that same traffic results in conversions for the keywords you targeted. Depending on the results, you can choose to use those keywords for your SEO or not.
Conversely, you can use the data from your eCommerce SEO keyword research to bolster your PPC campaigns by targeting keywords that you already know perform well.
There are other ways to synergise SEO and PPC, but the core principle when using both is to use the data gathered from one method to inform and optimise the strategies for the other.
For eCommerce SEO, the top three metrics to consider are the following:
All of these are available in Google Search Console.
Meanwhile, PPC campaigns measure:
Google Analytics lets you track all these metrics for your Google Ads campaigns.
Apart from on-site SEO and PPC campaigns, online businesses can also greatly benefit from being connected to a network of blogs and influencers within their industries.
There is the broad benefit of building awareness for your brand when other websites and thought leaders mention your company on their platforms. It also has a more specific and material benefit of getting links back to your eCommerce store, which is important to improve your ranking.
You can start by researching blogs and influencers that cover the kind of products you sell and talk to your target audience. Build a rapport with them by commenting on their posts and interacting with their social media accounts genuinely.
Over time and with an established professional relationship, you can then ask to contribute to their websites with a guest post and get a link back to your online store in return.
Bitcade is a Bristol-based retro arcade machine manufacturer that was lagging behind its competitors in online search before Superb Digital implemented PPC and SEO campaigns.
Superb Digital, an SEO agency in Bristol, started with a Google Ads campaign, putting up both text and shopping ads. Sales shot up by 181% at the end of the first month and another 30% after two more months with further improvements to the campaign such as reducing their CPA.
With the initial sales boost and confidence in their digital marketing, Bitcade greenlit a full eCommerce SEO campaign.
We implemented on-site optimisation based on thorough competitor and keyword research, created a blog with rich, insightful content, building links with lifestyle and gaming bloggers, and overhauled the site design to make it more visually appealing and easier to use.
There were consistent increases in rankings and revenue for the first six months. This groundwork prepared Bitcade for the rise of digital purchases during the pandemic, resulting in a massive 297% increase in leads and a 370% upturn in revenue 12 months into the campaign. Suffice to say, Bitcade’s founder, Jack England, has been over the moon about the results and is continuing to invest in his digital marketing with us.
If you’re hitting a brick wall with your search rankings or have seen a recent drop then it could be time you engage with a reputable and trusted SEO agency. At Superb Digital we can help with your organic SEO and PPC campaigns, as well as other elements of your digital strategy.
Get in touch with us today and we’ll be more than happy to look into your online store (or any type of website for that matter) and put together a no-strings-attached quote.
E-Commerce is one of the world’s most lucrative industries. More than ever, businesses need to have an online presence if they want to keep their customers loyal to their products, services and brand. COVID-19 has only accelerated this need for organisations to get digital, put their product data online and offer a completely virtual service.
Of course, it’s easier said than done whether you’re a multi-national organisation or part of a smaller, specialised industry. Your main challenge is getting your product data from its source to your end user, quickly and accurately. And when your end user has the ability to interact with your product data in multiple ways, across any number of different platforms, that challenge grows in complexity.
So how do you manage this data flow? Having an effective Product Information Management tool (PIM) is key.
A PIM centralises your product data information and assets, including product specification data and any associated media assets, before distributing that data to multiple sources. Put simply, a PIM ensures your data flow is as efficient as possible.
In manufacturing, for example, it’s typical for product data to originate from older, legacy systems, where it’s input at the factory during the production stage. Then, the marketing teams responsible for selling these products have the daunting task of translating this data – often manually – in order to get it online. This process then often requires manual intervention again, to keep it up to date.
Processing the data manually in this way creates a disconnect between the marketing data and the product data: they’re never in sync with one another. And that leaves room for error.
According to Ventana Research, 46% of companies that don’t have one single source of product information, and instead, use Excel spreadsheets to manage product data.
This can be a serious problem. 47% of the above companies admit they often find product-related errors and almost 20% of those errors have a major detrimental impact on sales performance. PIM is the solution.
Your customers interact with your data on many different devices, through their desktop, mobiles, or even via their smart speaker. So, having an application with a modern Application Programming Interface (API) becomes essential in your data workflow.
By using a RESTful API your product data can be shared easily, as it’s exposed in a predictable, interactive format.
But not all organisations can commit the time, resource or budget to completely overhaul their systems, end-to-end, all the way to the factory level. Instead, there are other options.
To alleviate problems caused by disparate, legacy data, you can break the process down into smaller, more manageable applications. This is known as having a microservices architecture. Microservices are dedicated applications which focus on one dedicated function: in this case, in consuming your legacy data, transforming it into an end-user friendly format, then injecting that data into a PIM.
This approach ensures your original base data is kept up to date, and maintains data availability even if there’s a breakdown in one part of the workflow or chain.
Using cloud services, such as AWS, we can leverage tools like SQS and Lambda to support a decoupled architecture. Not only does decoupled microservices architecture prevent potential data loss, and preserve service in the event of application breakdown, it improves performance by offloading queue management and data flow into the Cloud.
A final but essential consideration, no matter what systems and applications you use: data security.
Experimental product data can be incredibly sensitive, so keeping it secure at both the point of origin and in-transit is important, as is ensuring pre-production data doesn’t accidentally end up publicly viewable. A PIM provides protection by implementing strict workflows for your data.
There are many applications and frameworks out there specifically designed as PIMs, and they range in price depending on the supplier and the size of your product data.
Likewise, every business has different workflows and product data structures. Once you include a legacy data issue you’re having, it’s rare that any off-the-shelf-solution will meet your requirements exactly. A custom solution is often the way forward. And this is where using a flexible framework, such as Drupal, has distinct advantages.
Drupal is an enterprise-level content framework with many applications. Traditionally it’s a content management system, but its latest version is much more than that.
Drupal has a powerful entity framework, allowing you to model almost any data. Its strong community – made up of real people struggling with the same challenges as you are – has developed countless modules and plug-ins to enhance functionality.
And what’s more, since Drupal is open source, there are no licence fees or user usage limits. So every penny of your investment goes where you need it: into solving your specific workflow and data modelling challenges.
No matter how large or technical your datasets, nor how specialised your business is, you deserve to get the most from your digital applications.
At Proctors, our team of technology experts have been solving problems for specialist businesses across the globe: from tech behemoths like Panasonic, to niche industry start-ups. When it comes to talking data, you’ll want to talk to Proctors.
We’re more than happy to put our heads together with yours and discover the best solution for your business.
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