“You’ll never get yourself off the treadmill of paid ads, if you don’t build your brand”
Someone on a Search Podcast, 2019
It’s very easy to dismiss online content, blogs, image assets and even display ads as pretty much useless – because you don’t have the instant gratification of seeing leads and/or sales.
This is completely understandable; especially if you have a background in sales – where your job has been to ‘finish off the lead’ and get a sale.
However, if you are in it for the long (or medium) run, then building your brand is a must. Whether you are a tradesman or a giant corporation, your brand’s reputation and the brand-awareness is your safety net when it comes to consistent website traffic, leads & sales.
It takes time to build a brand – but once it is built, those people who come to you direct because they know who you are – are effectively free – or at least very cheap in comparison to some of the cost per click of Google Search Ads these days.
Building a brand is not easy however. Take my other blog for example – Blackbeltwhitehat.com
The blog has over 600 pages of content, lots of it really long, in-depth and time-consuming to produce. The site has 5,000-10,000 visitors per month, but virtually nobody comes to my website via a branded search on Google.
This could be down to one specific reason – the domain name is crap and hard to remember.
I’ve bought a few more memorable domains (like WokeMMA.com “Woke” being an ironic term for self-awareness used in the MMA & Jiu Jitsu communities) and I am currently weighing up the time & effort of re-branding everything like GoogleMyBusiness, TrustPilot etc. – plus all my back-links currently point to blackbeltwhitehat.com (I’m aware of 301s etc. but I’ll still definitely see a drop in rankings).
My blog is ultimately a hobby that I’ve invested less than $50 into over 6 years. But if I had some more budget – I’d put together a plan to build my brand online…
First make sure you know your target audience & do one of those SWOT analysis. Then make specific goals to establish some brand KPIs.
Here are some ideas on what to do next:
Get a relevant, easy to remember domain name!
Learn from my mistake, a short catchy domain name is an easy-win if you are just starting out from scratch. A lot of the best and obvious domain name will be taken however, so you’ll have to do some research first. If you are just starting out, don’t name your business until you secure your domain name!
Display Ads
Depending on your niche, you can set tiny max CPC bids in some instances – and they’ll still get thousands of impressions for very little spend. Gmail ads work particularly well for (potential) low CPM (cost per 1000 impressions).
Rotate your display ads’ design & colours to stop people ignoring them due to ‘banner blindness’.
Blog & Outreach
Blog are great for reaching people who are researching a potential purchase.
For example, I landed on Perfect Keto’s blog a few times whilst researching Exogenous Ketones. Then ended up buying their branded product on Keto-pro.co.uk; because, for what ever reason, I trusted their brand.
Create great content, with statistics, images and video – and then outreach it – i.e. send it to relevant blogs and websites.
If you can afford it, use “PR-Level” outreach and contact national newspapers etc. This can be done via websites such as gorkana
If you content gets links too – then great – that’s good for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Doing some of your own exclusive research and generating tables of statistics are great for generating back-links naturally i.e. passively.
So consider doing some market research using Google surveys etc. These guys calculated RV/Campervan depreciation in value, just by looking at vehicles for sale online and get hundreds of back-links.
To turn blog’s into direct sales, you can also use relevant ‘CTA’ images below your blog.
For example, if you post a blog about the Walking Path’s of Snowdonia on your Snowdonia-based-bed-&-breakfast website; consider adding a relevant & clickable ‘book now’ and/or ‘get your free brochure’ button with eye-catching image at the bottom of the post. Many people now do this with newsletter sign up pop ups, which are a bit annoying but do work.
Content is great – but tools tend to do better than copy. For example, NerdWallet’s top page in terms of organic traffic – is their mortgage calculator.
Reviews
As well as brand awareness, you want some social-proofing of your brand. Start with a free account on Trustpilot and GoogleMyBusiness
Video & Social Media
The number 1 mistake people make on social media is to harp on about their brand all the time. Be entertaining, provide useful information and insightful comments. If you are over-promotional, people will not follow you. Build some authority by providing helpful insights that your target market will appreciate.
Videos & podcasts can be costly in terms of time. If you don’t want to set up your own podcast, guest-appearance on other people’s podcasts can generate valuable awareness and also back-links to your website (important for Search Engine Optimisation/Rankings).
Build an amazing product and/or service
This is your foundation and one of the reasons that Apple is so successful. An LSD-fueled Steve Jobs came up with some amazing ideas and concepts. The brand also turned itself into unique hybrid of tech & fashion thanks to their pioneering products.
The big, light-up apple on the back of Macbooks no doubt was a design aimed at building brand awareness too!
Please note – I realise this blog has a rubbish social media following. But that’s due to lack of time/money investment. I generally just use this blog as somewhere to record my thoughts & to remember how to do all things marketing related. E.g. here are my notes so I remember how to use Screaming Frog to scrape OG tags.
For some blogs and websites, even keywords with 0 monthly searches may be relevant.
My other blog – blackbeltwhitehat.com has built all of its traffic off KWs that Google KW planner says has 0 searches.
It all depends on how authoritative your website is and your competitors are. You can go after bigger, more popular KWs if you are a huge website with a DA of 90. It’s a different ball game if you are running a personal blog with a DA of 15
Try and include a number of the relevant searches in your articles etc.
Check Competitors & KWs Their Relevant Pages Rank for
If you have a tool like semrush.com,
Check what keywords competitors are ranking for.
If your head keyword is “football goals”, see who’s ranking top 5 for that term and see what other keywords the top URLs are ranking for.
If you don’t have an SEO Tool, you can just check the copy and meta title & description to see what keywords the top websites are trying to opimise for.
European Union (EU) referendum decision day is almost upon us and no-one truly knows what the implications of an exit from the EU will have on businesses or our day-to-day lives.
We can take an educated guess though, so here are some of the ways an EU exit could potentially impact small businesses in the UK. What is an EU exit?
The UK is currently part of the EU, a politico-economic union of 28 member states across Europe that enjoy freedom of trade and movement of workers. These trading rules also apply across the wider European Economic Area (EEA), which includes Norway, Iceland and Lichtenstein.
On June 28, 2016, the UK will held a referendum to decide whether or not the UK should remain as part of the EU – and we all know the result…
How does EU membership benefit UK small businesses?
EU membership means small businesses can move goods and services across both the EU and EEA without paying any customs duties, a system which opens up greater opportunities for small businesses to trade across the continent.
It’s estimated that being part of the EU has increased trade between the UK and some European countries by as much as 50%
This trade arrangement provides a standardised set of rules when it comes to customs procedures and this reduces a lot of the paperwork and admin faced by businesses doing business internationally.
If this freedom of movement is removed, not only will it make it more difficult for UK businesses to trade across Europe, it’ll also mean there’s more red tape to negotiate.
There is also free movement for all workers across the EU, which means talent can be brought in from a much bigger pool than if businesses were restricted to only employing UK nationals, else encounter more red tape.
How does EU membership hold back UK small businesses?
Current EU regulations on patents are strict and this can stifle innovation and hold back industries trying to enter new markets and attract new customers. It’s believed an EU exit will instantly see much of this red tape removed and allow imaginative small businesses to prosper.
The UK pays an annual net contribution of around £8.6 billion – that’s more than £23 million per day – to be a member of the EU, money which the pro-leave campaign argue could be invested directly back into UK small businesses to help both new start-ups and existing businesses.
While it would never be a simple case of splitting this money between all small businesses, the suggestion is that there would be more money to go around.
How does EU membership benefit UK consumers?
EU health and safety legislation means that any products designed and sold within the EU must adhere to strict safety regulations and stand up to scrutiny under stringent quality control, which means it’s harder for companies to cut corners and sell unsafe goods to turn a profit.
If UK companies no longer have to meet these stringent safety regulations we could see businesses selling sub-standard, even dangerous, merchandise. This issue could impact a number of manufacturing industries, but farmers and food distributors have voiced their concern regarding an array of chemicals, preservatives and farming methods, that are currently banned in the UK, but not in the USA. With a UK exit from the EU, the entire industry and food processing itself, could be changed drastically.
So what will an EU exit mean for UK small businesses?
It’s impossible to say whether UK small businesses will sink or swim if the ‘leave’ campaign is successful, as there are pros and cons for each eventuality – it really is a trip into the unknown.
The Open Europe think tank has estimated that while an EU exit could see UK Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grow by 1.6% by 2030, it also forecasts a worst-case scenario could cost the UK 2.2% of its GDP.
There are so many potential implications for UK businesses that could be impacted by either staying in, or voting out of the EU.
For example the EU data protection rules that became law in 2018 affected everyone in the EU. If we leave the EU, it could mean less restrictions on data – great for people working in digital marketing like myself (it’s much easier to target specific buyer-personas and demographics when I manage USA accounts vs UK ones), but is this in the interest of the consumers and internet-users?
This is one example of how subjective things can easily get. As a business owner you may prefer ‘looser’ laws around data, but the general public may not. To put this into context, let’s say you own a vegan food shop in Manchester, stricter EU laws make it more difficult to target vegans living in specific parts of Manchester…
One thing’s for sure, Brexit appears to be having a very positive impact on UK tourism and with more Brits likely to stay at home this summer, thanks to the push by protesters concerned with global warming; there could be a real boom in the industry.
