Our Daily Articles: Complete Index 2008–2020

The sort of customers we deal with probably search for ‘reviews’ just like consumers do, but what they’re really after is a demonstration.

If you think about nothing else, consider setting a ‘brand tone’ for your business. Most other things will cascade down from this.

To balance your budget between short- and a long-term investment, splitting it between Google Ads and content writing could be smart.

The product may not generate much of a thrill, but what it can do for the customer could be a different matter.

Think carefully about how you set up the UTM codes. These can be anything you like, but you’ll want them consistent and grouped.

Think of LinkedIn as an evolving, public CV showing your authority and expertise, and you might put more effort into adding content there.

The titles of pages in Google Search results will be cut off in different places, so getting the important words at the start is important.

If you’re just putting over one straightforward message, more than ever I’d try to put the whole thing in the email

That long tail, in total, could easily account for far more traffic than the few headline terms at the top.

As you’d expect, it’s pretty good at just about everything, although you will need to add ‘plug-ins’ to ensure you get the most out of it.

Weigh up the commitment you’re asking them to make and the value they’re going to get from it. Then sell that value.

I still come across businesses which don’t define goals and the associated results required, yet measure performance regardless

Google claims the change makes ads more distinguishable, even if every normal human I’ve spoken to thinks otherwise.

Whenever I get an important email, I add the sender’s address to a filter ensuring their emails never get sent to the spam folder in future

If you’re in a situation where a fax needs to be sent or received, and you don’t have a fax machine, what are your options?

Where ‘a whole new way of working’ comes in is to have discussions recorded and the transcriptions used primarily as a searchable index.

One tip to in-house company video directors: ensure that the interviewee knows the day before that they’ll be taking part in a video.

For product pages, it may make sense to strip back the URL to the important stuff (the product name) while adding some helpful descriptors.

It makes sense to ensure your company page is set up well, because that’s where readers are likely to turn after reading your content.

If you’re not personalising your marketing more in 2020, just remember that your competitors may well be. Video is just another outlet.

Hmm… not many enquiries and an inability to knock up tailored landing pages? I suspect most readers will identify themselves here.

How convenient is responding to your advertising? Or finding out a crucial technical specification about one of your products?

It’s becoming increasingly clear that the direction in which we’re heading inexorably is one where the marketer needs to be more empathetic.

If your keywords make sense as tags, use them, but also investigate what existing highly-performing videos are using as their tags.

Search adverts against your competitors’ brand names are not a good idea, as it can be expensive and have unintended consequences.

We don’t have scope for experimenting with direct mail; it needs to be right first time …and here’s where our online capabilities come in.

It could well be a good investment of time or money to take a serious look at a whole range of speed-related aspects.

A nice walk in your lunch hour to think about things wouldn’t go amiss once a year. Or once a decade.

My sample of clients’ websites is showing a doubling of mobile traffic share in the last three years, typically from 10–20% to 25–40%.

I’ve mentioned the ‘title’ attribute for web page elements, and the ‘alt’ attribute. Now we need to talk about ‘caption’ and ‘description’.

Should I use the ‘title’ attribute on images and links? No.

This may cover different things at different companies; many don’t include the salaries of the marketing team in this, for example.

The key is to be somebody who answers questions regularly. Join in the sites as a community member, and be respectful as well as helpful.

Great salespeople get prospects to identify their situation and offer material to demonstrate credibility. Can we do this on a website? Yes we can.

Politicians know what resonates with people. They need to communicate relevance, and they do this by showing how they’ll improve our lot.