It’s a simple question. If a business does not have a website are they doomed to fail? Well no, because obviously it is possible to market and promote yourself offline. The decision will differ for every business with some not having the ability to market themselves in any other way and some choosing to invest in more traditional methods such as newspaper advertising because they are more comfortable with it.
Let’s clear up what sort of business we are talking about here. Firstly, if you are an online retailer then yes, you need a site, its pretty straightforward. I will count into ‘having a site’ those who have developed an eBay store and the like since the fact remains that you have some dedicated page somewhere on the worldwide-interweb-net where you are promoting yourself. But, everyone else, small or large, new or old, does everyone need a site?
In order to understand whether you do, go back to basics and do a spot of research into your market. Let’s say you sell sweets, in fact let’s be specific and say retro sweets since this is what one of our clients does. The company is cornering the UK retro sweets market which they happen to know very well. Did they need a site? Well, the market is geographically far-reaching ruling out the ability to capture the market with a single high street presence. The market on the whole is also very broad with a heavy weighting towards the 25-40 age bracket who remember the sweets first time around. This means they are statistically very likely to be using the web. So, it would clearly be beneficial to promote your business within an environment shared by your market, however, it still isn’t a must. Read the rest of this entry »
Well, it has been a couple of weeks since I posted the contents of a free SEO guide we put together to help new clients to get their heads around what was required from a natural search campaign. If you missed the article you can find the FREE Webfaced SEO Guide here.
What I want to focus on this time around is a simple checklist of considerations for PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising. These are the paid ads that appear at the top and the right of a search results page. These ads, unlike their natural listings to the left are the result of a paid campaign whereby the advertiser pays a certain amount for every click the ad receives. PPC provides a highly measurable marketing medium. To know the value of a click, you need to decide what the goal of your advertising is. If you are just branding, then you should expect to lose money to gain mindshare. If you are using pay-per-click to generate direct product sales you need to know how much each click is worth. Most clicks end up being failures so even if you have a 30% conversion rate, 7 out of 10 clicks did nothing for you (and they cost you money). When you begin PPC advertising you stand a good chance of losing money before you start making it.
Well that sounds really positive, thanks, sign me up.
Keep reading! PPC is a highly measurable way of reaching your market and whilst it can be run at any point to boost traffic, where Webfaced almost always recommends a paid search strategy to clients is when their sites have just launched. Read the rest of this entry »
For the first time this week I heard someone talk about social media and they actually talked some sense. I like people that talk sense, they inspire me.
Anyone following the Webfaced tweets this week will know that the TFM&A exhibition (Technology for Marketing & Advertising) was in town. However, it was not during a seminar at Earls Court that I heard such sense being talked. Actually, all TFM&A did was to demonstrate why few people will earn the right to be called a social media expert (even if they declare themselves to be one). This post is dedicated to someone who was NOT at TFM&A, Chris Buckley, who heads-up social media consulting for the social PR agency, Headstream.
I can’t get through a day without hearing the constant sound of tweeting and trying to get through an evening without being poked to death by a friend is impossible. So why do I say that there is no such thing as social media? Well, because I wanted to make a sensationalist statement to inspire you to read this post. There is such a thing of course, however, “social media” is a term I loathe because it leads people to place too much emphasis on the ‘media’ part and not enough on what is ’social’ about it.
For many clients, the creation of a website signals the end of a process. The build may have been done internally or by an agency but whichever way it happened it is likely that a lot of time, effort, thought and money went into its creation. The fact is that once a website has been built it should never be the end of the process, your website’s existence does not guarantee its success!
A simple analogy normally gets entered at this stage so we will of course oblige! If you decided to open a shop on your local high street the grand opening would be a momentous occasion. You might have banners and balloons, music playing and maybe even enlist the help of last year’s Big Brother runner-up to hand out flyers. Some will be enticed into the shop by the banner on the door, some by the products they can see in the window and some just to witness last year’s Big Brother runner-up’s rapid fall from celebrity!
At the end of your first day you might have sold a few items and certainly some people will have gone home and talked about your new shop and what you sell; good times. Read the rest of this entry »
We have been busy working with a number of clients over the last month who have launched a site and then sensibly wanted to address Search Marketing. This is great but unfortunately SEO isn’t the easiest subject to pick up and many people still feel that the launch of their site is the end of their online project… if only!
So… we have put together a FREE SEO guide to set you on the right track in terms of understanding the task ahead.
If you want to discuss any of it with us just drop us a line. Feel free to share the document and tweet it if you find it helpful.
Well, well, well. A little late but hey, it’s a busy time of year for everyone. The Webfaced site is now live (obviously, you are on it!) and it looks great, what a great job the whole team have done at Webfaced Towers!
It’s always a difficult project to do something for yourself when you have projects for clients that need finalising, there never seems to be a good time and certainly no point when you can comfortably say, “right, some me time I think”. Still, we got there in the end and not a single client project slipped which is the main thing!
So, what to expect from the site and in particular this blog? As an agency it is our job to stay up to date with what is happening in the big bad world of online design and we hope to be able to report back here with things we see. What you will get is an honest view of our world so this blog will hopefully become a nice little diary as we journey on through online projects and work with various clients as we go.
I dare say we will be moaning about certain things, praising certain things, getting excited and feeling suicidal about things and generally allowing you to see the world through our eyes. Why? Well, it kind of follows our ethos as a company. If you were to sit down with any one of the team here at Webfaced you would soon see that we tell it like it is. We believe in transparency and we see no reason to ‘pretend’ to be something we are not. This blog gives us the opportunity to display this way of working to you, the reader.
Hopefully, you will one day require help with a web design project or an SEO strategy and because of what you have read on these pages you will feel a little better informed as to what we offer and also a little closer to us. If that is the case then great because you will know us even before we start working together. We believe it is understanding that allows a project to succeed. We need to understand you though so please, if you want to have your say in response to something we have said go ahead!
Well, that’s it for the first post on the new site… speak soon!
Dominic, MD
