Ultimate Marketing For Christmas

DB Christmas Wreath thumbnail

Christmas is a peak time to build brand awareness and generate more visitors. Companies grab the attention of customers with the most engaging social media content, best contest ideas and unique Christmas giveaway ideas. If you want a good chance at capturing some of this extra attention for yourself, prepare/start seasonal promotions and offers ahead of time and fully embrace the festivities and fun.

  • Choose to market products and services that are easy to sell and represent your wider offering.
  • Aim to not only increase sales but customer loyalty. The same customers can be reengaged with other marketing opportunities throughout the year.
  • Embrace the Christmas spirit and maintain a strong connection with your brand. Your brand is already designed to stand out against your competitors, so don’t be shy about embracing the engaging sights and sounds of Christmas. It’s not just to add a festive touch to your social posts. Your campaign still has to set itself apart from Christmas marketing online and offline.

Marketing Ideas to Consider

A quick and easy Pay Per Click campaign on Facebook involves creating a target audience based on their online activity and engagements. To maximise results early, you can engage your customers in the weeks running up to Christmas. For example, invite all of your followers to post their favorite gift ideas or local charities, and use this information to help create a social media campaign that your followers have had a hand in. This also helps to maximise the organic reach of your later paid campaigns.

Interactive campaigns are very modern and perfect for seasonal marketing. We recently helped a client with a digital scratch game using simple QR codes. Extensions of this idea included unlockable discounts themed as Christmas Gifts or something similarly fitting. Cleverly executed discount campaigns can help to get people engaged and spending money in the run up to Christmas.

Some of the most fun or catchy seasonal campaign videos go ‘viral’. At the time of writing, the Romford M&S store team heads for the charts with their own catchy Christmas song. As noted in the article, one person in the comments said the film was better than a professional Christmas advert. Further, the release is raising money for homeless charity Shelter and Together4ShortLives which works with terminally ill children. While this is not the easiest or most comfortable idea for every team, the results can be staggering.

Need help getting started?

Drive By Websites Ltd can help you build your festive website landing pages, create your Pay Per Click campaigns, design your bespoke festive materials, send your seasonal newsletter. Whatever you need, we’re here to help. Give us a call on 01775 761512 or contact us online.

Adding Value To Your Website – From One Page To Ecommerce

online content marketing SEO

It can undoubtedly be difficult to generate new content on the same topics regularly, but we are here to remind you of a few different ways to keep your site ranking highly in Google without always covering the same ground. Some suggestions might be new to you and as always we’re here to help. Here are a few suggestions for how to rethink your website content:

  • In 2021, YouTube is quickly becoming one of the most valuable marketing platforms to share useful or engaging content with returning/potential customers. Social video content in general is easily accessible on mobile devices without the extra effort of reading or scrolling. The same is true of your website. By connecting relevant search terms to your video and connecting the content to your website, customers can discover and follow your other content and website offerings.
  • You can use your website to help limit unpredictable customer service costs such as time spent answering social media enquiries or answering calls. With this your website can help provide a service to your customers and the business itself. As an example, Frequently asked questions (FAQ) areas can be a lot of work to write but will inevitably save time and money for your business.
  • Social media content is a perfect microcosm for your target customers to help determine the effectiveness and engagement of certain topics and content. With those valuable social media insights, you can expand on topics across your website and wider social network. From there, including prominent social sharing facilities on your website content is necessary to maximise the potential for visitors to share and attract new visitors.
  • You might think of writing relevant and engaging content as the only factor in achieving maximum value for money for your advertising and marketing, however your website can turn viewers into followers by offering newsletter subscriptions, coupon/discount sign ups and membership areas. A few simple tools on your website can even make this remarkably simple.
  • Social Giveaways can be vastly more engaging on social media than traditional content and fortunately it can be just as simple to write in valuable search terms and keywords for optimising your website. Services such as kingsumo actually make it even simpler to create landing pages for your giveaways that can attract entries for likes, follows, shares and email sign ups. With a bit of integration to your website, you’ll soon be able to regularly generate hundreds of extra followers and mailing list subscribers for little extra effort or expense than traditional content marketing.

Don’t leave your visitors hanging around or bouncing off your site, spend some time extracting as much value as possible from your website visitors.

Is Content Still King in 2021?

Over half of UK marketing companies prioritise blogging as their primary content marketing strategy. Clearly generating leads online is considerably easier when producing engaging and relevant content. When this is combined with other relevant value adding strategies such as the above examples, the process of acquiring and converting visitors into customers on your website has never been as effortless. It all starts with relevant original content. If you’re struggling to generate new ideas or exposure to the right demographics, we can help with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) or implementing techniques such as those above. For businesses that are actively exploring content marketing opportunities, give us a call on 01775 761512 or contact us online.

SEO, Social Marketing, Lincolnshire Content Marketing, Business in Lincolnshire SEO

Cookie Acceptance Is Almost Over – Thankfully

privacy

No more accepting cookies?

Oliver Dowden, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, said today that he plans to do away with “endless” cookie acceptance on websites.

The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which came into force in 2018, introduced cookie acceptance. It was not long before the futility of this feature was recognised across the country. While many businesses may still be overlooking data privacy and modern data management, even the most privacy conscious of our clients will not miss these banners. It is widely regarded as a pointless ‘tick to accept’ barrier that rarely even constitutes informed consent.

Reducing data barriers

Alternative regulations could see websites ‘assume’ consent, which seems a reasonable assumption in conjunction with the ability to retract or refuse this. This would allow website owners to provide customers an uninhibited browsing experience. Good website design simply does not go hand in hand with box ticking and popups. In fact, £11billion worth of trade is scuppered because of data barriers according to Mr Dowden.

Drive By Websites Ltd have helped hundreds of clients, both in Spalding and across the country. Our advice is always to take every data precaution and abide by the law. Contact us for help or advice with data security for businesses.

Get Competitive on your Website Homepage

homepage SEO impact

You probably already know that your website homepage gets the most views. That's why it is so fundamental to the success of your website. Making an impressive, speedy and competitive homepage might not be as tough as you think. We have made a few simple suggestions below to help you reimagine your homepage content.

For more information or help getting started with homepage improvements, please contact us.

Stop Using The Same Password!

Hosting Lincolnshire

Over 500 Million Exposed in Facebook Data Breach

In April 2021, approximately 20% of Facebook’s subscribers were exposed in a data breach. The data was allegedly obtained by exploiting a vulnerability Facebook says they rectified in August 2019. Records contained telephone numbers, email addresses, names, genders, dates of birth, location, relationship status and employer.

Why it Matters

When web hosts are compromised or broken, the data on their servers can be exposed to persons that should not have been able to view it. The regularity of these breaches should be highly concerning for anyone shopping and browsing the web. Unfortunately, many people are unknowingly already compromised. Anyone can help victims learn of their compromised accounts. With data breaches have been rampant in recent years, we encourage everyone to check by using a useful online resource: haveibeenpwned.com

Using the same password?

Businesses rarely change their email address and doing so is often considered bad for business. However, this presents a unique risk to businesses, particularly using the same password across multiple websites and accounts. It might only take a single account to be compromised for them all to be. When you consider the scale of this issue, If you’re a business then also consider the risk to your customers data by extension.

Get Notified If Your Account Gets Compromised

Visit haveibeenpwned.com and use the ‘Notify Me’ function to be made aware of your data being exposed. Use this to eliminate compromised passwords. In addition to this, you must avoid using the same password multiple times.

Is It Too Late To Upgrade? Websites in 2020

website upgrade covid

Our blog earlier this year, ‘Redevelop and Remain Productive‘, was intended to remind people that it’s never been more important to have an up to date website. The opening line reads:

“If you find yourself debating how you will remain productive during this difficult period, we suggest you start with your website.”

As we head into 2021, I am confident your business will continue to face new challenges with the same resilience that so many of our clients have. However, if you did not get round to your website, perhaps your competitors did?

It might be time to take a look over your competition online and check you’re still on the cutting edge. If you aren’t providing sufficient opportunity for your customers to help you through this difficult period, your business and Google ranking will suffer. We have been helping our clients analyse their competition from around the country in order to help keep them focus their priorities. While different sectors vary greatly, there has been a huge uptake in instant engagement systems.

Businesses that had previously focused their attention on social media adapted incredibly well, with many find opportunities for higher engagement. Examples of this were offerings of support into their communities. These contributions to support causes and charities were exposed to a captive audience over the lockdown and for many this was perfect advertising. That heightened engagement carried over to websites, with many more businesses using integrated social media messaging and live chat systems.

Businesses that had not previously used social media or had neglected it are finding their customer engagement is still not returning to normal. Expanding your online offering could be one of the simplest ways to adapt to the changing times. We can take care of all of your requirements and make it as simple as possible for your team to adjust to.

“We might not be running if our website wasn’t ready before the lockdown and we just wanted to say how thankful we are. You took us out of the dark ages!”

A live chat facility offers a simple faceless contact window for website visitors to acquire quick answers to their questions. If you are not available to answer these live chat queries, you could opt for an Automated Chat Bot. These are growing very popular on websites and Facebook pages. The information you can capture from these passing customers may be very valuable to your business. It will also help you improve your website as customers will inform you where your content could be improved.

If you rather speaking to your customers, there’s an option for that too. Smartphone users are very unlikely to scroll down and read a whole load of content wording and then send you an email, especially if there’s a lengthy form to complete. Because your mobile visitors are already holding their phone, allow them to call you with one simple touch of the button. No more copy-and-pasting or memorising the phone number for your customers.

Here To Help

If you’re short of ideas, we’re here to help. The generic advice we post on our blog relates to as many businesses and organisations as possible. We can provide highly specific advice based on your customers needs and competitor analysis. Contact us for more information on how you can enhance and improve your website.

Website Designer Spalding

Boston Website Development

Redevelop and Remain Productive

covid-19

COVID-19 has put immense pressure on businesses. If you find yourself debating how you will remain productive during this difficult period, we suggest you start with your website.

Generating Money

It’s an important time to consider whether you have maximised your potential website earnings. Both to acquire new business and also to directly generate income.

Cloudfare is a very powerful page cache and content delivery network. This system will deliver your content faster than your competitors and help maintain a higher website ranking.

If you are selling on your website, expand on your product content. If not, you can expand on your service pages with new content. Stuck for ideas? Testimonials are easy to acquire and can provide many paragraphs of new relevant content.

No products? You may not realise the opportunity exists but there are lots of original ways to generate income directly from your website.

  • Merchandise
  • Service Deposits
  • Advertising Space
  • Used Equipment

Customer Service

You can improve your customer service offering with a live chat facility to encourage faceless contact and allow people to acquire quick answers to their questions. If you are not available to answer these live chat queries, you could opt for an Automated Chat Bot. These are growing very popular on websites and Facebook pages. You can read more about them here:

https://drivebywebsites.co.uk/2020/02/05/automated-chat-bot/

Smartphone users are very unlikely to scroll down and read a whole load of content wording and then send you an email, especially if there’s a lengthy form to complete. Because your mobile visitors are already holding their phone, allow them to call you with one simple touch of the button. No more copy-and-pasting or memorising the phone number for your customers. Read more here:

https://drivebywebsites.co.uk/2019/05/23/click-to-call-the-single-best-feature-for-mobile-viewers/

Community Support

During this difficult period, if you feel you have something to announce to your clients or surrounding area then get it online. Here are some examples:

  • Product/Service to support the vulnerable
  • Discounts
  • Closing down until further notice
  • Changing opening times
  • Frequently asked questions
  • Service changes (avoiding contact etc)

Here To Help

Contact us for more information on how you can enhance and improve your website.

Automated Chat Bot for your Website and Facebook Page

drive by chat bot

In 2018 we heavily promoted the benefits of Live Chat facilities on website. At the time, research had found that customers respond very positively to the idea of a live chat over a contact form on a website. As well as this, employees using live chat features can productively engage with far more people at one time. But how can we top this in 2020?

Talking to multiple customers over the phone is clearly more time consuming than holding multiple live chats with your website visitors. However, the next productivity feature is here and it could make live chat boxes redundant in time.

 

Automated Chat Bot

Predefined questions and automated responses on your Website and Facebook Page.

 

We’ve written out a summary of what this interesting new trend actually offers to your business.

An automated chat bot can converse fluidly with website and Facebook users. Google’s Natural Language Processing allows the chat bot to provide realistic small talk and natural interaction that mimics the real world. Not only can they be programmed to manage your enquiries but It can also search your website, send contact details and provide user feedback.

These facilities are being improved all the time and already offer a significant competitive edge. Ultimately, it does a better job at converting visitors than your website does alone. It will still not replace manned live chat facilities for many companies but the limited time required makes the chat bot feature a serious consideration for overnight/weekend enquiries. With a chat bot you can sit back and collect more leads, conversions and satisfied customers without any effort.

Even predefined questions and answers alone will still generate more conversions than the ‘No one is Available to Chat’ message that can often be seen on a live chat box. So if you are considering an upgrade, give us a call on 01775 761512 or email [email protected]

Our Highest Performance Servers To Date

Upgrade server

We’re introducing a waiting list for our upcoming server upgrades. Clients can change over their existing annual hosting arrangements for an upgraded monthly arrangement on brand-new high-performance servers.

We’ve made some comparisons of single sites on both server specifications and found that the upgraded servers are clocking in at over twice the speed of standard hosting. The cost of owning and managing these systems is substantial so we’re preparing a waiting list to kickstart this service upgrade.

Performance and value are always our priority. The best prices are available from hosting multiple sites. However, the price is not always our client’s priority. If you are ready for a step up in speed and security, then transferring to a high-performance server is the next step you need to take.

How To Upgrade Your Hosting

If you’re interested in this upgrade and would like to be added to the waiting list, please contact us.

The WooCommerce App – More Mobile Advancements

The WooCommerce App could allow you to save time and effort by allowing you to manage your online shop at any time while on the move. The app is powered by Jetpack and has a lot of useful features. If you don’t have an online shop yet, this could be enough to tempt anyone over to WooCommerce.

woocommerce appMonitor Your Online Shop

Find out which products are performing best

Check your total income

View order/visitor data by day, week, month and year

Mobile Sales Facilities

Filter through specific orders and order details

Expand on order information such as product(s), value, customer data, shipping details, and notes.

Simple order fulfilment

Mobile Order Notifications

Get notified about activity such as new orders and product reviews on your products (including a cha-ching sound!)

Drive By App Review

Effective across multiple types of devices. Quite a simplistic app overall but if you’re looking to be informed of orders as quickly as possible then this would be a great option. If you’re looking to replace the dashboard of your website completely, it’s not there yet in our opinion. I am happy to recommend an app that doesn’t do everything if it does what is claims to. Once the app evolves, we might need to revisit the review.

Connect Your Shop

We’re going to be testing out these new features with existing clients. If you’re not an existing customer and you’re interested in finding out if your website is compatible then call us on 01775 761 512.