How many times have you needed to get in touch with a company about a product you’ve ordered or a service they have delivered, only to find that the advertised means of contact is an online form which can take up to 24 hours for a response? 

As a species, technology and innovation are making us more impatient – and more demanding. When we have questions or issues to raise, we want to be able to do so immediately, and we want to know that our message will not only be acknowledged but also responded to. 

Enter the new world of social media marketing. 

We are constantly being told about how social media is an important, modern part of the customer journey – both during the discovery phase, the research phase, and the follow up phase. For companies who are on top of their social media and are utilising it seamlessly, this means that everything from reviews to complaints are likely to be received through social platforms – with Facebook ranking as the most popular platform for businesses. But what about the benefits of social media marketing, and messaging in particular? 

What is social media marketing?

Social media marketing refers not only to the use of social media for advertising and marketing products and services, but also includes direct messaging and commenting as a means of contacting a company and/or responding to customers. Initially designed as just another means of online contact, advances across the industry have meant that automated chatbots are now an integral part of every social media strategy – especially when it comes to Facebook Messenger marketing, which is the outlet of choice for most modern consumers seeking a way to get in contact with a company at all hours of the day (and night). 

The benefits of chatbots when it comes to Facebook Messenger marketing

There are a broad range of benefits that come with using social media as an integrated part of your marketing strategy, but chatbots sit up there as the most beneficial aspect to come from Facebook Messenger marketing in particular. 

Far from the robotic images and flat responses that many envisage when they think about chatbots, modern chatbots are interactive, engaging, and able to use everything from words to visuals and videos by means of response to a variety of questions, issues and comments. Of course, in ascertaining and identifying the benefits of using chatbots in your Facebook Messenger strategy, the first thing to note is the simple fact that your communication lines are always open – unlike real team members, chatbots don’t need sleep. With this in mind, chatbots are especially popular with global brands where their customer base lives across a huge variety of time zones and thus may need assistance at any time of the day or night. 

Another benefit of integrating chatbots into your Facebook Messenger marketing plan is that they can provide consumers with simple answers to a huge range of questions – thus eradicating a huge load of admin for your social media team. More often than not, consumers contacting you through social media will be after a quick response – for example, the stock levels of a certain product, or the status of a delivery driver. These require factual, quick responses which can be delivered seamlessly by a chatbot. 

For those instances where a more personalised response is required, the developments in AI mean that this is becoming more possible every day. By being able to differentiate the products and services required by different individuals, and by using the details they provide in order to generate personalised responses, the future for chatbots – and for sales conversion – is bright. 

As well as the efficient and effective responses created by chatbots, additional information and benefits that can be gained through the use of chatbots include:

• Data Analysis of your target audience
• Communication learnings about how your audience interact with your brand on social
• A broader understanding of where your target audience are and what they look like
• Seamless payments through a central platform

Other benefits of Facebook Messenger Marketing

As well as being able to use chatbots to replicate and engage in personal and direct conversations, there are a handful of other benefits that come with using Facebook Messenger marketing as a company or brand. 

For one thing, the messenger platform allows you to integrate with your target audience on a platform which works for them and which they regularly use as part of their everyday internet activity. All too often we see brands and companies losing out on that crucial transition from browser to buyer, simply because they are not presenting a presence that is readily available across different platforms. If you only allow customers to ask questions through a contact form on your website, or by dialling a number and being put on a hold list, the likelihood is that you will lose a large chunk of potential business from those who would rather quick on a quick chat icon and receive an automatic response. 

And finally, why not consider Facebook Messenger marketing as a way to acknowledge and generate information about orders and delivery notifications? A massive 85% of people say they want to be able to text back after receiving a push notification – so it follows that using Facebook Messenger marketing to control those kinds of notifications could open up a channel for conversation and ongoing communication. 

Why you should integrate Facebook Messenger marketing today

Facebook is the OG of all the social media platforms when it comes to consumer – business interactions, and as such it is leading the way with the integration with direct messaging, consistent communication and advertising, and chatbots. The future of your business could well rest in the way that you employ and use social media in the coming weeks and months, particularly with the 2020 pandemic driving more and more people to browse and shop online. 

Create a seamless consumer experience using chatbots and messenger apps – and watch as browsers start to become buyers.

My SEO Predictions for 2021

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) has long been considered an integral part of the digital and online marketing world, using the power of keywords and valuable internal and external website links to increase your organic search results and increase the level of genuine audience traffic moving onto your website.

There are a huge variety of aspects which go into a high quality SEO campaign strategy, and as such more and more companies are looking to recruit experts and entire outsourced services which are dedicated to increasing and improving their SEO.

This article looks a little more closely at the areas in which SEO could grow over the next year, considering the ways that technical reliance will continue to adapt and change the ways that we use online to communicate with our customers and clients.

Taking our learnings from 2020 into 2021

If there has ever been a time that online strategy has been important, it’s been this year.

With businesses being forced to close their doors, limit their capacity and completely change the way in which they interact with customers, the value of social media and a strong online presence has been felt across the business world, regardless of industry.

From recruitment and advertising vacancies, to launching new products and services, sharing testimonials and internal stories, and simply communicating with clients and customers, everything in 2020 has been about finding new and innovative solutions – and a lot of this will carry on over in 2021 as more businesses herald the value of a strong online presence.

In terms of SEO, this means an increased focus on understanding who your target customer is and how to reach them.

It means knowing what search terms and solutions your customers are searching and looking for, and how they might come across your brand or website page.

It means producing high quality content which proves your worth as an expert in your industry or field.

Most of all, it means creating and maintaining a website which is as much written for usability and reader value, as it is designed for Google and a high SEO ranking.

What SEO will look like in 2021

One of my biggest predictions for SEO in 2021 revolves around a more connected use of search results which combine standard content with GIF’s, videos, images and other graphics. The world is becoming increasingly visual and more and more users are finding visual guides just as easy to use – if not more so – than standard written guides and chunks of content.

If you can elevate the value of your website with some internal and external video content, using the right keywords and meta tags for Google to trawl through, you will find that image recognition technology provides a boost in your company’s prominence both on Google and other search engines.

Another way that SEO will shift focus in 2021 is towards more of a well-rounded user experience, which combines and blends social media presence with email communication, influencer marketing and affiliate marketing.

If you can get high quality third party sites and influencers to repost and link back to your landing pages, as well as including relevant external content on your own site, the chain of high quality links will serve you well and will create seamless user experiences which not only read well in terms of Google but also mean that more active consumers will read more about and potentially click through to your site.

When it comes to link building, I do have two of my own top tips to share to help you harness the power of links in 2021 and beyond:

1.      Keep your links about quality rather than quantity.

2.      Don’t outsource your link building to just any another company, as the risk is too high: there are so many organisations out there which sell link building solutions and ultimately will end up packing your website with spam. Put the time in and build internal and external links up yourself.

And then we have content itself, and the way in which companies will continue to use content as the main driving force in their SEO strategy.

Keywords remain an integral part of a consistent and high quality SEO strategy, and so the higher the value of content you can create and share on your site and other online platforms, the better.

However, far too often I see bloggers and writers simply stuffing their content full of keywords which make little sense – and unfortunately, Google has outgrown us in terms of intelligence; now able to read and identify every time a keyword has been used as a space filler.

What this means is that, now more than ever, SEO strategy has to use keywords in a smart and intelligent way which highlights value and relevance, without going over the top. 

Steps you can take to improve your SEO in 2021

Google will often change its algorithms with little warning, and so one of the best steps you can take to keep your SEO relevant and up to date is continuing to watch and keep an eye on technical innovation and online reports about new ways that the internet is being used – across all devices.

One of the main areas that I predict Google will focus on in 2021 is mobile optimisation across all devices, in terms of delivering a high end user experience to every used regardless of how they interact with a site. It is no longer enough to deliver the same homepage on a computer and a smartphone – the sites must be tailored to the end user and the way that they are using the site.

I could go on for pages about the ways in which SEO will shift and change in 2021, but for me the key lessons to take and implement are these:

·        Put time and thought into the ways that you can prove and showcase expertise and authority in your industry or sector.

·        Create content which does more than share the keywords a few times. Make every blog and article count – and remember, the better the content, the more likely it is to be shared.

I hope that’s of some use to you, I’m happy to thrash ideas around, so if you’re looking at starting or improving your SEO in ’21 – give me a shout or head over to kaizen-digital.com for more info.

Have you ever seen the following, anywhere – “source: Dude, trust me”? If so good, then this will be easier. If not, you’ll get the gist I’m sure. We are told all the time that content is important, that content marketing will help save you time, money and resources. We are told that it will get your message out, increase your visibility and strengthening your sales. OK, great. Source?

Well, Bill Gates once famously said that content is king. He’s an idiot. Do you realise how much spammy, useless pages flew into the aether because of that? Us either, but it’s a lot. Content is not king, quality content is

Why is quality content important?

Content doesn’t magically appear; it would be great if it did, but it doesn’t. It requires thought, planning, in-depth knowledge of the subject matter and it’s also important to know how to write it so that:

• It gets found
• It informs
• It is shareable
• It is memorable – for the right reasons

Honestly, quality content the most powerful tool in your digital marketing arsenal. We would go so far as to say it the only tool. After all, your social channels would be empty without it – you will go so far with stolen memes. You will also have nothing for your website, YouTube channels, podcasts… Nothing. Oh, and yes YouTube and podcasts… unless you wing it with no script, like a savage.

Because digital marketing is so vital for businesses today, you can’t very well expect your business to succeed without it. Not anymore.

Why you need quality content

The internet is like the world’s largest library, with every type of content imaginable that answers any question that you can throw at it (except maybe, ‘have God and Morgan Freeman ever been seen in the same room?’) and it is being constantly updated. Everyone is competing for business, and whatever it is that you do – there are a dozen others in your town doing the same thing and they all want the same customers. What are you going to do about that?

People are busy looking on the internet to buy what you are selling. How are you going to see to it that they buy from you and not a competitor in town? Content and content marketing makes it possible for your potential customers to find you, and much faster than they would otherwise.

There are other reasons, naturally. Such as:

• Quality content helps build your brand relationships

People, some time ago, fell out of love with the faceless corporation. Big business realised this in time to take advantage of it. At no other point in recent history could you name the CEOs of the biggest companies on the planet. People trust people, not logos or slogans. They want a relationship with the brand they want to invest in, however small that investment may be.

• More and better customers cost you less
  

The return on investment in great content and content marketing is obscene. In a good way. Depending on how well the content matches the needs of your audience, you could be enjoying conversion rates as much as 6 times higher than if you had no plan at all.

That’s just two other points, and I could go on, but the point is abundantly clear: content was, is and always will be the cornerstone of any marketing plan – especially of the content variety.

Excellent content sells. Source: you just read it.

If you need help, call me on 0044 (0)7486 571 264 or email me on dj@kaizen-digital.com

10 Benefits of SEO For Your Business

To be frank, every business (especially now) should be working towards building a strong organic presence in the search engines, whether in-house or outsourcing to an expert (hint hint…). 

Properly done with user intent in mind, SEO can often work more effectively than most other digital marketing strategies, so read on to see how SEO can be used to grow your business and its profits.

Fun fact… Every day your website is not optimised for the search engines you are losing money to your competitors.

Allow me to explain:

1. Your services are being searched for ON LINE.

There are millions of people doing billions of searches daily, and if you’re not optimising your site and content properly for search terms relevant to your services, you don’t stand a chance of being heard through all the noise. As a basic strategy if you are just starting out, don’t try and rank for ultra competitive keywords such as “recruitment”. Although search volume for (as an example) “fintech recruitment agency Manchester” may only show 15 people searching per month, the INTENTION of these searches is high, meaning if you’re optimised for that “long tail keyword”, your chances of conversion are significantly higher.  

2. Quality over quantity of traffic every…single…time.

People are actively looking for what they search for, whether their need be immediate or for future reference. If you rank on page 1 for their search, you’re almost guaranteed to get their attention. If you’re page two… who are you?? Proper SEO will ensure that the RIGHT people are hitting your site through effective targeting. There’s no point in attracting people to you business who will NEVER be interested in, or in a position to secure your services. 

3. Traffic from SEO converts more.

Most websites analytics show that their organic traffic is the one with the highest conversion rate, as mentioned above… it’s all about the search intent. Rank for the right keywords and people will come and convert.

4. Increase your sales and leads with SEO

Before revenue comes leads. And SEO is fantastic for INBOUND lead generation. A properly optimised site with properly optimised landing pages and an enticing Call To Action (CTA) will result in additional leads. An individual leaving their details for a call back, is already a more qualified lead than a cold call, as they’ve found their way to your site with INTENTION to engage you.

5. SEO can lower your Cost Per Acquisition (CPA).

Compared to paid ads (Google PPC etc) CPA is generally lower with SEO. Even when outsourcing the SEO, in the long run you often pay less than you might spend on ads to get the same amount of clients. 

6. SEO is organic, you don’t pay for each click.

Pay Per Click advertising (PPC) can be massively expensive for firms starting out or with restrictive budgets. Although SEO can take some time to kick in, it will bring you a constant flow of leads and traffic without having to pay for ads on Google Ads or Social Media per example.With PPC, once your budget is gone and ads stop running, that’s it, game over, no more leads. With SEO, it’s much easier to stay in the search engines for vastly longer without exponential costs!

7. SEO makes buying decisions easier.

As I’ve said before, SEO isn’t always about revenue generation. Brand awareness is a major benefit too. People will automatically believe that you are a trusted, relevant and authoritative name within your space PURELY because you’re on page 1 of Google etc. That awareness, that exposure will often reassure any potential clients that you’re a firm worth reaching out to, making their decision to engage easier.

8. SEO boosts Social Media Traffic

Quite simply, the more unique, relevant visitors you get to your site, the more people have the opportunity to engage with your social media platforms. Another chance for you to keep prospective clients and candidates “warm” that all starts with them finding you via search engines!

9. Good SEO will improve your website strength.

SEO will help your website (well, the domain actually) build strength as it grows through SEO best practices. A strong domain is made up of a number of factors including relevance, trust worthiness and authority, all factors which are impacted by SEO. By building good quality backlinks using content outreach for example (producing and pushing high quality, informative articles etc), you can easily improve how Google sees you as an influencer within your space.

10. SEO can help you get foot traffic (offline visitors)

For businesses that have a high street presence and physical location, or who have multiple offices in several locations, optimising your website for “Local SEO” can pay dividends. “Recruitment agencies near me” for example, will show your site in that search and allow people to easily find your address (assuming you’ve got a Google My Business page) and read reviews (assuming you have them). 

SEO should absolutely be one of your main marketing strategies. In fact, if I really try hard, I struggle to see any downsides to SEO. 

The only thing I can think of, and this is scraping the barrel, is that it can take a couple of months to see tangible results. But that even depends on how your site is structured. If your site already employs best practice in terms of structure, navigation, content etc, it IS possible to see tangible uplifts sooner. 

This snip is from a report for a new client, who saw these increases within a little under 8 weeks. This particular client did not have an optimum site structure and still saw fantastic results. 

The point being SEO is hands down the best long term strategy for revenue generation and brand exposure. Do it, but do it properly. If you can’t, reach out to me and find out how I can help you.

Thanks for reading (assuming you have!)

Dan Jones @ Kaizen Digital Consultancy
E – projects@kaizen-digital.com M – 0044 (0)7486 571 264 W – www.kaizen-digital.com

I’m not looking to say one is actually the better option than the other here, this is simply me saying “this is where apps can add MORE value than your website!”

Right now, mobile usage will be SOARING. With the sheer amount of people unable to work from office premises, it’s all too easy for people generally to pay a little more attention to their smartphone. If there was EVER a time to be utilising mobile channels to attract new clients or candidates – its now!

Larger firms might be able to have the luxury of both web and app platforms, whereas some may have to make a choice, and that choice will ultimately come down to factors of cost, usability, target audience and the relevant features required.

Having said that, there are studies that suggest people prefer app over sites (generally) which is a strong case for the creation of such apps for your business. 

There are other reasons too, reasons that in my “humble” opinion make apps better that websites (my own app is currently in development at the time of publishing).

So, without further a due, here’s my top 10.

#1: Personalisation Is Better With Mobile Apps.

Mobile apps make it easy for your users to have a personalised experience, especially if you create functions that are customisable by the user. 
You can also observe/track usage, and data is king when it comes to targeted marketing.

#2: Sending Notifications Is Easy!

Email…so last year! 

Over-emailing leads to loss of effectiveness – opening and click rates are less than overwhelming!

Enter push and in-app notifications… the non-intrusive, instant way to reach your audience. Push not’s can have open rates in excess of 40%!

• Hot Jobs
• Star Candidates
• Timesheet Reminders
• Invoice Reminders

And so on…..

#3: Exploiting Mobile Features

Apps make it easy to create an interactive experience, utilising the phone’s GPS, camera, contact list, etc etc. 

Also – these features can be used to reduce users’ efforts, uploading ID from within the app for example.

#4: Offline working ability

One of the most fundamental differences is apps allowing basic content and functionality offline. Obviously the available features will depend on the audience, the point being that a connection isn’t always required.

#5 Design Freedom

Apps can be designed to use a variety of elaborate gesture-based functions, swiping, pinching, dragging, etc, the benefit of which translates to an innovative experience for your user to perform tasks better than on a website.

6#: Fresh Branding

Thinking about relaunching your brand or launching a new entity and want to test the water with different styles/appearances etc? Do it with an app. 

You can experiment because, as a separate entity to the website, the app won’t impact the design/structure if existing websites. 

Want to play around with the internal linking/structure/nav of your site without jeopardising SEO? Roll out your ideas via the app for feedback.

7#: More Time Is Spent On Apps.

According to Forbes, mobile users spend 86% of there entire mobile time on apps, compared to (obvs) 14% on mobile websites!
Build an app, capture that screen time!

#8: New Conversation Opportunities

Because of the nature of apps (the targeted audience) it can be easier to drive engagement, and in turn feed users through a conversion funnel. 

Mobile/Browser websites on the other hand will typically reach a more diverse audience. With clients and candidates in mind, the content each user sees can be tailored. Have different content in different user profiles. Easy!

#9: Presence Of Your Brand

Subconsciously, the presence of your little app logo on your user’s phone will “brand” your business into their psyche. You never know when they might be in a convo discussing the services a firm like yours can provide then BAMMM, “I’ve got an app that could....” 

This presence can in some ways be linked to Signal Detection Theory – which basically says that people can process in their minds, ads that they’ve in some way ignored previously. 

#10: Speed

Load speed, connection speed, task execution speed, can all work quicker on apps. 

Storing preferences for example will reduce the time of some tasks to complete. 

Locally-stored data is quicker to access so load times are generally faster.

Mobile app framework can typically run 5x faster than Javascript…the technical justification!

So while the background is optimisied for speed, it means the front-end experience is often quicker ‘n’ slicker!

So, given all that, what choice should you make? 

IF you can do both, do both. If you’re restricted by budget or business goal, you’ll likely have to choose. 

Both have pros and cons but in terms of conversion and personalisation – apps FTW.

If you want to know more, get in touch, or go to  https://kaizen-digital.com/mobile-app-development/ for more info.

If you know anyone who needs to see this give it a share. 

Take care, stay well!

Is your SEO bod good or bad??

If, like most recruitment businesses you don’t have an in-house SEO function, you’ll need to outsource that to a 3^rd party. You can’t not do SEO; you probably don’t have the skillset yourself – so it gets farmed out.

BUT…if you don’t understand SEO, and the best practices for it, it can be hard to find the best recruitment SEO partner for your firm. How do you know their work is healthy SEO and not “Black hat”? SEO is difficult to implement effectively and as a concept to non-techie people is often confusing! Sounds more like something way technical rather that a useful marketing tool!

“SEO? Isn’t that something to do with websites??” is typically question asked by those who aren’t familiar. IFKYK, and if you DO know, you might get that properly done SEO can increase a website’s Google rankings. Very rarely does anyone except an SEO expert understand specifically how the process works.

Bad SEO practices can actually do damage to your online visibility, and a lack of knowledge in tur processes behind SEO can often leave businesses vulnerable to bad practices. If the damage to your visibility is bad enough, it can even mean that ranking on Google could be impossible – not just more difficult! When you’ve built an impressive, effective website, the last thing you need is to be invisible due to shoddy SEO.

How Do You Monitor Your SEO Contractor?

Ideally when you hire an SEO, you’ll need to understand SEO at a basic level, both as a tool and a concept. 

As I’ve said before, SEO is nothing more than a process. A process that is used to (usually) positively affect your website’s position in the results pages on Google for example. Good SEO practices can boost your positions and in turn offer exposure of your brand, attracting new clients and candidates. For example, if you’re a finance recruiter, you want your website to appear before your competitors’ when someone searches the words, “finance recruitment” or “finance recruitment agencies” etc. You can increase your search rank by implementing certain good practices like including keywords and internal linking. Hiring an experienced SEO agency or consultant can help to boost your rank subsequently increasing your visibility.

Could Hiring an SEO Threaten Your Current Rank?

To understand how a person hired to increase your rank could actually harm it… think about what motivates an SEO. Our job is to make your website rank higher than your competitors’. It’s literally our one and only objective. Everything that we do serves that purpose.

The problem is, Google doesn’t make this easy. AT….ALL. It looks at hundreds of factors to decide on its rankings, and some of those factors are difficult to change.

The enterprising SEO, who wants to keep their job or not jeopardize their contract, feels a lot of pressure to get Google to bend to their will. The quicker the SEO can get results, the better. If an SEO discovers a way to cheat Google – to lie about the factors Google considers to make rankings – then there’s very little to stop the SEO from trying it out. When these tactics are employed, they’re called “black hat” because they go against Google’s guidelines.

Google spends a lot of time searching for black hat offenders. When Google finds them, they tend to punish the websites by penalising sites, removing them from the results pages, even sometimes even taking down websites completely! In to the abyss! So, you may pay an SEO to boost your site in the rankings only to later find your website hit by a Google penalty that removes it from the results pages entirely!! 

How Do You Know If the Tactics Your SEO Expert Implements Are Black Hat?

To evaluate if your SEO tactics are white hat or black hat, you need to analyse them from Google’s point of view.

Google WANTS to show the best pages first. If somebody searches “finance recruitment,” Google wants to show the searcher a list of finance recruitment firms organised with the best choice at the top, whether that means the recruiter who is physically closest or the best rated. This is true of any search. Google prioritises the person searching, not the business the searcher is looking for. It provides the very best result it can, every time.

If a tactic your SEO implements seems to be tricking Google into thinking your website or your business is better than it is, that tactic is likely black hat. For example, your SEO might tell you that links are powerful indicators of a website’s worth, so the SEO suggests buying other domains, building a network of other websites, and using them to link to the one you want to rank. Google would see those links and think your website is particularly good – look at how many other websites link to it!

This tactic is sometimes referred to a PBN… “private blog network”… and would be black hat. Those links weren’t created by other websites because they legitimately thought your site was good. They were created solely to make Google increase your rankings.Building links by adding your website to listings or writing articles with links for other sites would be white hat practices.

Your SEO expert shoud suggest that you create strong, follow-links on different sites to support your own domain – this is how I do it! Your SEO will also explain how you need keywords in your target search terms on the page. Still, your SEO might advise a black hat technique. For example, if you’re a finance recruiter in Manchester, your SEO could suggest putting the words “finance recruiter Manchester” all over the website.

To prevent people from thinking that looks spammy, the SEO will say to make the words “finance recruiter Manchester” white on a white background so they’re invisible to visitors and are only visible to Google.Again, this technique is tricking Google into thinking your website has a lot to offer about “finance recruiter Manchester,” when a human visitor wouldn’t see it that way.

You’d be lying to Google about what’s on the page, so that would be a black hat technique.Aaaaaaand, even if you visibly add in too many keywords for no apparent reason, Google could count this as “keyword stuffing,”  which would be considered black hat. 

Ensure Your SEO Practices are Executed Effectively and Correctly

You don’t really need to know all of the specifics of SEO to determine whether or not an SEO’s tactics are black hat. You’d just need a basic understanding of SEO and to ask questions about certain tactics to ensure your hired SEO is not trying to trick Google.If you don’t, Google will find out and punish your site. Like most crime, black hat SEO doesn’t pay…at least, not in the long run. Protect yourself from Google’s penalties and your website will enjoy a lifetime of traffic, leads, and revenue.

If you’re ever on doubt, and want an impartial bit of advice I’m more than happy to chat to you and offer my opinion, freely of course. 

Any questions on anything in this piece drop me a line either on 07486 571264 or email me directly at dj@kaizen-digital.com