Free Online Marketing and SEO Tools? Why not!

Marketing Communications are becoming more than essential for business today. Consumers integrate more and more communication technology into their daily activities. This makes it extra easy and difficult in the same time for companies to communicate their messages. And extra expensive.

Starting and maintaining a business is an economically challenging task. No matter in what branch you operate you will need a lot of visibility, both online and offline. This requires as a minimum a website – web host, domain registration, website building, website optimization, SEO monitoring, updating and maintaining on ongoing basis. And this is just the beginning! You have not even thought about advertizing, offers, newsletter, teasers, etc. Here I am not even mentioning all other costs in connection to renting an office or simply maintaining the daily operations.

Looking at it from this perspective it looks like running your own business is next to impossible. The question here is whether it necessarily should be like that.

All the great and free business and marketing tools

If you really think that paying for services and software is absolutely necessary maybe you will miss the point here. If you though consider that price is simply a marketing trick after all you might realize that the price of opening your own business might fall drastically.

Let’s explore a few of the options you have for making you life easier and your business low cost.

1.       Webhost: There is a wide range of webhosts out there and it is important that you research a bit before you make a decision about who should host your website. Consider the importance of 24/7 live support and Control Panel with all the cool features and extra services you can use. The technical characteristics of a webhost are also very important. How much space and what speed your website requires? Is there an option for secure server? Are there website import/export features or databases? After being clear about what you need you can choose webhosting that ranges between 1 USD and over 10 USD per month. Do not limit yourself to webhosts from your own country. In many cases the big international providers will be much better for you.

2.       Domain name: Choose carefully your domain name as it is going to shape your image. Just as with webhosting you have the option to buy (actually rent) your domain name anywhere in the world and with any suffix. Prices vary a lot also there so research can save you around 10 USD per year if not more. If you need sub-domains make sure that your domain registrar allows that.

3.       Website design: I read an article for entrepreneurs written by Region Midt in Denmark and in it I saw a price of 700-800 Euro for getting your website running. Be careful as you are going to stumble upon such offers by designers, IT-specialist and many other consultants. In reality you are able to build your website on your own. It is a myth that you need a programmer for that task. Nowadays website building is made accessible for non-specialists. You only need to understand how and what your website should communicate. For this task you might want to consult a Marketing Communications Specialist or someone specializing in Online Marketing. Using Wordpress for example can give professional results with almost no effort. On top of everything else you can find countless themes and plugins in Wordpress which will make it easy for you to integrate exactly the design and the functionality you want.

Do not get carried away with buying expensive Wordpress themes. Here I want to use a moment and mention Graphene Theme. It is a completely free and fully responsive theme which can be used as you like and adjusted beyond imagination. My special thanks to the developers!

4.       SEO and Online Marketing: We are trained to think that SEO should cost a lot. It should not. Not so many out there know that Microsoft has developed a free SEO toolkit which does a lot of the work. Furthermore you can facilitate many small and bigger SEO plugins directly into your Wordpress website allowing you to count social conversion, visits, perform on-site optimization and set custom micro data, meta titles, descriptions and keywords. You can learn a lot about your website’s effectiveness by signing up for Google Analytics – it is a free and great service! Google Master Tools provide you with a lot more control and optimization options in connection to managing you website and authenticating it which helps your SEO. Last but not least you can draw on the keyword and search activity analysis provided in Google Trends and Google AdWords. You can even see your ranking in connection to different key words in Google Webmaster Tools. The only thing you cannot see there is a competitor analysis. But I am pretty sure that there is a simple and free tool for that too out there.

Yes, it might seem a bit overwhelming and it is true that it requires a certain level of understanding of those systems. But it is just like with everything else – you need to learn it in order to use it.

If you though think that it is way too complicated for you to handle, there are even free consultancy options online. Just check http://www.dcommunication-group.com/ and learn how to make your life easier and your business low cost.

DIDI

Marketing mix-up: Why everyone is all the sudden talking about social media?

Social Media: a Marketing Mix must?

 

Social Media seems to have become one of the inevitable elements of marketing mix. Have you noticed that in quite a lot of companies today there is a great demand for online marketing, primarily through social media marketing and SEO? What was wrong with our marketing strategy until now? Can we survive without social media?

Swept away by social media

 

Observing the communication reality online one can easily find out that there is a lot of pressure about implementing comprehensive social media marketing, SEO (sometimes interesting enough, called SEO optimization, which honestly does not make any sense!), online advertising, traffic control, etc. There are also numerous articles like this one found in Forbes stating that social media marketing is going to become the absolute must in 2014 and there ia a list of media seeing growth and decline.

As a business manager one gets completely swept off their feet by social media marketing promisses forgetting the uniqueness of their business and old and tried out maxima as “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Managers are convinced that optimizing their online policy is what is going to save their business. But is that true?

Is social media appropriate?

 

First and foremost, it is essential to understand that not every business is carved to be social. A simple example can be James Nicholls’ scientific research publication, “Everyday, Everywhere: Alcohol Marketing and Social Media—Current Trends” (Alcohol and Alcoholism Vol. 47, No. 4, pp. 486–493, 2012). The article discusses social media tactics used by alcohol brands in the UK and their consequences including creation of lasting habits. One can easily predict that many more articles like that discussing fast food companies, candy producers, soda producers, tobacco companies, possibly even companies staying behind environmentally bad products.

 

The danger of being social

Social media is social not only because it gathers consumers and gives companies the possibility to communicate directly and more effectively with target groups. It provides consumers with the power to communicate and discuss with each other and spread news. If there is just one opinion leader out there who finds out something discrediting about your company or the way you do business it is going to spread like wild fire. Because scandal sells even more that sex. Social media means transparency and exposure at levels which you have never experienced before. Many businesses are just not ready for that.

On top of that social media means that you need to provide valuable regular updates. You might want to be funny, or clever, or innovative, or whatever you want. But you need to be able to keep it up. Nobody will follow dull updates and they will not be of any value to you. When did we all get so productive and innovative and funny that we can keep it up daily for the foreseeable future? When did we deceive ourselves into believing that we are the only ones trying to follow such a strategy? Too much funny, too much innovation, too much cleverness is at the end simply too much.

Stuffing social media with corporate messages is going at the end to have the same effect as commercials on TV. Companies need to understand that they are not wanted on social media. Users of social media are people who want to come in contact with their friends, family or like-minded. This is also the reason why apps like Facebook AdBlock are appearing all the time.

Not only that every company’s arrival on Social media is going to avert consumers who in most cases see advertising on social media as too intrusive and violating their privacy, it is going to become significantly less effective in the future. Keeping in mind Facebook’s targeting methods it basically means that both you and all your competitors will have a shot at your target group. How is that better than advertising on TV?

Having a page on social media is more acceptable but as noted above it is not for all as many businesses will be accused in manipulating consumers or creating unhealthy habits or committing another sin. Using your page as an open communication channel is all alright but it is not going to be your miracle cure. Consumers are always more likely to socialize with a brand they are familiar with. For that reason new or not popular brands need to employ heavy marketing before a social strategy can be possible. Beware also of overexposing yourself. More presence will possibly make you visible in the eyes of consumers. Depending on your strategy, that can bring around more damage than good.

Looking back at the very core of social media we encounter another one of its downsides. The almost unlimited freedom of information dissemination makes it impossible for companies to control their image without manipulating posts and comments. However, even doing that will not save them from angry consumers. Regular users are gods in the social media space. The examples of stars’ death hoax are becoming ever more. If someone writes for example that their sister was poisoned by your product and everybody needs to share it to support the grief, they will. No matter if the story was true, the shadow of doubt will fall on your product and you will face losses. Are you ready to face the hoax?

Even if you have all your polices straight and you are 100 % sure that nothing can hit you unprepared you still need to be careful when voting for social media marketing. Analyzing consumer data is still pretty much in the shadows and social media users are not aware of how and how much information is gathered and used for marketing purposes. This is dangerous and might damage your image if information on shadowy data collection is connected to your company’s name. Nowadays there are pieces of data “uncovered” everyday and consumers are getting angry. Even though you were probably just a user of a service the CSR standards demand that you research and keep your supply chain clean. Thus, you are guilty.

Much more can be said about why not to go social. But this as all decisions concerning corporate communication should be made based on your strategy. If you are certain that engaging in social media marketing will be good for you, do it. It does work for many. What you really need to do prior such a decision though, is to make sure that you have double covered all scenarios and have your crisis communication policy close to you at all times. Just in case.

Last but not least, remember to not forget to employ traditional marketing and its basic principles. They still work.

 

DIDI