Research from digital agency, Marketing Signals found that 42% of businesses outsource their marketing [1]. With nearly half of UK businesses outsourcing marketing, do you know what to ask for to get the best out of your digital marketing agency or freelancer? Here are some tips to help you.
Let’s look at some stats to see what marketing activities businesses are outsourcing. Businesses interviewed by Marketing Signals revealed that:
63% outsource digital marketing
59% outsource social media marketing
44% outsource email marketing
Digital Marketing
Let’s define what digital marketing is. According to the Digital Marketing Institute, digital marketing is:
“Marketing efforts that involve electronic devices or focus on online platforms.”
Like it or not, we’re in the digital era. Businesses are taking advantage of our affinity for digital by marketing through these channels. A good example is the High Street retailer, Next. They slashed their budget on traditional marketing, e.g., print ads, direct mail, to focus on digital marketing instead, because it yielded higher returns. Pre-pandemic, Next was associated with big queues on boxing day and their ‘directory’ (yes, we once paid £3 for a copy)! Their website was essentially a replica of their directory. Fast forward to today, Next enjoyed strong online sales over the summer with like-for-like sales increasing by 44% compared to 2019. Next’s overseas online sales rose by a whopping 61%. Their decision to invest in digital infrastructure has well and truly paid off.
You might be convinced about digital, but not sure where to start?
Have a high performing website at the very least.
Building High Performance Websites
Nowadays, you can build a website with relative ease using systems such as Wix, Squarespace or Shopify (e-commerce). However, website building is something which is frequently outsourced to web developers.
Web developers can design and build your website and give you access to a content management system (CMS), where you update content yourself, e.g., blog posts. Here’s a tip for you - whatever CMS you choose for your business, choose one which is highly rated for speed and accessibility. Opt for essential cascading style sheets (CSS) and javascript (JS).
Website Hosting
Always choose a domain name server (DNS) with rapid response times. If your developer is offering website hosting as part of the package, ensure that it includes:
regular backups
security updates
a firewall
Appoint SEO experts early doors
During website development projects, an area which often gets neglected is search engine optimisation (SEO). If you ask your web developer about SEO, the majority will tell you that they know all about it. However, the reality is that SEO is a practice that is constantly evolving. SEO specialists and web developers don’t usually get involved in each other’s projects, as they are two separate disciplines. My advice for those building a new website, is to ensure SEO forms part of the project. Appoint SEO experts early doors. They will check whether the developer is meeting the standard for mobile first indexing and ensure that core web vitals are addressed (more on SEO later).
Set up Google Entities
Once you’ve spent all this money on a new website, you need to measure how it's performing. If you don’t measure, you won’t know how effective it is. Ensure that your developers set up Google entities such as Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager and Google Search Console. Once you create accounts for these, you will have a code which developers need to include on your CMS. These free tools enable you to track your website’s performance. Using Google Tag Manager, you will be able to set up events to track user activities such as video views, phone number clicks and form submissions. If you’re unfamiliar with how it all works, Google offers online courses through its digital garage. If you still find it tricky, remember these can always be outsourced.
SEO
Now you have a new website and you have tracking in place. How do you get your website to rank highly on search engines? This is where SEO comes in. The purpose of SEO is to increase the volume and quality of organic traffic to your website. There are three parts to SEO: on-page, off-page, and technical. Here are the things you need to be aware of if you outsource it.
On-Page SEO
An on-page SEO strategy aims to optimise a website's pages. Here are a few things to be mindful of when you add content to your website:
Add a header tag | H1 – A Header tag is your main title. Search engines use this to understand the content on your page as well as user search relevancy. Include key phrases in your H1 tag. There has been debate amongst SEO experts about only using one H1 tag per page.
Add meta descriptions - search engines use this to summarise your page. You should include any key phrases, as well as a call-to-action. Check the latest word limit on search engines.
URLs – check that the automatically generated URL makes sense. Use lowercase, hyphens and include any keywords.
Add internal links – it’s good practice to add any links to relevant pages on your own website. This tells search engines how relevant and important your other pages are.
Add alt tags – these tell search engines what your image or infographic is. Always use alt tags and be descriptive.
Off-Page SEO
The activities conducted that are external to your website are considered off-page SEO. Here are a few tactics:
Add backlinks – by building backlinks to your website, you will increase your website’s authority. Link to sites with a high domain authority (DA). Use Moz or Ahref to check a website’s DA. Digital PR is an excellent way to acquire links.
Citation Building - these refer to any business listings to which you can add your company. Remember to utilise your free Google “My Business” listing.
Add shareable content – shareable content includes videos, white papers or e-books. It's valuable content which users want to share.
Use social media – use your social media platforms to engage and communicate with potential customers and to drive traffic to your website.
Technical SEO
A technical SEO strategy is concerned with the items that affect how a search engine indexes and crawls your website. Here are a few things to watch out for:
Be mobile-friendly – Google predominantly uses the mobile version of your content for indexing and ranking. It’s essential to have a mobile-friendly website if you want it to rank well.
Site-speed optimisation – You should be aiming for a page load speed of 1 second. 3 seconds is acceptable. Check your speed with Google Analytics.
Fix broken links and errors – use Google Search Console to check for broken links or errors. These potentially affect your website’s performance and rankings.
Set up redirects – occasionally, you may want to delete a page or change the URL. In this scenario, make sure you set up redirects; 301 redirects are permanent whilst 302 redirects are temporary.
Social media marketing
Social media marketing is another digital activity which is frequently outsourced. Here’s some interesting data on social media usage [3]:
In 2019, 90% of Millennials, 78% of Generation X and 48% of Baby Boomers were active social media users.
54% of people use social media to research products.
Users spend on average 2 hours and 25 minutes each day on social networks and messaging.
We touched on earlier that nearly 60% of UK businesses outsource their social media marketing. Follow these steps to ensure your social media strategy is effective.
Define your goals. What is your end goal? Do you want to be seen as an authority on the subject matter? Do you want to use social to boost sales? Once your goals are defined, you will be able to establish strategies to achieve them.
Know your target audience - use platform insights to understand who is following and engaging with you. Use tools such as customer personas to help you categorise customers.
Use data - analyse any previous postings. By understanding what you’ve already tried, it will help you formulate strategies for future content.
Measure everything - Use data as a benchmark to measure success going forward and measure everything. Use UTM tracking codes. I have made a UTM tracking codes video tutorial here.
Evolve and adapt - no strategy is set in stone. You should constantly adapt, experiment with new content and capitalise on what’s trending.
For further tips on improving your social media marketing, read my blog here.
Email marketing
The most effective digital strategy is still email marketing. Campaign Monitor unveiled that in 2020, the average open rate for emails across all industries is 18%.
The email marketing field has evolved considerably since its introduction. Email spamming is no longer prevalent. A good email should be personal, targeted, and written specifically for the recipient. Writing email copy can also be challenging. Here are some tips when writing email copy:
Your subject line is your killer line, get this right
Your language should be concise and engaging
Have a clear call-to-action (CTA), e.g., Buy Now, Read More.
Utilise the best send times.
Marketing automation
Deploying email marketing automation has been an emerging trend. Using email sequencing, which the likes of HubSpot offer, gets 8-times more open and click-through rates, compared with mass emails. HubSpot defines an email sequence as:
“A series of emails sent to a prospect, user or customer sent automatically using automation software based on predetermined criteria.”
These type of email campaigns yield an average open rate of 46%. Over 64% of B2B businesses are deploying email automation techniques [4].
I hope that was a useful summary of each discipline. Whether you choose to outsource to an agency or a freelancer, outsourcing saves you time, money and enables you to focus on what you do best, running your business, profitably. To discuss your digital marketing requirements, contact Add Salt today.
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