Website rules

 When setting up a website keep in mind that there are people who will be viewing your website with disabilities such as visual, hearing, physical, speech, cognitive, neurological and so on. Remember to include aids to cater to a wider variety of people. Keep the content on your site simple and easy to read. Offer large print or sound files to assist users who need it. There is no problem experimenting with different font types but keep them easy to read, you don't want people having difficulty reading your text. Make sure to keep the background of the text a neutral colour also as it is difficult to read texts off some colored backgrounds, play around with the colour scheme and find out what works best. Navigation is very important on your website! Double check that users can easily navigate around your site and find their way back to the homepage simply. The best way to keep your site simple is to avoid having any pop-ups and other distractions, Keep in mind that there is information that must appear on your website according to the EU Ecommerce Directive. The minimum information that your business website must have is:

• Your name/Trading name
• The address you are trading from
• An email address
• Company registration number
• Registered office address
• VAT number if you are registered even if you are not selling online. 

You are also required to protect the privacy of your visitors. The office of the Data Protection Commissioner, Ireland sums up the data responsibility for organisations that you must follow on your website/blog. They are as follows:

• Obtain information fairly 
• Keep it only for the specified purpose
• Process it only in the ways compatible within the purpose for which it was obtained
• Keep it safe and secure
• Ensure that it is adequate, relevant and not excessive
• Retain it for no longer than needed
• On the request of the individual  you must give a copy to them

In addition to the protection of visitors privacy your website needs appropriate security measures against unauthorized access. You can do this by using a secure socket layer on the parts of your website where you capture and retain personal data. 

Why and how you should survey online

The best way to get customer feedback? A survey! This doesn't mean you need to forget digital marketing strategies either, technology has evolved so that a lot of strategies you can do offline i.e. Banners, etc. are also offered online too. In fact having a survey online is way more efficient as it will be analysed for you! 

Creating a survey online is much like creating one offline, to begin you must know what you wish to find out and what actions you want to take as a result of the survey. Make sure to list the most important topics first and remember to ask exactly what you want to know, you can't solve the problem if you ask the wrong question. Try different ways of phrasing the question so the respondents do not get confused. You may want to write and rewrite the question several times before you have the perfect question(s) for each topic. There are different types of questions better suited to get you the best information on return -open-ended, closed, rating and multiple choice. Make sure to keep your questions unbiased!! Remember to reread your questionnaire to find any major holes, better yet get someone else to do the questionnaire for you as a trial run. While your at it, time how long the questionnaire takes to fill out. A survey should take less than 15 minutes or people will be less willing to take part in it. Try protesting the survey on a small group of people to obtain feedback and revise again. Keep protesting and revising until the survey is perfect and you can begin distributing. 

When posting your survey online the answers will be automatically analysed for you -how many people completed the survey, how many of the same answers there were, etc. Interaction with customers is a must and giving them a chance to give feedback on your business/product/service makes them feel involved. So remember the to create an online survey as well as hard compiles next time, you will get more willing participants and a broader range of opinions. 

Blogging as a business

How can blogging help spread the word of your brand? A blog is a regularly run website or web page. It is typically run by an individual or a small group, it is usually written in an informative or conversational style. A bog post can be any size a sentence, a paragraph or a page long. There are free sites in which you can register and create a website by choosing a template to start. Having a blog can allow you to post product reviews, demonstrations, comments about your business, products, services etc. Having a blog is a less formal way of communicating with your customers. Including opinions and reviews about your business/product/service can influence how conversations about your company goes. Blogs are open to feed back and this is the best way to create a good business image. 

Ways to use blogging to market your business/product/service:

• Highlight your businesses expertise.
• Share information about your latest news.
• Provide information on your products/services.
• Share instruction manuals, guides and tips.
• Offer advice and useful information.
   

Integrating digital and traditional marketing

While many companies just opt for one or the other the best marketing strategy is to integrate digital and traditional marketing to widen the rang of the potential customers. There are many ways to integrate both digital and traditional marketing strategies. In recent years companies have become very imaginative with integration. 

The most commonly used integration method that is seen virtually everywhere nowadays is having their offline ads encouraging the reader to continue the conversation online. Examples include: Flyers prompting consumers to "like" them on Facebook or "follow" them on twitter, Facebook organised events encouraging people to attend these live events. Even at these events the spokesperson could ask the audience to share their experience online and follow their businesses page.

Another commonly known integration method is traditional mailing being followed with a  supportive email campaign. Sending out an email to those who have revived the mail will ensure that those who have disregarded the the mail will  have a second chance to view your content. This strengthens the brands name and may even mean more traffic on your site or social media or vice versa. 

Now don't let these strategies be your only choices, as i have stated before companies have come up with their own original ideas. These companies have had the best success with integration and most believe it is the best way to market your product, service or business.

Want to know the difference between digital and traditional marketing?

Traditional marketing is based offline whereas digital marketing is all online. The largest difference between the digital and traditional is the cost. Sites such as Linkedln, Facebook and so forth aren't free if you wish to be promoting your business on them although it is by far a lot cheaper than any form of traditional marketing. Printing out brochures, flyers billboard posters cost quite a bit to get as many as would be needed to get the word out. To pay for television adverts and any other traditional marketing strategy can cost an amount of money small businesses could never have paid for. Making digital marketing the best marketing strategy for businesses of every size, not just the large ones with a lot of money to spend on every campaign. 

The second difference between digital and traditional marketing is the time needed. While you need to take into account the amount of time needed to print your paper advertisements, like flyers and such, the only time you need to account for with digital marketing is the time you may need to allocate toward making it. A big plus is that once you send out your information on the internet it could go viral within a matter of hours, hundreds of people could read your advert within an hour.

While your text online is easily changed, your traditional is less easy to edit. Once your your flyers, brochures or billboards are up and out in the world there is no way to easily correct a mistake such as a misspelled word. one of the perks about marketing online is that once a mistake it is noticed it is very simple to edit your post whether its on social media or an advert on google. 

Although you can hand out a flyer to everyone you pass on a street there is no guarantee that each or even half of those people will read the information you have handed them. An advantage with your online advertisements is that you can track every one of your advertisements, you can know exactly how many people have viewed your information and where they went from there.

Digital marketing is a brilliant platform to easily promote your business/product as a great deal of the target market is online these days and, as i have stated before, can be spread quickly. However there is an entire set of potential customers out there that do not have internet connection or who do not have any social media profiles, meaning to limit yourself to only market online you are ignoring an entire section of the market. This is why companies tend to opt for marketing in both traditional and digital.

Viral marketing

Viral marketing, a marketing technique that encourages the passing on of information, like a virus, your post spreads. How it works - By using pre-existing social media networks you can easily spread brand awareness. Viral marketing can take form of anything, video clips, ebooks, text messages, emails, interactive flash games or web pages. But for viral marketing to be successful your message needs to be captivating, try making your post creative, different, amusing or special the receiver needs to be encouraged to share your message. The success of your post going viral is all down to your potential customer forwarding your information. 

Now, accept the fact that some viral marketing techniques work better than others. Remember also that your viral marketing campaign need not include all the strategies but the more you have may make for a more successful campaign. Three of the most commonly used strategies are:

1. Give away's - Free products or services are one of the quickest way to grab the attention of the audience. Cheap or inexpensive way generate a wave of interest, but free will usually do it much faster. 

2. Team up with unlikely partners - Teaming up with people outside of your usual industry means a new potential customers. This could also mean creating a buzz around your campaign.

3. CTA buttons - Call to action buttons makes it easy for people to share your content.When you compel your new visitors to share your content, you’re able to increase the chances of getting more traffic to your page and your message is spread to an audience that may not be your target audience but may still be interested in your product/service. 

Social media campaign do's and don'ts

Social media has become a large part of the daily lives of most

people these days, people spend hours on there social media accounts catching up on peoples lives, reading articles etc. This means using social media as a marketing platform would be a huge advantage. Make sure that you apply smart integration with social media channels that suit your brand image and the product/service you wish to promote. Not all social media channels will bring about the positive feed back you are looking for but this can be used to your advantage. Publicly dealing with customers problems and trying to help will create a positive image for your brand. Keeping a social media account running, or multiple, can be difficult. You must interact with customers, listen to their criticisms and adapt, have quality posts, etc. You should ensure you have a social media team that will be about quality over quantity. Content is key!  Putting effort into making your social media accounts engaging, proactive and fun will make all the difference. Just by adding puzzles, teaser or games could create a buzz around your business.

Try to avoid restricting feedback to a Facebook wall instead try setting up a discussion board. Also don't just post and move on make sure to interact with customers weather the feed back is good, bad or indifferent, constant interaction with customers or potential customers will create a good name around your brand. Never try to be something you are not. Be ethical, deceiving or lying to your potential customers will not pay off because if someone suspects then, creating a false feel to your brand and lying and deceiving will more than likely go wrong leaving only bad words in the mouths of your audience.