Angelfish Marketing Blog

As we enter 2019, how is digital marketing changing? And how will this impact your inbound methods?

In this blog, we highlight what’s influencing the marketing industry, and how you can leverage digital marketing changes...

If the term ‘topic clusters’ sounds more like a breakfast cereal to you than an inbound marketing term, there’s no need to worry! This article will take you through the fundamentals you need to structure your web content.

To build a strong website presence, it’s important to have a strong SEO and content strategy. But where do you start? Let’s start by breaking down the jargon first…

Regardless of your industry, the web is an ever increasingly competitive space. Battling it out on the SEO playground has never felt trickier. Just when you think you’ve got it sussed, the rules of engagement change and everything that worked in the past seems futile. And there’s always some SEO expert selling their magic sauce for traffic-pumping success. But the truth is there is no magic sauce. And Google isn't trying to thwart online businesses by making it hard for you to rank. They want the same thing we all want: A great user experience and for everyone to find the best, most relevant content as easily as possible.

This is where the topic cluster SEO strategy comes in...

In a world of increasingly stretched budgets and advancing marketing methods, you may not know which strategies to use to boost your business’s brand and reputation.

However, inbound marketing could help you to reach your target audience and get more customers in a highly cost-effective manner.

Inbound marketing is simply a marketing method based on attracting customers through content and interactions. The key to a successful inbound marketing strategy is that this content and these interactions are relevant and helpful to your customers, which builds your brand, creates true customer loyalty and transforms your customers into brand advocates.

But how much of your inbound marketing budget will have an impact on your marketing strategies cost?

It’s a fair question and one that many businesses are keen to answer.

Inbound marketing is a highly effective marketing solution. On average, businesses spend significantly less on their inbound marketing compared to traditional outbound techniques. However, over 50% more leads come from inbound marketing services.

Inbound marketing is also a long-term and ongoing solution. There are a range of inbound marketing services and strategies available to your business. For example, you may decide to invest in a blog or create a series of targeted landing pages. As a result, its cost can vary greatly depending on the extent and range of strategies you decide to adopt.

Content marketing is fast becoming one of the most valuable ways to gain loyal customers. Why? Because people want to be offered relevant, useful information to help them along their buyer’s journey. Less and less do customers want to be blatantly sold to, meaning ‘pushy’ advertising is losing its power. Google wants to see great content produced by genuinely helpful writers. In turn, it pushes these websites further up the search engine results page (SERP), which makes them more discoverable for customers. In this blog post, we outline what the benefits of content marketing are, and how they can affect your business, and discuss whether this method is taking over more traditional PR techniques.

So, you’ve set-up a website for your business, you’ve started writing blog posts, and you’re happy with the content you’re producing. But no-one is coming to your site. Sometimes, it can feel like you are publishing posts into thin air. So how do you start getting noticed in such a noisy world of digital marketing? Well, that’s where SEO ranking comes in...

What are chatbots?

Imagine a world where we could communicate with robots to help us solve problems. Sound crazy? Well, this is actually becoming a reality with the increased use of ‘chatbots’ on websites. Chatbots are computer programmes that conduct conversations, designed to simulate how a human would respond to particular problems or issues a customer raises. Clever, right?

Digital marketing services are now branching out and beginning to implement artificial intelligence in their marketing strategies to increase value and save time. These days, how often do you pick up the phone and ring someone, compared to sending a quick text or WhatsApp message? Messaging networks such as Facebook Messenger are hugely popular as you can contact anyone, anywhere, and get an almost instant reply. Consequently, people are now expecting instantaneous responses from the companies they contact, too.

That’s where chatbots come in; their quick answers and friendly messages meet customers’ needs and are therefore becoming a popular method of communication.

Google’s latest algorithm update rolled out on 1st August 2018 and many businesses are concerned how this may affect their search engine rankings.

The details from Google were rather scant. The search giant called the update “a broad algorithm update” and referenced an older tweet, which said: “Each day, Google usually releases one or more changes designed to improve our results. Some are focused around specific improvements. Some are broad changes. Last week, we released a broad core algorithm update. We do these routinely several times per year....”

Subsequent tweets from Google Search Liaison Danny Sullivan revealed this was a “global” update, which means it impacts all Google search results across all regions and languages. However, Google would not tell us what percentage of search queries were impacted by the update.

Inbound marketing uses a subtler set of strategies compared to traditional outbound marketing techniques. It’s also a necessity for businesses that want to build a successful brand and stand apart from the competition.

Inbound marketing draws your customers to your products and services through the creation of content and campaigns that delight your target audience and transform them into brand advocates. For example, social media campaigns, SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and content marketing are all core strategies under the inbound marketing umbrella.

Outbound marketing, on the other hand, tends to use more direct tools such as direct mail, telemarketing and events. However, research reveals one-third of marketers think outbound marketing tactics such as paid advertising are a waste of time and resources.

We get asked this question a lot when we’re talking with clients and new prospects. Businesses are either new and considering how to get the most bang for their buck or they’re established and want control but are concerned about escalating marketing costs. Either way, choosing between insourced and outsourced marketing is a tough decision for any business owner or marketing team.

What should you keep in and what goes out the door? It’s a hard question to answer. We’ll confess we’re slightly biased on this one, but the reality is as with most things there isn’t a one-size-fits-all model. To decide what’s right for you, you need to consider what your internal skill set is like as well as other factors such as culture before making any big decisions.

If you have a business full of individuals with a very specific industry skill but with no marketing or sales experience, then outsourcing could make the most sense. However, if you or other people in your company have strong sales experience or a leaning towards digital marketing services, then you might consider getting them involved with your new marketing division.

And by the way, not having a marketing provision isn’t an option anymore!