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60 Seconds a Day Social Media Management with Automation and Technology

Many small to medium sized business are afraid of social media, are unsure what they should be doing on social media and spend an awful lot of time managing social media without any idea of what they are getting back from it. We’ve already covered how to monitor your social media activities and reviewed various tools to help you manage social media effectively. Now it’s time to take this one huge step further to automate virtually 99% of your social media accounts using technology.

If you’re a business owner or aren’t that tech-savvy then some of this may be a bit over your head, so get in touch and we can look to set up the same process for you with ease and show you how to use this system. The investment in this setup using free technologies will pay for itself within a matter of weeks within your business in time saved, allowing you to spend time improving other systems and processes to become more profitable.

Before people start jumping on the bandwagon about how social media should be personal, you should spend time crafting messages and treating every account differently etc. Bear with me. The reality for many businesses is that they quite simply don’t have time to be doing the work that large brands do as large brands have teams of people managing their social media activities in the background. The reality for the majority of small to medium sized businesses is that this is left to either a single marketing manager, a junior member of the marketing team or even the managing director to manage. For all of these people, social media management is not at the top of their priority list and is an area which can be made extremely efficient with technology and automation without compromising on the quality. On the other hand, if you feel that your business needs someone to be doing everything manually, then good on you, you’re probably wasting a lot of time as this is the equivalent of still using a dustpan and brush when you could just use a Dyson or a Roomba.

Now, on to the good stuff. Personally we use a whole host of technologies, automation techniques and manual interactions to manage our social media channels which works for us. Every business is different, so take what you will from this and if this could work for you, then great, you’ll be saving hours or time per week through the use of smart technologies.

 

The Manual Process

Before we jump into the automation, let’s just look at the common ways people identify content to share on social media channels. They are likely subscribed to either a daily, weekly or monthly newsletter from a variety of industry magazines and websites or they use a well-crafted set of followers on social media to manage their news feed effectively. We use a mixture of both, with the main @ContradoDigital Twitter account following relevant digital accounts that share some awesome news about the world of digital. As always, not everything is relevant for what our audience wants, so we need to filter out this so that the content that is shared is highly relevant to our audience who is interested in technology, innovation, digital marketing, security and general digital news.

Based on this, we review the content that is being published around the web and any content that is relevant we also share on our social channels, both company channels and my personal channels for Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Google+. We already have technology in place to automate the majority of the social media management process which saves an enormous amount of time already but we wanted to go further and really push the boundaries of what is possible.

We use Buffer to add social media updates to our queue of scheduled posts to be posted out to all social media channels along with Bitly to track the engagement from our followers to understand what content they like to read about. The last piece of the puzzle is how to automate adding content to Buffer with ease. Traditionally we would either favourite a news story on Twitter or open that news story in the browser then use the Buffer Google Chrome plugin or Buffer App on mobile to add this to the queue. While not particularly difficult to do, adding a new story to the queue could take up to 2 minutes by the time the pages have loaded and everything has been completed. 2 minutes, multiplied by 6 posts per channel per day, multiplied by 20 days per month equates to around 4 hrs per month spending time adding content to social media channels for our audience. I’d guess that this is already significantly less than what you spend managing social media channels, but we wanted to go one step further and significantly reduce this to only 60 seconds per day.

What if there was a better way…

 

Introducing Automation using IFTTT

If you haven’t come across If This Then That (IFTTT) before, then quite simply this piece of free technology is designed to automate almost anything you can imagine that you are doing manually. The service links together web based technologies through the use of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) which can be simplified as systems talking to other systems.

All modern and scalable web platforms have some kind of open API built in with them as they understand how this key functionality automates the work and grows their business. It is this what we’re plugging into to join the dots and save 4 hrs per month.

The logic behind the automation is as follows;

  • When a Tweet is Favorited on Twitter
  • Send this to Buffer to be automatically posted out to our followers who are interested in this content

There is a little more behind the scenes which we’ll talk through in a minute, but that is the gist of the setup.

 

The Process for Automating 99% of Social Media Management

So let’s just jump right into how to get this set up. Once set up, you will be saving hours of time per week managing your social media activities. Most businesses spend an hr or two per day managing social media activities. We spend 60 seconds per day as we’ve implemented the right technology to become more efficient.

 

Bitly

Set up a Bitly.com account if you don’t have one already. This is going to track how many people are clicking on the links that you are sharing on social media on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. Allowing you to improve performance of your social media activities over time.

 

Bitly Click Statistics

 

Buffer

Set up a Buffer.com account if you don’t have one already. This is going to automate all of your social media posts by adding everything to a pre-scheduled queue. Allowing you to simply add a post to Buffer which will then be automatically posted to your default social media profiles that you can configure to send out an update at a set time of day/week as you choose.

 

Buffer Logo

 

Make sure you link your Buffer account with Bitly in the settings to track link clicking statistics through Bitly as we find this provides a bit more insight than Buffer. You also need to set your default social media profiles up. So if you have multiple social media profiles to manage, then set which are your default ones that you want to send updates to as these will be used with this automation setup.

Buffer has the ability to email updates to Buffer which will be automatically added to your queue which is what we’re going to be using to automate things. Find your Buffer Secret Email Address within your account settings;

 

Buffer Secret Email Address

 

Now comes the clever part, using IFTTT.

 

IFTTT

Set up an IFTTT account if you don’t already have one. A component of IFTTT is that you create a Recipe which has Ingredients. Using this setup, you are essentially triggering an action to happen when something else happens beforehand.

In this example, we want to send an email to Buffer from Gmail when we Favourite a new Tweet on the @ContradoDigital Twitter account.

 

IFTTT Recipe

 

To do this, click on the “Create Recipe” button which will guide you through the process. As part of this process, IFTTT will connect with your Twitter account and your Gmail account. All fairly straight forward here. The part that you need to configure properly is what to contain in the email as there are specific shortcodes called Ingredients which need to be included so the correct information is sent over to Buffer to add everything to the right areas. Here you enter in your Buffer Secret Email Address from earlier along with the shortcode {{TEXT}} which will pull in the text from the Tweet you have just favorited and send this to buffer to use in the update;

 

IFTTT Gmail to Buffer

 

Once you’ve done this, it’s simple. Save the Recipe and start adding Tweets to your Favourites. IFTTT runs every 15 minutes or so, fully automated, so when it detects a new Tweet that you have starred then it will automatically post this out to Buffer.

All in all, meaning that we spend an average of 60 seconds per day managing our social media accounts, saving hours per month, allowing us to focus on more productive areas working with clients to implement similar technologies within their businesses to save them time and money.

If you’d like to make your social media accounts extremely efficient like we have and all of this has gone a bit over your head, then get in touch and we can look to set up the same process for you with ease. The investment in this setup using free technologies will pay for itself within a matter of weeks within your business, allowing you to spend time improving other systems and processes to become more profitable.

If Your Website is Seen as a Cost You Have Already Lost

Why is it that so many businesses still see a website as a cost rather than an investment to generate a return? We live in a digital world so why isn’t your online presence at the forefront of your business strategy to increase revenue? Well, after speaking with thousands of businesses ranging from startups all the way up to companies with offices around the globe, I’ve noticed a few common comments and it’s time to debunk some of the common reasons we hear and get serious about your investments in digital channels.

The Current Situation

So many established businesses will happily spend money on traditional activities because that is what they have always done. The world has changed, it’s time to keep up or give up. Traditional ways that money is spent includes sponsoring awards, radio advertising, printed materials such as flyers and handouts, promotional products such as pads, pens and mugs, trade fairs, direct mail, advertisements in magazines and newspapers, printed banners, popup stands and many more methods. Money is spent in these areas without batting an eyelid. Because apparently this is what we need to run a business, right? Have you ever attempted to calculate the return you generated as a direct result of your spend on these activities? I imagine that if you have, you have also struggled to attribute any of these activities individually to a direct increase in revenue.

Let’s be clear here though, I’m not saying don’t do any of these. I’m a huge believer of testing everything and tracking the results. And yes, these activities certainly support your overall marketing strategy. But you have to ask yourself the question, if we live in a digital world, why aren’t you investing more seriously in digital channels? What are you afraid of?

 

 

If you see your website as a cost, you’ve already lost. A website should support your business goals, sales and marketing strategy and more. Your website should be a key touchpoint during the sales process or should be directly generating revenue for your business through ecommerce sales or generating enquiries.

 

Digital Doesn’t Work for Our Industry

Seriously? Did I just hear you correctly? I kid you not, this is something we have heard on multiple occasions.

** Takes a deep breath **

You think that digital doesn’t work in your industry? I ask you to prove to me that digital doesn’t work in your industry. I want to see all of the following that you have invested in previously and generated zero results if you truly believe that digital doesn’t work in your industry;

  • Show me your Google Analytics data, how many visits are you getting per month from different traffic sources, what are these website visitors doing when they get to your website (Are they bouncing away straight away? It’s probably because you have a horrible website or you are getting low quality traffic), how many enquiries or sales are you generating through your website? (You aren’t tracking this you say?), is your website traffic increasing or decreasing every month? (You are tracking this on a regular basis aren’t you?)
  • Show me how visible you are on Google when customers are searching for your key products and services? (You are tracking this data aren’t you?)
  • Show me how your pay per click advertising campaigns are performing on Google AdWords (You have tested this haven’t you?)
  • Show me how your social media campaigns are feeding into your digital marketing strategy to connect with key influencers and boost your brand online (You are active on social media on a regular basis aren’t you?)
  • Show me how well your email marketing campaigns are performing, I want to see open rates, click through rates, popular content, active customers
  • Show me your average order values and customer lifetime values per traffic source, I want to see how your individual digital marketing campaigns are performing against your traditional marketing activities. Show me the return on your investments for all of your activities.

During our initial analysis when speaking with businesses, we ask some very probing questions about the businesses we may choose to work with in the future. We want to make sure that you are ready to invest in digital seriously. We want to make sure that you are truly open to increasing your revenue through digital marketing, or whether you are simply looking at digital to dip your toe in and seeing everything as a cost and a tick box exercise.

 

Facepalm Star Treck

 

Generally speaking, when we hear comments such as “Digital doesn’t work for our industry” there isn’t a great deal we can do to help at this stage. Let’s chat again in a couple of years when you’re ready to talk things through seriously and are more aware about how the world has changed. For those who can answer some of the basic questions outlined above, then this is where we come in to get you on the right track and get your digital marketing campaigns performing well.

 

We Had SEO Done Once

Search Engine Optimisation is never done. It is part of an ongoing process designed to increase organic traffic to your website over time and ultimately sales / enquiries / revenue depending on the sector you are working in. We’ve seen businesses who thought they “had SEO done” previously and decided to go no further, against our best efforts to convince them otherwise. Avoid making the same mistakes as we have seen to many other businesses make, invest in your digital channels to build long term results, rather than seeing SEO as “done”;

 

Weve Had SEO Done Once

 

Would you ever see your physical shop or office space as being “done”? Or would you empty the bins daily, clean the carpets, tidy the desks, bring in new customers, promote your shop as being open, walk your shop floor daily, add new products to your inventory, run special offers and promotions to generate new customers and more? It is no different when looking online. The only difference comes down to choice. Each individual business either choses to invest in digital, or they don’t. Living in a digital world, you yourself will naturally research many of the products you have around you right now online in the first instance.

 

We Already Have a Website, Why Do We Need Another?

Is your website performing? No? Is your website mobile friendly? No? Does your website look like it was built in 1996? Yes? Your customers online are looking for a website that sells a specific product or service, is extremely easy to use, is branded very well and fits with their personal beliefs. If you website was built by your friends neighbour’s son who was taking a Dreamweaver course 10 years ago then it probably isn’t going to be relevant for your customers.

A bad website is like turning up trying to sell to potential customers unwashed, unshaven, wearing unfitted clothes with holes in and smelling like a wet dog. If you turned up in person to sell to potential customers like this, how do you think they would react? And how is this different online?

Your website is your digital shop front, make it count and engage with your audience. Website visitors want to see that you care, that you are there to help them accomplish their goal, that you are only a phone call away from being able to answer their queries and that you actually want new customers. A bad website simply pushes people away.

 

Google1998

 

A good website builds loyal customers over time. Your website may not look as bad as Google’s did back in 1998 (although we have seen some that do come close!). Do you think Google would be as popular today if they didn’t invest in their website seriously over the past several years?

 

We Spent 10’s of Thousands on Our Website about 5 years

5 year is a lifetime in the digital world. Traditional civil engineering projects are often designed to last 100 years. You’re lucky if your website lasts 100 months without any input. Unfortunately spending money on digital projects does not guarantee quality. We’ve seen so many instances where companies have spent a lot of money on websites which simply haven’t delivered. Only recently have we seen a brand new website launched that is effectively telling Google to go away.

This is an unfortunate reality for many businesses, which is why we launched our Digital Lifeline packages so you can call on someone to give you solid advice about your digital activities and website technologies. Having bought a website years ago and wondering why this isn’t performing now is a little mad when you compare this to the real world. Imagine if you bought an old car from a sleazy second hand car sales man, you can picture the type, and then you decided not to get an MOT done at all, no services, any repairs were done with your own hammer, screwdriver, car manual and a bit of duck-tape where needed. How do you think your car would be performing today? Probably not very well.

Again, the same is true for your website. If you see your website as a cost, then you have already lost. If you see your website as a vehicle to increase ecommerce sales, enquiries from around the globe and ultimately revenue then you are on the right track. Imagine living out in the sticks, with only a post office and a corner shop in the village. Not a great deal of job opportunities (i.e. personal revenue). In this instance, buying a car isn’t a cost, buying a car gives you freedom to break into new markets such as cities and increase your personal revenue by getting a higher paid job. Your website is no different – when you invest in your website seriously.

 

We bought a website once

 

Your Website Should Generate a Return on Your Investment

Have a think about this;

  • If I asked you to give me a £1 coin right now, how many of you would pop one in the post to us? No-one? Why? We’re a great bunch of folk 🙂
  • As a comparison, if I asked you to give me a £1 coin right now, and I would give you £2 back, how many £1 coins would you send us in the post? I’m guessing that you’d empty your bank account, right? Because you would double your money overnight.

The logic of investing in digital marketing channels is no different. The difference being between traditional marketing channels and digital marketing channels is that you can track every single detail in one of these channels, whereas you can track very little results in the other channel.

Looking at the famous quote;

 

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”

 

I’d like to expand on this quote and be a tad facetious;

 

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; It’s the offline half!”

 

Being able to track and understand how all of your marketing channels are performing will allow you to make strategic decisions to grow your business. Simply spending money aimlessly on activities that you’ve always done in business probably isn’t the best approach going forward, unless you are confident that this is already working for you.

 

Next Steps

We work with businesses of all shapes and sizes, some who are well versed in digital technologies and are needing support along their fast paced journey, and also companies who require a good amount of support as they are still at the start of digital journey. We will work with any business who requires our help and is ready.

The familiar quotes couldn’t be truer;

 

“You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink” – Quote

“When the student is ready, the teacher will appear” – Chinese proverb

“A journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step” – Chinese proverb

 

We’re ready to work with you and your company as soon as you are. All of the contents of this blog post are choices which people and businesses can make. People either choose to do something about their underperforming website and talk to us, or they choose to do what they have always done.

The more companies I personally speak with, the more I realise that success in the digital world is not down to our amazing work alone (although this does help!) but it is often down to the choices made by the individuals within either ambitious or struggling businesses.

Remember, all you need to do is ask we we’ll be there to help.

Blue Pill Red Pill

The Importance of Using Progressive Enhancement Website Development Techniques

We’ve spotted a trend recently with many website developers utilising technologies that make it difficult for search engines to crawl and index the website. Meaning that when search engines find it difficult to understand the content of your website, that you are in a position whereby Google may either penalise your website for spammy behaviours or simply losing a significant portion of the traffic to your website and ultimately revenue too. Clearly for websites that are generating a lot of visits from search engines, if this suddenly dropped off, how much revenue would you lose out on?

The trend we have spotted is around using JavaScript technologies which are inhibiting search engines from crawling websites. So while a new website may look flashy and all-singing-all-dancing, but if the new website cannot be easily crawled by search engines then quite simply you are going to be losing a lot of organic traffic to your website and ultimately sales / enquiries. Don’t make the same mistake that so many website developers do and use the latest technology without thinking through the consequences of what this means for your overall digital marketing strategy.

 

Common Problems

The common problems we are seeing more frequently at the minute are with developers using JavaScript technology which often looks nice for users. From a search engines perspective, JavaScript technology is difficult to crawl which can confuse the search engines and would always be recommended to avoid.

As a prime example, a local business recently re-launched their ecommerce website which certainly looked pretty but when viewing the website with JavaScript turned off (as Google would see it), then there is no content to display at all;

 

Website Using Too Much JavaScript Technology

 

A website that looks good but can’t be indexed to Google is the equivalent of having a beautiful shop on the high street and keeping your doors locked at all times – you aren’t going to be generating any sales. For this business specifically, they have been notified of the issue and are working to fix the problem. Let’s be clear though, this is the exact reason why it is important that you are working with the right digital agency who understands how each piece of the digital marketing jigsaw fits together. A good looking website is often not the same as a good performing website. Good performing websites think about usability, functionality, SEO, PPC, Email Marketing, Conversion Rate Optimisation and more.

 

Why this is a problem for search engines

Developers love to use new technology, but this isn’t always the right decision to make. As a nice comparison, if a new website removed the traditional login username and password and instead replaced this with fingerprint scanning technology to access the website, which is possible. Sounds like a fun and exciting thing to play around with, right? But when you dig a little deeper, this means that only those with the latest Samsung Galaxy phones and certain specialist laptops would be able to use this technology, forcing everyone else away.

There is always a place for new technology and we would always encourage people to experiment with new technology to lead the way in their industry. That being said, you cannot do this at the expense of forcing people to use this technology if they don’t have the means to do so.

The same is true for Google. Search engines cannot easily index content that is powered by JavaScript. Which means that all pages on your website need to be accessible when JavaScript is turned off. Google recently updated their official guidelines on the topic which states that websites should be developed using Progressive Enhancement. So while some of your JavaScript based content may be being found by Google, it would always be recommended to follow Google’s guidelines on the topic to improve the chances of benefitting the website in terms of SEO;

 

What is Progressive Enhancement?

So what exactly is progressive enhancement? Well it comes down to creating a website (or mobile app) that can be run on all devices easily with basic functionality. Then if a certain device has a specific piece of functionality or technology, then you can enhance the usability of the website based on this technology. Most importantly, don’t assume that everyone accessing your website has all of the technology available that you think they do.

For example, how many times have you been prompted when accessing a website from your laptop which asks if it is OK if this website uses your location?

 

Website Wants to Use Your Location in Browser

 

While this technology can certainly work on website, it is often rather inaccurate due to the way your location is essentially guessed based on several factors. Compared with the GPS signal from your mobile phone which is accurate to within a few feet of your location. This is a prime example of when progressive enhancement would be used, with a baseline set of website features not using the Geolocation and only asking the user if you can use their location when they are accessing from a mobile device. People accessing services through their mobile device are used to giving websites their location in return for some form of added features or functionality. As an obvious example, Google Maps clearly needs your location to help you get from A to B.

From a search engines perspective, it is important to use progressive enhancement at all times to ensure that they can easily crawl and index your website and content. Far too often are JavaScript based websites (and Flash websites back in the day!) are built without thinking about how Google is going to be able to crawl them. When using progressive enhancement, this ensures that the baseline website is still accessible to Google when JavaScript is turned off.

Progressive enhancement is not only recommended by Google, but it is also recommended by the wider community opposed to the older approach of graceful degradation. The reason behind this is because it provides a much better user experience when people are accessing a website from a variety of devices with multiple technologies.

As a simple summary of the above, all modern smartphones come built with GPS, accelerometers, gyroscopes, compasses, barometers and more. Whereas most laptops and desktop computers don’t have any of these technologies built in by default. Any website that depends on technology for key features or functionality that not everyone has is doomed to fail.

 

How to Test

To check your own website is displaying correctly for Google, turn JavaScript off in your web browser and navigate around your website. If you can’t easily access all parts of your website with JavaScript turned off, then the chances are that search engines are also having difficulty. While it is true that Google does attempt to index JavaScript based content, they do still find it difficult which is why they recommend progressive enhancement their self.

Removing any ambiguity from your website means that Google will be able to crawl and index your website with ease. It is easy for Google to assume that you are showing one version of content to the user and another version of content to search engines – for which websites can be penalised for this behaviour. Always use progressive enhancement as a way to develop websites effectively.

If you need any tips, advice or pointers related to the technology your website is using then get in touch. We have a range of services to support your individual needs, from starter Digital Lifeline support packages to our high end consultancy packages designed to be tailored to your every need.

Experimenting with the New Top Level Domains

A while ago we talked about what the new top level domains mean for businesses. Since writing that blog post over 12 months ago, a lot has happened. Since the initial announcement of new top level domains coming to the market, we thought it would be worth looking at what has actually changed and what you can actually do with the new domains.

 

New Generic Top Level Domains

Back in February 2014, there was a total of 362 top level domains that had been registered. Today, there are 988, a figure that is almost triple. Again, have a good browse through the top level domains that have been registered over the past year to get a feel for how things are changing.

An interesting point to note that while we have seen an almost tripling of top level domains that have been registered, we’ve yet to see any significant rollout of these domain names from businesses and brands online. The .google top level domain has been registered, yet we are all still using google.com or google.co.uk when searching. Likewise, .barclays has been registered but we are also still using barclays.com or barclays.co.uk. So why is this?

Well, honestly, things haven’t really changed that much over the past year when it comes to how customers perceive top level domains. If anything, people have become more wary of websites that don’t appear genuine, with cyber fraud and phishing attacks becoming part of everyday life. You only need to look back and read some of the topics we’ve covered on cyber security recently to see the scale of the problem; Cyber Security Conference 2015; Online Fraud and Cybercrime is a Serious Threat in 2015; Creative Entrepreneur 2014; A Short Story About… A Poorly Designed Website Allowing Anyone to Register as an Administrator Without Validation or Authorisation.

What this has ultimately led to is a situation whereby it appears that brands aren’t willing to experiment with the new top level domains just yet. So we thought we would experiment a little to see what kind of things we could do. It would be extremely unlikely for us to switch over to our new top level domain for the main website, since people are still very unsure about the new top level domains and still associate websites with the traditional .com and .co.uk. Hence why this is a nice little experiment to see how people can interact with websites and brands in a more user friendly and effective way with a little thought and planning.

 

Introducing contrado.digital

That’s right, we’ve just purchased a trendy domain that fits well with our brand, http://contrado.digital. Yes this is the full domain. The .digital top level domain became available quite recently, so we thought it would be worth securing this to protect the brand. Going beyond this, we’ve set up some additional functionality that allows you to interact with us a little easier.

 

http://search.contrado.digital

To search the Contrado Digital website, you could use search functionality that is built into WordPress, www.contradodigital.com/?s=searchQuery, although you may not know that exists. We’ve kept the search functionality hidden on purpose for the time being to avoid cluttering the main navigation as we found that it wasn’t being used a great deal by the majority of website visitors. But what if you still want to search the website without having to remember what the specific search URL is?

That’s why we created search.contrado.digital. Simple type this into your web browser, followed by your search query and you will automatically be shown a search results specifically for your query. For example, here are a few you can try;

So there’s a nice easy way to find exactly what you need on the Contrado Digital website.

 

Search Engine Optimisation

 

http://email.contrado.digital

To email us at Contrado Digital, again, simply type the following into your web browser, email.contrado.digital and you will be presented with a simple way to drop us an email without any effort at all. Go on, give it a go;

Yes, you could just go to the homepage, scroll down to the bottom and click on the link there. But why waste your time looking for an email address when you could just setup a nice piece of functionality that automates this whole process for you.

 

Small Business Email Addresses

 

Social Media Channels

How about if you want to go straight to our social media channels to find out the latest trends happening in the digital world? Sure, you could again go to the website, hunt for the social media icons or go to the social media website and search for us there. But why waste your time doing that when you could just go straight to the relevant channel with ease;

Nice little bit of functionality!

 

Social Media Sharing

 

Summary

While the new top level domains are certainly still in their infancy, is there any way that you could be using these to help your audience connect with your brand easier? I’m sure there are many different and unique pieces of functionality that can enhance the user experience of your website by using this technology. What ways can you think of that would help by using a similar setup?

The Importance of Selecting the Right Digital Agency

Selecting the right digital agency partner can determine how successful your digital marketing campaigns are…or aren’t. Many businesses often work with who they like personally rather than the agency that can deliver the best results for their business to meet their growth ambitions. We enjoy working with ambitious companies who understand the value of selecting the right agency for the right reasons.

You will no doubt have heard the famous saying, “If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys” and this is even more true within the digital world whereby every recent graduate who can use Facebook is now apparently a digital guru. Let’s be serious here and make smart decisions when selecting the right partner to work with and always remember;

 

Quality VS Price Banner

 

The work that we do doesn’t come cheap and we make no excuses for that. We work extremely closely with our clients to look at the options that work for their business. With a no-nonsense approach to digital marketing, you can be confident that we don’t try and baffle you with digital jargon because we have no need to try and impress you with waffle. Instead, we let our results speak for their self. And it’s ok, because not everyone is a perfect fit for us either. We often actively turn clients away because they simply aren’t ready to work with us and if we did take them on board we would be in a situation whereby results would be difficult to deliver and not provide a positive return on investment. This is not a good solution for either part involved which is why we are always honest with businesses we speak with.

When you are selecting the right digital agency to work with it is important to look at what you actually want to achieve. This is significantly different than what you want them to do. If you want a digital agency to “Do that Twitter thing” for you, then you may not be the right type of business to work with us. Instead, you may be better off employing an apprentice who can quite happily play around on social media all day and look busy. Compare this to if you are looking for a digital agency to “Significantly increase social media engagement from current fans along with increasing targeted fans by 20% in 6 months”, then this is when we would step in and create a serious strategy to grow your business. And again, it’s ok if you are in the former category. Every business needs to go through a series of stages as they grow and always remember;

 

Good - Cheap - Fast Comparison

 

The final point to make about the importance of selecting the right digital agency is to make sure you have the right people in place to get you to where you need to be. You wouldn’t employ a book keeper to fulfil the role of a Financial Director would you? No, you wouldn’t. The same is true with people working in the digital industry. Just because someone can use Facebook doesn’t make them good at digital. Just because someone can build a pretty website doesn’t mean they know how to generate serious results in terms of website traffic increases and revenue increases. And again, it’s ok if you choose to employ a book keeper to fulfil the role of a Financial Director. This isn’t where we fit in, instead, go and employ a recent graduate at a lower salary until you are ready to seriously invest in digital. When you are ready to get serious results for your business, let’s have a coffee and see how we can help your business fulfil its potential. Many businesses simply aren’t ready to hear about the right solutions, they are too busy doing what they have always done or taking the advice of people with less experience because there is a huge lack of understanding for most businesses around what digital actually is. So remember, when you are ready for the right solutions for your business, we are the ones holding the wheels and we are ready to chat whenever you are;

 

Digital Opportunities Requires Listening

 

Already in a position to talk seriously about digital? Then get in touch and let’s meet up to see how we can help your business grow with the right people, the right technology at the right time.

Contrado Digital Goes International

Digital is global. Customers can access the products and services on your website from anywhere in the world with an internet connection. This is no different for us. We have recently boosted our client base to take clients on from international markets, specifically the tropical country of Costa Rica.

Read about the case study from another happy client from across the pond.

 

Namu Travel Group Case Study Header Image

 

This brings us onto international growth through digital which we haven’t covered a great deal before, yet one where we have a lot of experience with to help clients increase international sales. Having personally worked with multi-national clients to drive orders from foreign markets over the past few years, I can say that there is a huge opportunity for growth for businesses of all types.

 

Traditional Thinking for International Growth

When looking to export goods and services to the international market, the traditional process is to think about how things worked 30 years ago. Decide upon a market, visit the market, find a distributor or partner, speak with the UKTI, go on their Passport to Export programme, find out about shipping, taxes, logistics and try and make a few key meetings in your chosen international markets. Yes, this clearly works.

But wait. The world has changed. Significantly. The world is digital, customers are digital and people live digital lives. There is such a huge opportunity to increase exports without ever having to leave the country. The traditional approach is still highly valuable and one which clearly does add a lot of value, but it isn’t telling the whole story. The story that is told with traditional thinking is one of a non-digital world. So let’s start to think digitally.

 

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Digital Thinking for International Growth

So if we take ourselves as an example on the small scale. Did we visit the country, run through the whole market research process or find a local partner? No. It would have been nice, although the cost of visiting is a little more than an EasyJet flight to Paris, and most importantly, it wasn’t necessary. The technology we work with is ubiquitous and location independent. Digital products and services can be provided globally from the comfort of your own office which puts digital exports into the high value, low barrier to entry segment.

Digital products and services are a little easier to export than physical products that require shipping, so let’s take a look at some of the finer details here. Sure, you are going to need to go through all of the traditional areas for international growth we just talked about for this. But then what? How else are you going to get your products to market internationally? With digital. Connecting directly with the customers in those markets who are already searching online for your products. So what do you need to be thinking about then?

 

Technical Factors

So you are ready to export your products and sell directly to end customers through your ecommerce website, but is your website actually capable of selling products directly to the end consumer? Does your website have multi-lingual or multi-location functionality available?

What about local taxes, local shipping options and other legal and logistical things you need to consider? Is your website capable of scaling with your needs and customising product prices based on location and taxes? Generally speaking, this is your first port of call to review the capabilities of your current setup to check for suitability to scale internationally.

What about the structure of your website and domain name(s). Do you use sub-domains, http://en-gb.your-website.com, directories, http://www.your-website.com/en-gb/, or do you use country specific domain names such as http://www.your-website.co.uk? There are many considerations for each option which fully depends on how your plan to grow your business and the amount of active marketing you are planning on doing. Considerations that span technical areas, SEO, PPC and Social.

 

Gears - Tracking

 

SEO

Search Engine Optimisation is as powerful in international markets as it is in the UK. Although there can be significant differences and challenges to overcome. For example, if you are looking to target English speaking countries around the world as a first port of call, how to you handle the duplicate content issues that this brings? There are ways of informing search engines about what you are doing to avoid any penalties.

It is also important to understand the different search engines that are in use around the world. In the UK, Google has around a 90% market share for search. In other countries this can be completely different, for example in Russia the leading search engine is Yandex, in South Korea it is Naver and in China it is Baidu. Each of these behave completely differently and have their own nuances that you need to be aware of.

 

Baidu Search

PPC

What about Pay per Click Advertising? How are you going to target your key customers when they are searching online? This totally depends on the way your customers are searching in each individual market, which can often be quite different online than how they behave in the real world. For example, some countries may prefer to purchase items from a .com domain name, whereas others may prefer to purchase from a local domain name such as .com.au. Which is best? Online market research will be able to tell you this.

 

Google Analytics Traffic Growth Header Image

 

Social Media

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, right? That’s all we need to be focusing on, isn’t is? Well, no, not necessarily. In Germany they use Xing as their equivalent to LinkedIn. In China they use RenRen as their version of Facebook and Sina Weibo as a micro-blogging platform somewhere in-between Twitter and Facebook.

Never assume anything in the digital world when looking to export your products and services. Everywhere in the world is different and quite considerably.

 

Content Strategy and Promotion Header Image Original

 

Imagery and Content

Selling online in multiple markets has it’s challenges. Translating your website and adding another currency simply isn’t going to cut it. You need to localise your website for the individual markets. For example, what may be quite normal in one culture could be offensive in another and put people off from purchasing your products.

Imagine you are selling items for the kitchen, you may have an image with a family around the table, a bottle of wine in the middle and a steaming hot meal. Sounds about right? What about if you are selling to a country where alcohol isn’t consumed by the masses due to religious reasons? Now maybe this image isn’t the most suitable.

 

Payment Methods

How are you actually going to be paid? Is your current payment gateway used by the masses within your target country, or is it unknown and distrusted. I have experienced this personally when booking a flight with a foreign airline directly through their website. To cut a long story short, their payment system didn’t quite work, so I got the flight unknowingly for free at the time, until they contacted me 12 months later requesting payment. Absolutely fine as this was paid, although the method was a little challenging as the payment gateway they used I had never heard of, nor would it allow me to pay through it due to restrictions in place for international payments.

That is a personal experience as an end customer, but what about for markets where other payment methods are used? For example in China, a platform called Alipay (similar to PayPal) accounts for over 50% of the online payment transactions. In India, around 75% of ecommerce payments are based on cash-on-delivery according to this report [PDF Link] from a couple of years ago.

 

Credit Cards

Image courtesy of DigitalTrends

 

Considerations for International Growth

In summary, there are a lot of considerations for international growth that need careful thought about how you are going to proceed. Thankfully we have been there and done it on multiple occasions with businesses ranging from small to large. The key message of this blog post is that the traditional methods for looking at increasing exports are just the starting point. The key next step is to look at how you are going to increase exports through the many digital marketing channels that are available to you, which will often be different for each country you are looking to move into.

Not sure where to start? Get in touch to discuss your requirements and we can work with you over time to increase exports for your business through global digital marketing. We also run regular courses on how to break into international markets through digital marketing with our Digital Passport to Export workshop.