A lesson from the past
By Kate Ashley-Norman, director, Vast PR.
Back in the naughty noughties, when Google was barely out of nappies, I was running an overseas property company. With a budget of a couple of hundred quid a month we were running Google adword campaigns that ensured we were consistently on page one, and often within the top three listed companies.
We didn’t have a clue what we were doing, but it was giving us between eight and ten leads every single day.
My focus at that time was selling properties (there was a massive Turkish property boom going on at the time – you may have caught me on A Place in the Sun at some stage!) Google was a massive part of our marketing strategy, and our approach was really experimental.
I remember signing up to do some SEO and getting completely stung by a company that disappeared as quickly as it took my money! You live and learn. Although you may not want to understand the intricacies of how it all works, the greater your understanding, the more control you have.
This Google dominance within this particular niche lasted a couple of years before the competition multiplied and the search engine itself increased the complexities and sophistication of PPC. Today, the digital landscape has grown by several layers, incorporating numerous social media platforms and increasingly, AI.
Keeping up to date with every aspect is a full time job to ensure you are at the very least keeping on a level with your competitors.
The beauty of digital marketing is that it gives you an incredibly in-depth insight into your potential customer base, enabling you to reach them at a relatively low cost.
Focused and targeted campaigns can be run based on geographical locations, profession, income levels, family sizes, age, gender, what car they drive, what books they read, what programmes they watch, how they vote.
What this means is that even if your ideal customer is not yet looking to purchase a new set of windows or doors for their property, you can use their own interests and preferences to reach out and start sowing seeds.
And once you’ve involved that delightful box of cookies, you can start to really understand how our thoughts and preferences are being constantly monitored. The ethical discussion around this aside, getting your digital foundations right is a complex project that consists of many spinning plates and interconnected pieces that, when balanced out and working in harmony, is an incredibly powerful force.
Getting all those elements in place, while keeping an eye on your overall marketing goals is never a simple process. With one client recently we wasted several weeks trying to regain control of a Facebook page.
No one seemed to know who actually owned the page in the first place, which meant that the right permissions for admin could not be granted to those waiting to start on essential work. The frustration of waiting for responses ate into weeks when we could have been split testing and optimising ads for lead generation.
We ended up ditching the page altogether and starting afresh – not the best solution in the short term, but it gave us the reassurance that we had complete control once again.
What we shouldn’t forget is that the real power comes when you combine the digital with the personal. Coming from a PR background, that personality element to a business is often the forgotten ingredient in a digital campaign that can actually amplify its voice and raise it over and above the competition.
This includes a more tangible, or physical, aspect to your overall marketing mix – whether it is sending lumpy mail in the post, or scheduling a product demo in the home or a showroom – it helps to build trust, confidence and credibility. The digital world is still evolving, but there’s nothing like the reassurance of a firm handshake to seal the deal.