At Zeald, we have a lot of customers asking what they can do to get better results for their business. This resource will cover off important topics which will help you to reach your website goals; SEO, PPC, directory listings and social media.

Search Engine Optimisation

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is how a website ranks organically in search engines, that is, how it ranks without paying any money to Google.

The easiest way to improve your SEO is to create fresh, user friendly content that your customers will want to share with all their friends. This means writing blog posts, creating videos, and resources which you then share on social media, on your website, and in email marketing. 

To read more on how to improve your SEO please consider the following articles:

• Why doesn't my website appear in Google?
• Why is SEO important for your business?
• Why content marketing is king
• Correct the names of your images to improve your SEO
• All you need to know about inbound links

Pay Per Click and Google AdWords

 Pay Per Click is a method where you pay Google to rank well. You will have seen this when you search in Google and ads come up the top of the listings. Using PPC is a fantastic way to rank well without putting a lot of effort into content creation (you do have to pay though). PPC means that you only pay Google when someone clicks on your listing, which means that you only pay when someone is interested in your business. At Zeald, we have a team of Google certified PPC specialists that can help you with your PPC goals. To get started, have a read of our resources regarding PPC and Google AdWords.

• How to setup a Google AdWords campaign 
• 10 reasons you should commit to PPC
• Benefits of keyword analysis
• Google AdWords: Should you do it yourself?
• How to do a keyword analysis for your website

Directory listings 

Listing in directories is not only a fantastic way to improve your SEO, but it also lets potential customers know how to get in contact with you. It is important for local businesses to be listed in a directory that their target market uses. The best way to cover this, is to list in as many valuable directories as you can. It is also vital that your contact information is consistent on each of these listings.

To learn which directory listings might be good for your business, and how to go about making a listing, read the articles below.

• The importance of directory listings
• How to rank well locally to improve your SEO

Social Media

Social media is a great platform to share your content, and to create brand awareness. Here, you can get to know your customers, and see what they respond to. By having a community of your customers, you can get your information and offers out into a group of people who are already interested in you. For many businesses, social media should not be their only marketing platform, but it is a fantastic place to create a two-way relationship with your customers.

• Pinterest: Should you jump on board?
• Facebook rule breakers- are you guilty?
• Facebook, not everything in marketing
• Make Linkedin work for you
• Social media strategy 
• Instagram as a recommendation tool

If you would like extra help with any of the topics covered, please get in contact with the team at Zeald. We have a team of specialists that can help your business generate the business results you are looking for.

Email marketing is an effective tool to drive customers back to your website. It allows you to reach out to your customer and let them know what products and services they may be interested in.

1. Schedule your emails

What time and day to schedule your emails for will depend on the type of customers you are trying to reach. For example, if you are a B2B business, it is best to send emails in work hours, and on work days. Sending them an email at 5pm on a Friday is sure to go unnoticed by an employee whose mind is already on the weekend. Likewise, if your customers are stay-at-home mums, you might want to consider sending an email after the morning rush has slowed down. A good idea, is to schedule emails in advance, so your email goes out on time, regardless of someone needing to be there.

2. Have an interesting subject line

We all have inboxes overflowing with offers, your email needs to stand out among the masses. Identify the need of your client, and offer a solution. For example, a pharmacy could ask, ‘Are you ready for cold season?’. Try to avoid adding words like 'free' to your subject lines as they trigger spam filters.   

3. Segment your customers

Group your customers based on their needs. For example, if you are a sports website, and you stock the latest NRL merchandise, you want to let all your rugby customers know. Although other customers may also be interested, it will be more efficient to directly contact customers who you know have a keen interest in the sport. 

4. Have a strong call to action

What do you want people to do once they have read your email? Buy a product? Enquire about your services? Ensure you have a clear objective in mind so that your customers, in turn, know what your intentions are. Embed buttons and hyper links with your calls-to-action so that your customers can easily make the next step.

5. Split test 

Not sure if one subject line works better than the other? Split test your emails to see what works best. This is an excellent opportunity to continuously improve your emails, increasing your click through rate. All you need to do is to split up your customer group, and assign a different email subject line to each group. After you have sent out your emails, run a report on each email to see which was more successful. This may give you an idea to what your customers are most responsive to. This is not only useful for testing subject lines, but for design and offers as well. 

6. Report 

Are you not getting the responses you are looking for? Start reporting on your emails to see how many people are opening your email, clicking through, or unsubscribing. From there, you may start to see a pattern of specific offers being responded to more than others. This process of reporting means that you can refine your messages so that each email becomes more efficient. 

Want help with your email marketing? Talk to Zeald about our email marketing tool today. We can also help you with designing email marketing templates unique to your business. 

1. Buying products that have celebrity endorsements

It is common for people to be interested in products that their role models promote. This is especially strong when it seems natural that the celebrity would use the product themselves. For example, it would seem natural for wild-man survivalist, Bear Grylls to use a knife he promoted, compared to him eating at a fast food chain he promoted.  

Do you have a product that you know a customer uses? Write a blog about it, or post it on social media! For example, if you own a kids retail shop, and know that a celebrity mum uses a brand that you sell, let people know! You will most certainly catch the attention of customers who are a fan of the celebrity. 

2. Spending more to get free shipping

We’ve all been there, we have $25 worth of product in our cart, but free shipping is offered if you spend $30. What do you do? Some people will hunt around to find small something to bring their basket up to $30. Whereas other people may find your free shipping offer to be just the justification to spurge on the other product they were initially undecided on.

Because of this, you may want to consider the benefits of offering free shipping once a certain cart price has been reached. It is a great way to incentivise customers to spend that little bit more, without losing them to high shipping costs.

3. Spending more to save more

Offering a discount on one item because a customer has bought a number of other products encourages people to 'spend more to save more'. I have to admit, that while I know what shops are doing, I often fall for this. When you are already choosing between a few products, it does not take much for a company to grant you the permission you are internally looking for.  

Look to add this sales technique to your website seasonally when you are looking to get rid of excess stock, and to create hype via email marketing and social media when you do.