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Business Growth Marketing Tips for 2023

Business Growth Marketing Tips for 2023

1 Oct 2022 | Digital Marketing, General

Reading Time: 6 minutes

There are lots of things that you can do on the marketing front to tackle the last few months of 2022 and the new year ahead with the best possible chances of optimising business growth.

The team at Woya suggest you follow these top business growth marketing tips and grab the opportunities that 2023 has to offer.

Business Growth Marketing Tip #1 – Have a Mobile Responsive Web Presence

Over 60% of all web traffic is now made through a mobile device and so if a business’ website isn’t formatted to respond to the device on which its being displayed appropriately, those visiting will be forced to go elsewhere – and elsewhere may just be the website of your competitor.

Mobile responsiveness is now part of the standard offering of just about every web development business and if your business’ website isn’t set up for it, get to refreshing the whole thing to fit it.

Mobile responsiveness is often just considered to be images formatting down in a line for smaller screens but in reality, there’s a lot more to it. You may need to edit your website’s structure for mobile devices in order to more easily display and show calls to action and conversion opportunities, and it might be that an online purchase process can be streamlined to suit.

Security certification ‘behind the scenes’ on websites also needs to vary for mobile devices, so it’s definitely worth investing in a web designer who’s able to best advise and guide you through the options.

Business Growth Marketing Tip #2 – Visually Optimise Your Website

A website that offers a good user experience (UX) is not only more likely to drive conversions and positive action from those who visit it, it’s also more likely to be ranked higher on search engine results.

The usability and security of websites is now just as important for SEO as the usage of keywords and so is not to be underestimated in its power.

It is estimated that Google makes at least two changes a week to its algorithm in order to better present search results to users, and all of the recent updates have included a focus on UX over just language usage. This means that the SEO tactics of days gone by are fast becoming irrelevant, and in some cases could even harm your website’s performance.

It’s imperative that you focus on the up-to-date and ever changing methods of SEO practice and that your site is audited to highlight areas of opportunity.

Business Growth Marketing Tip #3 – Invest In SEO

Organic search is often thought of as ‘free’ in comparison to paid-for advertising, but it does require the investment of time and resource in order to manage it properly and make it happen. Now is the time to make a move, up your game and get ahead of the competition.

Work on SEO should be a continual process and so there’s no one project that you can complete and see the job done. Instead, businesses should invest time in the creation of appropriate, helpful and shareable content, ensuring the usability of their site is top notch and that they build up backlinks from high-authority sources.

We don’t recommend hiring an internal SEO consultant to work directly for your business. It is definitely more cost effective with the services of a specialist SEO consultant or SEO agency to drive results. With Woya SEO packages starting at £750 per month, this will certainly deliver more bang for your buck than managing an internal team.

Business Growth Marketing Tip #4 – Optimise for Local Search

Businesses that operate in or serve a particular geographical area can find vast benefit in the use of Google local SEO services. Taking the time to claim and optimise your Google Business Profile will elevate your organic exposure on search engines, with specific targeting toward your demographic audience.

Local search results really stand out from others on Google Maps, SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) with photos, contact information and highlights. It may seem counterintuitive to ‘think local’ on a search engine so global, but Google has invested heavily in its local SEO and reports that users find it extremely helpful.

Woya’s Local SEO packages include both on- and off-site optimisation as well as full management of a Google Business Profile account.

Business Growth Marketing Tip #5 – Take A Smart Approach to Social Media

A common pitfall is that businesses put time and effort into social media marketing, just because they feel they should, so it takes up time and resource without any real ROI.

You don’t need to be on every social media channel, but you should be present on whichever channels your target demographic are. The creation of content for social media that is engaging and invites interaction can help build a strategic relationship with your customer base rather than just a transactional one, and will allow for a more positive personal connection to be made.

Social media trends move fast, and something can blow up in minutes. It’s important for businesses not just to focus on ‘going viral’ but instead to understand what they want to achieve from their social media presence. Keep it relevant and appropriate for your audience and don’t diversify further than you need to.

Broadening your niche will only result in an audience who won’t engage and/or convert, and that’s not a good use of internal resources.

Business Growth Marketing Tip #6 – Up Your Content Marketing Game

Marketplaces are more crowded than ever and competition is fierce. The creation of unique, helpful and relevant content for customers is no longer a ‘nice-to-have’ marketing tool, but an essential one.

Content is often thought of as just blogging, but can be just about anything to position you as a thought-leading expert in your industry. Think videos, podcasts, e-books, printables, and instruction guides, just as a start.

All too often businesses get hung up on producing thousands of pieces of content just for the sake of having them. Instead, repurpose a single piece of content into other forms, use a freebie as a ‘lipstick offer’ to draw in an audience and try to balance out your content portfolio between current and evergreen in order for it to sustain itself long-term.

Business Growth Marketing Tip #7 – Add Digital PR to Your Marketing Strategy Mix

PR has traditionally entailed maintaining a decent relationship with your local newspaper, but in the age of the internet, the whole concept of PR has been transformed.

Digital PR involves the use of online systems to send business press releases to a myriad of relevant media worldwide. This increases your business’ brand exposure further than just local titles and helps increase coverage levels. In turn, this enhanced coverage can have a further positive impact on your SEO – as band mentions and links back to your website from high authority sites will boost your SEO ranking.

Positioning your brand as an expert in its field has a myriad of long-term benefits and will lead to further growth opportunities in the future. Be bold, be brave, and get out there – nail your colours to the mast and put your name to your brand values.

Business Growth Tip #8 – Strategise!

Most businesses now understand that a digital presence is critical to marketing, but without steering your efforts in the right direction, the optimisation and success will be limited.

It’s important that a thorough digital marketing strategy is created and managed in order to ensure that all work has an impact and is converting as expected. Without a proper plan, all too often digital marketing efforts become ad hoc and lack the clarity of direction required for real success.

A comprehensive digital marketing strategy will steer online activity across a variety of appropriate channels and keep messaging consistent throughout; so no matter how or where consumers come across your brand, they’re able to identify it. It will also speak to two audiences: existing customers, and potential customers, and maximise the opportunities to interact with both.

Business Growth Marketing Tip #9 – Work With Experts

Woya Digital are SEO experts and specialise in increasing the visibility and customer base of organisations online.

No matter how niche or specialised your organisation, we can help boost your exposure and increase your bottom line. Our team of experts work on a basis of continuous learning and improvement to ensure that we’re always at the forefront of SEO and digital marketing developments – so you can be, too.

All of our packages are constructed for stretched budgets, and everything is paid monthly with no upfront investment. Why hire your own marketing resource when you can use ours? Get in touch to discuss your organisation’s 2023 goals, and let’s chat about how we can help you in achieving them.

 

 

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The Benefits of Website Hosting on a Dedicated Server

The Benefits of Website Hosting on a Dedicated Server

22 Sep 2022 | Digital Marketing, General, Webdesign

Reading Time: 4 minutes

A website needs somewhere to live on the internet, and unless a business has its own dedicated server for website hosting, it will need to decide exactly where it will lie.

Indeed there’s no shortage of options available, with a deluge of website hosting companies advertising to companies with varying packages of server support. At Woya, we host all of our clients’ websites on a dedicated server – but this is just one choice available to those looking to secure their digital presence.

Find out more about the ins and outs of business website hosting and to help make an educated decision on what may be the right decision for your organisation.

What is Website Hosting?

Hosting is a space to house a website being rented or bought online.

All of the content that makes up a website – the HTML and CSS coding, images, videos, downloadables and all other components – must be housed on a server in order to be viewable online. When a user visits this content, it is downloaded from this server to be displayed.

What is a Server?

A server is a computer that acts as the connection between a website and those who use it, presenting the data to them.

It is a high-powered piece of machinery specifically built to store, process and manage network data, devices and systems, so it holds a lot of information and processes lots of pieces of data simultaneously. A server holds the website and its content and when accessed, displays it for the web user.

What is a Website Hosting Service Provider?

Website hosting service providers are companies who own servers, connectivity services and other associated services to host websites for other organisations.

Through the offering of a variety of hosting plans, they are able to sell and/or rent space on their servers to cover a spectrum of hosting needs that businesses may require; from small one-person blogs to large corporation’s websites. Website hosting service providers usually differentiate their services from one another on the pricing of packages and the reliability of their service.

The latter should be considered priority as if the servers of a website hosting service providers fail or malfunction, the website of the organisations hosted on it will be unavailable for visitors.

What Do Website Hosting Companies Offer?

Of course, every website hosting company is different and all will have varying service packages. However, generally speaking, most offer a space on their shared server for a website to be hosted, usually amongst hundreds if not thousands, of other sites.

Many also offer some degree of tech support, a choice of URLs and sometimes personalised email addresses.

Website Hosting on a Shared Server Differ vs a Dedicated Server

Not all website hosting companies operate by hosting more than one website on their servers – some dedicate specific servers to one website or organisation at a time.

The operation of shared servers presents different service levels to those of dedicated servers, and it’s important that businesses understand what is available to them in order to make an informed decision before they purchase a website hosting service.

Website hosting on a shared server is usually cheaper, but this cost factor often presents a compromise with site speed. As the nature of shared servers mean that more traffic passes through them (as more than one website will be accessed through it), site speed can be impacted. This is particularly a risk if one website on the server is spammed or subject to malicious traffic, as it can take a while for the website hosting company to identify where the issue is occurring and correct it. On a dedicated server, site speed will not be impacted by others’ traffic and service will be faster as a result.

Businesses looking to build up their SEO rankings need to consider that the risk of shared server unreliability needs to be weighed up with their SEO presence, as websites that are often down or slow may be ranked down in the Google algorithm as they are considered to not deliver a great user experience (UX) considering Google Core Vitals.

Shared servers don’t require the website owner to have any degree of technical skill, as no knowledge of servers, security or other hosting services is needed – everything is managed by the website hosting service provider with no individual intervention required, so you can self manage via their portal.

A business managing their website hosting through a dedicated server may need to understand a little more technically and often use companies offering dedicated hosting that can still manage the technical aspects. Then the organisation doesn’t necessarily need a tech or web expert in-house.

Dedicated servers do give a higher degree of control for those using them as opposed to shared servers as they are not limited by the customisation options offered by set packages. This allows for bespoke configuration setup in order to best tailor the website hosting to business requirements.

All considered, this makes shared servers a cost-effective option for personal websites but often not the preference for professional companies and businesses. Particularly large businesses with lots of content on their websites should consider hosting on a dedicated server as they will want to control the traffic levels and not be at risk from other shared hosting websites, in fact they should even consider mirrored servers to secure their online presence.

Woya Digital Dedicated Server Website Hosting

We host all of our customer websites on dedicated servers. These are premium quality servers which our team hold complete control over; offering the best in security, site speed and service – without our customers having to know the ins and outs of server technology.

Get in touch with our team to find out more about what we have to offer your business!

 

Official Motorsport Marketing Partners for the Alfa Romeo Championship 2020

Official Motorsport Marketing Partners for the Alfa Romeo Championship 2020

14 Dec 2019 | Motorsport, General, Sponsorship

Reading Time: 2 minutes
Motorsport in general is having to work harder than ever to survive! Motor racing championships are currently facing exactly the same pressures as business and as we speed into a new decade, the challenges are likely to increase for the less prepared.

This trend is no different for one of the oldest and well-known motor racing series in the UK, the Alfa Romeo Championship, which is just one year away from its 40th anniversary. It may have a distinguished motor racing heritage, but it certainly is a progressive Championship.

It is with this at the forefront that the Alfa Romeo Championship has announced a new appointment, an official motorsport marketing partner for the 2020 season, Woya Digital.

West Sussex based Woya Digital is a digital marketing agency comprising of experts in respective marketing fields with a main focus on SME business growth. This is achieved through affordable, integrated digital marketing methods such as: lead generation marketing, making friends with Google via essential local SEO and organic SEO, plus designing fully optimised websites.

Managing Partner, Natalie Karr commented “We are delighted to be working with the Alfa Romeo Championship this season, a genuinely fantastic fit to our experience and growing automotive / motor racing portfolio. With so much racing heritage and the desire to expand, we are excited about what we can achieve together.”

As digital marketing experts, Woya Digital has a specialism in motorsport marketing, experience in igniting motorsport sponsorship and is generally superb at generating leads for businesses through marketing. They are working with the Championship to maximise the potential of the 2020 season and beyond.

“The challenge for all UK motorsport is real, from club racing to the dizzy heights and proven success of the BTCC.” Championship Co-Ordinator Andy Robinson commented. “Maintaining healthy driver entry levels, developing new motorsport sponsorship relationships and attracting fresh race spectators on all platforms is key and an essential goal for all levels of motorsport. This is why the Alfa Romeo Championship has taken this bold move to engage with digital marketing and motorsport enthusiasts Woya Digital.”

ENDS

About Woya Digital

West Sussex based Woya Digital is a digital marketing agency comprising of experts in respective marketing fields with a main focus on SME business growth. This is achieved through affordable, integrated digital marketing methods such as: lead generation marketing, making friends with Google via essential local SEO and organic SEO, plus designing fully optimised websites.

www.woya.co.uk

About the 750MC – Alfa Romeo Championship

With nearly four decades of racing history, the Alfa Romeo Championship features a grid spanning a huge variety of different models from the Italian marque, as well as allowing competitors with Fiat, Abarth and Lancia machinery. Three main classes (Modified, Power Trophy and Twin Spark Cup) cater for the different models in addition to the Italian Invitation class, meaning that grids include everything from a 33 to a Mito. The 750 Motor Club offers the UK’s best value racing with a continual drive to offer the highest quality competitor experience and paddock for the club-level driver, as well as a host of other benefits to suit both novice and experienced racers.

www.alfaracer.com 

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Create your Business Social Media Content Calendar

Create your Business Social Media Content Calendar

9 Dec 2019 | General, Social media

Reading Time: 3 minutes

There’s nothing worse than suddenly realising you haven’t tweeted/posted to Instagram/pushed out a Facebook post for an occasion you needed to promote, to inform the world of your latest brand developments! Cobbling together a last-minute post and sending it out at any time of day, just because you need to get something out is not ideal – and it’s certainly not in the social media marketing textbooks!

These situations (amongst other reasons) are why you need to be using a social media content calendar to help you plan, track and strategise your content all year round, without any unnecessary stress.

What is a Social Media Content Calendar?

Put simply, a social media content calendar is a calendar that plans out what content you will post, to which social media channels, and when. It’s best to create as an e-document that can be regularly updated and amended as required.

Why You Need a Social Media Content Calendar

Planning out your social media content calendar in advance allows you to ensure: you’re covering all business aspects, you’re aligning your posts with your business goals, you maintain consistent branding, you’re tailoring your content to your target audience, and you’re making sure you are optimising your content for maximum reach and follower growth.

Part of this process involves researching what your customers want to see and which hashtags work best for you to maximise exposure to both your existing and your potential customers and/or service users.

Before You Get Started

Before you even start on your calendar there are a few basics that you need to first have established to allow you to move forward:

  1. KNOW WHO YOUR CUSTOMER IS – establish exactly who your target audience is so that you can create content specifically for this audience
  2. ESTABLISH YOUR GOALS – identify what the reasons are that you are even posting to social media. Establish your “whys”
  3. IDENTIFY YOUR PLATFORMS – many businesses we work with have a Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram social media account – because they believe they need to be visible everywhere – this is not true. Based on your capacity to regularly create and post content, identify which platforms your target audience is on, and focus your energy on these
  4.  ESTABLISH YOUR BRAND IDENTITY – especially for new or small businesses, have your logo, brand colours, fonts and all other design elements established – basically this should be standard to the look and feel of your website. It is important to have a consistent online presence as it means viewers can get familiar with your brand, find you easily, and this allows you to build up trust through familiarity

How To Arrange Your Social Media Content Calendar

Different social media channels call for different types of content, and planning ahead allows you to ensure that you’re structuring all your content in the way best suited to the particular social media channel it is intended for. On the whole, there are some basic rules you can follow to really optimise your social media usage:

  1. DON’T HARD SELL – there’s a clue in the name ‘SOCIAL media’ – it’s more about engagement and being social! Be more discreet and position yourself as a thought leader/expert in your field rather than making every post a sales pitch
  2. STICK TO THE 80/20 RULE ­– in the same way it’s annoying if you follow someone who only posts selfies, it’s frustrating to see brands just posting about themselves. 80% of your posts should inform, educate and entertain, and only 20% should be business promotion
  3. MIX IT UP ­– however niche your brand, get creative and mix your content up. Try a combination that works for you, i.e. product, then current affairs, then industry, then customer, then motivational quote…and so on. The key is keep it ‘social’ and encourage engagement
  4. IDENTIFY THE BEST TIME TO POST – through analysis, establish when your target audience is online, and schedule your posts around this. There are general time guidelines which can be found online, however it really depends on your industry and your social media platform insight reports will allow you to track and identify when your audience is most active online

Options to Manual Posting

For our sanity – there are social media scheduling tools available! There are a range of software options available which allow you to schedule your social media posts, with image, text and hashtags as far ahead as you like. The software will then automatically publish your posts on the chosen day, at the chosen time, and on the chosen platform!

Social isn’t going away, and if you are not yet taking advantage of social media marketing to grow your business, you are going to get left behind!

Woya Digital is a small digital marketing agency made up of experts in our various fields. We believe in making business growth through digital marketing affordable for all businesses through our pay monthly marketing packages, with no upfront investment. Find out more about how we can support your business growth through digital marketing.

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Latest Google Update Released

Latest Google Update Released

25 Sep 2019 | General, SEO

Reading Time: 3 minutes

We seem to have entered an age where everyone blames their social media, web content or marketing related failures on ‘algorithms’; even if perhaps that’s not really the case. In an attempt to stop internet users scapegoating their tech updates, Google yesterday, for the second time announced a broad core algorithm update in advance of it actually happening and impacting on websites. What does a Google update actually mean for your business and web presence? Read on ….

What is a Google Broad Core Algorithm Update?

‘Broad core algorithm updates’ aren’t specifically aimed at combatting any one issue, but rather at improving Google’s overall systems efficiency. These updates can take anything from a few hours to a few days to roll out across all content online. Whilst there’s no set schedule for these updates to take place, they do usually happen every few months. This means that what can be considered ‘Google friendly’ content changes frequently.

What happens when a Google Update is implemented?

The effects of algorithm updates vary depending on exactly what work has been done ‘behind the scenes’. The most notable impact is usually a change in the search rankings of content; so you may find your pages suddenly rank considerably higher or lower than they did before. This happens as Google reassesses all of its content to better align it and list it out.

For businesses who rely heavily on organic search for traffic to their websites and resulting sales, any change in SEO situation can have devastating effects if not managed adequately. It’s important, therefore, to work on your website optimisation regularly.

What should I do about a Google Broad Core Algorithm Update?

Monitor the situation when it comes to your SEO. Any pages that have dropped in the rankings aren’t necessarily being penalised for poor content but may just sit differently alongside new criteria standards. Regardless, action should be taken after each update to ensure that your rankings are able to recover. No one set action will guarantee full recovery but doing nothing will almost definitely inhibit any chances of it – even if another update is just around the corner!

When creating new content, it’s important for it to remain as relevant and current as possible. It is this, and not necessarily stuffing pages with keywords and links, that will help the content stay well ranked. Seek advice from SEO experts and work with them at each update, staying mindful that the approach to take will need to differ every time, dependent on what changes have been implemented.

How soon can SEO action taken recover a site from a Google Brand Core Algorithm Update?

There’s a common misconception that any remedial action taken won’t take effect until the next algorithm update is run. That’s not true: any recovery should be noticeable the next time that an automated ‘crawler’ (a bot that scans the site’s content to judge its fit amongst other pages and analyse where it should sit in the search rankings) scans it. This happens periodically and doesn’t wait for further updates. This means that rapid recovery is achievable, if effective action is taken quickly.

At Woya Digital we are constantly work to ensure that our clients website SEO is optimised and brought in line with constant security and Google updates. Take advantage of our awesome Instant FREE SEO Site Audit Report which we’ll send you to highlight all the things that can be improved on your website, and to optimise your website SEO ranking.

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Online Reputation Management for Small Businesses

29 Jul 2019 | General

Reading Time: 3 minutes

There’s an old adage in business: It can take years to build a solid reputation. It can take just a few seconds and one mistake to bring it all crashing down.

In the past, your reputation was built mainly on service, relationships and brand messaging. Nowadays we have digital marketing and social media marketing that allow us to reach out to individuals around the world. It’s the marketing equivalent of supercharging word of mouth advertising.

This is however a double-edged sword, as many businesses have found out the hard way. While it is easy to develop an online persona, it can be more difficult to control, especially with regards to what people say about your business on review sites and social media.

What is Online Reputation Management?

Online Reputation Management (or ORM) is a wide-ranging area of business development and marketing.

It’s not only about ensuring that any negative news about your company is addressed and managed, it’s everything from your brand development, the way you build your reputation and how you put in process and procedures that ensure your business can realise its full potential.

ORM isn’t just important for large corporations either. It’s vital for small business enterprises as well, particularly if they are looking to grow and become more successful.

Why is ORM So Important?

Building an online reputation isn’t that difficult. Building a great online reputation, however, is a whole different story. The public’s perception of your business is vital to its future success. If you are perceived as a reliable, trustworthy business, customers are likely to buy your products or hire your services. If you are perceived negatively, they are more likely to work with your competitors.

Online reputation management is challenging because you can be mentioned just about anywhere online at any time.

Let’s take social media as an example.

What happens if someone on Twitter posts a bad review of your support services and tells all their friends and family what a bad experience they have had? What if five or six people retweet this complaint? And five or six of their followers then do the same?

It’s easy to see how one bad review can suddenly spread like wildfire, cutting your hard-earned reputation to the quick. Of course, part of your online reputation management would be to respond to this review and manage it accordingly. Damage management is time-sensitive and there’s not a lot of it going around.

How ORM Works on Different Platforms

The complication with online reputation management is that it spreads across a broad range of different platforms. A complaint on Facebook is slightly different from one on Twitter. On Facebook, for example, you can go into a lot more detail and there are more groups that can help spread a message whether it’s positive or negative.

Then there are review sites. Recent research suggests that 85% of us trust online reviews and more than half of us prefer to see a 4-star rating or greater before we commit to buy. You ignore these at your peril.

For small businesses, coping with ORM can be challenging. The biggest reason for this is lack of budget and lack of resources. There are certain steps you should be taking, however:

  1. The first is to have a presence on all sites where you are likely to be talked about. If you are not aware of what’s being said, then you can’t do anything about it.
  2. The second is to have a process in place for dealing with complaints or adverse press about your business. There is a right way and a wrong way to do this and being confrontational is not the solution.
  3. Finally, you have to have a positive online reputation management process in place to counteract any bad press but also to spread the good word about your business.

These are three small things that can have wide-ranging consequences for your business when it comes to reputation management. If you would like to find out more about ORM and how it should fit into your business operation, contact the team at WoYa Digital today.