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How To Set Up Your Construction Business Online: A 5 Step Action Plan

How to Set Up Your Construction Business Online: A 5 Step Action Plan

Welcome to the future of marketing for construction companies. As a construction marketer you are standing on the edge of one of the fastest moving sectors that there is today. For a long time, businesses like yours relied on personal interactions with specifiers and architects at trade shows, exhibitions, and face to face CPDs.

Hours spent travelling, pressing the flesh, explaining your product, and eating lunch (well okay maybe the lunches weren’t so bad). Days stood on stands at exhibitions that oftentimes resulted in very little other than sore feet and an aching back.

Unfortunately, huge swathes of businesses in the sector still do this. The problem is that in a lot of cases these businesses are targeting the specifier at the wrong point in their buying journey or, worse still, the wrong specifier entirely. Add to that the fact that it’s not easy to measure the results from the channels they’re using, and you can understand why a change is afoot.

A Growing Market of Search-Savvy Construction Buyers

On the flip side, specifiers, architects, and buyers are becoming much more digitally savvy. Recent research has shown that over 98% prefer to conduct their research for products and services online. Over 2.5 million Google searches were made for building suppliers in the UK over the last year alone. This number expands into the many more millions of searches for different types of construction products and services. So, online in search engines is where you need your business to be found.

The good news is this is all a huge opportunity for you. To get ahead you simply need to embrace digital marketing. Everything you do should be laser-focussed, measurable and provide a good return on investment. If you don’t, you’re in danger of being left behind. Given you’re even reading this article means you’re ready to embrace this change and learn some of the fundamentals that could make a massive difference to your business.

5 Steps to Take Your Construction Business Online

First of all, you need to understand how technology and the internet has become THE way of doing business. Your customers; architects, buyers and specifiers have all changed the way they research. Instead of being ‘sold to’ by pushy marketers now all they need do is ‘Google it’. The start point of the customer journey generally begins by typing a query, problem, or question into a search engine such as Google or Bing.

Google will provide the searcher with links to webpages that it believes are most relevant based on (a super-secret) algorithm and information gathered by search engine ‘spiders’.  Being on page 1 of Google means your page is most appropriate to the search query. These formulas, known as algorithms, are constantly changing as the search engines strive to achieve improved results for the user. So, you just need to ensure your web pages provide solutions to the queries and problems your target audience is searching for.

Simple right! So, how do you do it?

Get a Professional Website

Set Up Data tracking

Optimise Your Website to be Found on Search Engines (SEO)

Create Compelling & Search-Friendly Content

Build Backlinks & PR Your Website

Step 1: Get a Professional Website

First of all, you need a professional website – this is your shop window. It needs to reflect your brand and enable a visitor to navigate to what they want to find quickly and easily.

This sounds simple but all too often websites fall down in this area. As it is important to have a solid foundation prior to building – so it is with websites. Ensure that the site is not going to cause problems later by ensuring it’s fit for purpose.

Your site should include pages which provide visitors with relevant information and can include a contact us page, a blog, an about us page and pages on your products and services.

Depending on your business there are other pages you should consider, such as testimonials, case studies or an online shop or ordering facility, including any payment functionality.

Step 2. Set Up Data tracking

A very important step that is often missed out is data tracking.

In order that you can accurately track how different activities, channels, and platforms are performing you need to ensure you have your analytics set up properly.

You need to be able to see what return on investment you’re getting. If you’re looking for leads, it may be that you need a goal set-up in analytics to capture each time a person submits a contact us form, or to implement call tracking. With eCommerce you want to know how much was spent and where that sale is attributed to. That way you can optimise your marketing budget in the areas you know are working.

Again, this sounds simple, but it can be a minefield if you’re doing it yourself and are unfamiliar with the platforms. It’s so easy to miss a step and then realise down the line that the data you’ve been looking at is wrong. We often see conflicting, mis-firing, and broken versions of Google Analytics (GA), Global Site Tag (Gtag), and Google Tag Manager (GTM) implemented on sites. If you want to understand more about what do they do and which ones are preferred you can read our blog here.

Step 3: Optimise Your Website to be Found on Search Engines (SEO)

Once this is set up you need to address the site from a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) point of view.  In its simplest form SEO is about making changes to your website to encourage Google to show your pages to the person who is searching.

Unfortunately, Google keeps many of the details of what makes a page rank better than another a closely guarded secret but experts like us have tried and tested processes that we know move the needle in your favour.

There are a number of considerations, including the technical elements of how it’s set up, your trust signals, the content on your website and the backlinks pointing to your website from news articles and other third-party sites. To really move the needle, you need to address these technical aspects of your site, create search optimised content and build links from other websites to yours through digital PR and link building.

SEO takes time and is an ongoing process. From the point changes are made, it generally takes about 6 months to start seeing the impact, so you need to be patient. Also, you need to remember that Google continues to develop its algorithm and so SEO needs to develop with it. SEO is never ‘done’.

Text will always be the foundation of search so making sure the text around your website’s assets is descriptive will help them rank well in search. (HubSpot, 2020) (Source:https://ift.tt/1LQUM1B)

Step 4: Create Compelling & Search-Friendly Content

Content marketing is a vital way to establish your business as the trusted expert in your sector. When you tailor the content on your site to the potential specifier or architect’s need, you are helping them make a better buying decision.

As the specifier is searching for a solution, this is what you need to provide with content. Without effective copy, Google won’t be able to crawl and index pages on your site, which will limit your opportunity to be found by potential customers. Think about what your target audience might ask search engines and craft your content around that.  There are several free tools that can help you find out what is being searched for, or an agency like ourselves can help and will have access to the latest paid-for tools.

Google rewards informative and relevant content. This can be done in many ways, some of the most popular are providing content in the form of FAQs, a blog, or newsletters.

Step 5: Build backlinks and PR your website

Most people think that PR is only important for promoting your business to the media, however, it is also a key factor that influences how you can be found by potential customers in search engines like Google.

PR does this by building backlinks. These are the links you find in news articles or in web pages that take you through to another website when you click on them. The quality and quantity of links from other sites that go through to your website have a significant influence on where your website will appear in the results when people search for products and services on Google.

Google’s ‘spider’ algorithm also uses backlinks to crawl the internet, so the more backlinks your website has, the more potential it has to be found and indexed.

However, not all links to your website are created equal and good links are hard-earned through PR campaigns and link-building activities. A professional digital PR agency will be able to help you identify which links are most valuable and how to achieve them.

There is much more to digital marketing than what we’ve been able to put here. However, implementing these basics will give you a solid footing.

The market is changing. Digital marketing is levelling the playing field and if you move early, it will allow you to get the jump on your competitors and to position yourselves as a trusted source of help to your potential customers.  I’d call that a win-win.

If you need any more help or advice on how to market or take your construction business online, then drop us a line.

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A Cup of Ambition With Christina Fournier: Director of Customer Experience

We pull back the vail on our Director of Customer Experience, Christina, to get to know what she does on a day to day, her passions outside of work and why she loves working at Brafton. A Cup of Ambition With Christina Fournier: Director of Customer Experience published first on http://wascript.weebly.com/

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5 Examples of Digital Storytelling Genius (All New for 2021)

Learn how digital storytelling can help your marketing team connect with an audience. 5 Examples of Digital Storytelling Genius (All New for 2021) published first on http://wascript.weebly.com/

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Why A Content Marketing Strategy Is Important & What To Include

The post Why A Content Marketing Strategy Is Important & What To Include appeared first on Koozai.com

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How To Make Your SEO And Web Developers Work Better Together

A common problem across all aspects of digital marketing is that of keeping the peace between developers and SEO work.

Whether you’re in-house or agency side it can sometimes be a struggle to relay information, get yourself heard and to get things implemented. This isn’t restricted to the SEO and Developer doing the work, but can often be the cause of friction all the way to the top of the company.

If you want your recommendations to be worked on and to get the full benefits from the work, you will need to help each other out. Rather than just being polite, gaining knowledge of each other’s reasoning is essential. With this in mind here are a few points to help you build a fruitful relationship.

Quantify Benefits

When opportunities are identified it is no good just making a request without explanation. If you want a certain change to be made then it should at least be backed up with the theory behind it.

If possible it’s also good to include any helpful data from past interactions or projections. This links back into UX and how the current site is used, so it is also a good idea to gather as much information as possible from the start – like event tracking in Google Tag Manager.

The explanation and benefits should include the following points:

Problem

Reasoning

Solution(s)

Benefits

Once these are outlined and explained you will have a much better chance of getting changes implemented and gaining the time of developers.

Propose Solutions, But Don’t Be Rigid

No-one likes being told that they are wrong, or their work has been done wrong. Rather than being blunt in this manner it is good to frame potential solutions from the outset. This being said, your choice of solution might not be the best route for the Developer, so take time to frame the issue and make sure that everyone knows the intended end results.

This can often require extra work compared to knee-jerk reactions, but it will save time in the long run and allow for a continued good relationship.

Explain what you’ve looked at and what you can do, but then be clear where your skill set ends and the developers skills are needed.

You may propose something only to be countered with an easier or more accessible solution, so make sure you are open to this as well. Don’t get stuck in one way of working if a better solution appears.

Fixing Bugs

Whilst fixing bugs is a wide-reaching term, it can be more beneficial to discuss tasks as bug fixes rather than adding in functionality.

Developers will have worked to a rigid set of features and designs for a website and if you come along and demand X, Y and Z it will likely fall on deaf ears from Developers and Management. Rather than this you can frame certain issues as bug fixing which can fit within the original remit.

This won’t apply to all issues, but issues with compatibility, readability, page speeds and server responses can often be put in this way.

Help Increase Exposure

This shouldn’t just be an SEO goal, but it should be one for all involved in the site. As an SEO your goal is to get in front of more users, but this carries across all channels and disciplines.

Hopefully it isn’t a matter of ‘going through the motions’, so improvements to the website should carry the same enthusiasm across the board. It might be a difficult subject to talk about, but it is definitely worth mentioning that it is in everyone’s best interest to get more traffic to the website.

Keep Each Other’s Work In Mind

Carrying on from the point on proposing solutions, make sure that you aren’t negative about the site and its aspects as this is a sure-fire way make sure your voice isn’t listened to.

This can go from top level opinions of the website through to your wording on requests. Rather than saying the site is a garbage fire try to have some tact!

If you request a change you’re more likely to get it actioned if you word it as “improving current performance” rather than “fixing what doesn’t work”.

You can easily see how you feel about the requests by reading them back and imagining you got the email, or simply run it past another member of your team.

Keep Your Working Methods Fluid

No-one works the same and even when 5 people are using the same software there will be quirks and efficiencies to take into account.

This is no different when working with Developers and anyone else outside your team for that matter. With numerous management systems doing very similar things it is worthwhile to stay agile and meet in the middle where possible.

With Development consisting of many more integrated systems than SEO is, you will invariably need to cater to Developers rather than Devs changing their whole processes for one SEO recommendation! Make sure that you keep this in mind when asking for Developers to learn one extra program or when weighing up the work involved.

By all means recommend systems if they aren’t used, but the chances are that the Developers working environment will be fully implemented and less open to change.

Summary

Most of the above can probably be summed up in the adage “don’t be a dick”, but making sure you are aware of the constraints, working practices and day-to-day of each party involved is key to a good working relationship.

The post How To Make Your SEO And Web Developers Work Better Together appeared first on Koozai.com

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The 7 Functions of Marketing: A Field Guide (Infographic)

Brush up on the 7 main functions of marketing to better understand how your efforts impact just about everything your business does. The 7 Functions of Marketing: A Field Guide (Infographic) published first on http://wascript.weebly.com/

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How To Get Started With Organic Marketing (Infographic)

Don’t worry, I’m not going to make a pun about organic food and organic marketing. How To Get Started With Organic Marketing (Infographic) published first on http://wascript.weebly.com/

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Top 5 Facebook Ad Creative Tips

Creatives are what makes your brand come to life. You can have a great audience ready to use but if you can’t capture the attention of potential customers then you might as well not run ads at all. Our top 5 tips should help you create images and videos that work to your advantage and help attract your carefully chosen audience to visit your website and convert.

Stock Imagery

Stock imagery is a great way to begin advertising if you’re just starting out or if you don’t have much imagery to hand. There’s plenty of free stock images out there that look great; however, many of them can be instantly identifiable by consumers and could be a turnoff. To change this, we recommend editing your stock images to match your brand in any way possible. This can be by adding your logo, brand colours or adding overlay graphics to enhance a stock photo and make it yours.

Testimonials

Creating trust between you and your customers is super important, and why not show off your 5-star reviews by turning them into ads. People are more likely to trust your business if you have lots of reviews as well as if you’re rated highly so showing off your highly rated reviews in your ads can help nudge people in the right direction. Try to use these in remarketing ads to persuade interested users to make a purchase and further create more trust with new customers.

Ad Placement

Facebook provides multiple placements for your ads to appear in, and unfortunately, it’s not a one size fits all. Different placements need different image sizes which means having to create multiple versions of the same ads. This can be time-consuming and not all images will work in different sizes. However, taking the time to create placement specific creatives can provide a more user-friendly experience and are more likely to capture the attention of users on the placement platforms. Sidebar or off-platform creatives tend to be smaller than standard and story ads so make sure you alter the text size to reflect this. Small text on an image might not be readable so it’s always good to preview your ads before publishing.

Video Creatives

Images are easy to make and can be used across all social platforms through organic and paid. They’re also easy to manipulate for different placements and can be turned into carousels to tell a story, but they’re sometimes not as easy to digest as a video. Videos on Facebook tend to do exceptionally well, with higher engagement, impressions and more likely to convert than images. It’s easier to include more info on a video than a single image so it’s not hard to see why they tend to perform better. We recommend, where possible to use video creatives alongside image ads and find out what works best for your business. There are times that images can outperform videos but it’s worth testing this as you might have a lot of untapped potential.

https://www.koozai.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Zepta-1.mp4

Offers

This might seem like an obvious one as we all know people love getting offers and discounts on things they purchase. However, we tend to see that a lot of people use the discount offer in the headline or the caption, but we feel it’s better placed on the image, as you’re more likely to capture the attention of someone with large bold text. Since Facebook got rid of the 20% image text in 2020, you can make the most of your offers by applying them to the image itself. This saves your headline and captions for something a bit punchier that can grab the audience’s attention in a different way.

  Hopefully, these tips are enough for you to get started on your creative journey with Facebook ads. If you need help with setting up your audience, make sure to check out our paid social blog insightful hints and tips.

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User Intent: Understanding How People Search & Why It Matters

Learn what user intent is, why it’s important for search engine optimization and how to tailor your content offerings to attract your target customers. User Intent: Understanding How People Search & Why It Matters published first on http://wascript.weebly.com/

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The Top 9 Content Analysis Tools to Boost ROI

Learn how the right content analysis tool can help you measure and boost return on investment for your SEO marketing — and check out our list of top tools. The Top 9 Content Analysis Tools to Boost ROI published first on http://wascript.weebly.com/

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Where to find the core web vitals report in Google Search Console

The post Where to find the core web vitals report in Google Search Console appeared first on Koozai.com

Where to find the core web vitals report in Google Search Console published first on http://wascript.weebly.com/

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Internal Marketing: 5 Strategies That Work (Infographic)

Internal marketing represents the set of activities that promote an organization’s mission and objectives to its employees. Internal Marketing: 5 Strategies That Work (Infographic) published first on http://wascript.weebly.com/

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Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) — What It Is And How to Maximize

Return On Ad Spend (ROAS) is one of the less popular but very useful key performance indicators (KPIs). Read on to find some useful tips on what you can do to improve your ROAS. Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) — What It Is And How to Maximize published first on http://wascript.weebly.com/

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How To Handle A Website Migration Correctly

Redesigning a website can be a great way to increase conversions and freshen up your brand. Successful website migrations are planned in advance and executed with military precision.

Planning starts as early as possible, ideally when the idea of migrating the website is first entertained.

One of the most common problems happening in website migrations is SEO agencies getting involved in the process way too late.

There are so many things that need to be considered from domain names to redirects, meta to content. There are a multitude of things that can go wrong and damage a site.

Website migrations can be really tricky.

Recently an ecommerce website that I have used went through a website migration. It has not been handled at all well. The main issue is no redirects have been set up even though the URLs have changed. Google Ads and promotional email links are directing users to 404 pages. Also pages in the Organic SERPs have the old URLs indexed which are returning 404 errors. This means the company is missing out on sales and wasting media spend budget in the process. They are not a client of Koozai but we have informed them of their errors and what they need to do to fix them.

If you are about to start planning a site migration, I have put together some instructions below that will help sustain your rankings and maintain your current traffic streams. Hope you find it useful.

Domain Name

I suggest keeping the same domain name on the new site as it will have a number of inbound links. If you must change the domain, we suggest a full redirect to the new site, which is done on a page by page basis.

It is also ideal to purchase variations of your domain so that can’t be snapped up by competitors.

Content Management System

If using a CMS, it is essential that your website allows the following to be done:

Implement and change meta descriptions and meta titles independently so that it does not affect other features on the page such as headings

Implement text changes easily

Implement and change internal links easily

Implement Alt tags on images easily

Implement and change H1 and H2 heading tags around text easily and independently (so that it does not affect other features on the page such as navigation or layout)

Place permanent 301 redirects on pages of the website

Format text easily such as putting sections in bold or underlined

Enable an XML Sitemap to be uploaded and replaced

Enable a robots.txt file to be uploaded and replaced

Staging Websites

If a staging website is used for the build of the new website, upload a robots. txt file to the staging domain to ensure it is not indexed. Alternatively add a password to the website so the website cannot be crawled.

This is essential to ensure that content for the actual website is not found by the search engines on a staging site initially, and then later found on the live site.

301 Redirects

It’s beneficial to keep the same URLs of each individual page on the new site as they may have a number of valuable inbound links. If you do change the URL it is essential to set up a 301 redirect from the old page to the new page.

This will avoid any broken links and pass on external link strength.

If you are going to create new URLs it would help to make them ‘search engine friendly’ by referencing the service or product keywords.

Implementing the points above will help launch a new site and maintain your current rankings.

The post How To Handle A Website Migration Correctly appeared first on Koozai.com

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Content Memes: 5 Tips for Using Memes in Content Marketing

It's content. It's a meme. It's a content meme. How can it help your marketing strategy? Content Memes: 5 Tips for Using Memes in Content Marketing published first on http://wascript.weebly.com/

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5 Interactive Content Examples Your Audience Will Love

Interactive content is sure to get your target audience engaged. Check out these examples of great interactive content. 5 Interactive Content Examples Your Audience Will Love published first on http://wascript.weebly.com/

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How to Use the Google Search Console API in Screaming Frog

The post How to Use the Google Search Console API in Screaming Frog appeared first on Koozai.com

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