Total Marketing Solutions

We all like to think that we are behaving responsibly and doing our bit to save the environment, but just how green are the various marketing activities you are currently undertaking? Have you ever carried out a thorough audit of their environmental impact with a view to adapting or changing the way you market your business? Well if you haven’t, you are not alone. According to Envirowise, the Governement body established to encourage businesses to improve their green credentials, 44% of leading UK companies are not taking any steps whatsoever towards embedding sustainability in their strategies. This despite the various carrots - free advice, incentives and proven improved commercial performance - that abound. As the drive to combat climate change becomes increasingly influential, those organisations lacking robust environmental credentials risk losing out to their more switched-on competitors. As legislation starts to be introduced to force us to be fully accountable for the way our businesses impact on the environment, those organisations not already ahead of the game will waste valuable time, resources and money playing catch-up whilst their competitors focus on increasing their market share. Put simply, the future health of your business is inextricably linked to the health of our planet. But where to start? As marketing consultants,  we have worked with a number of companies as part of their overall strategy development who have successfully introduced initiatives to combat their environmental impact. One of our clients, Pepper, a Plymouth-based printing company, were one of the first businesses in the South West of England to gain the BS8555, the new standard for environmental management systems. Not only have they reduced their carbon footprint in what is traditionally a very “ungreen” industry, they have also saved costs and increased efficiency.  Take a look at the Pepper website for more information on how they went about achieving green status.You could start the ball rolling by completing the Envirowise questionnaire, which will not only pinpoint where you are now but guide you towards the next steps. Not only does it make sense from an environmental perspective, but there are real, tangible benefits to adopting a green approach to how you do business. If that isn’t enough of a carrot, then you could always wait for the very big stick which is coming along!  

Every man, woman and their dog now has a website covering the whole spectrum of the good, bad, ugly and downright awful. But it’s fair to say that even some of the most beautifully designed, graphically pleasing sites may not be doing their job, which is not only to communicate with visitors to the site but to help get them there in the first place. If a website has not been fully optimised - i.e. is not exploiting every opportunity to be noticed by the spiders from Google, Yahoo, MSN, Mars and so on who crawl over websites gathering relevant information for the searcher - then it it doesn’t matter how lovely it looks, it is failing you and probably losing your company lots of opportunities for business.The good news is that to change things is neither impossible nor necessarily costly and can represent a real business development opportunity for SME’s who may have limited marketing budgets available.As marketing consultants we frequently look at overhauling a company’s website as a part of developing their wider marketing strategy. We find that our customers are often very pleased to see quick and significant improvements in traffic to their sites through even the most basic search engine optimisation (SEO). But just how easy is it to optimise a site for search engines? Here are some simple ideas that we believe work:

1. Make sure all copy is not only customer friendly but also “search engine friendly” - use your keywords (the main search terms used by potential customers) wherever you can, as long as the text still makes sense!
2. Make sure you have a site map - web crawlers can’t jump but love crawling from page to page via a site map. Take this a stage further and get yourself a Google Site Map, an XML thingy that is much loved by far and away the most important search engine. Note: if you Google the phrase ‘Google Sitemap’ you will find some ‘free’ software that will create your sitemap for you.
3. Keywords should be used in the title tags and meta tags on all your key pages - the snappier the better. Web crawlers don’t dawdle.
4. Take care with images - most web crawlers can’t read text contained in an image so make sure all images have an “alt attribute” - a text description so they do not remain invisible to the short-sighted crawler.
5. Get your finger out! Keeping your website up to date with blogs and news items will ensure web crawlers notice your site more easily.

For more hints and tips on Search Engine Optimisation, visit our Resources page. Whilst it will require time and effort to optimimise your site, it can pay real dividends quickly and effectively. A fully optimised site, even if it has been touched by the ugly stick, will prove far more effective than the airbrushed beauty. Whoever said looks aren’t everything certainly had a point!