Creating an app for your business

finger-769300_1280Apps are growing in popularity and there are now a few platforms in which you can use to download an app for a particular program or company. Apple, Microsoft and Android all have stores where these apps can either be purchased or even downloaded for free.

If you are looking to have an app created for your company then you need to consider what is the main point of it from your customers pint of view. It may be that you have a delivery service and want people to be able to schedule and track deliveries on the go. For this type of business an app would be extremely useful but you will probably find that you cannot really charge for it so could possible make money possibly by selling advertising space on there.

An app can just be essentially a mobile version of your website, but consider if anyone will want to download it using up vital space on their phone rather than just visiting your site. You can often send notifications through to your app users phone (if they allow it) informing them on a new product or service or a recent news article that you want to share.

Make sure you do plenty of research before going down this route to find out exactly what you wish to gain from it and what is right for your business needs.

Online marketing explained

downloadWebsite marketing can be a great way to generate new business and stay ahead of your competition. More and more people are now turning to the web to find anything and everything they need, from buying a washing machine to dating – the web really can offer it all. This is why it is vital to ensure that your website is working for you and performing well on the search engines.
Online marketing is not just about getting your website to the top of the search engine results pages (although this can be a massive part) but it also includes other forms of marketing such as social media. Social media has grown at a vast rate over the last 5 years and now almost all of us have some sort of profile on at least one of the major social media websites. This means it is a fantastic opportunity to interact with new and existing customers and build up a community within the online world.

Don’t get complacent with your marketing

It is very easy to let your marketing slip at times. It may be that you have a lot of work on or simply that you have too many other issues that you are dealing with to concentrate on it. This can be very dangerous and you may find yourselves a few months down the line with little or no business coming in. Even if you are very busy, I would not recommend stopping your marketing altogether. You need to try and plan work in ahead, you may get some people that simply cannot wait but even if you only get a handful of the work, that is better than nothing and you have the peace of mind that you have a full diary for the next few months. Also once you have stopped marketing, you may find that you quickly fall behind. This is especially true for SEO online marketing, where the search engines can be very quick to demote your site down the search engine results page listings.

Marketing your website at Christmas

Depending on what type of industry you are in, Christmas may be one of your busiest times of the year. If this is the case you need to start thinking about how you are going to market your site approaching the festive period up to six months in advance. There are two main types of online marketing that can help your website get found.

SEO – Search engine optimisation is a technique used to improve a website to get it to rank higher on the search engines organic listings (not paid for ads). This can take time to achieve and therefore needs to be started well in advance.

PPC – This is a service that many of the search engines offer that allow you to set up ads that show on the search engine results page amongst the paid listings. This is normally pretty instant, so although you may not need to set it live until November / December time it is worth having the campaigns all set up and ready to go to avoid costly delays.

Pay per Click Marketing

 

Pay per Click (PPC) marketing is a type of online marketing that allows a company to place an advert on a search engine or another website linking to their site. The adverts can be quite generic or very specific depending on what you wish to target.

There are many companies that offer Pay per Click advertising, the biggest being Google. Google’s pay per click program is called Google Adwords. It is relatively easy to use, meaning that inexperienced website owners can set it up but to get the most out of your adverts and budget, you really should let an experienced marketing expect set it up and maintain it for you.

There are so many different options when it comes to setting up a campaign that it is very easy to do it incorrectly and waste a lot of your budget or create something that is not set up to show to the audience you wish to target.