This week I had the pleasure of
hosting the Norfolk Chamber of Commerce “be better online” conference. Around
100 delegates from businesses across Norfolk
As well as being an honour to host
these events, I too sat with the rest of the delegates writing notes and picking
up ideas that I could bring back to Archant towers and implement. I was not
unduly surprised that from the varied speakers talking about such subjects as
content marketing, search, social and email marketing there emerged some common
but essential principles.
Too often companies undertake
activities, especially online, without any goals or KPIs to check against. “We
do social because we ought to” is not a reason. Have a proper plan with targets
and goals and measure yourself against them and don’t be afraid to change if you
don’t hit them.
Make sure you understand what your
customers are doing on your own sites. For example it could be that your
audience arrive on your site not on the homepage but a different landing page
but unless you check your analytics data you cannot use that knowledge to your
advantage. While you are doing that you should also make a point of
understanding what your competitors are doing and see if you can do it better or
differently!
Use content in its different forms
to show people how great you are, don’t tell them. Use your own product and
market experience to set yourself apart from your competitors. Finally a theme
across all the day was my old favourite that applies to everything: test, learn
and refine.
These simple rules may seem like
common sense but are often forgotten by businesses. The value of a conference is
not always in what is said but the chance to remove you from the rush of modern
working and remind yourself that basic principles apply just as much to the
digital world as to the offline world and arguably more
so.
Tim Youngman is director of
marketing for Archant
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