Member Article

Online Marketing – an independent consulting perspective

It’s online marketing focus week on Bdaily. Here, John Crummie, former director of DFDS Seaways in Newcastle and now owner and director of John Crummie Consulting, offers his perspective on the subject.

The launch of my advice-led management consultancy was driven by research confirming strong demand from SMEs for supportive advice, from experienced and skilled consultants to help: analyse business development opportunities; evaluate strategic options; ensure effective and efficient implementation plans are capable of delivering business objectives.

My own trading challenges in building a sustainable client base were easily identified:

• Awareness – who is John Crummie? A story was needed detailing my knowledge, skills and business achievements.
• Value proposition – why purchase from me rather than someone else? Website content needed to communicate my value proposition and services.
• Channels to markets – how could I reach my defined market cost effectively? Solutions needed to be impactful, affordable and provide 24/7 visibility.

Evaluating business options, I prioritised on Online Marketing given the powerful tools and methodologies it provides to promote services nationwide through the internet. An informational website - www.johncrummieconsulting.co.uk - was produced and website architecture, page structure and content addressed the above challenges.

Realising an internet presence is easy. Expertise and skills are required to get your brand ranking early in search engine results. Achieving this goal is helped by using these online activities:

• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO): undertake research to identify key words or terms used online by your target audience. Build these into page content and build referral links to your website from other sites.
• Email: build up a database of prospects and customers, produce an e-signature providing a quick link to your website and develop rapport via mailing campaigns.
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM): test pay-per-click campaigns using banner ads, consider using affiliates to distribute your product or service based on commission models.
• LinkedIn: a great social media platform to grow B2B contacts. Create personal and company profiles to improve your rankings. Utilise opportunities to publish articles or provide links to interesting content.
• Public Relations: produce a press release detailing the launch of your website. Be creative around messaging as this will improve the probability of gaining media coverage.
• Mobile: eight million people access the internet daily from smartphones. Ensure your website is mobile friendly.

Use Google Analytics to gain insights on: visitor numbers, demographics, page dwell times, repeaters and much more! Insights should influence content development, new link building and creative evolution.

For most SMEs Online Marketing helps drive growth. Whether you are producing an informational website or developing a transactional site, you need to identify the best suppliers to fulfil critical design, technical, analytical and legal tasks. When recruiting new digitally skilled employees check out experience and skills and invest in their on-going training.

Using an experienced consultant to give advice in developing your Online Brief, selecting the digital companies to participate in your pitching process, can be a useful to mitigate against risks if you are concerned about the fast changing digital landscape.

Based on my experiences as former UK Managing Director for DFDS Seaways, setting clear business objectives and utilising the optimum blend of external and internal digital resources was critical to ensure implementation plans were executed well. Over a relatively short period of time 70% of travel bookings were obtained via new online channels compared to historically expensive traditional advertising and distribution channels.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by John Crummie .