Summer is rapidly approaching. Thousands will be flocking to the beach. You better be looking your best. You don’t want the popular kids to make fun of your shoddy physique and poor use of font on your website. Yes, kids are different now. They care about weird things. No need to focus on lifting weights, time to put emphasis on lifting your search engine ranks. Preparing for your big day at the beach can be tricky. Red bikini or yellow? Speedos or mankini? Will your swimwear really make a difference to your appeal? There is a common misconception in the wonderful world of website design, one that makes the price of investing in one appear somewhat unjustifiable when looking to revamp your marketing strategy. Being a digital agency, it’s in our best interest to change that perception and prove otherwise. Here, we write about how beneficial a website could be to your business and the value of doing it properly. The mankini WILL make a difference and your website will also.

By investing in a website you are automatically minimising the cost of offline marketing. Magazine ads, billboards, lead generators & other offline marketing methods have become somewhat surplus to requirements. A website provides an online, easy to access platform where you can advertise and showcase your business. Even if you plan on using your website as a form of online brochure, the saving on costs for printing that information alone would likely stack up and be saving your business money in the long run. You are thinking; “That is ridiculous! You don’t know what you are talking about?! Go back to talking about swimwear!”. But, We did research to prove that what we are saying is true and we will come back to swimwear later. On average, it costs £40 for 1000 A4 printed flyers (unlikely to fit anywhere near as much information as your shiny new website would on it) & our websites generally see, on average, 1000 visitors per month. With an average cost of £2500 for a brochure site, within 5 years your business would be saving money on printing costs alone and will be getting better results. You wouldn’t spend money on delivery, distribution or design, all of these adding even more cost to offline marketing strategies. Now, what do you have to say about that, wise guy?

Another problem people face when looking to invest in a website is the cheap, easy to make template websites that are offered online. Something along the lines of ‘No upfront cost and just £49 per month for a website’. We’d be naive to think this offer isn’t one of two things, one, a plausible investment for a business that aren’t interested in making profit from digital/see their website as an expense and account for it. Two, for a business or person that are only using it to direct friends and family towards the website and naive to think the ‘cheap’ offer wasn’t tempting. There are various differences between a bespoke website and templated one. With the templated sites, the look and feel of your site is limited to the templates provided. Couple with the fact the design is limited, meaning it’ll be difficult for you to achieve a design that will make your brand stand out, the SEO capabilities of these sites are dwarfed by that of a custom built website. Custom websites, by their very nature, are more original. You will not arrive at the beach to see Patricia wearing the same flip flops. You purchased them first! Patricia is always copying you. Get your own sense of style, Patricia.

As we’ve said on more than one occasion, a custom built website brings endless benefits to you and your business. When investing in a custom built website you really can make your site work for you, make it act like another employee. The website can obtain data, attract new potential customers and even provide you with their contact details that will enable you to make a one on one connection with the potential customers. Something that would take an offline an employee a sizeable amount of time and rack up some sizeable expenses for your business. Get in touch with us and let’s put you on a strict digital diet to give you a healthy web physique. And eat a burger, because you are beautiful no matter what!

Be sure to get in touch! with us if you want to take your business to the next level!

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We signed a new client last week. They are great and we are very happy to have them but in the pitch, the client asked what the importance of Instagram was? “Is it not just for selfies?”. Of course not, you fool. Well, it sort of is but it can be SO valuable. I decided to write a blog about why my client and your business needs Instagram. The client also said my new haircut was lovely. We shall blog about that next week.

It’s not just where the ‘kids hangout’

Instagram, coupled with Snapchat, the social media platform most popular amongst the serial selfie taker and food photography extraordinaire (of course, we are being sarcastic). The fact Instagram is so popular amongst the younger generation and infamous for the place where teenagers can post content that business owners like yourself would see as pointless. Yes, Instagram does have a huge amount of people from a younger demographic but that isn’t the only age group that enjoy the platform. An incredible 110 million users are over the age of 18, 36 millions of these being over 30 and a further 12 millions are over 50! Instagram can be effectively used to target any age demographic. If you’re company isn’t on Instagram, it should be. Below, we have 4 more reasons why we believe this is the case.

High quality, easily digested content

If you’re a regular reader of our blogs, you’ll be familiar with the term ‘fish where the fish are’. We use the term when explaining the benefits of social media and that is one of them. Social media allows you to go to your potential customers and makes digesting your content easy and convenient for them. Instagram is possibly one of the most simple platforms out there; you post a picture or video (max 15 seconds) with the option of adding a caption & tagging friends if it’s a photo your posting. Instagram place the emphasis on the photo/video when posting and without a photo/video you can’t post. This means that the quality of content on Instagram is much higher than that of other social media networks because they make posting a photo or video compulsory. The concept is simple and the high quality content means that your content is much easier for your audience to digest. If you post content that’s relevant to your brand, people are able to scroll through your Instagram and effortlessly get an idea of what your business is about.
It’s not a ‘passing trend’. Instagram allows the opportunity to give the audience an insight into your company and supplies another platform to showcase why your company is awesome.

There’s always new ideas for social media platforms popping up here and there, creating a small buzz and soon dying out. Instagram certainly isn’t one of these. With over 300 million monthly active users Instagram is a big player in the world of social media. Amongst these millions of users are 65% of the worlds top 100 brands. With that growth coming in under five years, it’s rapidly becoming one of the world’s biggest platforms. Instagram is here to stay and the amount of users is only going to increase, the sooner your business gets to grips with the platform and utilising the power of it, the better.

Tap into large audiences easily

The hashtag is a well known social media ‘buzz word’ and Instagram has fully embraced the hashtag. Instagram only allows you to search for one of two things, an account or a hashtag, this makes the hashtag much more influential and effective when used on Instagram. Finding out 2 or 3 hashtags that are popular and relevant to your business can give you access to thousands of people that are relevant and interested in you/your brand. A very effective way to quickly and easily market your business. Make sure when you get a haircut, to use #NewHairDontCare and tap into a huge vibrant online conversation about new haircuts. What is the point of getting a haircut if you are not going to post a picture of it on instagram? Heck, what is the point of doing anything if you are not going to post about it on social media?

Showcase a more casual side of the business

It doesn’t take a genius to work out that social media is a social space. Social media doesn’t just allow you to market your business and expand your customer reach further than word of mouth or more classic marketing techniques could, it allows you to be social. Social media brings a whole new dimension to the world of marketing, a dimension that having your name plastered on a billboard or an ad in the paper doesn’t have. Social media allows you to interact with customers one on one, in real time and make a genuine connection with them. You can show them pictures of ‘behind the scenes’ at your company and have a much more personal approach. When your company is personable, it will naturally instill confidence in potential customers and give them much more reason to invest in you/your brand.