Rebel Magazine is a fashion and lifestyle magazine, focusing on creative industries including designers, art, film and music. That’s why it’s great to see Marketing Zone’s fashion designer client, Alex Seroge Ignatian, featured this month.

Take a look at the website we developed for Seroge, and view his featured collection in Rebel magazine on pages 54 61 below.

In this month’s Hertfordshire Business Independent, Marketing Zone’s Mark features in their Executive profile. Take a look at page 23 to hear from Mark about the importance of strategic insights, creativity and results in marketing.

Plus on page 31, Mark gives importance tips for businesses considering whether to outsource their marketing.

Advertising on Google has many advantages. By subscribing to Google AdWords you can get your product’s advert to appear on the first page of specific search results to generate clicks to your website. This can lead to sales for your business. No matter what your budget is, you can display your advert on Google as you only pay when people click on your advert, and you can cap the amount you’re willing to spend each day.

Advertising and marketing agencies can analyse the competitiveness of keywords and set up a full Pay Per Click campaign for you. Or you can manage it yourself. But you need to make sure you’re getting value for money as there are different ways of measuring the results – some have more value than others so you need to know how to sieve through the jargon. Let Marketing Zone make it clear for you.

Glossary of terms

• Campaign – this sets out your daily budget, keywords, geographic area and the networks where your adverts are displayed.
• Ad Group – a group of ads within a Campaign that are focused on a set of specific keywords and key phrases.
• Click – if a customer sees your ad and clicks on it, this will lead them to your website. This Click will be recorded on your account and by monitoring this you can see the number of potential customers who have arrived at your website via your Google advert.
• Cost-per-click (CPC) – you only pay when someone clicks on your advert. You can have AdWords manage your CPC automatically, or you can choose to cap this to a limit. 
• Impression – this monitors the amount of times your advert appears on a page, but this is only exposure, it is not valuable. A click is valuable.  
• Click through rate – the number of clicks your ad receives divided by the number of times your ad is shown as an impression. A keyword’s click through rate is a strong indicator of its relevance to the user and the overall success of the keyword.

So when it comes to paid for advertising, to measure the value for money you’re receiving you need to focus on the number of clicks, cost per click and click through rate. We can create a pay per click advertising campaign for your business, just get in touch.

Now that smart phones are becoming more popular, there’s been an increase in people using QR or quick response codes. But, what are they and how could they be used to help promote your product?

A QR code is a 2D barcode which is recognised by a smart mobile phone. It consists of a pattern of black modules arranged in a square pattern on a white background, and the information encoded can be a URL, text or other types of data.

A person will scan a QR code that might be in a magazine, on a sign, business card or on a product. They’ll do this using an app they have downloaded to their smart phone. From the data stored within the QR code, the user will either be taken, via their smart phone, to the product’s website or to a specific portal for further information about the product. At the moment, QR codes are more popular in Japan and South Korea, but the UK is slowly adopting this technology, especially now that smart phones are more accessible. But there are some limitations as some people are dubious about data protection issues because an organisation could receive personal data from their mobile phone.

However, it’s always good to know about different applications, so keep your eyes peeled next time you’re out shopping to see if you can spot a QR code on a product you’re buying.

Marketing Zone can create a QR code for your product – contact us to find out more

It works like this. If you’re wondering what words a customer might enter into a search engine to find your service, you can practice using this tool and find out what they might be.

For instance, when ‘marketing agency’ is entered into the Wonder Wheel, is displays other relevant keywords that potential customers might search for when looking for that particular service, such as ‘direct marketing agency’ or ‘advertising agency.’ That company can then be mindful to use these keywords and phrases in the content of their website to improve the chances of its name appearing in the search engine results.

Try it for your organisation and see if there are any surprises – there might be words that customers use that you haven’t even thought about! And of course, if you need a more detailed analysis, Marketing Zone can help you as we have access to a number of digital tools.

3D is taking the UK by storm with 3D film blockbusters like Avatar and the launch of Tron: Legacy coming up on 17 December. That’s why this month Marketing Zone launched Polaroid’s 3D glasses collection online.

As Polaroid are the first 3D glasses manufacturer to have stock available in the UK, it was vital that we were hot off the mark to create the outlet for sales. By developing an ecommerce presence and positioning the collection as stylish and technically brilliant (which it is!) Orders are coming in thick and fast with cinema tie-ups due in spring.

Marketing Zone’s been working with Polaroid Eyewear since we re-launched the brand in 2007 when it had all but disappeared in the UK market. Now it’s recognised as a Top 3 brand at major airports and will be available in John Lewis and Fenwick’s from next year. That’s pretty fantastic progress in just three years, so let’s see where we can take 3D!

Over 130 Chartered Institute of Marketing members, including Mark and Stephanie from Marketing Zone, attended the Women in Marketing Awards last week.

As well as developing the website for these awards and creating a suite of promotional marketing tools, it was important for us to attend the event to provide marketing support on the night.

Held at the celebrity favourite May Fair Hotel, London, the evening was a huge success. With keynote speeches from advertising specialist and sponsor Kevin Allen, Anna Bateson from Google, and Brook supporter Sam Roddick via a video message, there was a real buzz of success and inspiration.

All the lucky winners should be proud of their achievements, and as a marketing company, we’re pleased to be part of such a successful event.

It’s always good to hear other experts’ opinions on digital marketing developments, so we attended The 4th Cambridge Digital Marketing Conference.

Dr Dave Chaffey from Smart Insights offered 20 tips on search engine optimisation and converting interest to sales. There was more on everything digital, including mobile marketing, smart phone apps and search from experts at Google, Microsoft and MagicSolver.com.

Social media was the hot topic of the day. A key message is the sheer volume of online users of social networks. Mark Cook of Further Group talked about speed of change; quoting the much used statistic that radio took 38 years to get 50 million users. In comparison television took 13 years and Facebook took just 5 months.

Has your organisation got a social media strategy in place? Looking at those statistics perhaps it needs one.

In the hectic digital marketing world, website design agency Marketing Zone is determined to stay ahead. That’s why we’re attending The 4th Cambridge Digital Marketing Conference, at the Imperial War Museum in Duxford.

This event is run by The Chartered Institute of Marketing, and is a power-packed programme of expert speakers discussing topics of particular relevance to those involved in digital marketing. We’re looking forward to hearing insights from Gilli Goodman from Google, Zuzanna Gierlinska from Microsoft and Mark Stuart from The Chartered Institute of Marketing amongst others.

As a web design agency, we are fully equipped to develop, design and host a new website for your business that will raise your profile and sell your products. We’re keen to mix with other digital experts at this event and it’s sure to be an informative and dynamic day.

We’ll blog again after the conference to share with you the pearls of wisdom we’ll discover.

Customers want to communicate with businesses in new and different ways. It’s not that brochures and flyers aren’t effective. And it’s not that customers won’t use their phones to call customer service centres or see and appreciate an ad. But there are new tools emerging from the social marketing sphere that can and do have an impact on customers and their purchasing decisions.

Twitter is a microblogging platform that gives businesses new ways to connect with their customers and their potential customers. And, it gives customers a way to talk to and about the businesses they know and use. For example, a recent guest at a restaurant tweeted about how long they had to wait for a table – in spite of having made a reservation. The restaurant found the tweet as part of a regular morning search using the name of the restaurant as a key word. The restaurant was able to send a direct tweet to the annoyed customer and offer them a free meal. The result: a happy customer who then proceeded to tweet about how well they had been treated and how satisfied they were. Twitter is another tool that can help a business build relationships that are important to its success.

Twitter can be used to listen to what customers are saying or to let them know about a new product or discount. Like all social media tools, it has its own terminology.  Here’s a list of some of the most common terms.

Twitter terms

Profile: A short description of you or your business. It should cover the who, what and where of what you do.

Tweet: A 140 character entry. It could be a statement, a comment, a question, an exclamation or a URL.

Twitter Name: This is a username, the one your followers will see. You could make it your name, the name of a company or even the name of a product. Each name is unique, so choose yours with your customers in mind. What will they be looking for?

Follower: A user who subscribes to your tweets.

Follow: To follow other twitter users, click on the follow button of their profile. You’ll get an email letting you know if someone decides to follow you. 

Follow Back: Following someone who is already following you.

Reply: A public message sent to a specific user. The user is designated with an @ followed by the user’s name.

Direct Message or DM: A private message sent from one user to another. Just click the “message” link or put a D followed by space in front of the user name.

Twitter Stream: A list of a users’ tweets on their profile page.

Hashtag: The hashtag is used before a topic that’s particularly interesting to a group or community. For example #Jaguar sales.

Retweet or RT: A repeat of someone’s tweet. Just type RT before you tweet it. Or just hover over it with your mouse and click retweet.

Favourite: To mark someone’s last tweet as your favourite, just insert FAV username. It will show up in your favourites tab.

Lists: Dividing your contacts into lists lets you decide to listen and communicate with different groups separately.  Perfect when you learn more about your customers.

An introduction to Twitter terms can help, but it’s certainly not the whole story. Twitter needs to connect with people, but it also needs to connect with other aspects of a wider marketing plan or strategy.