GLO – Generate Leads Online

SEO Copywriting Checklist

John Parnell — Wed, 30 Mar 2022 13:09:54 +0000

Beth Craig Presents ‘SEO Copywriting 101’

We had the pleasure of attending The Bridge Marketing and County Wire’s very first ‘Wired for Success’ event at Trinity Park – with our very own Head of Content, Beth Craig, delivering a workshop amongst a whole host of expert speakers including Martin Shave (Global Sales Director at Microsoft), Hana Dickinson (Director of The Bridge Marketing), and business coach Jann Richardson. The event was a roaring success – and we couldn’t stand the thought of anyone unable to attend the event missing out on some of the brilliant content delivered throughout the day.

That’s why we’ve put together this blog post – including our very own basic SEO copywriting checklist for business owners. Whether you couldn’t make it to our workshop, want to add to your notes, or are simply in need of a refresher, we’ve got you covered.

Watch it on demand

We’d hate for anyone to have missed out on Beth’s immersive, hour-long workshop in optimised copywriting. Though things aren’t quite the same through a screen, she’s done her very best to recreate an interactive workshop atmosphere in this recreational recording – taking viewers through the seven simple steps needed to take a webpage from the bottom of the pile to the very top of SERPs. You may even get a chance to practice your own copywriting skills throughout – so get your pens and paper (or keyboards) out!

SEO Copywriting Checklist

1. Establishing Your Intended Audience and Brand Voice

The first step in taking a page from the bottom of the pile to first in search involves conducting the research necessary to ensure your final content stays on brand and appeals to the correct audience.

Start your process by completing a generic user persona questionnaire. By filling in this form with the details of your most desired or most common customer, you’ll get to glean some definite information on who you’re targeting with content and why.

To further this, dive into your brand guidelines and any documentation you have surrounding them – particularly where tone is concerned. Consider your brand and its values.

Using the knowledge extracted from the above, you should be able to create a brilliant tone to match your ideal client and keep them engaged – getting all the right points across, whilst staying on-brand and in character.

2. General Research

To get to the top of the SERP, your page needs to be the expert source in the eyes of Google, so research thoroughly. Consolidate and expand your own knowledge on your business, product, or service by reading through your own website and document – but don’t neglect competitor research.

I recommend reading the web pages ranking at the top of the search results pages for similar search terms to what you’d like to achieve.

You should also search general terms related to your industry, product, or service – bolstering your knowledge in every relevant manner.

3. Open Keyword Research Tools

I’m going to introduce you to two key tools for keyword research that will make your life just that little bit easier- Google Search Console and Mangools.

Google Search Console or ‘GSC’ is an online tool that allows users to discover and export data relating to organic search queries tied to a website/page. In simple terms, it helps people with existing websites discover keywords that they’re already ranking for – making it a good place to start. When re-writing content for an existing site, GSC should be your primary source of information. It’s completely free.

Mangools KWFinder is a keyword research tool in which you can find hundreds of keywords with low SEO difficulty. It’s one of the best ways to discover lists of new keywords related to those you’re already aware of. This tool isn’t free – but has a handy 10-day free trial – which provides more than enough time to get your keyword research done!

4. Find and Note Keywords you’re Already Ranking for with GSC

Begin your keyword research process by opening your GSC tab. Search for your website by clicking the three bars in the top left corner of the homepage, followed by search properties. Locate and click on it.

Once you’ve gained access to your site’s overview, click the performance button in the left-hand column. This is where you’ll be able to view all the data you’ll need. As you’ll be completing keyword research and site content on a page-by-page basis, you’ll want to narrow your results down to your chosen page. Do this by clicking ‘new’ and ‘page’ then paste the website page URL within the pop-up field. Ensure the date is set to ‘past 16 months’ to view the most data available.

This process will narrow down the data to show everything collected specifically for that page. Scroll down to ‘queries’ and sort by highest clicks first (if not clicks then search by highest impressions first) – this will reveal the strongest potential keywords.

Note down the most relevant keywords with the highest number of clicks in a notepad or online document. You’ll use them as the foundation of your research.

5. Discover New Keywords with Mangools

You’re now going to take the initial keywords you’ve found through GSC and discover new, related, and potentially higher-performing keywords using Mangools or any other keyword research tool.

Open up the Mangools KW Finder website and ensure you’re on the ‘search by keyword’ tab of the search tool. Here, you’ll be able to insert the keywords you shortlisted in the GSC step, or, if you don’t have any, choose a keyword related to your page that you think would suit it best, for example, if your page is about coffee machines, so you can start with the keyword: coffee machine.

Simply type your keyword into the search form, select the location, and click on the green button “Find keywords”. If you’re a local business or targeting a specific geo region, make sure to specify the location and language. Different locations lead to different results.

Your search will bring up a list of related keywords ranked by relevancy – some of which could trump those on your existing list. Add them to the notes document you started with your GSC results, writing down impression numbers in order to give you a reminder of how each keyword performs.

6. Choose Primary Keyword

You’ll now want to select a primary keyword from your shortlist of Mangools/KW research tool and GSC options – one which best describes your business, product, or service whilst being relevant, and ideally, having a high number of clicks/impressions. Some in your list should jump out to you immediately.

Keep in mind that although the short, impactful keywords here may be appealing with their high impression numbers – that you may be able to combine keywords/terms to create a long-tail keyword.

A long-tail keyword is a phrase typically made from three to five words. Since these keywords are more specific than generic terms, they allow you to target niche demographics. These keywords are also less competitive than generic keywords because they are designed to better reflect how people make queries. With long-tail keywords, you are able to attract more high-quality traffic to your website which is more likely to lead to conversions. Creating a long tail keyword may be as simple as transforming ‘Wedding Flowers’ to ‘Wedding Flowers Suffolk’, or taking ‘Healthcare Recruitment’ to ‘Participant Recruitment for Healthcare Research’. In creating the right long-tail keyword, you’re much more likely to put your website in front of all the right people.

Note down your primary keyword, and perhaps two two three secondary keywords to be sprinkled throughout your content.

7. Heading Hierarchy Research

Headings help users and search engines to read and understand text. They act as signposts for the readers and make it easier for them to figure out what a post or page is about. Headings also define which parts of your content are important, and show how they’re interconnected.

You’re limited to using one H1 heading on each page. This heading should be the name/title of the page or post and include the focus keyword/phrase. After writing your H1 header/title, you can go on to use H2 and H3 subheadings to introduce different sections.

Think of H2 subheadings like the chapters of a book. Within these chapters, you may want to list more specific subsets of information using lesser headers (H3 tags, then H4 tags, etc.) descending in chronological order. It’s rare for most content to get ‘deep’ enough to need to use H4 tags and beyond unless you’re writing really long, or really technical content.

Before writing your heading hierarchy, you’re going to do some competitor research in order to get to grips with what you’re up against and inspire your own heading order. Input the primary keyword you chose in the last step into Mangools SERP checker (with the correct location field selected).

By searching, you’ll discover a list of the top sites ranking for your chosen term – aka your best competitors. We’re going to uncover their strategies – but first, you’ll need to download the Mangools plugin. After you’ve got that sorted, you’re going to select the 3-5 top ranking, relevant URLs and make sure that they align with the end user’s search intent by opening them and skim reading (irrelevant results including eBay, Amazon etc should typically be ignored).

With one of the competitor URLs open and a notepad or google document ready, open the Mangools Chrome extension tool – click ‘on-page SEO’ – ‘Headings’. Copy/paste the site’s headings into your document or write them down. Repeat this process 3-5 times for various competitor websites.

You may also take note of any particularly valuable, informative, or well-written copy found under each of these headings – all of which can be copied into your template doc and used as content inspiration during the body content writing phase if relevant.

8. Writing a Heading Hierarchy

Look through your list of competitor sites and heading hierarchies. Do you notice similarities between headings? What headings are repeated? What ones provide value?

Use the above information to pick and choose the best individual headings for your new page.

And if you’re in doubt, don’t worry. A generic formula along these lines customised to match your business and keyword should work:
H1 – Service/Product (including the focus keyphrase)
H2 – Include more detail of the H1 heading (specialists/locations)
H2 – What is the service//product?
H2 – Benefits of the service/product
H2 – Who may require this product/service
H2 – Process (If applicable)
H2 – Why choose the company
H2 – Customer reviews/
H2 – Contact Form (If applicable)
H2 – FAQs

Look over the headings you’ve selected and continue to work on building and refining a chronological, effective order that will be easy for users to navigate, and allow for good web design where relevant. For example, in most circumstances, it would make no sense to add additional info before discussing the product/service/business itself. Refer to the competitor research for guidance/inspiration.

9. Writing your Page Content

You’re finally ready to start writing your body content! Use your knowledge from research and competitor sites to put together the best, most informative and action-inspiring webpage possible in line with any brand guidelines received.

Word Count

Aim for at least 600 words excluding FAQs – but keep your audience at the forefront of your mind. If your reader would appreciate or be reassured by a significant amount of information, create a page in this format. On the other hand, if your reader is likely to want to make an immediate decision, keep your copy more concise with plenty of CTAs inserted nearer the top of the page.

Keyword Density

Help search engines recognize the main theme of your content by using the primary keyword throughout the copy. As a best practice, use the term two to three times per 100 words to create a 2-3% keyword density. Try to avoid going over this limit to avoid keyword stuffing issues.

Show search engines that the page is closely related to the topic by bookending your copy with a mention of the primary keyword. Try to use the target keyword near the beginning of your first paragraph and within your final paragraph to reinforce what your content is about. This will help make it clear to search engines why your content is relevant.

Phrasing

Writing high-quality content doesn’t always mean producing a super complex webpage.
In fact, it means the opposite. Write your content for an eighth-grade reading level on the Flesch Reading Scale. That means using common terminology (not complex industry jargon) and writing short sentences and paragraphs. Use active voice primarily, and make sure writing is structured with appropriate paragraph breaks (every time the focus of discussion changes within the context of the heading you are working underneath), syntax and punctuation.

Linking Opportunities

Links help search engines connect and understand online content. Add relevant internal links to other pages on your site, and when possible, use the linked page’s target keyword as the anchor text for the link.

Originality

Craft original, valuable content. Don’t copy content that is already published on your site or published on any other sites. Search engines may penalize your site or not rank your page if it has content that is copied or duplicated from other sites.

10. Boost Rankings with Optimised FAQs

Time to round off your document with a set of between 5 and 10 FAQs. FAQs are a great SEO tool – giving you an opportunity to add a huge amount of highly relevant content to your page. They’re a great way to draw in users highly interested in your product or service who aren’t necessarily aware of your business. For example, imagine your car is making a strange rattling noise. Your first port of call is to google ‘Why is my car making a rattling sound?’. The first result is a google snippet explaining that it might be your air conditioning. You click on the link and are taken through to a comprehensive answer from a local garage with a CTA to book an air-con check-up at the end. Sold!

To find commonly searched questions and answers for your page, you can:

(If applicable) open Google Search Console and select the domain you’re working on. Click performance. Ensure your date is set to ‘16 months’ to gain as much data and insight as possible. Click new – query – and add a question word such as ‘why’ ‘how’ ‘what’ and ‘when’ to bring up potential FAQs.

Search some of your keywords on Answer the Public to view FAQs in a mindmap format.

Search your keywords within KWFinder and sort by ‘questions’ in the results section.

Search any of the questions you’ve sourced above in Google, and note any relevant ones appearing in the ‘people also ask’ section in the SERP

Use the knowledge you’ve built during this process to answer these FAQs with between 100 and 200 words of valuable, informative, and original content. Remember, FAQs are SEO tools and should appear in featured snippets – meaning they shouldn’t be blatantly biased towards your business. They should instead aim to effectively answer the user’s query.

Your FAQs will always be placed under an FAQ H2 Header at the very bottom of the page and should be included wherever possible – e.g. service pages and homepages. They’re not typically included on the content not set to rank – e.g. contact us, case studies or meet the team pages.

11. Review

What webpage would be complete without a review? A fantastic way to self-reflect on the work you’ve produced is to read it back to yourself out loud. Do you run out of breath before a sentence finishes? Does what you’ve written really make sense grammatically? Does the tone sound appropriate for webpage, brand, and industry? Would you want to read it?

After you’re happy with the page, you’re ready to upload, sit back, and benefit from the brilliant effects of SEO copywriting! Enjoy!

Book a Consultation

GLO are here to help local businesses understand how they can improve their online presence and generate leads online. We’re a young but informed, results-driven agency who practice what we preach. So for free advice and support, including monthly website analytics reporting on the house, schedule a free consultation. We can’t wait to meet you!

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Claim your free website analytics

John Parnell — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 20:09:59 +0000

Start making informed marketing decisions by claiming your FREE monthly website analytics reports, worth over £100 a month! If that wasn’t enough, we’re also offering a free pair of sunglasses to the first 100 people who sign up! Very good. Very nice.

What’s included?

Analyse and track up to 10 target keywords
Google Analytics reporting with goal tracking
Google Search Console (SEO) reporting
SEO website audit and health check

Benefits of Analytics

Track and optimise marketing campaigns
Improve your website’s conversion rate
Find and target the right audience
Make informed marketing decisions

Claim your free analytics

Please fill out the form below to claim your FREE website analytics & keyword research reports and we’ll send you a pair of GLO sunglasses on the house.

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Start-Up Business of the Year Winners

John Parnell — Tue, 21 Dec 2021 16:51:15 +0000

The team at Generate Leads Online are proud to be rounding out a highly successful year of innovation, growth, and recognition with their most meaningful award win yet; the Suffolk Business Awards’ Start-Up Business of the Year prize.

2021 has unarguably been GLO’s biggest year yet. From the very first to the very last minutes of these twelve challenging months, our team has worked hard to create groundbreaking data-driven campaigns, and to develop our talented team of SEO specialists, graphic designers, copywriters, social media experts, and digital marketing executives – all whilst delivering an even higher level of outstanding results to our growing group of clients.

We’re proud of ourselves, our work, and of each and every piece of recognition we’ve received this year – which is why we want to tell you about our latest win.

Multi-Award Winning Digital Marketing Agency

‘The Suffolk Business Awards bring the county’s business community together to celebrate each other’s achievements and highlight the leaders in each industry. We are proud that these awards bring Suffolk’s diverse and vibrant business community together in order to celebrate companies who are truly outstanding in their sector and honour the achievements and contributions being made to the local economy.’

This year’s Suffolk Business Awards attracted countless entries from Suffolk’s leading start-up businesses across all sectors – ultimately boiling down to a worthy shortlist of four finalists in our category: AccuGrit, Resitute, Vantage Building Control, and GLO.

After an extensive application process, an in-depth interview, and a wonderful evening of celebrations at Kesgrave Hall, GLO was named winner of the organisation’s Start-Up Business of the Year award, sponsored by Beckett Investment Management Group. We couldn’t be more pleased to have been recognised by such an influential and experienced judging panel – and are proud to have taken part in an event highlighting Suffolk’s thriving business community.

‘Over the Moon’

Following the long-awaited awards ceremony, the GLO team are ‘over the moon’ with our latest win. In a winner’s interview, John stated:

“It’s a dream come true to have been crowned the best start-up in Suffolk and I couldn’t be prouder of the GLO team. As Generate Leads Online evolves, we will keep developing local talent, delivering fantastic results for our clients and striving to be a top name in the digital marketing industry.”

Adding to comments previously made by John, our Digital Director Tony spoke to the EADT on the night of the event, declaring:

‘It’s an incredible honour to be named Start-Up Business of the Year. It’s a real testament to the special talent we have here at Generate Leads Online. We will continue to help our customers to grow and in turn, that will help us achieve our goals. This is just the beginning of our journey.’

It’s safe to say that this new trophy has brought an overwhelming sense and accomplishment to our office – reflecting the team’s hard work, dedication, and passion for what we do, alongside a hint at what we can achieve going forward.

So, as we often say, ‘roll on the future’! We’re delighted with our many successes this year and can’t wait to continue delivering the innovative, data-driven digital experiences we’ve become known for in 2022.

‘A Standout Application’

Post-ceremony, judges hailed the details discussed in GLO’s written application and interview as contributing to an ‘outstanding entry’ – noting in particular, GLO’s defiant and flexible approach to recruitment amongst continued Covid-19 restrictions, symbiotic use of Kickstart and degree apprenticeship schemes for the means of both business growth and the boosting the prospects of local digital talent, and finally, the way in which founder, John Parnell, ‘used his extensive experience in the sector to disrupt the marketplace of SEO web design’ – delivering a level of transparency unlike any other.

‘GLO is a model for any entrepreneur – demonstrating that success is dependent on doing everything possible to build a team that can use their skills to grow the organisation.’

So, why not take a look at the best bits of the application that started it all?

Digital Disruptors

Disruption was a key aspect of this year’s Suffolk Business Awards, with all ‘Start-Up Business of the Year’ applicants required to demonstrate their most innovative, unconventional, and successful approaches, products, services, and models.

Here at GLO, we believe strongly in the power of market disruption. Having initially set out to help local SMEs propel their businesses to evolve their online presence with smart, modern, data-driven, digital marketing strategies, three years later, we consider ourselves to have been highly successful in developing doing so – implementing innovative, optimised services producing exceptional results at an accessible price point.

We’ve been particularly successful in delivering a disruptive service in the form of our SEO Web Design service; a holistic combination of SEO, web design, copywriting, and CRO that works to deliver visually attractive, functional websites designed with incremental change in mind, and optimised from the ground up. John explains the need for this new service below:

‘GLO’s SEO Web design service was developed in response to an influx of new SEO clients whose existing, under-optimised sites were a key aspect of their disappointing online performance – particularly where online sales became a primary outlet for many businesses as a result of continuing UK-wide lockdowns. After hearing their stories of countless page additions and endless SEO tune-ups, the GLO team set out to develop a comprehensive solution unlike any other – creating a fully comprehensive fusion service combining web design and SEO upfront. This service delivers a uniquely holistic approach to web design and optimisation, creating websites built for SEO from the ground up – balancing proper site structure with strong content, design, and other elements to deliver results with a solid grounding in data, stunning visuals, and outstanding functionality that rank in SERPs from the very beginning.’

Websites created under our SEO Web Design service aren’t just our clients’ digital business cards. Instead, they become an automated in-house sales team – using smart CRO and solid data to consistently generate qualified leads. This automated, streamlined approach to winning new business has certainly been disruptive to our local market and has helped our customers prosper, even during the pandemic.

Looking to the future, our next step towards disruptive innovation is set to be in response to what we’ve observed amongst many new businesses formed during the pandemic. These clients express a need for incoming sales leads but aren’t in the position to take the risks and bear the costs of building their own website. GLO is looking to develop a service that will address this issue directly. Stay tuned for updates!

Committed to our Community

GLO are strongly committed to supporting the brilliant community in which we operate – whether developing talent or using our skills for good. Throughout our application, we discussed the following highlights of our involvement in and commitment to our Suffolk and Essex communities, and the people within them:

Firstly, we’re proud to provide many local graduates and high-school leavers with invaluable experience and support through the creation of numerous employment opportunities via kickstart and digital apprenticeship schemes. GLO takes great pride in nurturing Suffolk and Essex’s best and brightest digital talent – using a strong focus on continuous development, to support, encourage and finance employees’ upskilling via various online courses, qualifications and certificates, helping them improve their current skills and/or explore and develop complementary skills within digital marketing.

GLO also possesses a strong affinity with Ipswich Rugby Club – whom we’ve sponsored since our establishment in 2019. Despite the club having to shut down for many months during the pandemic, we worked to ensure our financial commitment, whilst offering our skillset to assist with further fundraising throughout lockdown. In our three-year start-up period, GLO has developed two websites for Ipswich Rugby Club, and helped to run multiple marketing campaigns for the club’s fundraising campaign – ultimately raising thousands towards their £150,000 goal.

Dedicated to our Clients

Of course, our business couldn’t have won this award without the support of our clients. As part of our application, we outlined our commitment to ensuring their success.

Here at GLO, we’re fully committed to delivering the best possible ROI to our clients, and work to achieve this using solid data and smart alterations – not guessing games. After launching a heavily optimised campaign based on extensive keyword research, our team doesn’t simply move on. Instead, GLO works reactively to ensure each aspect of our services is working optimally. To accommodate this reliance upon data and dedication to our customers, we’ve developed a comprehensive tracking and reporting system, designed to monitor both the historical and present results of each of our campaigns in an understandable, actionable manner.

The bespoke, fully interactive reports generated by this system are sent to clients at a frequency of their choosing – giving them full transparency and peace of mind with regard to every aspect of their services’ performance and ROI. We’re devoted to the continuous observation, analysis and optimisation of our client’s marketing campaigns – working to offer businesses a steady stream of quality sales leads set to propel their growth.

Work with Us

Looking to work with an award-winning digital marketing agency for your next campaign, website, or project? You’ve come to the right place. Here at Generate Leads Online, we take pride in helping propel businesses’ online presence to the next level and beyond – delivering bespoke, data-driven digital marketing strategies built to perform.

Let’s make something great together. Get in touch with us today through our contact form, or give us a call to start your digital marketing journey.

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2022 Digital Marketing Trends

John Parnell — Tue, 21 Dec 2021 14:45:52 +0000

2021 is coming to a close and it has been another year of change. Google (as always) updated many algorithms. Twitter started Fleets and killed it again. LinkedIn started stories and killed it again. Third-party cookies being blocked by Chrome has been delayed until 2023. And who can forget Facebook’s announcement of the Metaverse and name change to Meta?

With the digital landscape constantly changing and so quickly, you would be a fool to make any predictions for 2022, wouldn’t you? Well… We are going to do it anyway, as we want to help you stay ahead of the curve.

(Mark Zuckerberg showing his ‘metaverse’ avatar during Connect 2021 Facebook)

SEO trends 2022

Core Web Vitals

Google’s user experience update around Core Web Vitals started to roll out in June 2021, showing us that Google not only wants to deliver the most relevant result based on the user’s search, but also wants to make sure that websites provide a great user experience. There will be updates to this algorithm and Google will develop new ways to measure user experience.

High-Quality Content

A key part of user experience will be the quality of content that the audience can consume, site-wide. Increasingly, we are seeing pages in Google Search Console that are discoverable but not indexed. This means making every page (including campaign landing pages) valuable.

GLO’s 2022 SEO Tip

If you want to win at SEO in 2022, make sure every page on your website gives a great user experience and provides genuine value to the people visiting those pages.

Rich Media Trends 2022

Google Lens

Websites that have unique images will be rewarded in search results. Google Lens is tech that Google has on all of its Pixel phones and is connected to image search, discover, and shopping results. More and more, we are seeing images pulled into the main search results, not just the images or shopping results. Google understands what users want when they search and can offer richer content as a result.

Google Ads Image Extensions

Likewise, Google Ads is encouraging image extensions to help text ads look more appealing, pointing to the importance of images in 2022.

Metaverse

Similarly, Facebook’s announcement of the Metaverse (which will be highly reliant on rich media), means that now is the time to make sure you are also producing regular video content for your business.

Youtube

Make sure that you are using unique images and video on your website, that you have a YouTube channel, and that content is tagged correctly to help the search engine understand what the content is about.

Email Marketing

Email marketing has had its ups and downs over the years. At first, response rates were high, but over time this declined as the medium was abused and our inboxes became saturated with messages trying to sell us products and services.

End of third party cookies

With the end of third party cookies (in 2023), and search engines and social media platforms constantly changing their algorithms, one of the few constants you can control in your marketing armoury is your first-party data (email addresses, telephone number etc).

Audience Segmentation

There will be more companies turning to email marketing in 2022, so you need to make sure that your content stands out and is better than your competitors. One way to do this is to understand your audience and segment it. Deliver personalised content about what is important to them; make sure your emails bring your audience value and are not just constant sales messages.

Google Shopping

Free listings

When Google Shopping started back in 2002, it was free; it was a way to get more products on Google and take market share back from Amazon. As it became more popular, it then turned into a pay per click only option. In 2020, Google decided to change this back to free (for some placements) in the UK.

Surfaces Across Google

With Surfaces across Google, it’s possible for Shopping results to appear in search, Shopping, Maps, Images, and Lens. We have already mentioned the importance of images and Google Lens in 2022, so if you sell products online, make sure you set up your Google Merchant Centre now.

Social Media

TikTok

Before the 2020 lockdown, most people hadn’t even heard of TikTok, but the perfect storm of isolation and fun, low-quality, vertically-shot video to popular music caused it to become one of the most downloaded apps of all time.

Now, we all know what TikTok is and despite Facebook/Instagram’s attempts to take audience share back with the release of Reels, it continues to be one of the biggest and fastest-growing social platforms, with 1 billion monthly active users.

We remember having conversations with businesses about Facebook and being told, I don’t need to be on Facebook, we are having the same conversations about TikTok today…

It’s a place to grow an audience and share your brand, values and business journey. You don’t need to be funny, able to dance, or to know about popular music – it’s a place to be real and raw.

GLO’s Social Media Tip for 2022

In 2022, more businesses will be adding TikTok to their social media marketing. We advise you to get there before it’s too noisy. And remember, if you are advertising on the platform, make TikToks, NOT ads.

Request a Callback

Are you already applying all of these trends to your digital marketing strategy for 2022? Request a callback or schedule a free digital marketing consultation to get free advice about how you can make the most out of your digital marketing budget for 2022.

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A/B testing for CRO

John Parnell — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 16:10:43 +0000

CRO is an acronym used by marketers referring to conversion rate optimisation – the process of increasing the number of conversions a website receives. There are several types of conversions a business could be aiming to increase; transactional sales, form completions, email signups or the number of visitors creating an account. These are all dependent on the business’s goals.

In order to optimise your website’s conversion rate, you need to understand what your customers’ needs and wants are when visiting your website. Simply asking your customers through surveys doesn’t guarantee any quality feedback that you could rely on. Instead, taking the data-driven approach using analytical tools, such as Google Analytics and Hotjar, enables you to physically see what is and isn’t working, ultimately preventing your conversion rate from increasing.

What is A/B testing?

CRO and A/B testing typically go hand in hand, as optimising a website’s conversion rate requires various testing to be carried out. A/B testing is simply the act of testing two or more variations of pages, content or elements, to help pinpoint what contributes to customers successfully being pushed down the marketing funnel and converting. There’s no correct “one size fits all” way for your website to appear and function to be successful; what works for one company’s website may not work for another. The specific data collected from your visitors is key to understanding where any metaphorical “roadblocks” are along the customer’s journey, enabling you to eliminate them through the process of A/B testing.

But what data should I be tracking?

Within Google Analytics, the ‘pages per session’ and ‘average session duration’ metrics are good to be aware of but need to be approached with discernment. Having a high average session duration could suggest customers are having to spend more time trying to find what they want which leads to frustration and abandoning the site. To ensure this isn’t the case, view and examine your analytics – when visitors are viewing lots of pages, are they resulting in conversions? If not, it might be an indication that there are too many roadblocks on their way to converting.

The two metrics which are essential to track are Bounce Rate and Conversion Rate. If there is a high Bounce Rate on a certain page, you can take that as a good indicator of where to start A/B testing. Once you identify the problem and fix it, your Bounce Rate on this specific page is likely to decrease, resulting in a spike in conversions. After all, Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) leads to more completed purchases or sign-ups, depending on the goal, rather than just increasing the traffic that comes into the site.

How does A/B testing work?

Once decided on an A/B testing tool, some of the best being Optimizley, VWO, Omniconvert and Google Optimise, a code needs to be placed into the website in order to gain full control of the site and users’ experience. Now, using any of the website analytical tools previously mentioned, analyse where your visitors appear to be dropping off within your website. Identifying that helps narrow down what pages need reviewing and testing, allowing you to start building the new variations to test against within the A/B testing tool. Having conducted your research prior and identified where your visitors are dropping off, you can build the variations within the A/B testing tool, creating as little as one to as many variations desired.

Tip:

If conducting multiple A/B tests simultaneously, ensure none of them conflicts with one and other. Avoid testing anything which can be viewed at the same time, as although some testing tools do limit each visitor to only see one campaign at a time, others however don’t. Consequently resulting in both test results being contaminated by one and other. So in general it’s good practice to keep the tests separate and prioritise one over the other initially.

The A/B testing tool allows you to decide what percentage of your site traffic are recipients of the test. For example, 100% traffic would equal 50% of visitors seeing the original site, also referred to as ‘the control’, the other half seeing the variant. The delivery is completely random, ensuring there are no biased results depending on external factors.

Before launching the test, there will be an option of setting goals for your tests. This is dependent on what you are trying to achieve. Either increasing conversion rate or something more specific like multiplying click-throughs of a button or being directed to the next stage of the funnel.

Browser cookies track and save whichever variation visitors land on. Though, if a visitor were to delete the cookies’ data before returning to the website or open it on another device, they could potentially view the control or another variation.

Each test should last for a minimum of 1 to 2 weeks, to ensure enough data has been collected and the results have normalised, clearly stating a ‘winner’. Keep in mind that the duration of your test will vary depending on your site’s average number of visitors, especially if you have multiple variations. Low traffic means the test needs to run longer to collect enough data and vice versa. The successful variation needs to be implemented for 100% of traffic until it’s been permanently built into the website.

Marketing Funnels & CRO Strategies

When it comes to testing, you’re able to change basically anything that already exists on site which your customers can see. There are some limits though, you’re unable to add net-new pages without adding them to the original website. For instance, if the homepage needed to be completely redesigned, you couldn’t test this without adding the new page variation to the original website. However, using your A/B testing tool, you could redirect a proportion of your visitors to the new page and the others to the original. The other limitation to testing includes the site functions which don’t already exist in the original code. For example, if you wanted to test an ‘Add to wishlist’ function, it would need to be written into the code first, but then be suppressed for a percentage of traffic.

You could test:

Images or Videos
Copy
Call to actions
Buttons
Pop-ups
Navigation
Forms

If you are just starting out with A/B testing then begin with features that everyone can see! Landing pages typically receive the most traffic, so are a great place to start pushing those new visitors down the funnel and further into your site.

Further A/B testing ideas

If your website data isn’t showing you the results you were hoping for in terms of conversions but are unsure of where the issue lies, here are some testing suggestions:

Perfect your checkout – Your visitors are on the home stretch, ready to make a purchase. The checkout should have as few distractions as possible, to ensure your customers make that transaction. Test removing irrelevant content which could persuade the customer to go backwards in the funnel. Display shipping costs upfront as this can be a surprise expense which sometimes discourages the user from continuing. Simplify navigation, so there’s no confusion. Remember to continue showing any price discounts, original price and the new price. This will remind the customer how much they are saving which will motivate conversions.
Experiment with major elements – Large blocks of content can be overwhelming so try hiding parts or breaking them up into smaller pieces. Show/hide banners or images which are pushing important content further down the page. Cyber security logos may be off-putting for customers, so test which works for you.
Auto sort by popularity – Try sorting your product categories by popularity. This may improve the chances of new visitors finding what they are looking for quicker.
Create clarity – Test any call to actions (CTA’s) that have a lot of text vs a short snappy one. Chances are the short one will generate more leads. Any ad copy, headlines or CTAs should be clear and simple to drive a response.

A/B test results: How to identify the winner?

As mentioned earlier, each test should last at least 2 weeks. Your A/B testing tool will have a reports page that provides key information which contributes to deciding when the test should end and what variation won. There will be a metric called ‘confidence rate’ or ‘chance to beat control’, providing a percentage to each variation whether it’s predicted to be more successful than the original ‘Control’. The percentage has to be above 50%, otherwise, it’s a clear indication it has lost. To consider using any of the variations, they need to be at least 90%. Meaning there is little risk of the variation becoming a failure.

Next, a graph will present all the results. Ignoring the first few days, each line should have flatlined and stayed like that for 10 days or so to be able to stop the test.

Combining each of those points plus a sufficient amount of traffic will indicate a ‘winner’ of the test. If the confidence percentage is good but does not receive enough traffic, then let the test run longer, in order to obtain a fair result.

No clear A/B test winners?

Some tests may be trial and error, not all will result in the variant being crowned the ‘winner’ but that doesn’t mean the test was unsuccessful. You have gained more information about your visitors’ browsing habits, which will help guide future tests. But how can you utilise this information to your benefit now? The best way is to analyse the data and create user personas to paint a clear picture of your target audience, which can not only guide your further CRO efforts but also inform your social media posts or email marketing campaigns.

Building a User Persona

Forming one primary persona and perhaps a couple of secondaries from analysing previous reports enables you to build specific segments within your analytical tracking tool to identify what website elements the target audience is using and where A/B testing should be implemented. To give an example, using demographics within your analytical tool, enables you to identify both the age and gender of your key persona. At this point, start to build a new segment within the tool including that information. Take a look at your customer interests and narrow down what your primary persona interests are, then add those to the segment too. Also, key information to incorporate is ‘Geo’. Your key persona’s language and geographic location are valuable in order to target specific regions for future campaigns. You can make the persona segment as specific or vague as desired, depending on your website traffic volume or business goals. Now having built the segment, you’re able to see the pages and elements which are the driving factors of your key persona making a conversion. However, more importantly, you’re able to recognise where they are dropping off within your site which pinpoints exactly what to A/B test to optimise your website for your key persona.

How many A/B tests do I need to run to see an increase in conversions?

The first test won’t magically increase your conversion rate overnight. A/B testing is an iterative process of removing both big and small issues throughout your conversion funnel, creating a seamless experience for customers. Removing a stumbling block in the middle of the funnel won’t automatically make the entire journey clear too. It will take several improvements throughout the funnel until you start seeing your conversion rate increase.

It’s vital to regularly track your website’s data through analytical tools, in order to identify more testing opportunities. Through constant tracking, you will begin to spot behavioural patterns within your data. Completing one test and observing the subsequent data could potentially reveal another page which is now in need of testing. That new issue that arose as a result of a recent improvement proves how necessary observing your website’s data is at every step of the testing process. For example, improving an element on one page and successfully increasing the click-through rate will inevitably lead to more traffic being directed through to the next page. Consequently, the following page to which you have successfully boosted traffic levels, may not have previously received sufficient data to identify any testing opportunities. However, as a result, you may now be experiencing a high drop off rate, clearly showing the need for this case to be tested and optimised to increase conversions.

Here at GLO we continually analyse the data we are tracking to spot patterns and testing opportunities, which in turn help us to optimise our website and offer a seamless experience for our visitors.

Common CRO mistakes to avoid

Now, if you are sitting there feeling slightly overwhelmed or confused after reading the entirety of that information, let’s take a step back and recap. Conversion Rate Optimisation is an ongoing process that involves tweaking elements of your website in order to improve user’s experience and as a result generate more conversions, whether those are sales, form submissions or email newsletter subscriptions. By working on your CRO you can generate more leads via your website as your visitors will come across fewer roadblocks.

One of the best ways to improve your CRO is through A/B testing – the process of testing new variations of pages or elements on a website against the original. To decide what to test, use a website analytical tool to figure out where most of your current traffic is dropping off or start with landing pages that typically receive the most traffic. Some of the metrics that may indicate areas or pages worth testing include the Bounce Rate and Conversion Rate. Run your tests for a minimum duration of one to two weeks and allow the results to normalise – you know which version is your winner when you see one with at least a 90% success rate.

And finally, don’t forget that not all A/B tests you do will have the goal of increasing your conversion rate, especially in the beginning. You could set the goal to measure the number of times a specific element that’s being tested is clicked and therefore pushing those users closer to making a conversion. Furthermore, not all tests will have a clear winner but the data you collect can still be utilised to build a primary persona. This data can help you to understand who your key customer is and constantly ensure any A/B tests are increasing the conversion rate within that segment.

Conclusion

Just like with any optimisation efforts, it is important to strike a good balance between not responding to the data and doing too much to try and fix the issues. Every visitor wants a simple and easy browsing experience. So when it comes to optimising or redesigning your website here are some mistakes you should try to avoid:

Over personalisation – Personalised shopping experiences may be the latest trend but that doesn’t mean a customer’s experience should be 100% personalised. It can be off-putting sometimes for a customer to see actually how much information you know about them, resulting in potential losses. Test what performs best, do visitors want to see suggested items based on what they’ve already viewed or view new products that they may not have considered before?
Having multiple navigation methods – You want to ensure a streamlined experience. If adding new navigational methods, ensure it is easy for a customer to use or give hints on how to use new features.
Obsessing over colour – Of course, some colours are more eye-catching than others but overall it’s not an element to spend too much time worrying about it. Fix substantial problems before testing little details.
Carousels vs Static Images – Carousels that are especially featured on landing pages can bring the site to life and make it instantly more engaging, however, users typically click on the first slide, therefore missing the rest of the information. A/B testing will determine which works best for your users.
Don’t test without any data to back up your decision – This is a waste of time. Randomly testing elements to see if they work better is very time-consuming too. Figure out what content needs to be tested using your site’s data. You should A/B test new content before adding it to the original site in case it damages your conversion rate.
Focusing too much on the landing page – Yes, the landing page is very important! But if you know there are bigger issues further down the funnel, test and fix those first before driving more customers into the funnel.

Request a Callback

Are you already applying any of the above ideas on your website? Request a callback below to get free advice about how you can improve your conversion rate.

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Instagram Tips for Business

John Parnell — Thu, 28 Oct 2021 13:09:44 +0000

Social media has become one of the most important virtual platforms in our lives, with millions of people across the world accessing their social channels every single day. It’s strange to think that only 15 years ago the likes of Instagram didn’t even exist.

Instagram is so ingrained in our lives that we use it without a second thought, posting pictures and videos for our friends and family to enjoy. This might lead us to believe that using Instagram for business is the same thing, but in reality, it’s a lot harder to get engagement for a business account than it is a personal one.

Instagram Business Algorithm Update

Back in 2018, Facebook (who owns Instagram) announced feedback from the community that “public content, posts from businesses, brands and media” was “crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other”. As a result, changes to the Instagram and Facebook algorithms were made to help you “find relevant content” and “have more meaningful social interactions”.

This means that Instagram posts from businesses are typically seen by fewer people than the content posted from your own personal account.

Marketing Strategy for Instagram Tips for Business

So, how do you make Instagram work for your business? First and foremost, you will need to work hard and be consistent with your posts, making sure you are giving value to your audience.

To help you with your strategy, here are our top Instagram tips for business and how to use Instagram for marketing.

1. Define your goals.

What do you want to achieve from Instagram? Brand awareness? Reach? Lead generation? Your strategy should be created around these outcomes. Your goals also need to be SMART – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-Based.

2. Optimise your account.

Your account may be the first impression that someone gets of your business, so make sure it reflects you in the light that you want. Have a profile picture that fits 320 x 320 pixels. Include a link to your website and a call to action. Use relevant and clickable hashtags in your bio, name all photos you post with relevant keywords and add alt text to your posts with keywords.

3. Do not use ‘fancy’ fonts in your caption.

They won’t be recognised as actual words and Instagram has confirmed they use the keywords in your captions, bio and posts to help the content get found in their search function.

4. Engage with your audience/potential audience.

Engagement gets engagement; make sure you are liking, commenting and sharing other accounts’ posts. This will help you to get noticed and hopefully, the interaction will be reciprocated!

5. Use Canva.

Canva and other design software are fantastic for creating great-looking posts easily. A word of warning – do not use the exact same template that they offer. Find one you like and adapt it to your aesthetic and brand.

6. Keep a consistent theme/aesthetic.

The news feed is very busy with potentially thousands of pieces of content that could be shown to a user and people scroll fast! You need to stop the scroll and people recognising your content in their feed can help do this. Develop a consistent theme by using the same font, colour palette, tone of voice, filters/presets, etc. for all of your posts.

7. Keep the most important information in the first two lines of the caption.

The first two lines are shown automatically without having to click (or tap) “read more”. This is your opportunity to engage the reader after you have got them to stop scrolling, so make sure you are giving them what they want.

8. Know your audience.

This will be important for ad targeting and setting your tone of voice, as well as for knowing the best times to post. Regularly look at your insights to see who your followers are and when they are most active, then use that information to schedule posts in order to maximise engagement.

9. Have a regular posting schedule.

Make sure you are posting regular, consistent and valuable content so there is always a post in your followers’ feed for them to engage with.

10. Use features such as ‘quiz’ or ‘polls’.

You can ask your followers what kind of content they want to see and if they see the content they voted for/want, they’re more likely to engage.

If you need help with your social media marketing, schedule a free consultation today.

Request a Social Media Consultation

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GLO named as top SEO Agency UK by Top Design Firms

Beth Craig — Mon, 26 Jul 2021 17:04:23 +0000

GLO ranks best SEO agency in Suffolk, UK

At GLO – Generate Leads Online, we love the excitement of new beginnings. That’s why we’re elated to be a part of the inaugural launch of Top Design Firms!

From the B2B experts behind Clutch, Top Design Firms is a new research resource in the B2B space that will play an important role in the further development of the industry. Top Design Firms compiles and organizes companies offering marketing, design, and development services. They aim to help companies find the right web design, SEO, Google Ads, social media marketing and marketing agencies for their projects.

That said, we’re proud that Top Design Firms’ 2021 research named us a Top SEO Agency in the UK! We’re thrilled to be named one of the leading digital marketing agencies in Suffolk and the UK and are grateful to Top Design Firms for highlighting our team’s consistent SEO success on their platform.

Top Design Firms carefully evaluates companies using various factors, such as market presence, previous customers, and verified client feedback. Our stellar showing on Clutch is one of the many reasons we ended up ranking so highly in their list. We currently have 13 reviews and an average rating of 4.9-stars on their platform – but the feedback doesn’t end there. We also boast a solid 5-star rating and 47 reviews and counting on Google!

What Do Our SEO Clients Say?

My experience with GLO has been positive. Their team is very responsive. If I need to speak to them, they’re very quick. – Director, Grant Cullen Coaching

GLO’s SEO services got me up to number two on Google in my local area for organic search results. I’m definitely happy. They did a good job finding the right keywords for my niche and getting me up to the top of Google within a really short period of time. – Director, Nourished Content Marketing

Our website looks great. For the design, we discussed different layouts and I’m very happy with the final result. It works well. – CEO, RPM Fuels & Tanks

It’s an honour to receive such significant recognition from a recognised B2B platform such as Top Design Firms, and are over the moon to add another national award to our portfolio of accolades and work.

Why not take a look at the SEO projects that helped us earn a top spot in Top Design Firms’ list? Take a look at our portfolio section.

Want to Start Generating Leads Online with the best SEO agency in Suffolk?

GLO is the best SEO agency for those looking to propel their business’ online presence to the next level. We’ll help improve every aspect of your online presence by creating a bespoke, data-driven digital marketing strategy, built to meet each of your business’ individual requirements. From SEO to web design, our digital marketing services are designed to produce results beyond your most ambitious expectations. Get in touch with us today through our contact form, or give us a call to start your digital marketing journey.

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How GLO’s degree apprentices apply academic training to day-to-day work

John Parnell — Thu, 24 Jun 2021 14:48:01 +0000

In September 2020, we took on our first apprentice through the digital marketing degree apprenticeship programme. Since then, knowledge has been rich, work has been high-class, and goals have been smashed. GLO’s degree apprentices have really made this their own!

Beth Craig, Level 6 Digital Marketer Degree Apprenticeship BSc (Hons), says,
“I truly feel that this is the best way to pick up even more complex skills and knowledge, especially in an actively evolving digital environment.”

The digital marketing degree apprenticeship programme is proven to be both beneficial for our staff, as well as, our business. Let’s find out why.

Meet GLO’s talented degree apprentices

Callum Marshall – Level 6 Digital Marketer Degree Apprenticeship BSc (Hons), Anglia Ruskin University

Callum has been part of the GLO team since November 2020 and started his degree apprenticeship in January this year. With day-to-day duties revolving around SEO and PPC ad campaigns, some days he may be auditing and improving on-page/off-page SEO for our clients’ websites; and on others, he may be setting up, managing and improving PPC campaigns on Google Ads. Alongside these, Callum also contributes to the keyword research for new websites and assists the content team with their keyword research. As well as, delivering expertly timed one-liners where necessary.

Digital marketing is such a dynamic, changeable field with a broad scope of disciplines under the umbrella; you can’t be complacent at any stage. If you want to engage your brain while helping businesses succeed, this is the field for you!

How have you used your course for work?

“There’s been a lot of excellent ways that my course has been immediately beneficial to my role. We have learned about different management styles and leadership techniques, which has been brilliant for enhancing effective interaction within our team and has also given an academic basis for why some of the things are done the way they are at GLO. It’s kind of like the theory behind the scenes of behind the scenes!

There’s also been a lot of emphasis at uni on the fundamentals of marketing, digital marketing and organisational structure. This has been invaluable in forming both context and a ‘bigger picture’ of the whole marketing field, and again, understanding on a fundamental level the why of things, not just the how.

Finally, as a result of doing a degree in digital marketing alongside my role, I’ve benefited from ‘sneak-peaks’ of digital marketing tools and techniques, which has made both, learning how to, and implementing new techniques or aspects of my role significantly easier, because I have learned some of the academic theory beforehand.

It’s brilliant to see immediate results from an academic qualification in your day-to-day role. Sometimes, learning about academic practises and theories in an institution like a school, college or university can seem almost irrelevant (how many times have we all asked ourselves “when am I going to need to know that?”), but that certainly doesn’t seem to be the case with the digital marketing degree apprenticeship!”

How has work helped your course?

“Just as I have been able to benefit from the digital marketing degree in my day-to-day role, by studying in parallel to being an SEO consultant, the reverse is also true. There are many ways that my work has assisted with learning from Anglia Ruskin University.

Every day at GLO sees me working within the fields of SEO, PPC advertising and writing content. By learning about these in a professional context, and getting to practise them every day, it provides me with excellent foreknowledge about topics within these fields when they come up in university tutorials and assignments. This is beneficial because it means that at least the basis is already there when it comes to learning, which means I can assimilate the knowledge further in class.

In addition to this, an ability to multitask, prioritise and manage my workload is vital as an SEO consultant. This naturally lends itself really well to completing a part-time, distance-learning degree alongside my full-time role, and all the joys and tasks of life that happen in between!

Furthermore, with my experience in working as part of a digital marketing agency increasing every day, it means that when I learn new techniques or information on my course, I can immediately relate it to a real-world context. Personally, I feel that this helps me assimilate information faster, retain academic information for longer, and plan for future scenarios where I might use this information.

Finally, like all of my contemporaries on the digital marketing degree apprenticeship with Anglia Ruskin University, working alongside study has made for the raising of interesting talking points and perspectives on topics that come up in workshops and tutorials. You can get validation for what it is you do, see how other people in other organisations do things and make a note of the stuff you like for future reference. It’s been great to meet many like-minded people, and equally great to hear what they have to say.”

Learn more about Callum’s Apprenticeship Programme.

Beth Craig – Level 6 Digital Marketer Degree Apprenticeship BSc (Hons), Anglia Ruskin University

Beth joined the GLO team as a degree apprentice in September 2020. Since she started, Beth’s specialist role has been SEO copywriting. Whilst actively building her education on all areas of digital marketing on quieter days, most of Beth’s time is spent preparing long-form content for our clients; researching, writing up websites from scratch, putting together articles, or in meetings.

The role gives me the perfect opportunity to combine my passion for completing work within a real environment, applying theory, and producing positive, tangible results.

At the end of the last semester, Beth was nominated to complete an extracurricular IDM certificate in digital marketing; and she smashed it!

How have you used your course for work?

“Callum has summed this up excellently! It’s early days for both of us, but to give a bit of context, our last few modules have consisted of topics relating to work-based learning (which were particularly helpful when entering the role), organisational management, the fundamentals of marketing, and, most recently, campaign planning. Each of these topics has given me further insight with regard to both my role and the organisation as a whole. There’s been a significant opportunity within our assignments to analyse GLO itself, alongside our own performance as individuals. This has really assisted in my ability to set and achieve realistic targets across all aspects of work and personal development and has opened doors for discussion with our managing director John as to how we can best operate.

In more recent modules, we’ve begun to get into marketing itself a little more, and I’ve immensely enjoyed being able to attach solid theory to my work. Being able to compare and contrast what I’ve learned as part of modules, and in my outside reading, to real-world applications and results has given me a significant confidence boost with regard to decision making.

In addition, many of our lecturers have taken the time to discuss the differences between the digital marketing theory taught, and traditional marketing; and, along the same lines, have encouraged us to investigate integrated marketing campaigns. This, combined with the niche strategies explored in our online workshops, has given me a broader field of view and thought as to the techniques used within, and applications for our existing services.

Being able to apply rather large concepts, and otherwise solely theoretical coursework, to a real working environment, in which my choices have a significant impact, has been the key to consolidating my learning.”

How has work helped your course?

“I feel that taking on such a large and independent role at GLO has given me a significant head-start on my work at university; particularly with a number of modules in later years set to focus on my specialisms. I’ve approached many lectures, discussions, and assignments with an existing familiarity with topics. This has given me confidence in completing both graded and ungraded work, alongside time to complete further independent reading on theory not necessarily covered in, but highly relevant to the degree, and greatly building upon my knowledge.

In addition, GLO’s commitment to supporting degree apprentices further learning has been really extraordinary. Using their ‘treasure chest’ scheme, they have funded or helped me complete over seven external certified courses in digital marketing and related specialisms in the last year alone. The knowledge gained as a result of these courses has been highly beneficial in both my everyday work and the completion of large scale projects, alongside my coursework.

GLO’s highly productive and professional environment provides me with an excellent space in which to apply and consolidate my knowledge, and I accredit many of my academic achievements to the amount of responsibility and associated practice I’ve been given within my role.”

Learn more about what other ARU apprentices say.

Why did GLO decide to offer Digital Marketing Apprenticeships?

Finding staff with the right set of skills, and a willingness to continue learning in order to keep up with the evolution of the industry is difficult.

New technologies and ideas are entering the digital marketing industry practically every day and many students completing a purely study-based bachelor’s degree may find that by the end of it, what they learnt is no longer as applicable as it was at the start of their course; or that it’s difficult for them to connect the theories with real-life examples. Equally, those that have practical experience in the field may lack the theoretical knowledge to understand the bigger picture.

The strong academic training that the apprentices receive in their respective higher education institutions can be applied all throughout their degree in the work that they do here at GLO. This helps them to assimilate their knowledge and gives them a chance to engage in experiential learning.

We believe that offering opportunities for aspiring digital marketers to enter this exciting, yet competitive industry is a way for the company to contribute to the future prosperity of the young generation and economy at large. That is why we are now recruiting to fill another digital marketing degree apprenticeship position.

How does the Apprenticeship Programme work?

The Apprenticeship Programmes, which is the scheme all of GLO’s degree apprentices have gone through, are funded from the contributions made by the government and us, the employer. They offer people of any age the opportunity to learn and train for a specific job by combining work and study. At the end of it, they will have completed a top-level course and receive recognised qualifications, some equivalent to bachelor and masters degrees! Being able to gain practical experience, while at the same time earning money is the most optimal setup for those looking to start a new career, or shift to another industry.

The programme requires apprentices to study for at least 20% of their working hours, meaning the majority of their time is spent applying what they learn to real-life situations. In this way, whether the apprentice chooses to stay with the employer they were with for the duration of the apprenticeship or not, they are prepared for the current job market where more and more employers favour hands-on experience.

There are hundreds of apprenticeships available to choose from, covering multiple disciplines and offering different levels of qualifications. It can take between one and 6 years to complete an apprenticeship depending on which one you choose, what level it is and your previous experience. Currently, our two degree apprentices are both on the same program, but there is a programme to suit everyone’s needs!

GLO’s degree apprentices benefit from blended learning, which is being delivered online by highly experienced tutors, many of whom worked in the marketing industry itself prior to moving into academia. This is advantageous to the apprentices as they’re learning from those who are able to bring in theoretical knowledge and frameworks, as well as real-life examples.

The future of the Apprenticeship Programmes

When the coronavirus pandemic hit the UK in March 2020 those who were at the time ready to enter employment found themselves in a difficult position. The job market suddenly shrunk, and the government was faced with the issue of managing an imbalance in the supply and demand of people looking for work and jobs available to them. Hundreds of graduates and school leavers were raring to begin paid work but there were not enough jobs to accommodate them all.

The turbulence that the pandemic brought made the apprenticeship programme particularly vulnerable. A survey carried out back in 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, revealed that out of the firms who were running an apprenticeship programme at the time, on average, only 40% of those programmes were able to carry on as normal, with the rest facing learning disruptions. This raised fears that after the crisis, there would be fewer apprenticeships on offer and fewer businesses willing to provide them.

To simultaneously support businesses in the creation of new workplaces, and job seekers in successfully securing a paid position, as part of its March 2021 budget, the government announced that it is upping the support by injecting a further £126 million to enable 40,000 traineeships and doubling the employer incentives. This comes after £1.6 billion stimuli dedicated to boosting work search, skills and apprenticeships, which was revealed back in July 2020.

With this additional government funding, the future of Apprenticeship Programmes feels a lot more secure and enables more individuals to train in the field they’d like to work in. It equally incentivizes more businesses to employ eager apprentices who bring a fresh outlook and new ideas. We believe that GLO’s degree apprentices are a true testament to the effectiveness of this scheme!

How to apply for GLO’s Apprenticeship Programmes?

We advertise our apprenticeship positions on Indeed and LinkedIn. The application process varies depending on the level and type of apprenticeship programme it is. Our 4-year Digital Marketing Degree apprenticeships required candidates to record verbal answers prior to having an interview. Other courses required applicants to only submit a CV and a cover letter in order to potentially be shortlisted for an interview. Depending on the role, in the past, we have also given shortlisted applicants a test project to complete before a specified deadline.

The application process is always clearly laid out in the job advertisement and will be reiterated to you in any further communication.

Some of the things we’d like the future GLO’s degree apprentices to demonstrate include:

Willingness to learn continuously
Ability to work autonomously and in collaboration with other team members
Confidence to ask questions and ask for help when needed
Determination to put your 100% in and produce work of the highest standard possible
Eagerness to contribute and take ownership of your tasks

For more information about the different Apprenticeship Programmes available, visit the Further Education and Skills page on the government website. And if you believe your future is in digital marketing, learn about the current digital marketing apprenticeships on the GLO website.

We’ve been so impressed with the value GLO’s degree apprentices have brought to the company, and would highly recommend business owners to consider employing young talent through this initiative. Not only to add a valuable asset to their team but also to enable those individuals to launch their career with the best of both worlds; practical and academic training.

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How to generate leads with content marketing?

Beth Craig — Mon, 08 Mar 2021 12:27:26 +0000

If you were to ask a few different marketers, what are some of the best ways to generate business leads in 2021, no doubt the majority of them would mention content marketing.

Online content plays a much bigger role in the consumer journey now, than it did a few years ago. The internet has become an authoritative source of information for buyers and an avenue for marketers to advertise their products. A 2019 study demonstrated that 81% of consumers do online research before heading to the shop to purchase a product. With coronavirus forcing businesses to go digital, and consumers having less opportunity to shop in physical stores, there is a greater reliance on content marketing to satisfy the customer at several different touchpoints.

Similarly, Ofcom 2020 stats show that adults in the UK are spending a record 4 hours a day online, which demonstrates an increase of one hour since 2018. Marketers can use this data to their advantage by moving their target audience down the sales funnel with the use of high-quality, value-adding content that triggers the desired action and is then distributed via channels that offer a high return on investment.

There is no doubt that content marketing is paramount if you’re looking to reach your target audience and build trust relationships with them while adapting to the increasingly more digital “new normal”. Those relationships cultivated through the process of building up your online authority with interactive content, as well as having a carefully planned content strategy that supports your business’s goals are going to help you generate leads with content marketing. In this article, we will guide you through our 7-step guide on how to do this. To apply what you learn in this article, download our Content Marketing Strategy template and follow along!

What is lead-generating content marketing?

Developing and maintaining a competitive advantage that helps the business generate leads and convert them into sales and loyal customers is the main concern of digital marketers. By applying different processes they create a brand image and develop online authority that helps to attract and convert web visitors into leads.

Lead-generating content marketing often refers specifically to digital content and is a strategic marketing approach dedicated to the creation and distribution of valuable, relevant and consistent online content that attracts and retains a specific type of audience. Some lead-generating content, such as coupons, can drive profitable customer action when delivered to the customer at the right time.

At GLO, our content marketing specialists can attest to the fact that generating leads with digital content marketing can be a very successful online marketing strategy when supported by intelligent use and analysis of data. You can easily support your content marketing decisions with data gathered with Google Search Console and Google Analytics, which are both easy to add to your website.

One thing that’s undeniable when you want to successfully generate leads with content marketing is that you need a strategy. As the founder of Content Marketing Institute (CMI), Jay Baer says, “A content marketing strategy is not a nice-to-have, it’s a requirement.”

In this article, we will guide you through the process of writing your content marketing strategy for lead generation so that you can take your customers from the top of the funnel through to conversion. We’ve created a handy Content Marketing Strategy booklet with templates and an interactive Content Calendar to make it easy for you to develop your complete content strategy.

Reasons to add content marketing to your lead generation strategy

Apart from the customers demanding more online content in order to complete their research prior to making their final purchase, and people generally spending more time online, there are other reasons why you may consider adding content marketing to your lead generation strategy.

Content marketing is a form of ‘softer’ selling where you aim to provide a load of value to your web visitors before asking them to subscribe or pushing for a sale more aggressively. It adheres to the ‘Jab Jab Jab Right Hook’ idea, famously coined by Gary Vaynerchuk. This slower approach to marketing to your potential customers works well in the online space as a jab’s content aims to engage and trigger an emotional response while a right hook’s content aims to sell and self-promote. This 3:1 ratio strikes the perfect balance between the two and helps you to avoid a counterproductive result that too many right hooks could easily lead to – let’s be honest, no one likes to be constantly sold to!
Data collected by HubSpot further validates this, showing that 96% of first-time website visitors are not ready to purchase and prefer to carry out their research to compare against the competition. You want to be able to provide them enough ‘jabbing’ content to build up their trust in your business before going in for the right hook.

Promoting products or services to your target audience with the use of interactive content, not only meets their research needs but also has shown to be 3 times more efficient in generating leads, as compared to outbound marketing. Furthermore, 72% of companies surveyed confirm that content marketing increases the number of leads in their business.

Smart allocation of resources with a focus on avenues that generate the best ROI is what most businesses look for. Content marketing can provide this long-term. According to HubSpot, 1 out of 10 blog posts demonstrates a “compounding” quality, meaning that organic search steadily increases traffic to these posts over time. Even big brands, such as Coca-Cola have in recent years recognised the power of creating digital content and are now shifting the majority of their resources towards content marketing and away from TV advertising.

We are not suggesting you follow the big dogs and do what the likes of Coca-Cola are doing – your budget might not stretch that far. But even for those businesses with smaller budgets content marketing doesn’t have to be something that they get to do someday in the future.
A lot of the time when something is successful we assume it’s also pricey. Here’s the surprise! Demand Metric estimated that content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing techniques. Learning how to generate leads with content marketing is something that even small businesses can invest in right now.

A lot of the time, those trying to generate leads with content marketing for the first time, find that it’s a time-consuming activity. For those short on time, outsourcing to content marketing agencies can be a better solution and one that may potentially result in much better results. Take one of our clients as an example – after our content marketing team took over Eagle Training’s blog management, we were able to achieve top first page rankings in Google for some of the topics that their target audience was interested in.

Whether you’re going to try to generate leads with content marketing yourself or hand it over to a specialist team, below we dive deep into the steps we believe should be taken to start generating leads through content marketing.

GLO’s 7 step process to generate leads with content marketing

1. Develop a content marketing strategy

If you recall Jay Baer’s quote from earlier – content marketing strategy is a requirement if you’re serious about generating leads via this particular channel. In fact, writing out a strategy for any marketing efforts you are investing in is an important part of the process. Creating amazing pieces of content without a strategy that will synergise your content and lead your web visitors down the sales funnel is frankly a waste of your time.

So how exactly do you write your content marketing strategy? There are a few steps that come into it and involve you putting your thinking cap on. Traditionally, you’ll get your pen & paper out and start jotting your ideas down, but since we are a 100% paperless digital marketing agency, we prepared a downloadable PDF with Content Marketing Strategy templates for you to fill in.

Let’s get started!

A content marketing strategy is not a nice-to-have, it’s a requirement.

Download your Content Marketing Strategy template!

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1.1 Segment your audience and create buyer personas

Remember how we said that the ‘jab’ was the type of content that aims to engage and trigger an emotional response?

Your content marketing strategy will revolve around a lot of jabbing and a few strategically placed, and not so obvious, right hooks. But how can you evoke that emotional response in every single one of your web visitors with the same piece of content?

The answer is, you cannot.

Your audience needs to be segmented into smaller groups of people based on common characteristics and needs they have. From this activity, you can identify your ‘ideal customer’ or in other words your buyer persona. Having a more defined image of who you’re talking to, what they like and don’t like, what keeps them up at night and what their aspirations are, allows you to create content that directly speaks to their specific needs and triggers the emotional response you are looking for.

Most businesses with multiple products or services will find they have more than one buyer persona that when combined represent their entire audience pool. However, if you’re new to content marketing you can focus on just one that you think represents the buyer who is most interested.

So how do you put your buyer persona together? Well, you need data. This may be data you’ve collected in the past or data that you can derive from tools such as, Facebook Audience Insights or Google Keyword Planner. Both are great tools to build a picture of your ideal customer.

Once you have the data, you can put it into a buyer persona template and keep safe to guide any other marketing strategies you and your team are deploying. We’ve got a blank buyer persona template for you in our Content Marketing Strategy booklet.

1.2 Map the customer journey

Stepping into the shoes of your potential customers is important in order to understand what you’re doing well to meet your customer’s goals and where perhaps you’re not delivering enough value or making it too difficult to do business with you.

By understanding your consumers and their needs on a human level you can gain better insights into what it is they might need or expect from you once they’ve interacted with your content at the different stages of their journey. This way you can target their entire experience rather than just do the bare essentials of targeting the right keywords, which we’ll discuss later on. Discovering their unique journeys helps you to strategically choose the right content upgrades and lead magnets.

The easiest way to map your consumers’ journey is to go through it yourself and note down all the different touchpoints that happen on the way. These could include steps such as them landing on one of your blogs, seeing a pop-up about your new lead magnet, subscribing, receiving an email with the freebie etc.
To make it an interactive and flexible process for you and your team, use sticky notes to mould the journey of your ideal consumer.

When you’re clear on the steps your consumer takes and points at which they come into contact with your business, you can put it all into a consumer journey map like the one below.

1.3 Match content to the different stages of your sales funnel

Many businesses and entrepreneurs are already creating content – according to 2019 statistics, YouTube alone gets roughly 500 hours of video content uploaded every minute worldwide. But one of the biggest mistakes content creators make is they fail to move their potential customers down their sales funnel. We don’t want you to be one of those content marketers. Once you’ve mapped your consumer’s journey, use the online sales funnel to decide which content fits your consumers’ needs best at the different stages.

Pushing for purchase when marketing to someone who just became aware of your products or services is unlikely to result in a sale. At the awareness stage users are interacting with your content while gathering knowledge on solutions available to the problem they’re currently facing. By adding an emotional appeal to your content, which can be done with social proof, some of those users might express further interest in your products or services and will be willing to exchange their email address for a free resource that helps them with their problem.

The awareness stage is a great opportunity to find out which of your content benefits your web visitors the most. Another name given to this stage is Top of Funnel (TOF) as it’s where the process of sifting through your web visitors begins so that you can move the interested ones to the next stage – consideration, where you get to turn them into leads. For this to happen, it’s not only the content that needs to resonate with them. You also need to remove any barriers they may face when attempting to sign up.

Having successfully moved the consumer down to the point where they begin to consider your business more seriously by comparing your solution to other solutions, your job is to offer them whatever they need to choose you over your competitors. At this stage, your content marketing strategy may turn to inviting them to a free webinar or sharing an in-depth case study where you demonstrate your expertise. If they bite, they enter the decision stage and may look to you for reinforcement of their decision. If you’re a service provider, you could offer them a free consultation and follow up afterwards by sharing a testimonial someone else left you.

1.4 Identify what lead magnets you need to create

Lead magnets help you gather contact details in exchange for a free resource, such as a free trail or eBook. By growing your email list you get to interact with your target audience and create marketing material that is more personalised, which increases the interaction.

As consumers are becoming more demanding and discerning, it is no longer enough to write a good article and expect those readers to instantly become fans that keep coming back to consume other pieces of your content. Web users are looking for added value in the form of free resources. Being able to download freebies helps them to make up their mind on whether they believe the source is a credible and authoritative one.

But before you go ahead and create your first free resource, let’s consider what makes an irresistible lead magnet.

First and foremost, your lead magnet needs to solve a problem and offer your reader a quick win. Great lead magnets are easily digestible and can be accessed instantly. To help you build trust with your audience, your lead magnets should have a high perceived value and demonstrate your expertise well. To generate leads with content marketing you want your lead magnets to satisfy all of the above.

Recently, marketers have had a lot of luck with interactive lead magnets, such as quizzes, but there are many other freebies that have been working well for years, including checklists and eBooks. The type of lead magnet you decided to create depends on the needs of your target audience. Our Content Marketing Strategy booklet gives you many suggestions of different lead magnets you could produce for your content.

1.5 Put your ideas into a content calendar

If you’ve followed the previous steps, by now you’d know what pieces of content you need to be creating to move consumers down your sales funnel, including the freebies. But one of the factors that helps websites rank high in Google is publishing high-quality content on a consistent basis.

Content creators with many great ideas, and some understanding of how these pieces come together to encourage the consumer to choose their business, may feel confident about their content marketing strategy. But without accountability and a schedule that outlines when these pieces of content are supposed to be published, their good momentum will eventually stop.

Without a content calendar, you risk your sales funnel becoming leaky, with potential leads dropping out before they covert. Creating a content calendar may take you a few hours on the day that you decided to do it, but will save you many hours and headaches in the future. Not only will you know exactly what content needs to be created and published when, but everyone on your team will know too, and will be able to step in if needed. Furthermore, CMI 2021 statistics show that four out of five top performers use an editorial calendar while only half of the least successful do.

In your content calendar, for each piece of content you should make notes on some of the following details:

The title for the piece of content.
Who is it aimed at?
What is your Call To Action?
What content upgrades or lead magnets will be associated with this piece of content?
What other pieces of your content will you be linking to?
When the content is going to be published?
Who is going to create the content?

There isn’t one unified formula to follow when filling out your content calendar. We would advise you to try and create journeys for your web visitors.

So let’s say your buyer persona is interested in one specific topic that you’ve decided to write about.

First, you’ll title it using the types of words this particular type of customer is likely to type into Google to search for the topic you’re writing about. You will learn this from your keyword research.

The next step is to think about the reasons why this person might have been searching for this type of content. Are they just researching or are they desperate for a solution now? What exactly was their search intent?

Based on those findings and assumptions, think about what sort of free resources you could provide them with in exchange for their email so that soon you can interact with them again, using another piece of content. Similarly, think about what other topics could they be interested in and see if you can make content to answer those questions. Then plug it all into your calendar in a way that maps their journey through the sales funnel.

Remember that different pieces of content suit the different stages of the sales funnel. You want to have a mixture of traffic-generating content, such as blog posts, social media posts, videos or infographics, and lead-generating content, which would include your free resources, eBooks, mini-courses, coupons, webinars or free challenges.

Within our Content Marketing Strategy booklet, you’ll find a link to an editorial calendar template we created on Airtable. We’ve filled out the first few fields to show you how to build journeys for your consumers with your content and move them down the sales funnel simultaneously. All you have to do is follow the pattern!

2. Apply SEO to your content

With the content marketing strategy out of our way, we finally arrive at step 2 of our guide on how to generate leads with content marketing.

This step is all about making sure that whatever content you create, you make sure to optimise it for search engines. After all, you are generating content for web users who are most likely searching for solutions in Google.

The type of keywords that will be relevant to your pieces of content will differ depending on the stage of the sales funnel you are associating the content to.
Long-tail keywords, along the lines of “how to generate leads with content marketing” or “what is the best way to generate leads online” might be something you include more in pieces of content that aim at attracting those consumers in the awareness stage.

Someone searching for commercial terms, such as “content marketing agency” or “content marketing expert” is likely to already be in the consideration stage.
Understanding the search intent behind the different search queries will help you stay focused on the most optimal keywords for each piece of content you produce.

To further indicate to search engines, which keywords you’re hoping to rank for you’d need to apply on-page SEO tactics, such as formatting your primary keyword with the use of H1 tag.
We go into a lot more detail on how to produce SEO-friendly content and the various on-page SEO techniques you should apply in our guide on How to generate leads online through SEO?

3. Make your content interactive

Capturing your audience’s attention is key to generating leads with your content. Our attention spans are becoming shorter and shorter. A study conducted by Microsoft all the way back in 2000 showed that the attention span of an average person equalled 12 seconds back then. Around 2015, this dropped to 8 seconds and since then it has been ever decreasing due to the abundance of information presented to us.

Statistics show that interactive content gains two times more engagement than static content. When your audience interacts with your content, it is more likely to be shared and so may have a lot higher reach than content that is static and doesn’t get entice the reader to pass it forward. Similarly, 77% of marketers say that interactive content has a “reusable” value, resulting in repeat visitors and multiple exposures.

Creating a variety of content, whether that is video, podcast, infographics, eBooks or quizzes is the best approach. Equally, within one content piece, such as a blog post, you can use several different types of content to keep the user engaged.

4. Distribute your content via high ROI platforms

Creating valuable, authoritative and interactive pieces of content is one step of the process. The next step is to promote that content.

Distributing your content should be a part of your content marketing strategy. Even if you haven’t been producing long-format content in the past, you may know which one of your social media accounts gets the most engagement and perhaps has generated some leads in the past. That’s the one that is most likely going to see a higher click-through rate when you start sharing links to your content.

If you don’t have any insights into the performance of your social media accounts, it’s something that you’ll have to test and adjust as you go along. However, to start off with, think about where your target audience is most likely to hang out. As a B2B digital marketing agency, more of our content gets seen by relevant users when we post on LinkedIn and Facebook, as opposed to Instagram. Depending on your business and what audience it appeals to, you can predict the social media platform that may work best for you. Pinterest is also a great place to share your work as it can generate a sustainable flow of traffic.

5. Promote your lead magnets with Facebook Ads

When you’ve created your irresistible lead magnets for your content, it’ll be a shame not to promote them to a wider audience. One great way is via Facebook Ads.

For years, Facebook has been collecting data on its members, which you can utilise to target your chosen target audience. Their AI is able to predict the buying habits of their users and knows about their preferences and interests.

With the wealth of knowledge Facebook holds over users all around the world, it makes a great tool for marketers who are looking to advertise to their target audience and generate qualified leads.

Advertising lead magnets via Facebook can work with audiences at different stages of the marketing funnel. Whether you’re trying to increase awareness or hoping to move someone from consideration to the decision stage of your marketing funnel, the audience selection tools within Facebook Ads Manager allows you to do that. You can build audiences based on your buyer personas and further suggestions from Facebook, or simply upload your email subscriber list and retarget to them.

Facebook users tend to like advertising that is more passive and so when coming up with creatives for your Facebook Ads campaigns, be sure to produce something that doesn’t disturb them while scrolling through their news feed, but equally grabs their attention so that they go ahead and subscribe to your email list in order to receive your freebie.

6. Look for guest blogging opportunities & other forms of collaboration

Writing blogs for other platforms that already managed to capture the attention of an audience that is similar to yours is a great way to generate leads with your content. It’s also a great way to secure a backlink that boosts your SEO.

Once again, it’s good to be strategic about your collaborations. First, research different blogs, podcasts, vlogs that your audience might be attracted to, and before pitching to those platforms, think about what evergreen content you could produce to benefit your audience.

Once you decide on the content, create a lead magnet that you can promote within your blog or while on the podcast. This will be the thing that determines how many leads you’ll get from your guest blog. Refer back to the qualities of an irresistible lead magnet and see if you can tick all those boxes. Additionally, make sure your lead magnet is highly relevant to the topic that you’re covering.

When writing your piece of content, you should create opportunities for yourself to talk about the freebie you have. Make your writing sound natural whilst at the same time mentioning something about your lead magnet throughout the body of the blog post. Another great place to mention your lead magnet is ‘Author’s Bio’.
By exposing you to a new audience, and giving you the opportunity to add value to those users with your expertise and the freebie, guest blogging enables you to generate leads with content marketing.

Guets blogging has been around for years. As a content marketing agency, we look for guest blogging opportunities for our clients. Having many Suffolk based clients, we produce guest blogs on their behalf on local directories, such as Suffolk Business Directory and Suffolk Business.

Other forms of collaboration could include being a co-host on a webinar. In recent years, webinars have been extremely popular with online users. In this way, you get exposed to a huge amount of people and connect with them on a more personal and interactive level.

7. Track analytics and insert content upgrades

Just as you need a strategy for any of your marketing campaigns, you need to track the analytics of those campaigns to gain insights on what’s working and what isn’t. Monitoring a few of the different datasets in your Google Analytics will help you make more informed strategic decisions.

By analysing the sources that your content viewers come from, you can determine which platform is generating you the highest return on investment and choose to focus more of your efforts on that particular platform. This goes back to step 4 in our process where we were trying to identify the highest ROI platform to distribute our content on.

Checking how many people viewed your content, and how long they spent on the page gives a good indication as to how interesting and engaging your content is. If, for example, you notice a trend of “How to…” guides performing better than other pieces of content, you can add more of those into your editorial calendar. High-traffic content pieces can easily be made into lead-generating powerhouses by simply adding content upgrades to them. Content upgrades work best as two-step opt-ins as you can hyperlink words within a short sentence in which you present the value of the freebie to then, once they click, send them to a contact form or a pop up where they can sign up. The two-step opt-in process has proven to increase the number of conversions.

Lastly, you want to monitor how many people sign up to get your freebies, which lead magnets are the most popular and bring in the most traffic, as well as where those people come from.

Data shows that out of those practising content marketing almost all (94%) top performers measure their content performance whereas only 60% of the least successful do.

Tracking your analytics gives you a view of the bigger picture and guides your entire strategic marketing process. In 2021, it is not enough for content marketers to know how to produce SEO-friendly content or interactive infographics. They also need to understand how content works across the board. Knowing how it can be leveraged and reused let’s you generate more leads with content marketing.
At GLO, we believe that tracking data and analysing it, allows marketers to derive insights that give them a superpower of marketing agility. This helps them to be more responsive to the ever-changing digital landscape.

Congrats! You made it through all of those 7 steps – we know it’s quite a lot to take in. We can imagine that by now, you either:

A) have your content marketing strategy written up and your editorial calendar filled with many ideas on content pieces that will help you to generate leads

B) have already given up on attempting to do this yourself and would much rather get a content marketing specialist to do it for you!

If the answer is B, get in touch with the GLO team and let us generate leads for you with content marketing.

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Best Digital Marketing Agency UK by Clutch

Beth Craig — Mon, 25 Jan 2021 13:27:19 +0000

Proud of our agency’s award-winning status

Scouting out the best digital marketing agency can help your business keep up with the demands of the ever-evolving online environment. Developing and maintaining an effective digital marketing strategy has never been more important to the growth of businesses across nearly every sector. Offering a powerful, highly adaptable tool for promotion, brand-building, and valuable communication, digital marketing and its associated techniques can provide organisations of any scope and scale with the online presence needed to take their success to the next level.

With this being said – finding a performance-driven digital marketing agency with the necessary skill and knowledge to create genuinely effective strategies can be difficult. That’s where accreditation and awards come into play – working to highlight the achievements and quality of top-performing agencies and freelancers across the globe.

The GLO team are hugely proud of our agency’s award-winning status, having been previously awarded for the quality of our B2B marketing work in 2020. Now, in 2021, we’re ecstatic to announce that for the second year in a row, we’ve been named as one of Clutch’s top UK digital marketing agencies.

What is Clutch?

Clutch is the leading global ratings and reviews platform for digital marketing companies, SEO agencies, and a number of online service providers. Offering clients a unique level of insight into performance and satisfaction levels, Clutch’s innovative system brings high-performing agencies into the spotlight. Our Clutch profile’s five-star rating across the board speaks for itself – but our status as one of their top agencies truly establishes GLO as being among the best of the best.

It’s an honour to receive national recognition from such a widely recognised institution on a continued basis – from our first year of operations, until now. Why not take a look at the work that helped earn us this award? Take a look at our portfolio section.

Want to work with our award-winning team?

GLO is the perfect agency for those looking to propel their business’ online presence to the next level. We’ll help improve every aspect of your online presence by creating a bespoke, data-driven digital marketing strategy, built to meet each of your business’ individual requirements. From SEO to web design, our digital marketing services are designed to produce results beyond your most ambitious expectations. Get in touch with us today through our contact form, or give us a call to start your digital marketing journey.

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