Herd Marketing Podcasts

Some of you may remember back when business owners and entrepreneurs had to go lockdown a developer just to make minor changes to their websites and content. That all changed with the introduction of WordPress, making the management of websites far simpler and easier. It was a total game-changer for everyone involved, especially small business owners!

You have probably already heard about WordPress before, as it is the perfect blogging tool, but did you know that the more accurate term for it is CMS (Content Management System)? By using this platform, you have the potential to build a fully interactive website. WordPress is used all over the globe by millions of people as their preferred platform for web development. There are a variety of reasons that detail why it’s so popular, but in this article, we’re going to go over why WordPress is an ideal option for your small businesses.

WordPress is a Free Open Source Platform

Let’s come out of the gate strong and tell you arguably the number one reason why this platform is so widely used and so powerful. It is free open source platform! Once you finish up the free download, all you need to do is install it on your website or a local sandbox environment with simplicity and then you’re free to do whatever you want with it. Since WordPress has emerged, small business owners have been able to get great looking, professional websites at an affordable rate.

It's Safe, Secure and Reliable

You may be thinking that since it’s free and open source, it may not be the safest or most reliable platform available on the market, but the truth is, it’s practically the best. Because WordPress is a strong CMS and web development platform that has a constant flow of consistent ongoing work, it was designed to be as secure as possible. Some people are downright shocked to learn that regarding security provided, WordPress ranks at the top of the charts. How do they stay on top? By rolling out regular updates and security patches the platform stays up to date thus creating a safer website environment for users. If that’s not enough, there are various ways of improving your website’s security by implementing plugins or other basic precautions that are also available right on the platform.

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Recent Website Designs by Herd Marketing

It's incredible User Friendly

WordPress was created to be a powerful tool that technically savvy people could use to achieve the precise results they want, while also providing a simple and smooth experience for average users. At its core, the platform is very powerful and allows for a great user experience. Overall the layout is very interactive and user-friendly regardless of your technical skill level, which allows users to effortlessly create web pages, menus, posts, and forms, plus more. You can manage media such as videos and pictures with zero hassle and little to no experience.

Plugins Galore

To add some more functionality to your website, you can take advantage of the thousands of available WordPress plugins. Many of them are free, but there are a few that come with a small cost. There are legitimately tens of thousands of pre-developed plugins stored in the WordPress plugin directory and if that’s not enough for you, there are plenty more premium ones available from marketplaces such as Pippin’s Plugins, CodeCanyon, ThemeIsle, and more. Plugins are typically very easy to use and even easier to install, plus they help to add layers of additional functionality to your website.

How Your PPC Manager Oversees Facebook Ads

So you want to reach a few of the 1.7 billion Facebook users scrolling on their social media —but you also want to be sure you’re paying the right amount of money to talk to the right type of people.

Less experienced marketers may feel that their Facebook ads are not delivering. But paid Facebook ads are astonishingly effective in the hands of a skilled PPC manager who knows what they’re doing, as your Facebook ad receipts will show.

Your PPC manager will begin by creating a Facebook business page along with your business’s Facebook ad account ID. Facebook Ad Manager supplies you with a dashboard that allows you to keep track of your campaigns and a detailed series of metrics, including the amount you’re spending each day.

Every PPC manager spends a lot of time evaluating these metrics and understands the strategies that stimulate performance. Crucially, they will know how to match ad activity with an objective. Your objective might encompass promoting overall brand awareness, driving up your number of downloads or app installations, or directing traffic to your e-commerce site.

Other objectives include lead generation, catalogue sales, video views, and more. After consulting you, your manager will set the parameters that allow them to track and monitor how a particular ad converts in terms of its specific objective. They will also work to configure a precise target audience that is most likely to respond to your offering.

Initially, this part of the game may require some trial and error. Your manager will likely make it a point to try several options, compare performance results, and help you hone your criteria as you zero in on the characteristics of your ideal customer based on location, age, gender, languages, relationship status, education, work, income, ethnicity, politics, life events, interests, behaviours, and connections.

From here, you and your PPC manager will discuss the appropriate budget for your ad campaign, both in terms of your daily and lifetime spend. Your PPC manager will even be able to set your ad for precise hours and/or days of the week if these factors are relevant to your product, service, or target demographic.

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https://youtu.be/LeMM5iUqe_I

Additionally, your PPC manager will have a hand in creating your ads. Because they know the ad formats inside and out, they will be able to specify which display will work best for your brand and objective. They will also be able to strategize its placement among the three main ad locations: desktop news feed, mobile news feed, or desktop right column. Each comes with its own advantages.

Using a combination of Facebook Ad Manager and their own specialized software, a PPC manager then measures and tracks how your ad performs over time, analyzes the results it's yielding, and will make adjustments accordingly to dial in a highly optimized, results-driven campaign.

Because your PPC manager has an eye on your ads every day, they can immediately bring you up to speed on how to interpret performance metrics and what you can do to continue using Facebook in the most strategic way possible.

How Your PPC Manager Oversees Google Ads

If you’re considering spending any amount of money on ads to reach your target audience, you know you want to spend it in the right place. Google entertains 4.8 billion interactions every day—an obvious place to allot at least a portion of your ad spend.

In our latest podcast and vlog, we visited The Material Studios in Liverpool with our client Jonathan Vaggers from Inspire Home Solutions.

In this episode, we talk to Jonny about Inspire and learn more about what they do and how they generate new business from their Facebook lead generation ads that we manage for them.

Finally, we close out this episode hearing about Jonny's plans for the rest of 2021 and beyond.

If you want to improve your online presence with Facebook Ads or Google Ads, reach out to us today here on our website:

https://www.herdmarketing.co.uk

Herd Marketing: Gather Your Audience.

In the latest episode of the Herd Marketing podcast, we visit Ryan, who runs and operates The Beer Lab in Heswall. The Beer Lab is a micropub that specialises in selling a huge range of craft beers and has built up an enviable reputation locally as one of the best pubs on the Wirral. This is down to an ever-changing range of artisan craft beers being on sale, as well as its really good atmosphere. 

During this episode, we talk about how the business has reacted to the recent Coronavirus and how by being quick to react, it has managed to not only survive but thrive. We also ''Taste Test'' one of the amazing beers that are available and talk further about some exciting new plans. This includes the opening a new warehouse that will help facilitate the growth of online sales for The Beer Lab. 

This new growth and expansion are certainly exciting times for The Beer Lab and we are pleased, as an agency to be working with Ryan and his team on this journey. Herd Marketing has built the new website and are actively working on and managing the paid social media ads on Facebook and Instagram for The Beer Lab. Additionally, we are also managing the Email Marketing campaigns and are already getting some excellent results and a ROI for The Beer Lab. 

These are certainly exciting times and we hope you have enjoyed this episode of our podcast. As always, if you have any thoughts, ideas or suggestions for future episodes then please do contact us or leave a comment in the box below.

Until next time,

Herd Marketing - Gather Your Audience. 

Last Friday we visited Katherine Jones at the Social Nation HQ on Stanley Street in Liverpool to record the latest Herd Marketing podcast.

Kath runs her influencer marketing agency, We Are Social Nation from here and works with a number of celebrities to manage their social media accounts, in particular their Instagram accounts. In addition to this, Kath recently set up a brand of sparkling wine and Prosecco - called Think Wine. This is a reduced-calorie and vegan-friendly Prosecco and in this episode of the Herd Marketing podcast, we talk about both of these businesses and how they help one another.

During this light-hearted and often funny episode - we find out in more detail about Social Nation and some of the interesting influencers that they work with. We also discover more about the Think Wine Group and learn how and why it was originally set up. We gently cover the topic of how the Corona Virus has effected both Social Nation and the Think Wine Group and we learn how Kath has changed her approach to tackling this issue, such as focusing more on the DTC approach to selling.

As has become a tradition with guest speakers on our podcast, we close out by asking Kath to talk about some of her favourite books and share with us what she last read. We hope you like this episode and as always, if you have any thoughts, questions or suggestions for future episode please do leave a comment in the box below.

Herd Marketing - Gather Your Audience.

In the latest episode of the Herd Marketing podcast and vlog we welcome special guest Mark Waldron from MOVE. Mark joins our founder and MD Mark Baker at the Material Studios in Liverpool to talk about relationship marketing.

During this episode Mark W shares his extensive experience of business networking and offers some useful hints and tips on how to grow your business with relationship marketing. This includes techniques and frameworks that he uses within his coaching business that have helped many business owners, both locally and nationally to grow and prosper.

https://youtu.be/v3T2gEnbF04

As mentioned in the video and podcast, Mark W organises the Netwalking events in Sefton Park, Liverpool on a Saturday at 07.00am and at the Marine Lake, West Kirby on a Sunday at 07.00am. Both of these events are always very well attended and are a great way to connect with other local businesses and business owners. To connect with Mark Waldron and find out more about him and these events, connect with him here on LinkedIn.

I hope that you have enjoyed this episode of the Herd Marketing podcast. As always, if you have any thoughts or suggestions on this episode or for any future ones, please do leave a comment in the box below,

Until next time,

Herd Marketing - Gather Your Audience.

Welcome to this episode of the Herd Marketing podcast -today we welcome special guest and LinkedIn marketing guru Pam Case from Linked Online. Pam runs a number of networking groups and training sessions, based around LinkedIn and how to optimise your LinkedIn profile.

In this episode we cover some important topics and areas within LinkedIn and explain in detail how these can be used to help generate new B2B leads and sales. Pam highlights four areas that LinkedIn can be broken down into and these include marketing, database, search tool and networking room. Each of these four points is covered in some detail within this episode along with her final top three tips for LinkedIn greatness!

https://youtu.be/kIoQfIdOr90

Mark Baker & Pam Case talk about getting the most from your LinkedIn account.

To stay up to date with all the latest digital marketing news, trends and best practices, subscribe to the Herd Marketing YouTube channel and/or podcast. We post regular episodes that offer value and insight into the world of digital marketing.

Thanks for watching and we welcome any constructive thoughts, ideas or suggestions in the box below.

Herd Marketing - Gather Your Audience.

In today’s blog article we are going to be looking at SEO tips for 2020. This content is available as a podcast that can be listened too and downloaded or in a written article format, as shown below. 

When it comes to optimising your website and the amount of organic traffic that you get, using a good SEO tool is unavoidable and also very advisable. There are several different websites and tools that you can use to help improve the search engine optimisation of your website. This includes sites such as SEM Rush, Google Analytics and Ahrefs for example.

However, if you don’t have access to these various tools, you can still improve the SEO of your content, website, or other digital media by simply implementing some/all of the following ideas and techniques included in this article. 

If you’re someone who is new to owning a website or digital content, you may not fully understand how to optimise your website for SEO. This is understandable, which is why we’re going to provide you with our top SEO tips and techniques that you can use to improve the quality of your search engine optimisation for your website. 

What is SEO?

At its core, SEO is the practice of using specific keywords, phrases, and other variables hat are placed onto your website in an effort to increase the natural ranking of your website on major search engines such as Google. There are over 200 known variables that affect SEO and each search engines ranks websites slightly differently, depending on the specific type of search ranking metrics that are used on their platform.

That is why it’s important to take into consideration the known variables that can affect your websites organic ranking. In the next section, we’re going to provide you with a list of our top free SEO tips that you can use to improve your natural ranking in search engines. 

Top SEO Tips for 2020 

As stated earlier, there are several different ways that you can approach optimising your website to improve the amount of organic traffic that you receive. Before implementing any SEO strategy, you need to write down all of the relevant information that is important to your business or operations. This includes things such as the location in which you offer specific goods or services, what you do and what your services provide.

Shown below is our comprehensive list of free SEO tips that you can use to improve the quality and ranking of your website with ease. 

#1 Optimise Meta Descriptions & Page Titles

Once you have created a list of premium keywords, you need to optimise your page title in order to bring in organic traffic. This is done by using an HTML element which is hidden in the background of the page and it is usually editable in the website control panel, better known as the CMS or content management system. If you use a CMS website that is built using WordPress, then download and install the <a rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank" href="https://yoast.com/">Yoast SEO</a> plugin. This free plugin will guide you through how to add page titles, meta descriptions and can also be linked to your Google accounts. The keywords you use should contain important words and phrases that relate to your business and will likely...

In our latest Herd Marketing podcast and vlog, we headed up to Chester to meet with Bikmo and their head of partnerships, Rob Grisdale. For those who are not familiar with Bikmo, they are a bike insurance company who create bespoke insurance packages for cyclists and their bikes.

During our visit to their impressive offices in Chester, we had chance to talk in-depth with Rob about the company and learn more about what 2020 holds for them. As an international company with offices in Chester and also in Innsbruck, Austria, Bikmo are industry leaders within their sector. This year has been successful for them and this is represented by their growing affiliations with large business and organisations such as British Cycling and Deliveroo.

https://youtu.be/rPzU4Ubw8vU

Bikmo Bike Insurance - Podcast and Vlog with Herd Marketing

One highlight for me during our conversation was learning that Bikmo had become a B-Corp certified company. This award is a form of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and it was fascinating to learn more about this and understand more about their core values. We also spoke about how they are looking at reducing their overall waste and how they impact the environment around them. Rob then explains some measures that they have put in place to try to reduce this, such as encouraging staff to cycle to work and going paperless as much as possible.

In finishing up our episode with Rob, we spoke in detail about how they look to support local businesses and retailers within the bike industry. It was refreshing to see a company keen on working with and giving back to local communities by using local businesses within their insurance policies. In doing this it is easy to see why they are doing well - as they have empathised with both their customers and local businesses and have avoided where possible, to become too 'corporate'.

We hope you enjoy this episode of the Herd Marketing podcast - we understand that this is slightly different from our usual posts and is not entirely focused on digital marketing, however, we felt this story added value to both our audience and also to Bikmo's customer base.

In our latest vlog and podcast, we talk about video production and why it is so important to your business and organisation. From improvements in your organic ranking right through to sharing it on social media, video production is a multifunctional part of digital marketing that should have a firm place in your digital strategy.

Video production has its roots in content marketing and in turn, this connects well to improvements with your SEO. The main reason for this is that video allows you to transfer a lot of information in a shorter and more digestible way to your website visitors. This is turn has a positive effect as it has been shown to reduce bounce rates and improve UX (user experience). As a result of this, Google and other major search engines can see that you add value to your end-users and as such, may rank you higher.

https://youtu.be/98Sxz06bc9k

Why Video Production is Important in Digital Marketing

One of the great things about video is that it can be used and utilised in a number of different ways. For example, the video in this blog, shown above, will be uploaded onto YouTube and embedded here within this article and will also be used on our other social media channels, such as Facebook. The diversity of video means that you get a lot of value in that you can reuse it in a number of different ways. A popular way of generating more value at present from your videos is to extract and use the audio in podcasts. This can add real value to the end-user, in that you offer them a number of ways to listen to, watch and digest your content.

Depending on what your industry is and what products and services you provide, video doesn't always have to be an expensive option. I know of a large retailer who runs a Facebook live video every week and they use it to market new products that have come in and also as a way to clear old stock. These live videos get many thousands of views and once they have finished recording, the video can be downloaded from Facebook and used again in promotional emails or on YouTube. This particular company I am talking about, only use a smartphone and wifi connection, yet manage to talk to thousands of their customers in an engaging way for very little cost.

I hope you have found this short article of some use and if you have any thoughts, ideas or suggestions for future content, then please do leave a comment in the box below.