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Increasing hits on your website by using text

Posted in Uncategorized by Tony on 14 Apr 2010

In the USA there were 15.4 billion core searches in March 2010.  That means that on 15,400,000,000 occasions in 31 days people decided to do a search on Google, Yahoo, Ask and the Microsoft search sites.

I don’t have the UK figures for the same period but they will be about 12% of that – still a fairly big number.

Increasingly people use long and complex phrases when searching, in order to find what they want.  They don’t type “cars” they type “Second hand Ford cars, north London” or whatever.

Which is why sites with lots of text on them tend to get picked up more often – quite simply because they are more likely to match whatever phrase people type in.

And yet, everyday I am asked to look at sites which the owners are very proud of, and which have beautiful design on them, but which are light on text.

I am sure the design will help people stay on the site once they are there (well, not always but sometimes – it all depends on whether the design follows the rules of the psychology of perception) but design never draws anyone onto the site.

If you would like me to suggest the sort of text that could help beef up the number of hits your site gets, send me the URL and I’ll let you know.  No obligation or cost.

Tony Attwood (Tony@hamilton-house.com)


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Why buy this, and why buy this from me?

Posted in Uncategorized by Tony on 13 Apr 2010

I believe that the single biggest question that must be answered within all marketing campaigns is “Why buy this, and why buy this from me?”

Sadly a lot of advertising doesn’t jump straight in and answer that question.

Where the answer can be given I really think it should, but I do admit, sometimes it is impossible to answer that question simply – because one is offering a product or service that is similar to that which the competition offer.

Answers to the question, why buy this from me, then tend to get into the region of
a) We’ve been at it for 20 years
b) We are a small family run business
c) Everyone knows we give a good service
and that sort of thing.

All interesting answers, but not really powerful, and generally they don’t work because you are now talking about you, rather than the client’s needs. With so many competitors around all aiming for the same customers, it is important that you distinguish your business. There are many advertising services available that can help you compliment your campaign such as these in this job archive.

So if you really can’t distinguish yourselves from everyone else, what happens next?

My answer is that you adopt a style of advertising that is utterly different from everyone else.  Indeed I think this is worthwhile even if you can differentiate yourselves in terms of product or service.
My approach has been to move over towards something slightly amusing – an approach which I have used with a range of clients, mostly with great effect.  (A few examples are on www.blog.toppled.info)
But there are many more companies who look at the jolly approach and simply say, “that’s not right for us,” and stay with the standard approach, even when it is not working very well.

I can’t do anything much about that, apart from saying that after half a lifetime working in advertising everything I know tells me that

a) you need to say why you should buy this product and why you should buy it from me
b) light hearted amusing approaches tend to work better than serious and dull approaches in most cases.

Tony Attwood

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Marketing is never about one particular issue, such as emailing, postal mailing, blogs, re-activating past clients etc.

Posted in Uncategorized by Tony on 7 Apr 2010

All of these are incredibly important, of course, but none of them can represent the total marketing activity on its own.

And indeed things can be even more complex than the list of possible activities suggests.  When focussing on email, for example, we might think about the best way to send out the emails, how to ensure that everyone who has asked to come off a list, is off a list, and so on.

In short we might focus on the technology.

But in doing all that, we can then forget all about the creative side of things.  Yes, our emails get to the right place without being knocked out by the blocking systems that litter the internet, but if they don’t have a really powerful and strong message within the email, the whole thing can fall apart.

It is through this realisation that Hamilton House has developed, with a number of our regular customers, a programme that has the ability to incorporate all the major aspects of marketing, and bring them together.

Our clients who are on this programme pay a monthly fee, and we undertake work with them across a wide range of options.  We might write some copy for a postal campaign, help get their web site up the rankings, suggest changes to a web site landing page, set up a system so that all of their past customers are emailed every fortnight with new offers….

In fact the list goes on and on.

The full details are on http://www.velocity.ac/business.html

I do hope you find it useful.  If you would like to know more, please do call 01536 399 000, and ask for a member of the Velocity team.

And here’s a final thought – even if you don’t want to pay us our fee to undertake some of this work, the list of activities on that page will probably be a very helpful check list for you, when looking at all the things you might be doing to give your direct marketing an extra boost.

Tony Attwood

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