‘online marketing strategy’

Integrated Technical Services known, as ITS Africa, is a well-known industrial and commercial cleaning equipment supplier in South Africa with a large customer base. The company is also a distributor of the famous Kärcher products.

The ITS client base includes the likes of large mining companies and projects such as the Gautrain cleaning contract. The company operates in an extremely competitive environment also when it comes to carwash and carpet cleaning equipment. Competition on high level also means that competitors invest a lot in marketing, especially online marketing. This in turn leads to extreme keyword and ranking competition. Getting to the first five search result ranks for one of the main keywords is a rather impressive feat and more so to stay at the position or to improve the position.

ITS Africa, as an award-winning cleaning equipment supplier and service provider to large enterprises in South Africa, recognises the importance of a flexible, yet, well planned online marketing strategy. With that in mind the company under leadership has partnered with iLead Online to ensure that it can gain and keep a competitive edge in the online environment. The company recently received the South Africa Distributor of the Year Award from two major suppliers. It is an impressive accomplishment indeed. Part of their distributor success has to do with their marketing and customer relationship building strategies. Both strategies include a solid online presence and user-friendly websites packed with information on the various products and brands.

Online Marketing Strategy And Performance

ITS makes use of Pay Per Click Advertising in addition to affiliate marketing, link building, search engine optimisation and content generation services offered by iLead. Their service package thus consists of a complete marketing mix ensuring that they gain maximum online exposure and visitor traffic to their website. In addition to the above the following areas are also exploited in terms of online marketing:

• Interactive blog allowing for short posts about specific services offered by the company.
• Website banner ads at strategic places.
• Newsfeed on the main page allowing for constant news updates on the latest developments.
• Facebook advertising and business profile development.
• YouTube Channel for video marketing and building of links.
• Opt-in Mailing List for news & specials.
• Newsletter to build credibility and keep clients informed

Links Increase

The ITS Africa website had 135 incoming links in June 2010. Within only a few months iLead succeeded in building an additional 126 links bringing the total incoming links to 261 for February 2011. Ranking is directly influenced by the number of value added and relevant links and as such the incoming links have helped to improve search engine ranking.

Organic Search Results

The website is performing well on the organic search results for most of their main keywords, considering how competitive the market is in terms of their specific keywords. Co-owner of ITS Africa, Wayne Mulder, commented that although the website is not within the first three search results for some of the important keywords that it is on its way there and since search engine marketing is a long term and gradual process, it is worth the investment. Being on the first page is absolutely essential if one hopes to get a major chunk of the visitor traffic, and lying within the first five definitely helps. The goal is to get to position two or three in the near future.

Pay Per Click Advertising

While the website is still climbing the ranks in terms of some main keywords, it is doing exceptionally well on the PPC front with tremendous click through conversions. The combination of organic search with a PPC campaign strategy managed by iLead is delivering the desired visitor and conversion results. Out of 10411 clicks in February 2011 there were 1061 visits. When interviewed about his website success, Wayne answered that PPC is a more controllable tool which is definitely a must have for immediate results. Pay per click offers the benefit of a user already being in the market for the specific product or service and not only browsing for information. With this then, PPC is used to compliment the traffic drive to their website.

Leads

According to Wayne iLead has helped to ensure a constant flow of incoming leads. Not all result in sales, but are still important for brand building and customer mailing list development. Every relevant lead is important and with a definite increase in leads experienced, the company is 100% satisfied with the iLead strategies and professional lead building techniques.

Report Back & Future Trends

With the marketing mix strategy that iLead follows, the client can expect a solid return on investment into online marketing. Additional channels which are still to be exploited fully include that of viral marketing, YouTube, and social media brand development, all planned for the future.

Client Perspective Of iLead

The company provides excellent service and staff is available 24/7 to assist with any queries. One can trust in the professionalism of iLead. Even though iLead has other clients in the same industry, the company gives 100% to each client and upholds the integrity of the relationship. ITS Africa experiences the search engine marketing relationship as one based on trust. iLead is committed to client service and the building of long term relationships. It is this commitment that ensures complete dedication by the search engine specialists and staff. It is a reliable company that delivers on its promises to clients.

In Summary

ITS Africa is one of the leading commercial and industrial cleaning companies in South Africa. The company makes extensive use of online marketing to expand its markets and to ensure brand awareness. iLead works in close relationship with ITS to extend the reach of the company by ensuring well planned search engine optimisation, a flexible approach to Internet marketing, and transparency in its marketing approach. With this approach followed and a professional relationship with the client, iLead continues to develop strategies for optimal visibility, online branding, and the ultimate return on investment for ITS Africa. Contact us to develop an online marketing strategy that will suit your particular advertising needs.

Although social bookmarking sites are effective vehicles for getting a blog noticed, bloggers can also use guest blogging as part of a blog marketing strategy to drive online traffic to their blogs. Guest blogging is often used as a last online marketing tool when indeed it should form part of any blog SEO and online marketing strategy. In essence then one should not attempt blog marketing without also using some form of guest blogging to get a wider audience, establish the blog name in the blogosphere, and to drive insane amounts of relevant traffic to a blog.

Guest Blogging As Blog Marketing Technique

Guest blogging as a relatively new, and rather ethical blog marketing technique, involves two things:

• Blogging at another blogger’s site relevant to the content of your blog.
• Allowing other guest bloggers to contribute to your blog through guest posts.

Steps Involved In Guest Blogging

Whereas blog marketing in the more traditional sense includes image building in the online environment through bookmarks, guest blogging entails the writing of informative and useful content. It thus takes more work.

• First you need to find a blog related to your blog which allows for guest posts.
• The second step is to review the content of the blog and ensure that the contribution you make will be of value to the blogger.
• The third step involves contact with the blogger to request permission for the guest posting.
• The fourth step involves the submission of the post. Normally the blogger will allow you to put a link or two to your site on the specific topic and also to introduce yourself to the readers of the specific blog.

Why Accept Guest Blogs

When thinking of guest posts you may be concerned about the outgoing links, but since blog marketing is all about the online building of links, you will need to give something back in return for top quality content, and of course, also a link back.

How Effective Are Guest Blogs As Online Promotion Techniques?

Blog marketing is an ongoing process and, whilst you simply cannot ignore the value of submission to blog search engines such as Technorati, bookmarking of blogs, and general optimization, guest blogs provide valuable exposure to new readers, several incoming links, creditability as an expert on the relevant topic, good standing in the blogosphere as well as tons of new online traffic to your blog.

One of the key concerns which have caused major debates on the subject of Facebook is the matter of privacy. The fact of the matter is that this social media website has completely revolutionised the way we interact with people online. Without a second wasted people share their every thought, feeling, comments, photos, videos and shared links, and considering that 350million people are registered, Facebook is the undisputed king of social networking.

While many people revel at the mere thought of sharing all kinds of details about themselves, there has been the global concern about privacy and how sharing private information could affect us as individuals. The user did have the choice though as to how much information they are willing to share by merely going to the privacy setting and choosing what they want to share with whom. This changed dramatically though in December, 2009, when Facebook’s privacy settings changed in a fundamental way in that Facebook users couldn’t restrict access to their profile the way they used to.  Of course the reaction was one of outcry as this raged the debate of privacy, public information and Facebook even further.

The latest in the “Facebook privacy” saga came about on the 18^th of August, 2010, when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced their newest venture – Facebook Places – a Smartphone-based service. This foray into the world of location-based services’ main aim is to bring about 3 things:

• To help users share their exact location for social purposes;
• To help you as a user see who of your friends are nearby; and
• So that you may discover nearby places as well as new places by means of your Facebook friends’ profiles.

In light of the privacy debate focus was placed on Places’ security features wherein it was pointed out that the “check-ins” that users would select when pinpointing their location would be, by default, only visible to their friends. Of course the user will be able to customise the setting should they want to share this information with a broader group or restrict it to only a few selected friends. Moreover, people will only be able to tag those on their friends list in when checking in on Places. To ensure that mischievous behaviour is limited the service will only allow you to check in a friend if the user checks themselves in too, thereby avoiding users to check their friends in at embarrassing places. In case a user was tagged but prefer not to be, they will have the option to remove the tag or opt out from being tagged at all. There will also be a reporting feature on Places where users can report any locations listings that are either offensive, erroneous or outdated.

The day after the announcement Facebook launched the read API which allows people to read check-ins as well as providing them with information about a place. The write- and search API is currently in beta testing phase and said to be soon rolled out by the developers.

The question still remains though whether or not this is sharing too much of one’s private details. Facebook’s VP of Product Chris Cox shared his enthusiasm about the future and how this device will be able to tell us all kinds of facts about a place and which of our friends are there or have been there before, what pictures they shared when visiting the place and whether or not they had a good time. You need to ask yourself this though – do you really feel the need to share so much of yourself as individual? On the other hand, this could only mean great things for business owners and their online marketing strategy.

If you think that search engine optimization – or more commonly referred to as SEO – is all about keywords, then you might want to make yourself comfortable in front of the screen and continue reading this article. Although keywords have a very important role to play when optimizing a website, there are many other factors that have to be accounted for. This is especially true if you want to enjoy the monetary privileges websites holds in store for their owners.

If you are a business owner who are about to have a new website created from scratch, then you need to make sure that your website is ‘search engine friendly’. Suffice to say that the best way to go about creating a new website is by making use of the services of a company who has the proper know-how and experience in both website designing and SEO, such as iLead Online. If you have an existing website it can be used and optimized to your advantage. One factor that Google pays attention to though is the age of a website, which is why newer pages on an older website will definitely get faster recognition as a new website’s pages.

Now, say for instance that you are about to have your new website designed which will be optimized, the first thing you need to ask yourself is what it is that you want your website to achieve? Do you want readers to purchase your product, request your services, fill in an enquiry form, or simply contact your business directly? It’s only logical that you need to set up your goals at the very beginning so that you will know in which direction to steer your online marketing strategy. Once you have established your goals it will be necessary to evaluate your site, as well as your competition’s, to see what route should be taken to achieve the highest results.

Optimizing a website requires labour. So if you think about taking all kinds of short cuts you will learn that, although it may show some kind of success, the only way to achieve real results is by investing precious time. Moreover patience is a virtue when it comes to optimization as you may very well not see the fruits of your labour within weeks since you began. This is why you need to think of it this way – SEO is a long term investment. And seeing that more and more things are happening online, this is the place you want to be.

Apart from properly doing your research and planning for your website, the following factors will need to form part of your SEO campaign:

• Design – It is human nature that we use our senses in everything we do, which is why it is important that your website is visually appealing. Easy on the eye is always a good thing.
• Keywords – As mentioned before, keywords do play a significant role when it comes to search engine optimization. Be sure to find the keyword phrases that aren’t as sought after, but still attracts the right kind of readers to your site.
• Domain Name – Choosing the right domain name is vital as it can be used as part of your keyword strategy.
• Meta Tags – The Meta tags consists of the title-, description- and keyword tags. Properly optimized websites will always have Meta tags that are created (written) in a specific manner best suited for your website.
• Content Pages – This is where the services of specialised SEO Copywriters are needed. They will provide you with high quality, informative, optimized content pages. These pages can really make or break a website, as it will be bad for your business if the content is of no use to your reader, while good content can act as bait to achieve your goals.
• Navigation (Internal Links) – An efficient tree-like structure is a must.
• Link Building – Link to good sites with good rankings, and be sure to avoid link farms.
• Website Speed – Google recently decided to include ‘site speed’ into their search ranking algorithms.
• Freshness – It’s always good to keep on adding fresh content and changes to your website as Google likes fresh pages.

The abovementioned are merely a quick description of some of the things you need to do if you want your search engine optimization strategy to be successful. And as you can see this is not so much for dummies but will require a keen eye, passion, dedication, knowledge and experience – something we at iLead Online can proudly offer you. So without further ado be sure to begin your SEO process today by contacting us.