A website is one of the most important investments any small business can make for itself.  The website design and website development are just two of the ingredients that have to be thrown into the pot and these days it is not just any old website design and development, it is about eye-catching and aesthetically appealing graphic, video and animation detail with comprehensive content, built on sound foundations of robust and open source code that is readily available and adaptable by any number of developers with a common skill.

A word of warning: don’t get caught in the trap of bespoke development, and make sure that your system is a “readily available brand” – complex bespoke systems are rarely required except in instances where integration into existing admin functions is or maybe required.

For true “digital stew” success, you need to add to your cooking pot of excellent website design and code- using the seasoning and spices of internet marketing:-

• Individually Meta tagging each page with unique descriptions and keywords

• Website content addition and management

• Website links and directory listings

• Article submissions

• Tracking

Garnish is always essential in any dish and your website recipe should be no different – the need to “push” visitors to your site through various means (some of the above techniques will automatically pull customers to your site).  There are a number of methods that businesses can use as push marketing for their digital strategy and this can be confusing for the average business owner, with so many new channels giving much bigger audience reaches for less money than ever before, so much hype and buzz around ever changing and developing platforms- it is little wonder that some businesses only ever dip their toe in the water of digital marketing and then will little success.

Here are our top tips for digital marketing in a SME b2b environment.

Keep it real: - Whilst digital is cost effective, there are many more people out there ready to take your money on the back of big promises, who then don’t deliver.  Set a realistic budget and stick to it.

Campaign it – make sure you have a clear message and that this is being communicated across several digital mediums – like any good recipe – add ingredients and adjust flavouring - little and often.

Monitor, Analyze, Adjust it  -  Digital marketing offers the best opportunity ever to measure, analyse and adjust your messages to improve ROI – it is instant and can be very effective in increasing traffic.  The accountability of digital marketing is one of its many appeals but it is only relevant it you use the results.