Frequently Asked Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
General Digital Marketing Questions
A digital marketing consultant is a skilled professional who provides expert guidance to businesses, devising tailored online marketing strategies encompassing SEO, PPC, social media, email marketing, and more. They optimise campaigns, analyse data, and adapt to industry trends, empowering businesses to succeed in the digital landscape.
I provide bespoke marketing solutions that are tailored to your business and industry. Here are the usual marketing disciplines I can apply to your marketing strategy:
This can vary depending on the consultant’s experience, current workload and their outgoings. I’m a freelancer with very little overheads because I mostly work from home, otherwise I like to get out of the house and sit in a cafe for a few hours.
My rates are charged at how long a project will take me to complete. Sometimes these come as fixed fees, i.e., for website designs. Otherwise as monthly payment, i.e., for social media management.
I’ll always explain the full details of costs with my client prior to commencing with the work.
I am committed to delivering desired results and the best possible services to all of my clients.
You can expect to receive:
- My experience and knowledge in a range of industries
- Monthly meetings to discuss the progress of your instructions
- Advice and assistant to support your scalability
- An impressive return on your investment
If you’re looking to scale your business, implementing a holistic digital marketing strategy can support your growth.
This requires you to think about the bigger picture and consider the granular details. What works well and where can you reallocate your budget to increase your return? What channels can be integrated to generate more leads? Or what new channels can be explored to generate more leads?
I recommend starting by setting a growth goal. This will give you something to work towards and will support you in outlining your objectives.
I recommend reviewing your business processes to ensure you have the resources to react to an increase in leads or sales.
In business, I’d always ensure that there’s clear policies and procedures in place for sales processing. This way, you can expect to engage with every opportunity without any falling through the net.
There’s a range of marketing activities that can lead to more traffic landing on your website. All the services I provide can be designed to achieve this.
The most effective way to achieve this is through SEO. Nearly 93% of global website traffic comes from Google Search. SEO can be competitive depending on the products or services you provide, but quality content will give you every chance of success in appearing in first page search results.
Are you ready to grow your business?
Marketing Strategy Questions
A marketing strategy is a plan designed to increase your business performance. Usually, marketing strategies are aimed at increasing sales or brand awareness. They include an outline of your current situation in the market, a list of objectives to reach your goals, how you plan to reach your goals i.e., marketing solutions, and how you will measure your marketing strategies success.
How quick you see results from a marketing strategy depends on the marketing solutions applied. For example, if a chosen marketing solution is a paid search campaign, then usually you will see results within 2-4 weeks. However, if it’s a SEO campaign you have running, or you want to increase brand awareness through a content marketing campaign, then results will take some time longer. That’s not to say that the latter solutions are less effective, because much of marketing is about establishing brand equity and consumer trust, which is pivotal for long-term growth.
We’ll outline measurables in your marketing strategy document, but how a marketing strategy is measured depends on your goals. Of course, any marketing solution applied in the strategy will have the appropriate KPI’s, but if your goals are for example to increase sales from £100K to £150K, then reporting will inform you on how much of your marketing strategy contributed to your sales.
My rates are charged at how long a project will take me to complete. Sometimes these come as fixed fees, i.e., for website designs. Otherwise as monthly payment, i.e., for social media management.
I’ll always explain the full details of costs with my client prior to commencing with the work.
What will your marketing strategy look like?
Search Engine Optimisation Questions
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is what Digital Marketers do to get your website appearing in Google searches. It involves optimising your web content, meta titles and description to key words related to your products and services. Google search ranking is measured by Google algorithms that determines which website contains the most relevant information to the search term.
It can also be measured on how fast your website loads (Core Web Vitals), and your websites authority (inbound and outbound links).
By optimising your page content, will give your website every chance of success in standing out to search engine algorithms, ranking you higher in searches queries, which ultimately leads to more website traffic and customer trust.
An SEO audit is the analysis of the factors that impact a website’s visibility to search engines. These typically provide insights around:
- Core Web Vitals
- Indexing and crawlability
- Website structure
- Competitor benchmarking
- Keywords
- On-page SEO
- Website authority
My SEO service is based on the number of days a month I need to secure you the best results, which vary depending on what you’re looking to achieve and how competitive the search terms are. I don’t do fixed fees because all my SEO campaigns are bespoke based upon your business. I will, however, provide an estimated timeframe to get the results you need, which will form a part of the overall costs. Rest assured, I will always aim to deliver results as quickly as possible.
My rates are charged at how long a project will take me to complete. Sometimes these come as fixed fees, i.e., for website designs. Otherwise as monthly payment, i.e., for social media management.
I’ll always explain the full details of costs with my client prior to commencing with the work.
Before I commence with your SEO project, the first objective is to set some goals. I’ll ask questions like ‘what is the monetary value of a newly qualified lead?’ amongst others to form goals we can aim towards.
I like to measure SEO campaigns in two areas, input, and output.
Measuring input informs us on the current situation and progress made on satisfying SEO metrics, such as keyword rankings, website authority, on-page SEO, core web vitals etc.
Measuring output informs us on how the SEO campaign performed, by analysing user behaviour and conversions. For example, website traffic, engagement, scroll depth, and of course, sales and leads.
I provide my all my SEO clients with a monthly report that covers the input and output of their SEO campaign.
Digital Marketers use a variety of tools that provides them with insights around popular search terms related to your products and services. The most common tools are Google Search Console, using the keyword planner in Google Ads, and other tools like SEMrush and WordStream. I will always ask my clients what search terms they specifically want to rank for.
Backlinks are simply links from one website to another. Using links in any website content contributes to better SEO performance but these sources need to be relevant. Where links direct users to your website, will contribute to your website authority. The more authority the awarding website has, the more search engines will score the receiving participant.
The idea is to prove to search engines that you’re a trusted source, which ultimately supports your ranking in search results. This method is also the backbone of marketing outreach, where online influencers and publications are talking about your products and services. Their content will link to your content, and hence you have quality backlinks to your website.
When we talk about website structure, we refer mostly to your sitemap and website usability. Your sitemap is how your website is structured, i.e, Home Page, which links to your blogs, service/product pages, and so on.
It’s important that your sitemap is easy to navigate around, for both your visitors and search engine crawlers. This forms a part of your SEO performance. Websites with easy navigation for bot crawlers will ultimately score better in SEO rankings.
Top Tip: Ensure you have links to other relevant pages of your website using descriptive anchor text.
Are you ready to start ranking in Google?
Content Marketing Questions
A content marketing strategy is a comprehensive plan that outlines how a business will create, distribute, and promote valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and engage its target audience. The primary goal of a content marketing strategy is to build and maintain a loyal customer base, enhance brand awareness, and ultimately drive profitable customer action.
Content marketing can bring many benefits to a business that includes brand awareness, organic website traffic, audience engagement, and demonstrates a business’ expertise in its respective industry.
Ultimately, content marketing fosters trust between a brand and its audience. By delivering valuable information without the pushy sales tone, businesses can build connections with their audience that leads to informed purchase decisions.
I mostly use Google Analytics to measure the success of any content marketing campaign. With this, I’ll look to find out how many visitors landed on your content, how many of these engaged with your content and how many bounced. For RIO, content marketing is measured on sales, new leads, and email subscriptions.
Additionally, we’ll want how your content ranks on Google search. So, I’ll use platforms such as Google Search Console to find out where your content ranks in related search terms.
Are you ready to connect with people who'll love your business?
Google Ads Questions
Google Ads is an advertising network created by Google. It is used for advertising websites, products, and services to potential customers.
The most common advertising in Google Ads is Search Campaigns where you will find sponsored web pages appearing in Google search.
Within the first month of your Google Ads campaign going live, you should see more website traffic and increased leads and sales.
But bear in mind that the majority of the first month of me working on your campaign is spending designing your strategy and how best build your ad campaign.
How much you should spend on Google Ads will always be determined by how competitive other businesses are with the same ads, and of course, how much you’re willing to spend. Google Ads will suggest their recommended ad spend but I always recommend starting low to medium while your ad picks up on algorithms. Within a week or two, the platform will provide you with recommendations to optimise your campaign.
Google Ads are not only ranked by your budget, but also by ensuring your ad campaign is relevant to related search queries, such as using a variety of headings, descriptions, and keywords.
Unlike some agencies who charge a percentage of your ad spend, I choose to charge a fixed monthly fee of £200.00 with a one off £100.00 setup fee.
Conversion tracking in Google Ads is a tool used to set up triggers within your Google Ads account and your website to measure events such clicks, form entries and purchases.
Are you ready to get more sales or leads?
Web Design Questions
I highly recommend having a website, whatever business you do. More people are committing to research information about the company they’re interested in buying from.
A website will give your business an online presence and credibility. They are also the church of your digital marketing strategy and is a crucial touch point in the customer journey. There are endless marketing activities where your website will play a key role in attracting business.
This can vary depending on how many pages you want your website to have and whether you want an e-commerce website or not. You’ll also need to consider third-party costs such the content management system and domain.
I’ll always be transparent with the costs of building your new website from the outset and outline the fees with a detailed description within your Creative Brief and Terms of Engagement.
As we complete your creative brief, I’ll have gathered enough information around your requirements to provide you with an estimated delivery.
But again, this mostly depends on how many pages your website will have. Small websites that consist of 6-8 pages typically take between 1 and 2 weeks, and larger and e-commerce websites typically take between 5 and 6 weeks.
Another factor is the approval process which relies on how quickly we can get elements of your website signed-off.
Each business is different which means every website will be different. However, your website should include the basics, such as your Home page, About Us, Contact page, Blogs and pages describing your products and services.
You should aim to have pages that are unique and relevant to what your audience is looking for. This will support your Search Engine Optimisation performance.
Yes, of course! Even after I have finished building your new website, I can make sure that it remains healthy and regularly updated.
If you need any minor content edits to your website, these are included in the monthly maintenance fee.
Absolutely! I’ll develop a responsive website for a seamless visitor experience.
During the building process, I will test and tweak each page to make sure that your website is responsive to all devices, like tablets and mobiles.
Are you ready to showcase your business on a winning website?
Email Marketing Questions
Email marketing is a direct or outbound marketing method used to send commercially focused messages to a group of people, using email. Email marketing is designed to keep your marketing list aware and informed about your latest updates, products, or services. It can play a pivotal role in your digital marketing strategy with generating leads, brand awareness, and keeping potential customers engaged.
This all depends on what we outline in your email marketing strategy and where I can assist you. Mostly, this will depend on how many email campaigns I deliver, whether you need me to draft content for your website where emails lead to, and whether you want to implement automation journeys.
I’ll always be transparent with costs for my services and will provide you with options that suit your budget.
Upon our initial consultation, I’ll ask you questions about your business and the systems you have already in place. If you currently use a customer relationship management (CRM) software, I’ll look for an email marketing tool that uses API technology to communicate with your CRM. This will provide us both with important information around your database and individuals consumer behaviour.
Additionally, you may want to tap into email automation. However, not all email marketing tools provide this and ones that do may not be compatible with your CRM. This means there’s a lot of weighing up the pros and cons. Rest assured, I’ll guide you through your options and recommend the best kit for your email marketing strategy.
Email Campaign Automation is a feature used in some email marketing tools, like MailChimp and Force24.
It allows email marketers to automatically release email comms to a segmented list when an event is triggered, such as a potential customer placing an item in their online shopping basket.
It also involves setting up journeys, so that recipients receive tailored emails depending on where they sit on the flow chart. These are particularly useful for email marketers looking to increase their open rate, since emails can be resent to recipients who haven’t opened the first version.
Click-through-rate is simply the number of times a link has been clicked on a single email campaign. CTR is also a metric to measure engagement. For example, a Newsletter containing links to articles can measure which article was most popular in the newsletter.
A/B testing in email marketing is where email marketers send separate emails with the same content to two separate lists. What’s different about them are usually the subject line, the layout, call to actions etc. Email marketers perform A/B testing to work out which email performs better.
Data segmentation is where email marketers cleanse a business’s email marketing list by adding information to each contact. For example, a potential client of a law firm made an enquiry about a business law matter, therefore the firm can ideally send tailored email comms to that individual around business law. It’s all about making your email marketing relevant.
There are a number of methods to increase your email marketing list as long as they’re GDPR compliant.
I recommend staying away from buying data from a dodgy source. In fact, I recommend staying away from buying data all together. You won’t get any real results from it.
The best chance of increasing your email marketing list is through, again, quality content and building trust. Your content strategy should aim towards generating leads, which triggers your audience to essentially want to hear from you. Invite them to sign-up to your newsletters on every blog you write. Ask anyone who makes an enquiry on your website whether they’d like to sign-up to your newsletter. Think about incentives to signing-up, i.e., “10% off of your next order when you sign-up to our newsletter”
Are you ready to get repeat business?
Social Media Management Questions
Social Media Management is the task of creating, growing, and monitoring the social media platforms of a business. It involves planning and strategy, creating and posting content, and reporting on key metrics that drive successful social media management.
I tailor my social media management packages to suit my client’s budget and objectives. Take a look at my packages here.
While social media presence is an important aspect of building trust and engagement with your audience, some platforms will work better than others depending on your business. For example, if you provide products and services to other businesses (B2B), then you will likely perform better on LinkedIn. It’s all about knowing your audience and where they spend their digital time.
Being true to your brand, what you’re passionate about, and delivering meaningful and engaging content will increase your chances to gain followers. That’s the organic approach.
Alternatively, or even concurrently, you can launch a paid advertising campaign to reach more social users and invite them to like your pages.
Don’t forget to place your social platforms on your website, newsletter, email signatures, and brochures, business cards etc.
This depends on what aspect you want to measure and what objectives you outline from the outset.
To measure your audience, I’ll look to see how many followers you have now, compared to let’s say last month. But if its post reach and engagement you want to know, then I will report on the impressions.