Digital Marketing – Calico Marketing

3 Security Options Lenders May Ask For When Arranging A Business Loan

September 5, 2024 by Calico UK

Whilst commercial lawyers may not provide detailed financial advice along the lines that accountants or tax lawyers might do, however Rowe Bristol Lawyers are an important source of advice when it comes to certain financial transactions a business might enter into, especially concerning the legal implications of them.

One such financial transaction is when a business seeks and receives a loan or other form of credit, where the lender requires security on the loan. This is akin to a mortgage company securing the mortgage they lend a homeowner to purchase their home against that property. In this article, we will explore secure business loans and specifically outline the three main types of security that banks and other lenders will normally accept.

Why Businesses Need To Raise Capital

There are several reasons why a business may need to raise capital in the form of a loan, credit, or even a mortgage. In addition, borrowing in whatever form it takes is far more common within the commercial world than many people realise. The view is that, given many companies are worth millions of dollars they would not need to borrow money, but that is a mistaken assumption.

Even for a corporate giant, much of its worth might be in stock, land, commercial properties, machinery, and intellectual property to name but a few, and it is often the case that its liquid assets, aka cash, are low by comparison. This can also apply to small businesses on a much lesser scale, but the principle is still the same. If a business, large or small, wishes to raise cash, then the main option they have is to borrow it. That cash could be required for the following reasons:

Avoid These 3 SEO Tactics That Will Flag You As A Spammer To Google

April 16, 2024November 12, 2023 by Calico UK

In the race to get to the top of Google’s rankings, many techniques and tactics can be utilised. The vast majority of them are legitimate and whether it is you who implement them or an SEO agency like SPE, none of them should cast you in a bad light in the eyes of Google. In fact, they are more likely to give your rankings a boost.

Unfortunately, not everyone plays by Google’s rules, and instead of following an SEO campaign that is whiter than white, they instead use blackhat tactics that seek to create a shortcut to high rankings. Frustratingly, some of these underhand SEO techniques work, but only temporarily, and as Google’s algorithms are so advanced, SEO spammers being caught is almost a certainty.

When Google does catch spammers it has several ways of punishing them, ranging from a drop in their ranking to delisting a website from their search results completely. if you are wondering how severe that is, it is the equivalent of a retail store being removed from the mall, or a commercial lawyer’s office being locked permanently, and the key being thrown away.

We must point out that there are occasions when a business will use SEO spamming inadvertently because they were either misinformed or simply were not aware that what they doing was wrong. Unfortunately, as with criminal law, Google’s law means ignorance is no defence, so to enlighten you somewhat, here are three SEO spamming tactics which you must avoid at all costs.

7 Tips For Law Firms To Secure The Best Results From PPC Advertising

October 9, 2024March 13, 2023 by Calico UK

For any law firm seeking a digital marketing strategy that is one of the most targeted and quickest ways to generate traffic to their website, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising has to be one of the prime options. PPC can assist in increasing the brand awareness of your law firm in your local catchment area, it can target leads so that they are more qualified when they first make contact, and most significantly, it can produce leads that convert better.

We are sure every lawyer reading that would agree those are very attractive benefits of running a PPC campaign. However, the fly in the ointment is that PPC ads have to be planned and created properly. Unfortunately, many PPC campaigns fail because the requisite planning has not been done. Thereafter, the optimisation required to make the ads perform even better is missing too.

For any law firms who wish to ensure that their PPC ads work as well as they hope and thus create a satisfactory return on ad spend investment, there are some relatively simple tips and tactics you can employ to achieve those. Below we have outlined seven of those tips which are proven to improve the results of PPC campaigns for law firms.

Find The Best Keywords: For any PPC ad to be successful, you must find the right keywords. These must be relevant to the legal services you offer and include associated terms and phrases. Use synonyms and longtail keywords to add to the potential numbers of keywords and keyword phrases you can target.

Include Applicable Negative Keywords: This tells Google what keywords you do not want your ad to appear for. For example, the search term “law firm in Perth WA”, you would want, but “commercial law firm in Perth WA”, you would make a negative keyword if you were a divorce or wills lawyer.

Why Great Content Is Essential For Marketing Family Lawyer Businesses

October 9, 2024December 7, 2022 by Calico UK

Family lawyers have numerous ways to market themselves and their family law practice online. These include social media, PPC advertising, and SEO, to name but three. However, there is one kind of marketing that might not grab the headlines in the same way these do, but which many expert digital marketers believe is not only highly effective but essential.

The marketing we are referring to is content marketing, and it first begs the question, “What is content?”. Arguably, anything you publish online could be considered content which would include everything from a 100-page eBook to a 10-word post on Facebook.

However, when it comes to genuine content marketing, there are specific forms of content that are used, and they are used for different purposes. That being said, your first task is not deciding what content you should use but answering an even more crucial question.

5 Fundamental Reasons Why You Should Be Using Digital Marketing

October 15, 2024September 26, 2021 by Calico UK

There will be many small business owners reading this who might not see the merits of setting up and implementing a digital marketing campaign. It might be the word ‘campaign’ that makes it sound like a huge investment of time and money, but in truth a digital campaign can be simple and inexpensive., especially if you want to test it first, to analyse its success.

If even that small, tentative step seems a step too far for a small business owner, then the stark truth is they are harming the potential for their business to succeed and grow. There are lots of reasons why you should be marketing online, but to provide some focus we are going to highlight just 5 of them, albeit 5 very important and fundamental reasons to begin a digital marketing campaign.

Your Prospects Are Online

Let us start with the most fundamental reason that you should be marketing your small business online, and it is the simple fact that online is where your prospects are. People’s use of the internet has increased enormously in recent years and has further skyrocketed during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Going online is also where many people will do their research and look for the products and services they need. If your business does not have a presence of any significance online, as it would if it had embraced digital marketing, then, sadly, no potential prospects are likely to find it.

6 Ways To Positively Boost Your Brand Using Digital Marketing

April 1, 2023September 9, 2021 by Calico UK

In every competitive marketplace, there are several strategies you can use to gain an advantage over your competition, and one of the most effective is to make your brand the one which consumers see as the market leader, or at the very least, a brand which is trustworthy and reputable.

Knowing that a strong brand is necessary to hold sway over your competitors is one thing, but sadly too many business owners do not know how to achieve this successfully. In truth, there are several ways you can positively boost your brand, and arguably the most effective is to utilise digital marketing.

Digital marketing covers a vast array of strategies and channels, and whilst this might seem somewhat overwhelming to some, if you break down your objectives into smaller, manageable goals, then you are well on your way to success. As such, here are 6 relatively simple ways you boost your company’s brand and importantly, protect it once established, using digital marketing.

Foster Good Relations With The Social Media Influencers In Your Niche

Social media is one of the most underused and misused marketing channels online which means many businesses are missing out on a huge opportunity to use it to boost their brand. One of the most effective ways of doing so is to seek out and build a relationship with the influencers in your niche. Just one post from them to their thousands of followers can cement your brand in the minds of those followers, many of whom will fall within your target audience.

7 Little-Known PPC Advertising Tips To Increase Revenue

April 3, 2023July 23, 2021 by Calico UK

Any business which includes PPC advertising as part of its digital marketing strategy will want to ensure that the revenue generated is maximised. Whilst it can contribute to this aim by having an effective sales funnel and highly desirable products, there is a further way. That is to optimise its PPC campaign to the maximum, and it can do so by implementing some little-known PPC advertising tactics.

We say ‘little-known’ because even some marketing agencies are not fully aware of them all, and that means that the vast majority of business owners who are trying to use PPC advertising without expert guidance, will definitely not know of them. What this means for you is that if follow these 7 tips to maximise the returns from your PPC campaigns, then your ROI will be far superior to that being seen by your competition.

Quality Score Optimisation

Whilst most people who wish to market their business will be aware that Google ranks websites organically based on the quality of factors such as content and user experience, they may not be aware that Google also applies a quality score to PPC adverts. If you create high-quality ads that convert and which avoid spammy ad copy, Google can reward you with lower costs per click and higher ad positions.

Use More Than One PPC Platform

Google is the biggest PPC platform, but it is not the only one. Facebook, Microsoft (Bing), Twitter, Instagram and many other platforms also offer PPC advertising. This can benefit you in several ways such as lower costs per click, being able to compete for high volume keywords, and to A/B test ads for little cost. Many advertisers with big budgets ignore the smaller ad platforms leaving them open for smaller companies and budgets.

5 Digital Marketing Trends Which Cannot Be Ignored

April 3, 2023June 13, 2021 by Calico UK

If you were to ask any digital marketing agency what their biggest frustrations were, somewhere near the top there might be something relating to the digital marketing landscape constantly changing. In other words, trying to keep up with the latest trends, updates, software, tools, and tactics, not to mention Google making continual changes to its ranking factors, means you can never rest easy when you are a digital marketer.

Many will argue that they see this as a positive rather than a negative, and we tend to agree. The reason is that it keeps digital marketing vibrant, fresh, and interesting plus it means lazy marketers who are looking for short term fixes, will thankfully fall by the wayside. This leaves professional and dedicated digital marketers to help their clients who appreciate that marketing online is often a long term project and that there are very few shortcuts.

As for digital marketing constantly evolving this means that to have success you must keep up to date with what is happening and what trends are taking hold. That is why we thought it would be worthwhile to highlight 5 of the current trends within digital marketing so that you are not only aware of them, but if you take advantage of them you will have a head start on your competition.

Get Back To Basics

It might seem strange in an article about the latest trends that we start with a heading that says back to basics. However, just as trends in fashion and furniture can go retro occasionally, within digital marketing it seems like many of the simple principles that have stood the test of time are front and centre once again.

Is PPC Advertising A Shortcut To Traffic Versus SEO?

April 3, 2023April 1, 2021 by Calico UK

The simple answer to the above question is that it can be, but there are plenty of caveats that must be considered. First, we will be upfront and tell you that PPC advertising, especially on Google or Facebook, can be highly effective in certain circumstances, and if you feel that your business would benefit from it, then please get in touch with us at Slinky and one of our paid advertising specialists will be happy to advise you.

One of the things they might need to clear up with you is exactly how paid advertising online works, as many business owners are not entirely sure. Firstly, PPC advertising does require a significant amount of research and preparation. This involves determining which audience you are going to target, which keywords you wish to bid for, creating the ads themselves, and then assessing your budget and how much you wish to bid for each click.

The wrong thing to do is simply rush in without any preparation and expect to see floods of paid traffic, as it simply will not happen, and instead, you will have wasted your ad budget. So, whilst paid advertising might be somewhat quicker, it is not something that can be rushed.

5 Best Mobile Marketing Software And Apps

April 3, 2023January 14, 2021 by Calico UK

As technology has moved forward over the past 150 years, marketing has had to move forward too. From it first being purely being seen in print form, it then was heard on the radio, seen in cinemas, then on TV, and with the introduction of the internet, marketing moved online. But that is not the end of the story, because, with the huge expansion in the use of mobile phones in recent years, marketing for mobile is now a massive opportunity for businesses.

By mobile, we are not just talking about mobile phones, albeit they are by far the most used mobile device, but other mobile devices too such as tablets, smartwatches, and even handheld gaming consoles. As we now take making a mobile phone call for granted it almost seems like it is the secondary reason for using a mobile device, with the ability to connect to the internet now being the primary reason.

With this point in mind, and given that almost every prospect is likely to have at least one mobile device which they use to connect to the internet, any business that cannot see the value of marketing to mobile devices is missing out on a huge opportunity. Further, if they ignore mobile marketing, and their competition embraces it, they are at an even greater disadvantage when it comes to finding and acquiring new customers.

For the doubters or those who want to start mobile marketing but think it might be difficult, the good news is that there are plenty of tools, software and apps that make mobile marketing possible. Most are relatively easy to use, and once set up and generating leads and prospects you will wish you had started sooner. As for those aids to mobile marketing, here are 5 of the top solutions.

Textedly

SMS messaging is a highly effective means of marketing and communication, and with Textedly, you have the means to implement and monitor SMS marketing campaigns. It allows you to schedule mass text message sending to your target audience and it also provides for inbound messaging too. This means you can react immediately if someone responds directly to one of your marketing text messages.

Traffic Boosting Social Marketing Tools For Webmasters

April 3, 2023February 21, 2020 by Calico UK

How to Dos To Increase Your Visibility
The following simple steps will help you get an overall view of what to plan and implement in view of social media group traffic. Focus on the larger networks and do not neglect to work on the submission of links to less popular social sharing websites as well. News sharing is also fundamental, as this will provide you with useful backlinks boosting your visibility and traffic.

Social Networking Strategies for Traffic
Large social websites can be a big waste of time if you do not use some useful and strategic tools to automate tasks, or you will find you are spending time on small issues and not concentrating on the more important ones. Take a look at some great ways to render your account self-sufficient and keep up with conversations easily.

Dlvr.it
Dlvr.it will help you promote your content and news with ease on all major social networks such as Facebook and Twitter to name a few. What it does is that it automates your posts on the major networks once you have published them on your website. Not only is this simple app a great tool for saving time, it also boasts many other features, including analysis and hash tag add-ons, to name a few.

Triberr
Triberr is a great community-centered invite only platform; whose basic concept is to create groups with the same interest. You simply add your RSS feed so that others with similar interests can follow your updates and be able to tweet these if they like them. It is basically similar to a service exchanging links; however, you do need to share the same interests to be able to promote yourself in the community.