SpeedieConsulting

Please enjoy our first ever Web Video for a client. Speed-e-Loans….

One of the things all companies should have is a batch of content (articles, blog posts and the like) that is sat on your hard drive ready to react to anything. This content reminds me of a Sunday cookup, where you make up a whole batch of food and stick it in the freezer only to get it out when you need it.

Now it is a great idea to have a content cookup too. Take out some time (not necessarily Sunday) and write some articles, blog posts, paragraphs, anything you can think of. You can then “freeze” these in a directory on your hard drive. In this way, when opportunity arises or you need some content, you have some you can use straight away. Or you can grab some snippets and turn them into something you can use.

To give you some ideas, the kinds of things you should be looking to create in your cookup are:

• Web Content – around 500 word mark.
• Blog Content – Anything from 100 to 1,000 words. (Although longer posts should be broken down into multiple posts).
• Guest posts – Again anywhere up to 500 words.
• Article syndication – Over 300 words is good.
• Facebook or LinkedIn updates – These could be random thoughts or small tips.
• Guest Newsletter articles – again around 500 words is a good length

Now you can use the same article for more than one of these areas, but you will get a bigger and better response if you can make each piece that leaves your desk a little bit unique. Write a paragraph or add in some different points or change the focus of the content.

In this way not only do you add value to your own efforts, you will be adding value all round.

One way, I find the time for content writing is during long train journeys. I can get a few articles or blogs written and a few outlines for other bits and pieces. Now I just need to get a netbook to key them straight in rather than use the old pen and paper method which then takes me longer to get published.

Just a quickie to remind you we have a range of freebies that could be useful for you and your business in 2010

Free 52 Week Internet Marketing Course aimed at Insurance and Finance Brokers

http:/www.insurance-marketing.co.uk

Just visit the site above to sign up

10 Free Wordpress Finance and Insurance Calculator tools.

http://www.speedieconsulting.co.uk/wp-calculators/

Visit the link above to find out more about the various tools and sign up to receive them directly via email.

We have finally opened the doors on our new Wordpress theme site for Insurance and Finance brokers. Aimed at DIY Insurance or Finance brokers who see the power of Wordpress to build their own websites, our themes are perfect to give then a slightly out of the ordinary template.

Our templates come with all the help needed to get a site up and running very quickly and then once live, our complimentary marketing guide will help you attract visitors and potential clients to your new website.

We currently have 3 designs available, with more on their way. They come in two flavours a single licence for use on a single website and developer license which means you can use them over and over.

We also give you a static html version so you can use the same design to develop HTML emails or if you are going to use PPC marketing, these can be used to develop landing pages for your campaigns.

To find out more or to snap up one of these themes please visit:

www.brokerthemes.com

The site is also packed with useful articles and tips to help you get the best out of Wordpress.

Just reading a very interesting post over at Social Media Explorer about US online advertising spends for the next 5 years based on research carried out by Forrester research which you can find here: http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/Excerpt/0,7211,55668,00.html.

The main bit of interest to me is the current spend in the Financial Services Sector, which showed the following:

Search Marketing $11.00

Display Advertising $10.00

Email Marketing $3.20

Social Media $0.20

Mobile Marketing $0.75

Total IM Budget $25.15

Percentage of Total Marketing Spend 3%

Forrester Estimates (in Millions)

Two things jump out of this at me.  Firstly, The huge gap in spend for email marketing.  Most lead generators will drive a huge amount of traffic and leads from sending out emails, so I think someone is missing a trick there.  There is still huge amounts to be made from email marketing to drive leads.

The second thing was that for all the hype about social media, finance companies in the US anyway don’t seem to be investing in it to the same degree as search marketing which seems to be the core foundation of online marketing, yet social media reach must be huge.  It will go to show that the innovative early adopters will reap the rewards.

Are you looking at what you will do next year and where your advertising pennies will go.  Maybe this will give you pause for thought about the kinds of things you should be looking at.

We get a lot of requests for building mini sites.  These can be used as link building tools, SEO tools or generally to add more virtual real estate to a business.  We recently created a powerpoint presentation.

Here it is here on Slideshare.  You will also find more articles on this site under related articles below explaining all the benefits of mini sites.

We have recently launched a new service for companies wishing to use Banners are part of their marketing mix.  From Affiliate Programmes, to Adwords, to plain old CPM buying, the banner is alive and well in some circles.

Some of our clients are seeing great success with their banners, that we felt time to get in on the act and have some designed for our own business. So keep your eye out for some Speedie Consulting Banners.

With our new strap line line of “Outsource your Internet Marketing”, now is a great time to get in touch to see how we can help you in 2010.

One of our marketing strategies is that we like to give away stuff.  if you haven’t already heard, we offer a free 52 week email course all about Insurance Marketing online.  To find out more and to sign up, why not visit www.insurance-marketing.co.uk

You will receive your first instalment right away.

And on the subject of email courses,  we can write build and deliver email courses for your business.  Email courses delivered over a period of a few days are a great way to build interest in your business and also to educate your potential customers.

It is also a good tool to get your marketing messages to them automatically and consistently as after they sign up, a system takes over and delivers your messages as you set them up.

To find out how email courses can enhance your business and automate part of your marketing please get in touch.

An interesting article over at Insiders View today about Google launching a new comparison service for mortgages. While currently only in the US it appears it will only be a matter of time.  Now that was interesting enough, they also gave us another little snippet which I found more interesting and that was that:

According to Hitwise

Search terms with the word ‘cheap’ have decreased by 32% over the past year whilst searches with the word ‘compare’ have increased by 92%. Of course this doesn’t show that consumers are not looking for cheap deals anymore, what it shows is that they are confident that they are able to find cheap deals whilst comparing providers on a comparison site.

So at a time when lots of companies are gearing up for 2010, now could be good time to start reviewing those keyword lists and SEO tasks.  Are you focussing too much on cheap? And if so you could be wasting your time focussing on diminishing returns.

The fact that the global economy has reached a somewhat stagnant state of late shouldn’t mean that businesses’ growth initiatives should stutter to a standstill too.

The need to proactively seek out new opportunities is as important as ever – if not more so – as companies must react to the economic conditions and find fresh ways of targeting new customers.

One way of doing this is through extending your scope beyond the English-speaking markets and targeting the 75% of the world that speak no English at all. This may seem like a daunting prospect, but tapping into new or emerging markets isn’t as tricky as it first seems…all that’s needed in the first instance is a foreign language website and a little online marketing savvy.

Online marketing is probably one of the most effective tools available to modern day business. It connects company with customer and facilitates the building of mutually beneficial relationships between the retailers and consumers of the world.

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is now among the fastest growing marketing strategies, with 64% of European marketers indicating that they planned to increase their SEO spend in 2009. However, optimising a company’s domestic English-language website is one thing – launching a fully-optimised foreign language website is quite another.

A myriad of cultural and linguistic intricacies face those seeking to grow abroad. In the European Union (EU) there are 23 official languages spoken in the 27 member states. Although English is the most widely spoken, German has the most native speakers in the EU with almost 20%, followed closely by English, Italian and French.

Understanding the nuances within languages is crucial to the translation/localisation process. For example, the differences between French and German are obvious. But the differences between French in France and French in Switzerland or Belgium aren’t that obvious.

In France, déjeuner means ‘lunch’, but in Switzerland and Belgium it means ‘breakfast’. Additionally, dîner is ‘evening meal’ in France, but in Swiss and Belgian French the word is souper.

There are many such differences between the French dialects in France, Canada, Switzerland and Belgium which help to highlight the importance of properly localising your services for each specific target market. The same can also be said for German (Germany)/Swiss German, Portuguese (Portugal)/Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish (Spain)/Latin American Spanish and, closer to home, US/UK English.

Assuming you intend to adopt a fully localised marketing strategy, what are the practicalities involved in setting up a foreign language website?

First of all, you must establish a need for your service in a particular country. A good way of doing this is to check out the local competition. If there are similar organisations there already, that’s a good sign, as it demonstrates a genuine demand. However, be wary of too much competition, as a saturated marketplace can be difficult to penetrate.

SEO is central to any domestic online marketing campaign, and international markets are no different. You may already rank highly on Google for certain key search terms on Google UK, such as ‘Home loans’ or ‘accounting services’. However, when you have your website translated for your target market, it’s important NOT to translate the keywords directly: the correct dictionary translation may not be what people use to search for their product or service locally…they might use abbreviations, colloquialisms or a different word that means the same thing.

So in the same way as you identify your industry’s highest ranking keywords for the English market, such as via Google’s free keyword finder, you have to research the keywords for each target country, to ensure your foreign language website is properly optimised. Google has country-specific versions of its keyword tool and is an invaluable means of identifying the correct key search terms in your desired market.

These key phrases should then be incorporated into a professionally translated website to organically optimise its position in search engines.

Another point worth mentioning is that it’s actually possible to rise quicker in foreign search engine rankings, simply because the competition for key search terms is much less than on the English language internet.

And there you have it. A multilingual marketing and localisation strategy should underpin any attempt to enter new or emerging markets, with SEO playing a central role.

About Lingo24
Lingo24 is a global translation services provider that specialises in website localisation. It has over 100 employees based in the UK, Panama, Romania, China and New Zealand, and a network of 4,000 translators. Its projected turnover for 2009 is £3.7m.

Speedie Notes.

This was not a paid for article but one we felt worthy of inclusion.  As well as foreign language markets overseas, there are other smaller pockets of foreign language opportunities within the UK.  Do you need finance or insurance content translated into Polish or German, or Japanese?