Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a very clever form of marketing that is being used by more and more businesses. If you want to utilise a marketing method that is going to get you results, then SEO is a very good way to go. It is especially powerful because it draws traffic onto your website, showing people exactly what you can offer them and present all of your information to them.

The other great thing about SEO is that it introduces your business to people who are actively looking for your services. All leads will be warm – the people who find your site have been searching for search terms relating to your industry. This gives you an audience that is more likely to convert.

If you are interested in SEO as a marketing technique, you should contact a reputable agency that is transparent in its aims for your marketing campaign. Make sure you know what they can achieve for you and follow their reporting closely.

User experience has to become a priority if you are going to make sure your website is a success. It is essential that you put yourself in your users’ situation, considering how your website will behave and look from their point of view. A positive user journey means that people are going to be happy, and more likely to convert.

In order to think like a user, you need to be able to consider much more than just how your site looks. User experience is about how everything works, not just landing on an attractive website. Think about what would be important to a user and what would make their experience of your site a positive one.

Once you know what a user in your industry would want, put this into your web design. Your site should be simple, easy to use and contain helpful content that adds value to the user experience.

Marketing is a highly beneficial activity, as long as you are using it to its full advantage. There is no point spending more on your marketing than it is going to make for you. The point of marketing is to capitalise on your spend and ultimately, make more money.

One way of ensuring you are making enough money on your marketing is to cap your marketing spend. When you make your plans, ensure that you aren’t too overly generous with the money you give yourself to spend on advertising and marketing. It should be enough to cover the marketing activities you want to carry out, without putting yourself under pressure.

You must also be careful to monitor the amount of money you make via your marketing efforts. If it is not making enough revenue, the answer isn’t necessarily to spend more. Spend more wisely instead and see where this gets you.

Choosing a marketing agency is an important business decision. You need to pick a team of people you are comfortable with and you need to be happy to work with them for the foreseeable future. They also need to get you results. Here are some considerations to help you make your decision:

• Check previous work. Go with an agency that creates work you like the look of.
• Look at results. As much as you might like an agency, you need to know they can achieve results too. See how their campaigns have worked for other companies.
• Check their terms and conditions. Protect yourself if it doesn’t work out. Make sure you know how easy it would be to leave.
• Don’t just look locally. Some of the best agencies might be based at the other end of the country. Use Skype and conference calls to have meetings and talk on the phone. If they can get you results, it doesn’t matter where they are.

Marketing is multi-faceted – at least, it should be if you are doing it correctly and getting the most out of your budget. Here are some ideas to expand your marketing horizons and get as much as you can out of your campaigns:

• Get an agency on board. They will be able to help you with new marketing ideas and help to better execute the strategies you already have in place.
• Think about SEO. This will help you to appear higher on search engine results pages, attracting people who are actively searching for your business.
• Tap into social media. Integrate into the lives of your customers by advertising on platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
• Update your website. This is one of your most important marketing tools. There is no point putting together an intricate SEO plan if people find a website that isn’t up to scratch. Make your website worth finding.