Through the Trading Online Voucher from the Local Enterprise Office businesses can have a budget of €5000, from which they are able to get 50% of the budget back i.e €2500. This means a business can put forward a budget of €2500 and have an actual budget of €5000 to use on their marketing project.
So the millionaire euro or five thousand euro question. What would ZOMA do with €5000 budget? We look at a few options.
Option 1: A business with little to no online presence
Are you a business with no online presence? No website, no effective social media presence, no marketing strategy? If ZOMA was in your shoes here's what we would do with €5000.
1. Brand: The first step would be to get your existing brand material and content together. You may want to look at a new brand design when venturing into the online market. This could involve a new logo, a logo redesign and development of some brand messaging for your brand - taglines, buzzwords etc. If your happy with your logo and brand, great! You can skip this step.
2. Website: If your business has no online presence, getting a website for your business whether your in the service or product industry is a must in today's climate. Having a website means that information about your business, your products and services, is available to potential customers 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. This means that you are always 'open for business' and not reliant on customers visiting your premises or calling you during opening hours. Instead they can find the information they need at a time that suits them. Similarly, having a website means that you are no longer tied to physical location, you now have the potential to access much larger markets. When a customer goes searching online for a product or service, you have the potential to reach them, regardless of their location. Your website becomes your online 'shop window' allowing potential customers to browse through your products and services, and contact you for more information. The growth potential for your business by going online is huge.
It doesn't matter what type of industry you are in, having a professional website provides an excellent opportunity to showcase your work to potential customers. Your website could include a portfolio of work, an image gallery showing recent completed jobs, or a comprehensive guide to the services you provide. Whether you are a painter, plumber, interior designer or you provide professional services - giving potential customers a visually appealing portfolio will encourage them to find out more. For even more impact, you can provide evidence of recent work, for example with before & after pictures. By having a website and by being online adds credibility to your business and brand and helps develop customer's trust.
3. Content Creation: Content is key to the success of a website and a brand. When developing a website the imagery and videos on the website will determine the success of the design. Better images and visual content will make a website very appealing to the eye, add credibility to your business, create differentiation and showcase your product or service in the most professional way. Product imagery, a walk-through video tour, before and after visuals, drone footage and team shots - all of these could be looked at in developing a bank of content for your business. The content could be used on your site and also on your social media platforms and print/marketing material going forward.
For a business or brand with no online or very little online presence, the above steps would be achievable with a budget of €5000 and would showcase your business in the best light online going forward.
Option 2: A business with an existing website but no marketing strategy.
Are you a business with an existing website but no marketing strategy and feel your not getting enough from your website? Little to no leads or sales online, ranking poorly for your main keywords in your target location? If ZOMA was in your shoes here's what we would do with €5000.
1. Review & Analyse: The first step would be to review your current online presence - your website, social media platforms and any advertising campaigns to date to see why your online presence has not been as successful as anticipated. You may also look at reviewing your brand, see how people identify with your brand and see if there is a need for a new brand identity.
2. Upgrade Website: Your website may be on the wrong platform for your business to succeed. We see it too often at ZOMA, websites on platforms like Wordpress, Open Cart, Magento being left idle and not updated as people are unable to manage these difficult platforms and don't want to be paying out high, unwarranted maintenance fees to agencies. It's very easy to transfer a site across to a new platform and businesses can then rest assured they are setup on the right platform to succeed. If it's a service or booking service site Wix would be the perfect fit for a business. For product sales and eCommerce - Shopify is the best eCommerce platform currently on the market.
3. Develop Strategy: Would you buy a flat-pack furniture set and not follow instructions to assemble it? Yes you might get an end result if your lucky, but would you be comfortable sitting on it knowing some parts may be in the wrong place or missing?
The same goes for a website and digital marketing. Every online project needs goals and targets and a plan to follow to reach these goals and targets. Whether the goals be "x" number of sales or leads, targets must be set in order for you to track your success or failures. By developing an omnichannel (multi-channel) strategy you can set budgets and targets for this budget to make sure your getting ROI (return on investment). With an omnichannel strategy you will be able to see what channels are performing better for your business and website and can therefore allocate budget to the high performing channels and not waste ads investment on poor performing channels. A typical omnichannel strategy will cover social media, google ads, email marketing, retargeting, SEO and content marketing.
4. Content Creation: Content is key to the success of a website and a brand. When developing a website or an ad campaign the imagery and videos on the website will determine the success of the design. Better images and visual content will make a website and ad campaign very appealing to the eye, add credibility to your business and ad, create differentiation and showcase your product or service in the most professional way. Product imagery, a walk-through video tour, before and after visuals, drone footage and team shots - all of these could be looked at in developing a bank of content for your business. The content could be used on your site and also on your social media platforms and print/marketing material going forward.
Option 3: A business with a successful website and thriving online business.
Have you an existing website that's been a success? Great! But things can change rapidly online. Look at some of the high street retail brands that have collapsed over the last 12 months. Are you prepared for the next 12, 24 and 36 months? Also, success in your eyes might actually be quite small compared to others in industry. You may be cutting yourself short and could be achieving a lot more online. As they say two brains are better than one and by commissioning an agency to work with your business could lead to success you may not have envisioned. If ZOMA was in your shoes here's what we would do with €5000.
1. Review & Analyse: The first step would be to review your current online presence - website, social media platforms and any advertising campaigns to date to see how your online presence fairs within your industry. Reviewing important metrics like conversion rates, cost per conversion, auction insights and return in investment would be key to understanding how the current strategy is performing compared to competitors and other businesses in your industry. A review of your brand, how people identify with your brand and your brand recognition should also be reviewed and analysed to see if there is a need for a new brand identity.
2. Website Add-Ons: E-commerce and web platforms are constantly developing and new demands are emerging for shopping and browsing online. Chatbots, Automated Email Campaigns, AI Shopping Recommendations, Booking Calenders, Online Classes, 3D and Augmented Reality, Product Upsell, Stock & Inventory, POS System, Automated Discounts the list goes on and on. Yes, you may have a site that's working well but now could be the time to get innovative and stay up to date with growing trends. You could also look at developing a customer flow map which would feed into a new site design to help increase conversion rate, user customer experience and reduce bounce rate and abandoned carts.
3. Develop Strategy: Time for some A/B testing. You know your strategy to date and how it's worked. Let's compare it to an agency's strategy and see what areas you can add to your own strategy and improve on. Vice versa you can add to the agency's strategy to make the strategies going forward for your business a resounding success.
4. Content Creation: Content is key to the success of a website and a brand. When developing a website, adding to a website or developing an ad campaign the quality of the visual content will determine the success of the project. Better images and visual content will make a website and ad campaign very appealing to the eye, add credibility to your business and ad, create differentiation and showcase your product or service in the most professional way. Product imagery, a walk-through video tour, before and after visuals, drone footage and team shots - all of these could be looked at in developing a bank of content for your business. You can never have too much content for your business and developing a bank of content is great for planning ahead for campaigns in the future.
Summary ...
Whether your business is the pits when it comes to online or a thriving green machine there is an option for any business when it comes to what they could do with a budget of €5000 to develop their online business.
If you're interested in the Trading Online Voucher and would like to see if your eligible talk to ZOMA today and we can make a plan on how to get the voucher and more importantly how to use the voucher. Email us hello@zoma.ie or call us (042) 9379 720.