When you consider page views and time spent on the site, Facebook has no equal, even overtaking Google to be the most “used” site in the UK. Facebook accounted for 49.2% of all UK visits to a social networking site during September 2009 with the average user spending over 26 minutes online for each visit during the same period.
Is this a one off? A blip in the statistics? It seems unlikely as over the last 12 months UK visits to Facebook increased by 86.1%. This coupled with the ever-increasing amounts of time that users are spending sharing photos, swapping links and chatting about their daily lives indicates that Facebook is becoming the social network of choice for many consumers.

What does this mean for advertisers? Well in some respects this is excellent news – you now know where a significant percentage of people will be spending their spare time online. You also know that these people won’t just be quickly logging in and then leaving – many will spend a lot of time using the service. This knowledge means that for many, choosing to advertise on Facebook will be an easy decision.

Facebook advertising allows for a targeted advertising campaign. You can specify exactly the type of people that you want your advert to be visible to, keeping costs to a minimum and ensuring high quality results. It is possible to link the advert to your own web page or to something on Facebook like a Page, Application, Group or Event.
Facebook provides detailed metrics that allow for simple analysis of any campaign. This allows for greater control over costs but also provides an opportunity to continually monitor the success of the current campaigns and adjust the messaging according to current trends and developments in a given industry. For example a change in base interest rates may prompt a new incentive for homebuyers that could be linked to an adjusted campaign for a house builder.

Facebook is a great vehicle for driving a viral campaign, or for drawing additional users to your website or online store. If you would like to discuss marketing using Facebook, or social marketing in General then call BradleyDyer today on 01737249479.

It turned out the officers liked us so much they wanted to get our contact details to pass on to some friends who were planning a party. Now if this isn’t ‘Word of Mouth Marketing’ in its purest form I don’t know what is.

WOM, to give it its acronym, isn’t particularly new – marketing professionals have known about its effects for about fifty years – but new forms of communication such as Twitter and viral are harnessing its power as never before.

Apparently most of it is done face-to-face (or in my band’s case, ear to ear), with phone, email, texts and blogs also providing conduits. It’s really no more complicated than someone recommending or being critical of a product/service/experience, something we all do in everyday conversation or if we’re asked ‘do you know a good garage?’ etc. Generally people are more likely to pass on positive experiences, although credit card companies, private health insurance companies, airlines and providers of TV and internet services are much more likely to be knocked than praised.

According to consulting firm McKinsey & Co, as much as 67% of consumer sales could be influenced by WOM. Marketers shouldn’t rely solely on the traditional media but in McKinsey’s words “create waves of communication that spread from a small number of lead users through consumer-to-consumer interaction.”

As a marketing professional I am always ready to investigate new ways of reaching an audience (when I’m not on stage!) and even when we’re creating more traditional advertising or DM campaigns, we are consciously helping to create powerful brands that engender positive WOM and create added value for clients. And, in the current economic climate, I think it’s fair to say that our clients need every weapon in the armoury!

If you’d like to find out how we can use our expertise to get your customers saying good things about you, why not give me a call on 01737 249479.

The National Association of Estate Agents reports that every house for sale is being chased by four prospective buyers, and more people are registering with them than at any time since the halcyon days of September 2007. Furthermore, there is an increase in the proportion of sales being made to that endangered species, the first time buyer.

So there’s a bit of a surge in sales, but you have to set that against a shortage of properties actually FOR sale, which on average per estate agent, has fallen, and may be propping up prices artificially according to some pundits.

Ho hum. Another case of misplaced optimism?

I’m not sure that it is. Everyone with any interest in the housing market, whether it’s personal or professional, is tracking these minute signs of change with eager interest. And speaking for my own business, in recent months we’ve certainly seen some increased marketing activity from several of our property clients. New (and mothballed) developments are now coming onstream and any existing sites with a quality product, are continuing to sell if the pricing is realistic.

Another piece of research carried out for the Building Societies Association shows that 59% of people think now is a good time to buy.
This is good news for housebuilders as well as for those of us involved in property marketing. At Bradley Dyer we’re certainly ready to tackle new projects with fresh ideas… in fact, it’s what we have continued to do throughout these recessionary months and I’m happy to say that our clients are seeing results from it.

To discuss how Bradley Dyer could help you develop a strategy that maximises opportunity in an economic downturn please give me a call on 01737 249479.

The success of the iPhone product family has meant that there has been a huge uptake in the numbers of people browsing the web from mobile devices. Currently the iPhone accounts for 65% of all mobile web browsing which considering it is still a fairly new product is very impressive. What Apple has succeeded in doing is making the whole process of mobile browsing much simpler, and more importantly incredibly user friendly.

As more and more users turn to mobile browsing as a method of getting the information that they require instantly there are many new considerations for businesses looking to improve their web presence; Does my site work in the all the myriad of mobile browsers? What is the best way to cater for these users? Should we do anything special for mobile users or just hope that the browser technology can cope with our existing site?
All of these are valid questions, and marketing towards the mobile web brings many challenges – however the opportunity is there for those businesses willing to spend the time providing a mobile presence for their existing customers and first time visitors.

Advertising directly inside mobile applications is also becoming a cost effective method of reaching the end users that you want to see your message. This is an opportunity to directly target user groups, and tailor your advertising on a very specific level.

In summary the mobile space is a rapidly growing avenue for businesses to add to their digital offering. Don’t get left behind the mobile revolution, talk to BradleyDyer today for help and advice in working with the mobile web, device specific applications and mobile advertising.

In another piece, the magazine’s writer Simon Graham takes a slightly more downbeat approach, seeing affordable homes as a first-aid measure for those who’ve been unfortunate enough to be repossessed and are facing homelessness. The Government’s Mortgage Rescue Scheme and Homeowner Mortgage Support Scheme will help a few of them but many more will have to join council housing lists and wait for a home to rent or part-buy.

In all this the Housing Associations are key, and in my opinion are no longer the Cinderellas of the housing market operating in the shadows of the big-name developers. In fact, in recent times we’ve seen almost all the big builders (including some of my own clients) using ‘affordable’ tactics to entice people to buy with variously-branded deferred equity schemes.

Housing Associations are meeting important needs, have excellent products and deserve first rate marketing expertise and collateral. It’s what we’ve been offering our ‘affordable’ clients all along and we are good at using the skills we’ve honed on the mainstream housing market. The ways to home ownership are becoming increasingly diverse, so the use of marketing skills which cross over from open market to affordable market are now vital in the drive for sales.

If you’d like to know more about BradleyDyer’s approach to the affordable homes sector, please give me a call on 01737 249479.

Apparently there’s been a slight decrease in the number of estate agents reporting falling rather than rising prices. The Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors reports that sales have stopped falling, and the Council of Mortgage Lenders’ figures indicate that new lending has picked up a bit, although it’s still only a third of what it was in the good old days between 2002 and 2007.

Baby steps perhaps, but perhaps Chancellor Darling’s measures will help a bit more. There’s £600 million earmarked to be spent on reviving new homes building programmes that have ground to a halt, and an extension of the ‘stamp duty holiday’ for properties up to £175,000 until the end of the year. There’s also help for buyers with a new scheme, Home Buyer Direct, which will bump up deposits with an interest free loan when mortgage lenders want to see a larger downpayment. This, it is hoped, will help about 3000 more people to get mortgages.

Admittedly the Budget is pretty grim but if you’re involved in the new homes or affordable homes sector, you might be permitting yourself just a little twitch of a smile. Maybe it’s time to start thinking afresh about how you can benefit from these initiatives. At Bradley Dyer we’d certainly like to help you, and we’ve got some fresh ideas of our own that could enable you to attract some of these new customers.

Hardly a day goes by without someone making another announcement about house prices.

Are they up, down or bumping along the bottom? It all depends on whose announcement you read. For instance, yesterday (2nd April) Nationwide Building Society said prices in March rose by 0.9%, cautiously describing it as a ‘surprise bounce’. But at the same time, Richard Donnell of Hometrack said they had fallen by 0.6%. The Bank of England reports a rise in mortgage approvals for February. But that has to be set against the stark fact that this improved figure is still 44% less than in February last year.

Howard Archer, an economist at IHS Global Insight, reports an increase in buyer interest through estate agents, and that this, coupled with the modest rise in mortgage approvals, suggests a bottoming-out of the market. But analysts also opine that although ‘activity’ has passed its low point, prices will continue to fall: by another depressing 15% in 2009, according to Archer. And Nationwide’s chief economist Fionnuala Earley thinks it’s more likely that this new activity is from buyers who just can’t wait any longer, rather than the beginnings of real recovery.

The truth is that no-one has a crystal ball and many factors will affect the short to medium term future of the housebuilding industry. Even if we do see some signs of recovery, it is likely that we will also still see intermittent setbacks as we continue to battle with the complexities of the global financial systems.

However, what we can say with confidence is that by carrying out a ‘strategic marketing healthcheck’, we can help maximise opportunities in the short term and create a robust platform ready for when markets improve. For an informal discussion on how BradleyDyer could help your business through these difficult times call me on 01737 249479.

There are some commonly used and highly regarded techniques which can be utilised to achieve better results for a particular keyword or keywords. It should also be noted that there are many other external factors which contribute to a satisfactory search engine ranking of which you are unlikely to have any real control but can also make a huge difference. It is estimated that several hundred criteria are taken into account by Search Engines when indexing a site. The most important ones are thought to include: Anchor Text, Site Popularity, Link Context, Topical Links, Title Tags, Keywords, Site Language, Content, and Site Maturity.

Different Title Tags on each page
It is believed that Google matches the words within a document to the words in the title in order to see if the content is relevant to the title and therefore genuine and worth a higher ranking. Therefore having every page with simply the website name may not be as effective as having a unique title for each page

Content / Word Density
It is understood that one of the ranking criteria used by Google is linked to word density. In recent years it has become more obvious that search engines are looking much more closely at the content rather than the tags as this provides search results that fit more closely with the patterns of users searching for content. In short all web pages should contain content that is refreshed often, relevant to the pages, punchy with a good keyword density and with enough content to gives pages some weight.

Use of <h> Tags
Another commonly used tactic is the use of the <h2> and <h3> tags in order to give a higher priority to key words and phrases within the site. Use of sub-headings and key areas of interest highlighted via the above mentioned tags will provide better results for the particular keywords contained within. This gives the search engines a clearer picture of what your site is actually about and makes it much easier for them to server up your site as a result to a query that doesn’t exactly match with your pre-defined keywords. It can also be the difference between your site and a competitor site.

Site Links
Site links are essential in SEO. When indexing a site search engines look for the links into and out of your site in order to traverse your site and collect data on each URL. However, they also look for those links to be in-context, meaning that the link must come from or lead to a site that is relevant to the page that is being indexed. Getting the site listed on as many local business directories  and any other relevant portals will improve the search engine ranking and give the site a more mature appearance to the search engine. This is improved even further when the link is reciprocated so providing a page with links is also likely to help in the longer term.

Site Map
A site map will help the site to be more accurately linked. The site-map should not be the sort of site map that helps users to find their way through the site but rather an XML-based document at the root of the HTML pages which contains information regarding each of the pages within the site. The site map usually contains some or all of the following: URL, last updated date, relevance to surrounding pages and so on. Keeping this document accurate and up-to-date will ensure that search engines always have the latest information on the site and ensure that the site is indexed correctly.

Popularity
Many search engines include a criterion for the number of times users click on web sites that are returned in search results. The more often a site is selected from the results the higher the ranking it receives. There is no easy answer to this problem as you want to achieve more visits to your site to improve the ranking but in order to receive those additional visitors you need your site to appear higher in the search rankings! The best way to tackle this is to try and create a buzz about the site – even if only on a small scale by sending email announcements to lists of potential customers, sending newsletters or by hosting events at the site in order to gain some local media coverage.

URL / Domain Name
The question of what to name a site is always an important one. When selecting a name it is most common to think in terms of the business name or a word / phrase which has meaning to the project in hand. In this case the name of the development was selected for the primary URL. Spend some time could searching for an effective domain name which will not only be more memorable but also closer to the likely search criteria of the potential customers for the development. When choosing a name you should always put yourself in the shoes of the end user – are they ever going to think to search under the name you have in mind?

Achieving good SEO can be time consuming and laborious process however it can be very effective when it comes to improving the ranking of your site. However organic SEO will NEVER be as effective in the short term as a good targeted campaign including both organic and pay-per-click methods. This is the only way to even come close to truly controlling the position of a site within Google.

The idea is that first time buyers rent their home at a discounted rent and then buy it, or a share of it, at a later date when they can afford to – or more importantly, get a mortgage for it. And despite interest rate cuts for five months in a row that’s still a sticking point in my opinion.

The Mayor announced some other ideas too, including cash boosts for mothballed sites, from the Homes and Communities Association. It’s potentially good news for first time buyers, as well as all those involved in building, kitting out and marketing new homes.

Whether these initiatives are going to make a real difference remains to be seen, but it’s good that some creative thinking is being applied to this serious problem. It’s exactly what we’re doing for our clients here as they struggle to get units sold.

Boris seems optimistic, at any rate. He says: “The property market will get going again in the next two to three years, so we’ve got to keep the supply going.”

Let’s hope he’s right.

It got me thinking though about how new homes developers have to be increasingly inventive about selling their product. This particular idea was undoubtedly a one-off but it got their name noticed – and the house was sold.

As Account Director for several property clients, I’m constantly racking my brain – and those of my team – for innovative ways we can help them shift their product. For instance, right now we’re doing a ‘Lonely Hearts’ digital campaign for one of our new homes clients, Rydon Homes. The houses are the ones looking for love… and we’ve designed a fully functioning micro-site where customers can log on and find their perfect new house partner. It’s a bit of fun and it’s different, but most importantly in this tough marketplace, it’s working.