My article about marketing through the bad times was published is the local paid daily paper on Tuesday July 14th:

“In these uncertain economic times…”

Are you fed up with hearing that yet? There is nothing uncertain about it; we are in a recession.

So, is it time to chop your marketing budget, or to invest more in marketing to strengthen your claim to the business that is out there to be won?

I am a marketing guy and therefore you can probably guess what my opinion will be. But I do have evidence… honest! At Upstream Connections (the SEO and Internet Marketing company where I work), we have not stopped growing in the last 12 months and let me tell you how: marketing. And, of course, being great at what we do.

The big buzzword of the moment is “engagement” (thank goodness; “synergy” was getting tired) and “engagement” is a great place to start thinking about how to market your company in a recession. On a local level, networking groups are a great way to meet real life human beings and boost your profile. We are repeatedly told that the best kind of engagement is “a conversation with your prospects”. Imagine having a real conversation; that’s what networking groups like the BHCC and CADIA offer.

Digitally, the equivalent is business networking sites like LinkedIn and Ecademy, where you can spread your net much further afield. One great benefit of finding people through these sites is that there is no travelling involved and the time commitment is smaller. The downside is that you often don’t meet your prospect face to face.

By networking, you will make yourself visible to a small batch of people at a time. At Upstream Connections, we firmly believe that you should be visible to as many people as possible, all of the time and Search Engine Optimisation is the best way to make that happen. By ranking well in Google for the searches that reflect your business you give your prospects a quick and easy way to find you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

If you are worried that your website itself isn’t up to scratch, we provide all SEO clients with a free, review of their website in the first month of work. For most businesses, basic is best.

These are hard times for sure, but there is still plenty of new business to be had. The best way to get those enquiries is to push your marketing in the most cost-effective way possible and forge the relationships that will see your business blossom when times are better.

This just in from Hitwise:

During February 2009, 1 in 35 UK internet visits was to a video website. That’s up 40.7% on last year, when the figure was 1 in 50.

At Upstream Connections, we love video. Quality video content on an ecommerce site helps inspire confidence and greatly improves conversion rates (if applied correctly). Did you know that a well-timed video can also be a route into Google’s top 10 results?

This is a result of Google’s much vaunted (and much maligned) Univeral Search. In a nutshell, Universal Search is an attempt to provide search results from a variety of sources, including blogs, images, authority sites like Wikipedia and video sites like YouTube. If you can create an interesting video with the right title, you have the potential to leapfrog onto Google’s front page. This can be particulary useful if you are selling a product that people search for using its name.

If you are interested in our video production services, drop us a line and let’s talk!

For anyone who’s interested in how the Upstream office building looks, check out this video which we made last year:

Sadly, you won’t see our subterranean office itself, but what a nice building, huh?

Upstream Connections started as a specialist SEO company in 2003. We recently celebrated 5 years in business… which is a long time in this industry.

I started working here as a freelancer way back in 2005, when Upstream operated out of a small office in the Brighton Media Centre. Since then, we moved to a bigger office, then an even bigger office and more recently to an even bigger office in Hove. During these years, we have been very privileged to work with clients in a huge range of industries, from language schools to power tools, via mobile phones, secured loans, tourism and financial software.

A lot has changed in those five years. When we started, most people would be slightly baffled by the mention of “SEO” or “Search Engine Optimisation“. Fast forward five years and the mainstream press is full of Search-related stories, journalists are given SEO training (which sometimes leads to bizarre coat tail grabbing headlines like this) and a little huddle forms at parties when you mention that you know how to get sites performing better in Google. The final point is not necessarily a good thing.

We are, first and foremost, an SEO company. But did you know we offer a whole range of internet services?

As you may well have seen on our homepage, we regularly design websites for clients. One big advantage of an Upstream-designed site is that you needn’t worry about whether it will be search-engine-friendly. You can be sure of it.

You can see some examples of our design work here and here.

We have a dedicated team of designers and programmers. We also work with a selection of highly talented freelancers, who can give a different perspective on a project.

Having great search results is only one part of doing business online. If users are not convinced by the site they arrive at, they will not want to do business with it. People are more trusting of quality websites now that they were even a couple of years ago, but are arguably less trusting of sites that appear dated or in any way suspicious. It is very important to keep on top of your image.

One of the great attractions of doing business online is being able to attract custom from around the world. To really connect with different cultures, you need to be sure that your website expresses exactly what you want it to. Our in house translation agency can ensure that you get a quality translation for a competitive price.

With the Pound set to struggle against the Euro for the forseeable future, now is the time to start appealing to overseas clients. Quality, localised text on your site is a big step forward. The next step is…

Upstream Connections offers SEO in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian and Portuguese.

Britain has one of the most developed internet economies in the world, but continental Europe is not far behind. If you want to make the most of your potential customer base in the coming years, you may want to look to the other side of the channel.

If you would like to see some examples of our work, get in touch and we would be more than happy to show you what we can do.

Links to your website are still a very important part of search engine optimisation. There are a number of ways that you can acquire these links, but the best way is to create quality content that people want to link to.

We have a specialist team in place to promote quality content in the places that bring the best return in terms of links and visitors. Check out our accent game and evolution of mobile phones video for a couple of examples.

So…

Making money online is a matter of providing the right service at the right price and making sure the right people can find you. Sounds familiar? The methods may be slightly different to traditional business, but the bottom line is just the same. If you want our help in making your website profitable, get in touch.