Marketing Skills for in-house agencies

1. SEO and content marketing

Where is the best place to hide a dead body?
~ On Page Two of Google.

This is a common anecdote used by die-hard SEO specialists. In today’s fast paced ecommerce environment, online shoppers rarely get past Page One. The lower the rank, the less likely you are to be found. You could even become invisible.

A blend of onsite and offsite SEO aims to put your website at the top of search results pages. Getting a marketing team that understands the importance of SEO will help them find new opportunities to reach customers online – boosting brand visibility, traffic and leads.

On page SEO, like keywords and tagging, is essential in helping Google know which people to send your way. If consumers visit your website and get frustrated because they can’t find what they’re looking for, they’ll leave. Your clickthrough rate and dwell time will drop and the bounce rate will start to rise.

Low clickthrough rates and dwell times, paired with a high bounce rate, can have a negative impact on your SEO ranking. Your PPC ads might not rank higher than a competitor’s, costing you time and money.

Content marketing is an important component of your SEO strategy. Make sure they can create high-quality content that appeals to your customers, as well as know how to review your SEO data to optimise your campaigns.

2. UX design

About 70% of online businesses fail because of bad usability. Almost 90% of online consumers won’t use a website again after a bad user experience. Meanwhile, bad mobile optimisation annoys almost 50% of consumers.

UX design can impact your SEO, pay-per-click (PPC), content marketing; basically your entire digital campaign.

Build an in-house marketing team that understands UX design trends.

UX design allows you to make choices with the customer’s ease and convenience in mind. Creating a positive user experience will keep people on your website longer. It can benefit your conversion rates, too. In fact, better UX design can yield conversion rates of up to 400%.

In many cases, your website is the first time consumers interact with your business online. If your user journey isn’t up to scratch, consumers will take notice. Here are a few ways a marketers can improve the UX:

• Speeding up your page load times
• Adding an SSL certificate for security
• Increasing white space
• Breaking large blogs of text with imagery
• Using high-quality images (avoiding stock photography)
• Sticking to brand guidelines for consistency
• Using short sentences and paragraphs to improve readability
• Making sure fonts are easy to read
• Using eye-catching buttons to drive conversions
• Making sure the navigation is organised and intuitive

A marketing agency that uses UX design will put your customers first.

3. Social media marketing and data analytics

Data, and utilising it across channels, is King today.

Look for an in-house team that can elevate your company on social media, too. A social media specialist will know how to keep up with the latest trends, utilising community management skills and working with influencers to help you reach a new audience of potential customers.

• Audience research
• Content creation
• Conversion tracking
• Creating attribution models
• Analysing performance data
• Collaborating with influencers

Every social or digital marketing campaign should also produce data – but you need someone that can make sense of that data, and turn it into something actionable. Following key performance indicators (KPIs) will help you determine which strategies are working.

In-house teams need to be able to structure and store unique data points for your campaigns; integrating a cross-platform event tracking tool (like Google Analytics) and help measure conversion goals. They should then use this data to glean insights and make informed decisions for your future campaigns.

4. Multi-channel creativity

Your customers won’t care about your website or content if it’s not creatively inspiring. It’s imperative that your in-house agency is filled with lateral thinkers that can challenge the brief. If they don’t think outside the box, your company could get stuck in it.

Your campaigns should never be cookie-cutter copies. They should glow with wow-worthy ideas that spread across every channel; website, social media, content hubs, and affiliate sites. Having a creative brand helps you distinguish from the competition.

5. Ecommerce capabilities

If you accept purchases on your website then your in-house agency will need ecommerce capabilities to take your online store to the next level.

Most of all, in-house marketing teams need speed

The best marketing agency will provide the tools you need to get ahead of the competition, but they’ll need to do it with agility as well. Being fast and effective means that you’re cost efficient, and that’s what brands need most today.

However, in-house agencies shouldn’t sacrifice speed for quality. But the best marketing companies will know how to find a balance between the two.