We talk to Harry Williams from The Click Hub about how the digital marketing industry is changing the way we do business…
- Please tell us a little about The Click Hub and your role within the firm
We are an independent digital marketing agency based in Exeter and London, working with a range of fantastic clients of all different sizes and from lots of different industries – from motorsport to coffee, and luxury real estate to accounting. We believe that by understanding our clients’ businesses and using innovate strategies, we can help brands connect with their consumers and grow online. I head up the London side of the business and look after our London, national and international clients.
- What role does PR play in digital marketing today, and how has this changed over the last couple of years?
Digital marketing can’t operate in isolation and we always dredge up the age-old cliché of ‘in order to stand out, you need outstanding content’. This refers to not only the creation of content that is intriguing and will engage your audience but also the methodologies needed to distribute and promote this content. To really over-do the clichés, “creating good content without distributing is like waving in the dark: you know you’re doing it but no one else can see it”. Contemporary PR strategies should look to earn links back from other, authoritative websites in order to improve your own website’s search visibility as this is a core part of Google’s search algorithm as well as generally raising brand awareness.
- What simple changes can businesses make to improve their SEO? / Have you got any basic advice for businesses who want to improve their Google ranking?
The general trend in SEO is to have a lot of good quality, authoritative and unique content on your website that provides value to users. Recent studies have shown that top websites tend to have around 700 words on the pages that rank well for really competitive search terms. Although this is probably too much for most businesses, the key message is that you need to have a substantial amount of text content on your website which is highly relevant to the topic you want to be found for in order for search engines to regard you as an authority on this subject. So, think blogs, guides, news articles, text-rich service or products pages and it all needs to be unique and provide some value to users.
- Have you worked on any cool, digital projects recently? What did you love most about it/them?
We’re working with a luxury British car manufacturer (who we can’t name!) at the moment, helping to launch new models in European markets. Being a total car geek, I love working on this project especially as a key element of the campaign is disrupting the consumer journeys of their competitors and bringing users through to our client’s website. We work to understand how people search online for and engage with content about luxury sports cars and so I get to spend a lot of time reading about some of the nicest cars on sale today! A really interesting aspect of this is that we are able to actually quantify the brand loyalty customers have to different car brands. This type of insight is really useful to our client and can be used across wider marketing activities.
- How do you think the digital landscape will change over the next few years?
Digital content is becoming more immersive and more interactive. With VR technologies and more sophisticated digital advertising becoming more accessible, there is a real opportunity for advertisers to get creative and redefine how users interact with brands. I think we will see a shift away from a ‘sit and listen’ approach to advertising and towards much more experiential campaigns where users can actually have fun and enjoy advertisers’ content. I would like to get to a point where users don’t click to skip ads, but actively go online to see them. We just need businesses to be willing to invest in realising that idea first!