Welcome to our quarterly company roundup series, where we’ll bring you up to speed on everything and anything Colewood Digital! Let’s get going.
Colewood Digital Office Refurb
Q3 has seen the exciting continuation of our office refurb! After starting to give the Colewood offices a facelift in Q1 and Q2 which saw the walls branded with Colewood Digital colours and plush new carpets, Q3 has seen the building decked out with new kitchen facilities and office spaces being refurbished and converted into divided working spaces. We are far from done giving Colewood Digital a total makeover so make sure you keep up to date with our socials to see the transformation!
Network, Network, Network!
The Colewood Digital Sales team has been super busy in Q3, exhibiting at expos and attending a variety of networking events that have proved to be a huge success.
Q3 saw our team head to the North East England Chamber of Commerce Exchange event at Redworth Hall, the networking event at Red Button Marketing Training, and the NEECC Inspiring Female Conference at Ramside Hall.
The team also had an excellent time exhibiting at the Teeside Premier Business Event Expo down at Wynyard Hall at the end of September. The team had an excellent time networking and catching up with local businesses and we can’t wait for the next one.
New Starters
Q3 has been another busy quarter for expanding the Colewood team by introducing two new starters!
First up, we have our new Organic Strategist, Jonny, who joined the SEO department halfway through Q3 and has slotted right into the team seamlessly. We cannot wait to see how Jonny progresses in the role and assists in the continuous growth of the SEO team.
Secondly, we have our new Senior Business Development Executive. JP has a wealth of experience in the industry and we are excited to see how he helps expand Colewood’s client base.
Awards Season Continues!
Q3 saw some very impressive nominations of 6 of our female staff members from SEO and the Social team, as well as our Managing Director Helen being nominated for the Digital Women 2022 Awards!
Helen has been named one of the 50 Digital Women to Watch in 2022! It is fantastic to see Helen being recognised for her achievements not only during her time at Colewood Digital but for her accomplishments throughout her impressive career in the digital marketing industry.
Our SEO and Social team nominations for the Digital Women Awards include:
- Fiona Watson – SEO Practitioner Of The Year
- Amy Leonard – PR Specialist Of The Year
- Olivia Fawcett – Socials Media Manager Of The Year
- Katie Rhodes – Digital Marketer Of The Year
- Katie Dodshon – Digital Copywriter Of The Year
Fiona ended up being placed a Runner Up for her SEO Practitioner of The Year Category and Amy was nominated runner up in her Digital PR Specialist of the Year award. We are so proud of the Colewood team and can’t wait for the next one!
What Else Have We Been Up To?
In September, the Colewood team participated in the Daisy Chain charity boat race at the Tees Barrage!
Although we only won one race, our close finishes got our fabulous team to the semi-finals where we were sadly beaten again. However, the team laughed from start to finish and ended up being more involved in the water fights than the rowing which had the team soaked right through from head to toe… But we had the BEST time!
More importantly, we raised a whopping £500 for Daisy Chain. We would like to say a huge thank you to all those that took part, to the supporters who came to cheer us on and to all those who donated to a wonderful cause and to Daisy Chain for the fantastic event. Bring on the 2023 race!
Black Friday Preparations
Black Friday and the busiest time of year for our staff is looming, so we are ensuring the whole team is preparing for the rush!
When it comes to assisting our clients with their Black Friday promotions, our PPC team have to ensure everything is ready to go in advance to provide a smooth running of the service during Black Friday weekend. Here are just a few things we’re doing in preparation:
- Plan our strategies early with clients reviewing last year’s performance, landing page experience, the shopping feed (eCommerce only) and confirming promotions and additional budget opportunities for the peak period to avoid budgets running out early in the day.
- Look at what’s trending and identify any new seasonal keywords we could target that is tailored to the product/service.
- Create new ad copy, extensions, and imagery and set up promotions in Google Merchant Center for eCommerce clients.
- Schedule the promos to go live in line with the client’s activity and ensure alerts are set up should there be any errors.
- To ensure we have the right audiences in place to reach the right people, it is vital to make use of remarketing audiences and first-party data.
- Keep an eye on competitor activity in the lead-up to Black Friday.
But how does the festive season affect other channels such as Social Media, Emai, PPC or SEO?
Social media is vital to utilise to the best of your ability over the Black Friday and upcoming Christmas season. Paid social campaigns are a great way to get noticed and promote any discounts or promotions your business is going to be running.
Looking back at previous years’ stats with some of our clients can also help our staff determine how they are going to prepare for the season and Q4.
Jasmine Silk is one of our longest-serving clients here at Colewood, who came on board way back in 2013 selling their high-quality silk products.
There have been hundreds of campaigns and great profits made during their time with us, but the biggest aspect of the year is the notorious Black Friday Email campaign. Email marketing is a key part of the success of their campaigns during Q4, and instead of sending out one blanket email to 50,000 people, we are looking at spreading the campaigns to target different people at different times throughout the Black Friday period.
Past results from this strategy saw an increase in revenue by a whopping 12,065.17% and transactions by 11,071.43%.
Ensuring strong strategies are in place prior to the busy season means we as marketers can assist in the success of any clients’ campaigns over the festive period.
Amazon Prime Day
When it comes to Amazon Prime Day, our PPC team has been busy working away to ensure our clients are making the most of it and reaping the rewards and benefits. Prime Day is a promotional event where advertisers can run promotions on their product range to get more sales.
Our team helped many of our clients offer a monetary value of a percentage-based discount that led to increased sales. Users expect a discount on the product so are more likely to buy if they see a percentage off the full price. Our team also encouraged our clients to use discount codes, as this is another great way to entice customers to buy, especially on a day such as Amazon Prime Day when competitors are most likely doing the same thing.
Colewood takes on France!
One of our amazing clients took some of the team away to the South of France as a way to show gratitude for all their hard work on launching a website and social media channels for a new custom-built boat hire club.
It was great to see the team have such a fabulous time experiencing the boats first-hand!
Industry News & looking to Q4:
Google Algorithm Update
As you know, Google rolls out updates regularly and our team needs to keep on top of the changes. In September this year, Google announced both a product reviews update as well as a core algorithm update, signalling noticeable changes to search results.
The core update meant that the overall search ranking algorithm systems changed. The core algorithm helps interpret signals from webpages, such as keywords and internal links with the goal of ranking the content that best answers a search query. The top purpose Google said they were rolling out this update was to improve its overall search results. As marketers, we are now starting to see that this update should benefit pages that were “previously under-rewarded.”
Our team is constantly working to improve clients’ content and how they appear in search engines, so updates such as these help us ensure we are targeting the right key terms and boosting their rankings month on month and year on year!
TikTok rolls out new updates
Throughout Q3 and into Q4, TikTok has seen multiple updates that marketers need to be jumping on in order to utilise the platform to the best of their abilities.
Tiktok now has a “TikTok Now” feature which is very similar to Be Real, they’ve introduced sound effects which are meant to help with users editing abilities and ensure the video is as engaging as possible to get those all-important views and likes.
Arguably most importantly, they’ve increased caption sizes from 300 characters to a whopping 2200!
But why is this great news for SEO?
With the increase in character limit, the captions can be packed full of SEO, including keyword targeting for the most popular search queries. These can range from anything like “How to have the perfect red lip”, “How to cook the perfect roast potatoes” or even “Halloween trends 2022.”
When a consumer types in these queries, TikTok is then now able to pull all the most relevant videos that answer the consumers’ questions, just like search engines do for websites. It is important to keep in mind that the first videos to appear will most likely be ones that were paid for by the creator for an AD, the next is the most engaging videos and then the best SEO-optimised videos after this.
What can marketers do to help improve the SEO of a client’s TikTok videos?
Tips from our experts include but are not limited to:
- Make sure you are using as many of those 2200 characters in the captions.
- Use as many keywords as you can to describe your videos.
- Hashtag Hashtag Hashtag!
With the continuous and rapid growth of the platform after starting off as attracting Gen Z as a popular dance app, now over 40% are said to prefer using Tiktok and Instagram as a search platform rather than an actual search engine according to Google’s internal data. Experts have also said that they are predicting TikTok’s advertising revenue to overtake Youtube by 2024.
Zuckerberg’s development of The Metaverse
When it comes to anything Facebook-related, marketers are usually hot on all the latest updates and advancements and use them to their advantage when it comes to client advertising.
With the developments put in place over the last few months and continuing into Q4 of augmented reality, there could be multiple opportunities for businesses to increase their ad revenue on the metaverse.
Although it is still currently in the Beta stages, marketers are starting to take note of how they can create specified ads specifically for an alternate reality. Like with any new medium, it will come with challenges and new opportunities for brands to promote themselves. Industry experts are predicting that the metaverse will soon be a must-have in regard to their marketing and will become a way of creating new and enhanced customer experiences.
As digital marketing experts, our team is preparing to plan brand activations and how they can attract customers to become a part of their metaverse community.
It is anticipated that brands that take advantage of the new metaverse will in the future have a revolutionary way of reaching customers in addition to all the existing platforms. Eventually, brands will be able to use the metaverse to build interactive experiences that let customers try out their products before they buy and then purchase on the exact same platform, making it an easy and seamless experience from start to finish.
If you want more information on any of our digital marketing services and how they could work for your business, get in touch today.
Here’s to Q4 and continuing success and results for our clients in 2022!
