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Category: SEO

Marrying Push & Pull: A Match Made In Marketing Heaven

We’re about to make a statement that’s probably going to shock you, so take a breath and brace yourself. Here it comes: As a business owner or business manager, you have less control over how your brand performs, than you have for some time. The market, digital platforms and prospective customers hold the real control. 

Accepting this somewhat harsh reality is actually the first step towards figuring out the most successful and intentional ways for your brand to gain customers in ways that appeal to them. By considering your customers, platforms  and your market, you can develop the right strategies for reaching them through push and pull marketing. No winking in the dark, so to speak!  

What Is Push & Pull Marketing?

So glad you asked. The push-pull method is one that makes marketing efforts in the business world easy and manageable. You simply make one push and another pull.

Push Marketing is a strategy used to promote products and generate awareness and interest by pushing product messages onto people who are not actively trying to find them or even aware of your brand. Push marketing sends brand related content to potential buyers through a channel they use in the hopes that they will develop an interest and respond by purchasing a product or service. 

Examples: Radio and TV ads. Pamphlets. Billboards. Meta and Programmatic Social Media Targeting (boosted posts and ads), In situ Banner and Display Ads. 

Pull Marketing on the other hand focuses on bringing aware, interested customers to you. It draws in a customer base for a product or service category and usually directs them to your brand website or physical location. Pull marketing uses brand awareness and visibility to pull leads to your website or business your way. The aim here is to establish a loyal following, enhance awareness and increase demand for products. 

Examples: SEO. Google Ads. Blogs. Remarketing. Word of Mouth, Promotions. Email Marketing. Product Displays in Brick and Mortar Stores. 

Key Differences Between the Two

Push Marketing Pull Marketing 
  • Focused on product positioning
  • Focused  on creating  action
  • Creates product/service/brand exposure
  • Encourages customers who are seeking out the product/service/brand to convert
  • When push marketing a product, the push usually begins before and continues throughout the sales process
  • When pull marketing a product, the pull usually begins after the push process and continues until the conclusion of the marketing process
  • Geared towards top of funnel goals
  • Narrows the marketing funnel 
  • Best suited when brand loyalty/awareness is low
  • Best for high brand loyalty/awareness
  • Paid promotion
  • Paid and Organic Promotion 
  • Used when expanding into a new niche
  • Helps maintain dominance in a specific niche or industry

Marketing Magic: Putting the Two Together

Push marketing and pull marketing are essentially two sides of the same coin, both offering distinct advantages, so an integrated marketing approach is always best. When used correctly and in synergy, push and pull marketing are complementary. We call this omnichannel marketing, where customers are reached across multiple channels to increase your chances of conversion. 

An omnichannel approach aligns different types of marketing communication into a powerful unified force. A combination of the two allows brand to achieve diverse outcomes; each favourable for impacting sales, brand awareness and bottom lines.  

Combining the power of push marketing with the magnetism of pull marketing is a marketing strategy that packs twice the punch. Get in touch with us for a winning push-pull marketing strategy for your brand today.

 

How Subdomains and Subdirectories Impact SEO Performance

One of the most hotly contested debates among search engine optimisation (SEO) strategists and online marketers is whether subdomains or subdirectories on a website work best for page rankings. On this, experts are divided. In one corner, some believe that subdomains have a greater positive impact on SEO, while others advocate for the use of subdirectories instead. 

We take a look at both sides of the subdomain vs subdirectories debate to help you understand how each works and which is right for your website.

What is a Subdomain and Subdirectory?

A subdomain is a standalone website that is linked to the same domain as the main website. It is the additional piece of information added to the beginning of a web address that points to a different IP address than the primary domain name. For example: In the URL http://blog.happypeople.com, the subdomain is the inclusion of “blog” in the site address.

Subdomains allow you to create a “second website” or “sub-website” and are treated as separate entities, but linked together under a single web server. 

Sub-directories, as the name suggests, are sub-sections on a website. It is a special type of directory used to group related content areas such as blogs and portfolios in a more organised way. 

Sub-directories are part of the primary website. This means that they are on the same level as the rest of the content. 

In the URL, http://www.happypeople.com/about, the “/about” section of the address is a sub-directory. Think of a website as a filing cabinet. The folders within the filing cabinet would be subdirectories of your website.  

Which Is the Most SEO-Friendly?

The truth is that the answer is not so cut and dry. Determining whether subdomains or subdirectories work best for SEO efforts often depends on the nature of the website.

The Case for Subdomains

Subdomains affect SEO in three different ways. They allow keywords to be included in a URL, improve the user experience and can appeal to a more niche audience with a higher click conversion rate. 

A subdomain works best for businesses that are content-heavy and difficult to manage all on one website. Thus, separate websites are added under a single primary domain. These can be blogs, competition entry forms, sign-up documents and more.

The use of subdomains enables a business to streamline its website hierarchy and improve how users navigate the site. This helps audiences locate the information they need more efficiently, improving a website’s SEO performance.

The Case for Subdirectories

As a website grows and becomes more complex, content may need to be split into sub-directories to improve page performance and enable easier access to content. Subdirectories concentrate a business’ keywords into a single domain, an important factor for determining web rankings in search results. 

For personal or smaller websites, subdirectories may work best as they are easier to pass link equity to indexes and category pages as well as individual sites. The keywords in each subdirectory are ‘owned’ by your website domain, helping to build credibility which impacts SEO performance. 

Final Word

Some experts believe that subdomains negatively affect SEO as Google treats subdomains as separate websites. However, according to Google, the search engine crawls, indexes and ranks both subdomains and subdirectories the same way. Ultimately, the nature of your website will determine whether a subdomain or subdirectory approach is best for your website and how it facilitates the achievement of organisational objectives.

 

Get Your Website POPIA Compliant before 1 July 2021

Time is running out for South African businesses that are yet to comply with the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA), a consumer data privacy law which came into full effect on 1 July 2020. If you’ve been a little preoccupied with other things, now is time to kick-start your company’s POPIA compliance journey. Businesses that fail to comply with POPIA before 1 July 2021, whether intentional or accidental, may face administrative fines of up to R10 million.

Let’s avoid that, shall we?

POPIA Compliance in a Nutshell

POPIA outlines a set of conditions for the lawful processing of people’s personal information. It was established to keep personal consumer information protected by providing conditions for how public and private bodies may lawfully collect, process and manage people’s personal information. In so doing, POPIA ensures no unauthorised sharing of third-party data, while also protecting consumers against identity theft, fraud and similar breaches of private information.

Personal information can include anything that can be used as an identifier, such as full names, addresses, photos, video footage, voice recordings, biometric data, education and employment information, religious and political views, criminal records, private correspondence and so forth.

How Coffee Creative Studio Can Help

As a website owner, POPIA affects how you may use cookies, digital information gathering and online tracking of visitors from inside South Africa.  One of the easiest ways to ensure compliance is a review and update of your site’s Privacy Policy, with full transparency as to how you intend to store and use the personal information collected. These terms should be made easily accessible on your website via a popup or banner – much like GDPR on European websites. If you break your privacy policy, you break the POPI act. Here are a few examples of POPI non-compliance at play:

Scenario 1: Contact Forms

You are collecting customer information online via digital contact forms. You receive several personal email addresses, which you use at various times to send business newsletters and communicate special offers. If the recipient has not consented to receive that newsletter, by law you are not allowed to send it to them. If you do, you have broken POPIA, and could be held liable should a complaint be lodged against your business.

Scenario 2: Sharing Information with Third Parties

Visitors to your website have granted permissions to use their information for future correspondence sent by your company. You then enter into a joint partnership or campaign with a separate business and share your private database’s information with that company, who then markets to your network. If people have not agreed for their information to be shared and used by a third party, you will have broken POPIA. Thus websites must outline all uses of private consumer data.

POPIA compliance does not need to be an expensive or labour intensive process. Once you have successfully updated your Privacy Policies, Coffee Creative Studio can update your website with the necessary amendments.

Don’t miss the deadline!

From Garage to Greatness

Once upon a time in a garage far, far away (well, not really, just on the other side of the hill in Westville), a couple of ambitious (and crazy) youngsters took on a freelance job. They had no idea at the time that this little job would be the beginning of an epic adventure.

If you’d told us six years ago that we’d be sitting in a super chic office in the middle of Umhlanga with a staff of sixteen, that we would be the creative agency for The Sharks and would have just landed an incredibly exciting project with The SPAR Group, we absolutely would NOT have believed you.

But, here we are, going from strength to strength and still loving what we do!

From working in a leaky garage to an office in La Lucia and then a move to Umhlanga, it’s been a journey of epic proportions that has certainly kept us on our toes! There has been plenty of laughter, tears, late nights, moments of “what the heck are we doing” and of course, copious amounts of coffee.

Over the last six years, we’ve been fortunate enough to work with some really inspiring brands and people, some of which have included well-known names like, FutureLife®, The Dolphins, Belgotex Sport and Fidelity Security and start-ups, including Republik and We Are Food. In addition to awesome clients, we’ve also been surrounded by a great team of staff (who we consider family)!

Our team of Coffee Beans are the life and soul of our business, after all, without them, we wouldn’t be where we are today. Their passion and commitment to each job has been phenomenal, and every one of them adds their unique flavour to our Coffee Culture. Thank you, Beans, for being an integral part of this crazy, exciting journey.

So, on our sixth birthday, we want to raise our glasses (and mugs) and toast to each and every one of you, big, small, start-up, and everything in between and thank you, from the bottom of our caffeine racing hearts, for trusting us with your brands and business, and allowing us to walk along side you as we help you achieve your business goals!

Here’s to another six and many more to come!

When Last Did You Update Your Website?

What do websites and the movie, “How to lose a guy in 10 days” have in common? Wait for it… The “love fern.” Believe it or not, your website (and any relationship) is like a plant that needs to be watered, nurtured, pruned and even re-potted from time to time. If you don’t, well – we all know what happens there. It’s pretty dire and to be honest, it’s costly and best avoided.

Today, it’s no longer enough to have a website that’s up and running, because a presence alone just doesn’t cut it anymore. In fact, we’re firm believers in changing things up every now and then. Much like a logo or a brand identity, your site also needs a fresh new look and some current info to keep it from growing stale. This is for a number of reasons that we’re unpacking below:

Tech changes rapidly

This one’s pretty self-explanatory, but from platforms to plug-ins, and even enhancements, your site will become redundant if it’s left unattended. Sadly, this is something we’ve come to notice in the web realm. Brands are keen to get things going and once a site is up, it’s forgotten and outdated in almost no time at all. Make sure that your in-house web team, or your agency of choice runs regular updates and is always up to speed with new additions to your platform. That way, you won’t have a dinosaur on your hands, because we all know what happened to them…

New trends are always emerging

How boring would life (and websites) be if there weren’t any trends to keep things fresh and exciting? Your website deserves to remain current and relevant with updates that reflect the latest happenings in digital. Now, we’re not saying that you should become a slave to trends; but every now and again, you should refresh your site’s look and content. This will ensure that it delivers something worthy of your brand that’s worth revisiting. If you don’t, you’ll probably find that your traffic and stats are poor. If there’s nothing new to see and do, there’s no reason for anyone to return. Totally harsh, but totally fair.

SEO

That’s “Search Engine Optmisation”, if you’ve been living under a rock. It’s the name of the game for anyone wanting to make sure they’re found speedily on Google (and not on the 5th page either…) By keeping your web content updated fairly regularly with either images or blog posts, you could boost your page ranking organically. This makes regular site updates even more beneficial and essential to your business!

The bottom line: update or die

If you’re one of our clients (shout out to our clients!) you’ll know that whenever we create a site, we have a ritual that we like to observe. We gift each client with a little plant when their sites go live, telling them that their website is just like it. If you neglect it, it’ll be okay for a while but it’ll eventually join the afterlife. Sure, it’s a tad morbid but it’s supposed to serve as a reminder that websites are not meant to go live and be forgotten. As our most important marketing tool, we owe it to ourselves and our businesses to ensure that they’re kept up to date, both with software updates and even content ones.

If your website needs a little TLC, why not contact us? Our dynamic team of web gurus could brew a little magic to give you the online presence you’ve always dreamed of. Chat to us today, we’d love to see how we could help you.