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Thank you for visiting our site. Please take a look around – play with the background (see above), get yourself familiar with our services, hear how we go about things.

Or scroll down the page to read some of our blog posts to get familiar with our thinking.

Most importantly judge, as far as you can, whether you think we’d be good to work with. We hope you think so and, if you want to ‘bail’ then just call us on 020 7043 2617, or email us and let’s talk about your requirements and how we can help.

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Local Marketing – More Than Just Google?

Local CommunityOn the face of it, it’s easy to get into the idea that Local Marketing for businesses involves either using local targeting in AdWords or ‘Google Local’ search results (where the map appears in Google when you search for something with a placename).

However, this is just the tip of the iceberg, there is a lot happening at the intersection of Local and Social marketing – which is what this week’s Social Summit is covering. We haven’t had a chance to make it down there, but it is the most interesting dynamic happening in online marketing and communications at the moment.

Why Social?

For many Social Media seems an impenetrable waste of energy. Why should someone be interested in our tweets? Or our followers? What is it all about?

Well, the key reason is something that has long since been the holy grail of online: community.

Facebook has done the best job so far of identifying the need for community and still it struggles to retain interest over a period of time. Other communities existing based around interest – whether it’s car ownership, or nail varnishing.

However, the issue is that these communities are mainly virtual and therefore artificial. This is not to say that the participants are not real, but there’s not much of a real world dynamic to the relationships.

How Web / Mobile Can Get Real…

Therefore, the intersection of Local and Social marketing is where it’s going to grow… where it’s going to develop, and fast.

From the $100m funding Yelp! got; to Google’s live search… to FourSquare and their ‘check in’ functionality based around geo positioning and real-life experience.

2010 is the year for Local Social. Are you prepared?

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Generating Website Content = Slicing & Dicing

Slice and DiceWe all can see the way that the web is heading – towards relevant content. To a certain extent, this is a good thing, even if abused – because if a website is working hard to put out good content, then the chances are it’s is worth visiting.

Rather like the SEO principle that good online operations will be optimised precisely because they care AND want relevant traffic – it seems to make sense.

Nothing to Say?

So many businesses fall foul of the main trap in all of this: that they just don’t know what to write. So, here’s a very quick means of helping realise that actually, it isn’t that difficult.

Think Like a Customer

The key is to avoid the first pitfall most will fall into: which is to start thinking about your business.

Don’t spend time on your business, think of your clients and potential clients… Read more »

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How to Spot an Adwords Hustle

This is the second time in as many months that we have come across this kind of activity. So we decided to post about it, just to forewarn visitors of this kind of activity.

The Hustle

Card Trick‘Search Marketing Agency X’ contacts you and says to you that they can get you ‘top of Google’ for only £100 a month.

They tell you that if you spend this with them, then they will guarantee that you will be top for a select number of relevant keywords.

However, if you stop paying them, then your positions will be removed.

If you commit to working with them, usually on 6 months plus of contract so they tie you in, then they will send you a list of keywords and you will indeed be on the first page of Google for those keywords from the start of the contract.

And all this for less than you’d pay most search marketing agencies to run a campaign for you: sounds great, doesn’t it?

The Trick

Read more »

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How to Value Search Engine Optimisation

One of the common concerns we have with Search Engine Optimisation is that few businesses are fully informed of how to measure the value of performing optimisation and the benefits.

The ‘Con’ First

Ladder to Success

Often you’re led to believe that getting to page one of Google is ‘it’ for a reasonably specific keyword phrase, and that you should pay for this privilege. But, almost certainly this is not a cost-effective route, particularly if you’re paying a monthly fee. Here’s an illustration for you:

SEO Firm offer:
“We can get you onto page 1 of Google for a relevant phrase for only £79 per month”

The Maths

They write copy for a single page on your site, and optimise it for you (cost to them – £50 copywriting, £30 to research, ongoing cost – negligible). They choose a reasonably relevant phrase for SEO purposes but one without much competition. Total Cost £80 covered by the first month’s fee you’ve already paid.

Your page is likely to get indexed on the first page of Google and they start to bill you. They can pretty much sit on their hands for the next 2-3 years without doing anything and your total cost will end up being about £1k a year!

So, what do you get out of it… let’s say that the phrase gets 1,000 searches a month and you’re in position 5… then you probably get about 1-2% of the click throughs, so say 15 visits a month. Read more »

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Old Media Fight Back, Or Game Over?

Newspapers Out of ScreenThese are both exciting and challenging times as the print media still tries to make revenue out of its’ failings. You could see this as the 12th round of a particularly intense boxing match, with the old champ on the ropes, face bloodied… knowing that returning fire is the only option.

The Case for Print

It seems that the concern is that Google has been long held that Google has been surreptitiously ’stealing’ content from their websites using Google News and the new entrant Google FastFlip. By hosting pages on their own websites containing this content they have been using other media’s work to fill their advertising boots as well as stop visitors to these sites.

However that ignores the fact that many users search through Google as the starting point to get to articles and then often do click through to read further or to browse the media. It also ignores the fact that Read more »

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Why Does Your Site Not Convert?

Electricity ConverterFor virtually every business with a website in the world, the one measure which makes the most immediate and substantial change to their fortunes is their website conversion rate.

Yet few businesses spend much attention on improving conversion rates through optimisation of their website and therefore they lose the one single area where they could generate an immediate improvement to their profitability.

So, here are some simple tips to get started on… things you can take away with you and evaluate your website: Read more »

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Social Media Marketing – Don’t be a Twitter!

Look, we’ll be the first to jump on any truck passing which could serve our clients better, particularly when it comes to the Internet.

In the Internet’s case, if you don’t get on the truck straight away you find it’s fuller than a bendy bus in rush hour… however, we have served ourselves a cease and desist order when it comes to ‘Social Media Marketing’ – quotes intentional.

Colin From the Fast ShowPut this into real-world context: if you’ve ever been at a drinks party and wanted to engage with a conversation, do you:
a)    Barge into the conversion, talk over people, relentlessly pursue your message, hand out some business cards and fliers and then exit without hearing what anyone else has to say, or do you
b)    Listen carefully, wait until you have something relevant to say, and then engage with the group in order to participate
If you can retain this picture, then you can understand better why so many marketing businesses are perplexed with social media – because social media marketing contradicts itself.

It is much better to consider Social Media as communications and PR than marketing. Once you think of it like this, then it all fits into place.

We’ll, of course, post this article to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn… and if you’re reading this and thinking – ‘hey, so what’s the answer’… then contact us and we’ll tell you: but it has to be based on who you are, what you want to say, whether there’s an audience and how creative you can be with the message.

Sad to say: there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution. You may have been told that there is, but as of 7.57pm on Monday 9th November, We’ve just said that there isn’t…

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Marketing Budget? Online Is Different!

In the good ol’ days the marketing budget was the ground rule for all marketing. Sure you could stretch it here or there, but it was set, rigid, in stone, and if you wanted to gain something you had to pilfer from somewhere else in the budget.

This made sense, because often stretching a budget in a certain field of marketing would actually reduce the overall effectiveness of the campaign.

For example, with direct mail, the larger the list bought, normally the less targeted it becomes; or with advertising, repeat advertising, whilst reinforcing the message normally has less effectiveness with the same creative.

So, What’s Changed… ? Read more »

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The Case for an Integrated Online Marketing Strategy

One of the key areas where full value can be achieved is by co-ordinating all areas of online marketing as an integrated approach will reap dividends. The traditional view of ‘horses for courses’ which may have served offline activity well works less well when there is, in the most part, a single destination – a website (or a business sitting behind the website).

The Challenge of the Multiple Supplier Approach

All Your Eggs in One Basket

Say, for example, you want to achieve more incremental business: you contact an email specialist, a search-marketing agency and even a social media supplier… as well as liaising with your incumbent web developer – the time investment alone needed to co-ordinate and measure all this activity is substantial and then, beyond this, it is often difficult to pull together the fuller reporting structures to identify which aspect really worked for the campaign. With all suppliers claiming effectiveness – it is difficult to work out what needs to change to improve. Read more »

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The 5 Biggest Website Mistakes

No Way Sign

We come into contact with a wide number of businesses and find the vast majority have ‘historical’ websites which often need urgent attention or complete overhaul. So, we decided to compile a list for you: go on, check your site against these, see how you stack up! In reverse order…

5. To Neglect Copywriting

This problem is so common it should be framed and put up on everyone’s wall (or sellotaped to a their screen, or stapled to foreheads).

Copy is treated as the poor cousin of design and technology when it comes to web. More often than not a project will be led by a designer (who has little or no interest in good copy, let alone an aptitude to write) or a developer who finds grammer a challenge, let alone copy.

The only other alternative is when a client nobly tries to write the content themselves: yet it normally ends up being long-winded, unengaging and full of fact without any mention of benefit. At worst, it can end up being just impenetrable ‘industry-speak’ and copious amounts of unnecessary detail.

If you were sending a mailer, would you get the printers to do the copywriting? The rules still stand for online – use a specialist to write your site, otherwise it will show.

If design is the bait, then copy is the hook, so allocate proper budget and make sure your copy really hits the mark.

4. To Forget This is a Marketing Medium

When we ask: “What do you see your website doing for your business?” Most clients either say ‘I don’t know’ or reel off a long list which practically covers the entire UK population and beyond. Yet the focused website is the one that gets the business. Read more »

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