Digital marketing & SEO
Digital Marketing & SEO are about getting people to your website, then turning them into devoted customers. We know how to do both.
Hey, your dream customer is at the door…
Like it or not, people don’t buy your product, they buy your marketing. After all, you don’t know what your coffee tastes like until you have paid for it, right? It’s for this reason that so much of a business’s success comes down to its marketing. Marketing is about finding your dream customer and making sure they show up to buy something. It’s something we’ve been doing for a long time and we’re very good at it. We do whatever it takes to make a business succeed, but our specialism is digital marketing.
What digital marketing looks like to us…
Partner with us and we’ll take care of all of this. Or every business we angel invest in gets our incredible digital marketing training & leadership, teaching you everything you need to know to dominate your niche.
SEO
Search Engine Optimisation. In plain English, that means getting your website to the top of Google for the right keywords and staying there. We have a system that works and we have been improving the recipe for over a decade.
Local Search
Ever used your phone to find the nearest coffee shop? That’s what we call local search. Also known as Google Places or Google Maps. If you have a front door, we’ll make sure people walk through it.
Pay Per Click
Also known as pay per action. With online advertising, it can be hard to know when you’re really getting value for money. But, if you get it right, digital advertising is not a cost. It’s a way to make money. Our in-house systems make sure that every Euro brings back two or more.
Web Development
Need a one-page website with pretty colours? Ask your niece. Our websites get judged at year-end as well as on launch day. So we design everything with the success of the business in mind. Starting from an agreed marketing strategy, we produce the right website for the business, large or small.
Content & Copywriting
Fair warning: if you want fluffy language that doesn’t mean much then we might not be the right partners for you. But we know how to create a strong, persuasive message and get it across. Nobody knows your product or your customers better than you. We’ll work with you to find the language that works best for both.
Social Media Strategy
How many hours should I be spending on social media? It’s perhaps the most common question asked by small businesses as they develop an online presence. But it’s the wrong question. With the right social media strategy, you will be able to see a real return on the time you spend online. And it won’t feel like a chore.
Conversion
So you have a website and it has attracted some potential customers. Now what? Conversion Rates Optimisation is a fancy-pants name for everything we do to make sure that your website visitors become customers and then raving fans.
Email Marketing
Done right, it can turn casual browsers into lifelong buyers. Done wrong, it’s just more unopened spam. We’ve been getting results with email marketing since 2013. We know the strategies that work and the gimmicks that don’t.
Jedi-level nerd skills
When we’re partners, we’re a team. From Day One, you will get a full team of experienced specialists, available on-demand. Quite nerdy, very driven. As your partners, we will be just as invested in the future of the business as you are. Let’s support and learn from each other.
Digital marketing is our bread and butter.
We have a very simple digital marketing strategy and it works every time. Whether you’re just starting out or you’re hiring an in-house SEO team, your marketing investment shouldn’t feel like a coin toss. With 14 years in the industry, we have a proven record of nurturing businesses that dominate their niche. We do this by implementing a no-nonsense digital marketing strategy that works every time.
How we can help your business
If you partner with us, we will do the boring bit. All our business partners get a full digital marketing team as part of our partnership scheme from Day One. It’s what we do and we’re very good at it.
If you are looking for angel investment then we have still got your back. As part of our investment, we can also teach your team everything there is to know about digital marketing. We’ll not only train you and your team, but we’ll help them craft their digital marketing strategy and be here for guidance and support as they drive your site to the top of Google.
Want us to prove our skills?
We thought you’d never ask :)
Attracting visitors to websites in droves is a speciality of ours. In tech-speak, we call it Search Engine Optimisation. For most online businesses, “SEO” is the key to getting sales in the book. And how do you know if a company is actually good at SEO? That’s easy. Ask them to show you a website, at the top of Google, that they’ve put there. Oh, and it has to be competitive, too.
MyIrelandTour.com
Top Rankings in a super competitive field.
Selling tours online is unbelievably competitive. They are high-value products, with competition who have deep pockets. State-run tourist sites, giant international travel agents, even the big online travel companies are in there.
We fight well above our weight, bringing top rankings year after year, which brings full tour busses and happy people.
TheSkiGathering.com
Wide range of top-ranking keywords
Casting a wide net through a huge range of ranked keywords. A really fun project. Ski holidays for solo travellers. No one keyword will bring in the bacon on its own, so we went for a lot.
The last time we checked, we were #1 in Google.co.uk for “Solo Ski Holidays”. And “Singles Ski Holidays”. And “solo snowboarding holidays“, “learn to ski holidays for singles“, “single person ski holidays“ and “solo ski holidays for beginners“. And many, many more.
No individual keyword was too difficult. The SEO challenge here was being in the top spot for a list of keywords longer than Mr. Tickle’s arms…
How to get our Digital Marketing & SEO skills in your business project
Option 1:
Partnership Scheme
For those in our partnership scheme, we look after everything marketing, digital, SEO and in fact a whole lot more. It’s up to us to make their phone ring and inbox overflow.
Option 2:
Angel Investing
We bring our full expertise with us when we angel invest in companies. We can train you and your team to turn you into full-on digital marketing ninjas. You’ll also have us on hand guide and lead your team as they implement their newfound knowledge & skills.
Not our first rodeo.
When it comes to digital marketing, we’re not experimenting or improvising. Our methods work and we can prove it. We will be very happy to talk to you about our existing partners and how we have been able to turn good ideas into businesses with an annual turnover in the millions.
We are not an agency, we are a business partner. That means we’re only interested in the digital marketing strategies that deliver for the business. And the good news is: we know exactly what they are because we have done it before. See our success stories here…
For us, it’s about getting more sales for you. That’s it.
Lovely prose, slick graphics? Or how about more sales. Digital marketing should be about one thing, improving your bottom line. And we are here to do exactly that. We are business people, after all.
Perception vs. reality
The role of digital marketing in a new business.
Businesses fail for many different reasons. But more often than not it comes down to one thing: they didn’t get the marketing right. No matter how amazing your product is, customers don’t just turn up. Somehow, you have to tell the world that you exist. When it’s done right, digital marketing shows you where your people hang out, and then it gives you a megaphone. And a marching band.
If you talk to a digital marketing agency they will probably tell you that the game has changed. Social media and search engines have changed all the rules forever. Right?
Nope. Controversy alert: the fundamentals of marketing haven’t changed a bit. The rules are the same, only now we have the data to see what really works. We love data.
At SquareFish, we’re not trying to sell you digital marketing agency services. We don’t operate as an agency at all. Instead, we’re making a very simple offer.
If you partner with us, the marketing problem goes away because that’s what we do best. Or if you use our Angel Investment Services then you have our full knowledge at your disposal any time you need it. We have done it many times before and our system works. Even more importantly for you, we have every reason to make a success of it because, just like you, we’re invested in the future of the business.
Our Ground Rules…
SquareFish is not a Digital Marketing Agency. We have no sales team. No BS. We are only interested in real-world marketing tactics that genuinely work for independent businesses. If you partner with us, here are some ground rules we always work to.
No False Promises
No, you cannot keep your website the same AND have your rankings improve. Digital marketing involves change, lots of it.
If you want a website to suddenly perform better without making significant changes, there are plenty of other companies who’ll sell you that service. I’d check how much their nose has grown during the sales call though if I were you.
No claim to have “secret knowledge”
There are no great secrets to climbing Google, no magic code or fairy dust. Everything we know can be googled. (though, in our defence, it might take you a while as there’s a lot of it.)
Awesome digital marketing is about two things: pure focus on the goal, and hard work. Anyone who claims they know the “magic secret” probably has a sideline selling the emperor some new clothes.
No short-lived marketing “tricks”
If we make a mistake with your marketing, your business is in trouble. No pressure then…
There have been countless schemes and tricks over the years in digital marketing. Zero to hero in the blink of an eye, only to be found out and crash right back to zero.
We don’t take risks with our clients’ brands. For us, that means real examples from real businesses, backed up with real data.
Long term. Honest. Tried and testing. Effective.
No Phoney data
We all know that statistics are easily massaged and manipulated. A digital marketing agency has every incentive to skew the numbers in their favour. With us, you’ll be partnering with a team of experts who want to know the real facts so that we can make the best decisions together.
Contact us
As things stand, we are not looking for new partnerships or businesses to invest in. Should this change, we’ll keep you posted here.
Introducing the Entrepreneur’s Resource Hub
Your expertise in your industry is watertight
But, what about everything else a successful entrepreneur needs to know?
If we could give just one tip for new business projects...
Customers buy your marketing, not your product.
Marketing gets people through the door.
When I go to a new coffee shop, I don’t know what the coffee is going to taste like until I take a sip. And by then it’s too late, I’ve already bought it.
So what made me buy it, if not the taste? It’s their marketing.
It’s the same with, well, almost everything. New phone? Holiday? New windows for your house? Service for your company? You don’t get the product until after you’ve committed to the purchase. All you have beforehand to make the decision on is their marketing.
Yes, the odd product will give you a free sample. But what convinces people to try the free sample in the first place?
No, they won’t come on their own.
Businesses fail for many reasons. But more often than not it comes down to one thing: they didn’t give the marketing its due care and attention.
They fall into the “if you built it, they will come” trap. No, they won’t.
How good your product is, does not matter. Not at the start, anyhow. Marketing convinces people to buy. Then if the product and follow-up marketing are awesome, they’ll buy again.
But if your marketing isn’t good enough, they’ll never buy in the first place.
Marketing is now your most important job.
Cards on the table here - we’ve a conflict of interest. So let me emphasise that you don’t have to work with us, or anyone, to make a business project succeed. You can do all your own marketing.
We love talking business and sharing ideas. So even if you’d never consider working with us we’d still love to share the most important tip with you:
Starting a project? Marketing is now your most important job. Success or failure depends entirely on it.