So Let’s Get Started – with a marketing plan

And here we go, having completed a lot of work recently on a revamped Jordan UK website we wanted to achieve 3 things really, firstly was a general website update, then came a Blog and finally a newsletter. All part of the Marketing Plan.

I converted the website from a tables based HTML only website, I had been added CSS over the last couple of years, but this time decided to convert the layout to CSS. The layout remained largely the same, some content was updated and a new header was created for the top. I have not got everything right yet and there is probably a lot more I could do for SEO, but that is the next phase.

The Blog was my first client installation of a Blog, but here was the premise. Newsletter or Blog… .Net Mag answered the question as usual and stated, get your Blog sorted out and the newsletter can then draw off that. So I proposed this to John at Jordan and he has agreed to ‘go for it’. The Blog is to act has his ‘dumping ground’ for stories of interest, news and views from his company and the wider industry.

Now when it comes to the newsletter all that was needed was to take the Blog Stories and highlight them, I was also able to link relevant pages from the Blog and the Main website. We used MyEmma to build and handle the newsletter, I can see why anyone would want to have a bespoke solution for newsletter management and although MyEmma took a little manhandling, I think the result has worked. As more newsletters are written so the format will improve.

I have to add a note here about dealing with these three mediums, for the website this contained the meat of the service and products that Jordan UK offers, I did not want to lose sight of this and everything about the website is aimed at getting people to make that vital first enquiry. The Blog was different, this was more general, snippets, offers, news and I hope in the future more opinion based articles. The newsletter had to be personal, directed at the reader with enough enticement at the top to make the reader read the bottom. Then plenty of links back. Everything ultimately had to be about getting people to make contact with Jordan and expand those sales leads.

The final touch to the whole effort was to make everything look the same, we had followed a centre column design and right hand news column. top nav and so on, so the whole thing was very easy to mimic. I have to add all through the process John from Jordan did not understand what I was doing, but afterwards declared “Now I see, now I understand and it has all come together beautifully”. I let you judge that for yourselves.