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Top 10 Marketing Tips – Numero Uno!

Due to a number of economic factors, the art of Marketing is far more complex than it once was! 

All organisations, large or small, need to regularly ensure they are differentiating themselves from their competitors. To help you achieve that over the coming weeks we’ll be divulging our Top 10 Marketing Tips.

If you work through you should be able to recognise where more focus or change is required for your own business and as such gain more business as a result!

 

NUMBER 1 – Where to put your company name?!?!?!

It may seem like common sense to use as the heading for any marketing materials but this is not the case. Create some intrigue!

Marketing materials generally have just seconds to make an impact and draw potential clients in. As such it may be more pertinent to understand the purpose of your marketing material and focus on that instead, for example, consider the benefit of the product or service, what’s in it for the customer?

Obviously it goes without saying that you still want to include your company name and contact details but once you’ve drawn the individual in then they’ll be wanting to find this information in any case! Don’t necessarily be exhaustive with the contact information – perhaps just include the company name and website for example, in turn this will direct people to your website where you can then communicate further detail accordingly.

As for business literature such as letterheads, compliment slips etc – be different! Perhaps put your logo at the bottom rather than, as usual, at the top. The font size, colour and style are also important but at the same time you want the name to stand out not the font! Perhaps make the company address smaller and in a different font to generate interest.

To conclude, you need to consider the medium you’re designing, the message you want to portray to customers and how you want company’s identity to be perceived.

 

 

We would love to hear what has and hasn’t worked for you and your business – please do get in touch.

Email Marketing, Part 3 – So how much is too much?!

We all have moments where we’ve cursed that repetitive email popping in to our Inbox with an automatic response of hitting the ‘Delete’ button. That’s even without reviewing it’s content! We just know that it will be a waste of our time looking at it – the content isn’t pertinent!

Needless to say no business wants to make their audience have such a response to their communications.

Within our previous Blogs we’ve discussed how to ensure the content of any email marketing campaign remains specific to your clients and also given numerous ideas on types of content. The next thing to consider is the frequency of such emails – what is the right balance? a few points need to be continually considered:

 

  • Historical recipient responses – a good starting point is to analyse previous emails. What was peoples activity? Obviously this may vary by commodity type but a few things to consider are (i) what links were followed, (ii) was there an increase in purchases of a product type as a result.
  • Seasonal variances – is it pertinent to increase/decrease depending upon the time of year i.e. Christmas
  • One size fits all (?!) – perhaps it’s not possible to have a generic ‘one size fits all’ approach to communicating with your audience! Consider whether it’s possible to change the frequency for different segments or reduce emails for the lower responding customers. It might also be possible to give customers the choice on how often they receive such messages

 

This is an ongoing task that needs constant assessment and as such reflected in the email marketing strategy.

Once you’ve assessed your audience’s responses this will assist in finding the right balance between over and under exposure with future emails.

One final point to make is that perhaps this Blog reaches you a little late and you’ve lost the interest of a number of customers already – all is not lost! Perhaps once you have your newly considered email marketing campaign organised it’s worth distributing a re-engagement campaign with an offer.

Ensure your customers understand and appreciate your value by fully considering all the aspects we’ve discussed in this and previous Blogs…lets make sure your email isn’t one of those thrown in to the Trash!

Email Marketing – Part 2…here it is!

In our previous Blog we spoke about how businesses can ensure their email marketing newsletters are specific to their recipients – the last thing any business wants is to be considered as a nuisance and as such lose potential valuable custom!

As well as considering those ideas previously provided in respect to how to manage the content of your newsletters, we wanted to offer some additional thoughts on what type of varying content you could consider inserting in to your newsletters.

  • Advice – much like we find ourselves writing this email marketing blog to help our business associates, why not write some content that will help your clients with relevant problems.
  • Top 10 Tips – why not provide a list of succinct tips that offer help to customers or associates on a product or service. Look out for our own Top 10 Tip list in a forthcoming Blog!
  • You’re the Expert….so why not offer your opinions on relevant news topics, industry developments.
  • Case studies – what projects you’ve recently been working on or perhaps completed. Show images of the work or even obtain recommendations from the client. As well as great advertising for your own business your client gets some free advertising for themselves!
  • “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…” – consider forthcoming holidays and dates and whether able to tailor some content around these such as Easter, school summer holidays, Halloween…..
  • Customer feedback – why not give your customers the opportunity to offer their opinions or feedback. Obviously this is valuable information but could in turn produce some further content.
  • Day in the life…– why not ask a colleague to write a piece about their working day or even interview them.

 

The list above just skims the surface of possibilities but hopefully it will help to build on the commitment of your customers.

Email marketing is all about building relationships so take this information and go and add value to your customers inbox!

Email Marketing – Part 1

How many times throughout the week do you find yourself disappointedly sighing at another nuisance marketing email clogging up your Inbox?!

Why is this though?! Surely you subscribed to receiving these emails from a provider so that you’d be better informed about a product or service or maybe, if you’re lucky, offered some form of discount.

A recent study of such email marketing behaviours, identified that over 60% of people would consider defecting to an alternative brand or even ends a relationship, due to being repetitively sent irrelevant messages.

So how do businesses ensure they keep their marketing email content relevant to retain subscribers and keep them loyal to their brand?

There are numerous actions businesses should consider such as:

  • Proactive content management – everyone that works for your company should constantly, as part of their day-to-day activities, consider whether something is pertinent to the businesses email newsletter. If so, detail should be stored in a suitable folder for future use. This gives an increased volume and more diverse type of content.
  • Who’s listening to you? – after sending out a newsletter you should have access to a report detailing what recipients responded to i.e. what links were clicked, which parts of the website were visited the most. All this gives valuable information on what readers are most interested in.
  • Be nosey! – what are your competitors up to? Why not sign up to their newsletters. Food for thought!
  • Social media – what are the forums, LinkedIn groups, networking sites, competitor’s blogs all saying about your business, products, services or even sector? What topics are generating interest with your client base?
  • Drive traffic to your Social media channels – use emails to engage and build relationships with your closest contacts ie clients and suppliers who are on your outlook contact database. Easy to export and set up.

 

In conclusion it’s all about ensuring your content is relevant and up to date with latest news.

So now you understand how to ensure your content is focused what sort of content can you consider?  ….another Blog to follow shortly…

Go…Go….Go!!!!! GOOGLE + now open to ALL

Everybody got their trainers on…..if you haven’t then you’re never going to keep up!!!

How on earth are businesses expected to keep up with the constantly changing Social Media environment – unless you subscribe and have the time to read all the associated editorials or have a dedicated service provider to give you the heads up it’s going to prove pretty tough!

Everyone is talking about Google+ and it being the fastest growing launch of any social network. It has attracted approximately 10 million users in the first 2 weeks!!! In contrast Facebook took 2 years to achieve the same figure!

But what is it?!?!

Basically, Google+ is an amalgamation of several services we already use. The idea, according to Google, is to do them better. For example, rather than the one-to-one video call which Facebook are to rollout and Skype already covers Google+ will allow a group video call with numerous colleagues or friends (interestingly Mark Zuckerberg protested that one-to-one communication will still be the most popular use of live chat!) or you can drag-and-drop people in to “Circles” which makes it easier to share or connect with these “Circles” via video or a mobile phone app.

To find out more have a look at this quick video the Loving Social Media team have produced, giving you a brief overview.

http://www.lovingsocialmedia.co.uk/wp/2011/09/how-to-use-google-plus/

Social Media – 'How To' Guide

Yeah, yeah, yeah….Social Media – we all know how it’s done don’t we? What’s all the fuss about – surely we all utilise the tools for our own personal means so just transfer the same methodology to marketing our businesses, yes?

NO!

Let’s just take a step back – the last thing any of us want to do is damage the reputation of our business by not fully considering all aspects of social media and how this fits with our current business plan. Unless we have a thorough strategy for how we are to implement social media we will never be able to benefit from it’s promotional attributes.

Too many businesses jump in the deep end and set up accounts on all technologies only to then realise they need to take initial and subsequent time to create content which reflects their business and it’s brand! In addition it will become transparent that perhaps the audience they’re communicating with isn’t appropriate for the development of their business.

Social media requires planning just like any other part of a business or project but there’s no need to be afraid! There’s an acronym created by Forrester Research (http://www.forrester.com/rb/research) which can help structure your approach:

  • People. Review your target customer’s social behaviours and attitudes.
  • Objectives. Decide on your social technology goals.
  • Strategy. Determine how your objectives will change your relationship with customers.
  • Technology. Choose the appropriate technologies to deploy.

By following this approach you’ll be able identify and build upon your ideal client base/networks and cut through all the fog that could potentially hold you up in achieving your social media marketing goals. 

Go get them!

So what’s all this fuss about Social Media?!

Obviously we all know and understand the benefits from a personal perspective but how does this differ from the point of view of marketing and as such expanding our own businesses?

In a nutshell – It doesn’t!

The main objective of keeping our contacts informed, whether personal or business orientated, is exactly the same…although obviously thought in respect to the content and the management of time in creating a message needs further consideration!

So how much additional time do we need to magically make appear in to our working week to reap the rewards? Now, where’s that wand of mine!

In a recent Social Media Marketing Report where over 3000 professional marketers were questioned, it was found that a significant 88% indicated that their social media efforts had increased exposure for their business by way of:

  • Increasing traffic and subscribers to their sites,
  • Increasing their search engine rankings,
  • Generating qualified leads to do business

…to name just a few! The main benefit of all of the above also demonstrated that overall marketing expenses actually decreased by utilising this method of business exposure!

So to achieve such results, ‘how much time?’ I hear you yell!

From those polled, a significant 58% use social media for 6 or more hours per week and 34% for 11 or more hours! In addition, those marketers that have used social media for longer are inclined to invest more time and as such fully understand the benefits that can be achieved!

So how much time do you spend on marketing your business via Social Media? Why not let us know what works for you.

What is happening to our high street?! Not more boarded up shops!

Since the beginning of the year we have seen a slow trickle of UK companies go in to administration such as Oddbins or Focus DIY but over the last week we have had a culmination of additional companies throwing in the towel, such as Habitat and Moben/Dolphin, or some making a last ditch attempt by slashing it’s exposure and changing it’s business direction, such as Thorntons or Jane Norman.

Obviously hard-up shoppers struck by increased taxes, pay freezes and the fear of redundancy are re-evaluating their spending and affecting retail sales. However, is there another approach these previously successful retail companies could have taken to increasing their customer base?

From 20 years of experience in the retail industry I believe the answer is YES. Amongst other marketing solutions including reviewing the look of in store environments, selling equipment, POS and visual merchandising, one of the key aspects would be Social Media. This can be seen by some of the thriving modern businesses succeeding in this challenging market such as ASOS, JD Sports Net-a-Porter, Bang & Olufsen or Marks and Spencer, who have embraced their customers’ needs for receiving up-to-date, refreshing and pertinent information about their offerings via social media channels. They each have vibrant and specific Facebook pages that communicate to clients current snippets of commodity specific information i.e. what’s hot and not, latest new products, new store openings, promotional offers (some exclusive), Sale items….In addition the customers can also personally comment and share their own thoughts. Isn’t great when someone else “Bigs up” your product or service.

Foursquare would also have an amazing effect on engagement with shoppers, giving retailers the ability to communicate their offers and spread the word virally and very quickly. Who would be Mayor of the Flagship store of Marks and Spencer, Next, Prada and the small local high street fashion boutique or even the local Good Looking Optics Opticians?

Videos of product demonstrations and “how to use….” or how to put together outfits from latest collections for that special occasion, uploaded on You Tube would demonstrate a company that is there to help, and would be seen as the fountain of knowledge. Not mention how they would help in Search Engine Optimisation of the company’s website.

So could Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, Foursquare, Linked In, Blogs….and the rest of the social media channels have helped some of our well known high street names? Would it have given them an opportunity to engage through an additional touch point of their brand?

What do you think? Please let us know your thoughts.

Why we should say more than just “Hello”!

In an increasingly crowded Social Media space, how can we stand out from the masses?

Let’s set the scene – You’re at a networking event and as such in a room full of potential clients or business associates. Would you ever be ignored upon approaching an individual to create or build upon a new relationship?! (I’d hope not!)

The Social Media space should be used with the same personal approach and etiquette as with any other face-to-face relationship.

We’ve all done it – received or sent a request to link up and simply utilised the generic text provided by the website…but why!?!

Every avenue of communication on social media should be personalised to make each connection want to engage and talk to you. For example, don’t just approve connection requests – take the time to personally respond to the individual and perhaps ask questions about the person or their business, reiterate where you originally met or refer to a mutual associate. This may sound menial but little things carried out on a regular basis can sometimes prove to be the most powerful!

Obviously it takes time to develop relationships but by adding that personal touch and taking the time to build this into our daily social media activities we can make sure we are remembered for being someone worthy of referring to.

So let’s take the time to say more than just ‘Hello’ to our new connections and stand out from the crowd by developing these online networks.

What do you think? We would love to hear your comments, so please let us know.