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Blog posts tagged strategy
Ten signs that you could do with strategic marketing advice
February 01, 2012
There are hundreds of potential marketing advisors for a small business owner. From design agencies, PR specialists, telemarketers, SEO experts, social media bods, media planners, and on, and on. It’s difficult to know who to talk, when and why.
Here are ten signs that you could do with some proper strategic marketing input:
- You’re not 100% sure where new business actually comes from – how do they find your site? What prompts them to pick up the phone, etc?
- You’ve done some work with an agency, but you weren’t too chuffed with the output – what was the brief?
- You get lots of leads, but they don’t seem to convert – what is the sales journey, and how well supported is it with powerful marketing content?
- You get enquiries for work that you don’t really like doing – is your business clear about what it does best?
- You’re always screwed down on price – does your brand and messaging set your business apart?
- When asked what your business does, your people all say something different – is your team clear on what you’re about?
- You rarely get repeat business or referrals – is your customer marketing and networking strategy creating advocates for your business?
- If one big customer left you’d be in trouble – is your business over reliant on one customer, or one market?
- You’ve tried telemarketing, PR, advertising or another tactic and it hasn’t delivered – do you have an integrated plan with momentum that all fits together and ties into your sales process?
- You’ve read the books and been to some courses – do you know that you need to give marketing some attention, but never quite get around to it when you’re back at the office?
These are all real scenarios that we’ve heard from small business owners in the last 18 months. Small businesses often make do with a ‘marketing-come-reception’ set-up, working with the marketing suppliers run by friends of friends, or the people down the road. And, there’s nothing wrong with that…if you know exactly what you’re doing on the marketing front. If you have an effective strategy clearly mapped-out, and a good grasp of the interplay of the key marketing tactics, you can indeed put together a top notch freelance team to deliver against your sales and marketing objectives. If, however, you’re feeling your way through the discipline, working it out as you go, then you’ll probably find that each supplier you speak to seems to sound pretty sensible.
You may struggle to find your way through all the ‘good ideas’ that they come up with to configure a watertight marketing operation that supports every step of your sales funnel.
In larger organisations it’s the job of the marketing director to pull all this together. Coming in on salaries upwards of £65k, most small business owners we meet simply can’t afford to have a hard-hitting marketing director on their team. So, what do you do? If you find yourself nodding in recognition at any of the statements above, it would be sensible to find yourself a strategic marketing partner who can be your marketing brain – working out what you need to say, to whom, when and through what channel.
- Bryony Thomas is an expert contributor to Marketing Donut and a marketing consultant, speaker, and author. Her first book – Watertight Marketing – is available Summer 2012.
Cuts, cuts, cuts - but cut your marketing budget at your peril.
August 11, 2010
The media is full of one story – Government cuts. NHS cuts. City council cuts. All sorts of cuts! In times like these your marketing budget may feel like a luxury and history shows that in an economic downturn, the top of the list of cuts for businesses is marketing. But cut your marketing budget at your peril. Here’s why:
We live in a competitive environment. Brands are competing for attention like never before. Cut your marketing budget and your impact on your target audience will reduce significantly, if not die out because you’ll be swallowed by competitive.
It takes seven touches to move from being unknown into conscious awareness. Let’s use the example of Swirl Printers.
1. Potential client stumbles across the Swirl website from a Google search. They opt in to their e-newsletter.
2. They later receive the Swirl e-newsletter.
3. Then they see a Swirl advert.
4. At a networking event potential client meets a Swirl representative. Potential client takes a Swirl leaflet promo.
5. Potential client comes across the Swirl leaflet promo a few days later and places it in a draw for safe keeping.
6. Another Swirl e-newsletter reminds them of the leaflet promo in the drawer.
7. They visit the website and can quickly find further information on the promo (reinforcing the leaflet). The telephone number is easy to spot and they take action.
Without a marketing budget Swirl Printers would not have had the website, e-newsletter, advert, the representative at the networking event or the leaflet promo.
The seven touch theory also relates to the process of increasing brand awareness. Through those seven touches, Swirl Printers increased their brand awareness to their potential customer. Educating your target audience about your brand takes place through a similar progression of drip fed communications. You’ve got to speak to your target audience frequently so they do not forget your brand.
In a downturn marketing it is even more important than it was before! It is now more than ever that you want to attract customers. Therefore you need to communicate. Since many people stop marketing in a down turn, if you keep it up, or even increase it, you will be at an advantage.
I’m not talking about a million pound budget! I’m suggesting you cover the basics and do it well. You need a simple but effective website that is up to date; some information you can give out on request such as a promo leaflet, booklet or e-mailable PDF; exposure in the form of adverts or articles in relevant magazines, on or off-line; and if your target audience is other businesses then keep networking.
And then there’s the free stuff. They demand some of your time but they do wonders to raise your profile if you add value and are consistent. Use Twitter; blog regularly; get on LinkedIn; write and post articles and press releases; and, offer to speak at relevant events.
These are just a few hints and tips. Don’t follow the trend of cuts, cuts and more cuts. Rather invest in your marketing wisely.
Top six tips to better business blogging
July 30, 2010
OK, so you’re blogging away, producing content regularly and starting to enjoy the writing process.
Visitor numbers are rising, albeit slowly, and you’re starting to deliver useful content. But something isn’t quite right, something doesn’t add up. There’s still a stilted edge about your blogging, something mechanical and clunky. Want to know what it is?
It’s probably due to my Number One of these quick six tips to better business blogging. If it resonates, you know you’ve got some changing to do. Nothing worse than that niggling internal voice telling you to change what you’re doing. Here goes:
1. Be authentic
Lose the corporate, parental, unemotional writing style. It’s dull, boring and your readers won’t engage. Try dropping your barriers and opening up. Write with passion, authenticity. Listen to yourself.
2. Be confident
There’s nothing worse than a safe, anodyne, sterile blog. Open up, be confident in your knowledge and expertise. Now share it!
3. Be challenging
Do you accept everything you see, read or hear? No? Thought not. So challenge what you see, hear and read out there, too. And highlight your challenging nature in your blog. Ask questions to make your readers stop and think. You can challenge anything.
4. Be humble
Not sure what this means? For me, it means there will always be better, smarter, faster, richer people blogging out there. And I am grateful that they share their mistakes, so I don’t have to make the same ones. Be humble for the wise old coots who exist.
5. Be funny
Nothing worse than a corporate blog which is totally devoid of humour. Boardroom bores. The antidote? Try humour, flex your funny bone, and engage with some witty banter online. Lightness, fun, and frivolity can get powerful messages across very well.
6. Be passionate
Are you passionate about your areas of expertise? Yes? Well, why hide it? Too many business blogs are devoid of passion. With so much competition out there, one of the best ways to stand out is to demonstrate your passion. Get emotional. Fight your corner.
Extra tip: just to keep you on your toes. Final nugget – ignore the critics, cynics and emotional drains in business. They are too many to count.
Wish them well, ask the gods that be for their success and happiness, and send them on their way. Ignore it and focus on the positive elements to your blogging instead.
There will always be a critic in the background. Usually an unhappy one.
- This article orignally appeared at BristolEditor.co.uk
Ten ways to create great blog content
July 07, 2010
I’ve long been an advocate of the power of blogging, but when you’re posting three times a week – or even trying to muster up something original once a week – it can be hard to consistently create compelling content for your blog posts.
We all have ‘off’ days, times when the creative juices aren’t flowing. Sometimes finding different, interesting and useful content to share on a blog proves tricky. With that in mind, here are ten ways to consistently create great blog content:
1. Re-visit your blogging legacy
Have a look through your previous posts – are there any blogs you can add a second part to, an update, additional content?
2. Read through the last 24 hours Home feed on your Twitter account
Reviewing the last day on your Twitter Home feed usually delivers a few good blog ideas or content themes to explore.
3. What are you doing at the moment – share the love
Discuss things you’re working on at the moment: projects, new client work, challenges, success, lessons learnt. Add value.
4. Check the blogosphere
Look at what bloggers are posting and expand their debates – this is a great way to further link into the blog community, too.
5. Become a source of exclusive information
Are you a thought-leader in your commercial space? No? Become one. Add exclusive content in your area of expertise.
6. Ask for help
Speak to your clients, colleagues and trusted network associates about what interests them. Ask for their help in creating content.
7. Do market research
Get online and see what your competitors are talking about. Then write something better on the same subject. Add insight.
8. Get passionate
If you have strong beliefs or proven methods around a commercial subject, share it. Share your passion. Readers love this.
9. Remain teachable
Ask your readers what they want to see. Start a survey, ask your audience what they value. Create statistical value.
10. Start with the end in mind
Remember why you’re blogging – think back to your earliest blog posts and recall what sparked you to start blogging. Share it.
- This article orignally appeared at BristolEditor.co.uk
What shape is your marketing budget?
June 30, 2010
The questions I most often get asked about marketing budgets are:
- How much should I spend as a percentage of turnover?
- Should I benchmark against competitors?
- How much shall I spend on each discipline (PR, DM, Events, Ads, etc.)?
All totally reasonable questions… but what you should be asking is: what shape should my marketing budget be? Seriously, it is the most important question there is on the budgeting front. So, let me tell you what I mean.
A decent marketing programme is centred on a sales funnel, onto which you’ve mapped the decision making process for your target audience. (see previous posts Making Marketing Pay, and What to Say When).
Fig1: Chart to show the influence of marketing spend across the sales funnel
From this you can put together a programme of activity that moves a person from awareness to a sale. Each marketing technique has a different level of influence at each stage of this process. You need to determine the level of influence at each stage, then apportion this across the funnel.
There are a few ways to decide the amount of influence each technique has:
- Workshop with the sales and marketing team to agree the apportionment
- Surveys or focus groups amongst new customers to get them to assess what they saw at each stage (this can be tricky, as people often post-rationalise decision-making, meaning that emotional triggers are downplayed)
- A best guess (hey, we’ve all got to start somewhere)
- A combination of all of the above.
From this exercise you now have a powerful tool for designing programmes and allocating budget. Now analyse your budget in the same way:
- Split your spend into each technique
- Apportion this spend as per the influence amount you’ve worked out for that technique (for example, if you worked out that PR has 40% influence at awareness, 10 per cent at interest, etc. your spend on PR should be tabulated to reflect that)
- You now have an actual shape for your budget
Compare your actual budget shape to the ideal budget shape you’ve established to maintain a free-flowing sales funnel. This allows you assess where you’re spending too much or too little, and to adjust your spend according to the funnel requirements.
Now, if you have a budget cut, or find a pot of cash, you again have a powerful tool to decide how to adjust your spending. The crucial factor here is to maintain the shape. So, rather than cutting a project that happens to be the right level of spend, you can cut evenly across the funnel ensuring that you’re not leaving any gaps.
- Article originally appeared on Clear-Thought.co.uk
Do you “own” your niche in the market?
June 07, 2010
There’s an important, and often overlooked, correlation between the strength of your brand strategy and the effectiveness of your marketing activity. In other words, people who have defined their niche in the market and communicate that consistently find it much more cost effective to market their businesses than those that don’t.
Have you defined your niche yet? It’s pretty simple. You look at what you’re good at, what you want to be known for and what your clients love about you. Then you look at what your competitors are doing, and what they’re known for or good at. Ideally, there will be a nice slot for you somewhere that you can occupy: your niche.
Let me give you an example. A client of ours makes widgets. Those widgets are beautifully designed and expertly made in the UK. She’s utterly detail focused and so that’s the niche she’s chosen to occupy: high quality and great design. Over the past couple of years she’s found that a lot of competitors have sprung up around her, many of which are outright copying her designs. A fair few have copied her marketing design, too – her website, brochures, etc. And because she’s been on maternity leave, she’s understandably let the communication slide. She’s slipped into a nasty situation where they’re all jostling in the same marketplace for the same clients. It’s easy to get cross and upset about this, but ultimately she’s got to “own” her space and that should fend them off. They’re not all offering the same product, hers are higher quality and she leads the field in design, so by making sure she communicates where her niche is, she can quickly and cost effectively get things back on track.
So how do you go about owning your niche in the market?
Once you’re happy that you are really occupying a “niche” (because there’s no point in directly competing with your competitors) then you need to keep that niche at the centre of everything you do. By that I mean sitting down, and actually mapping out what you’re going to do to communicate your brand position. That could be that you create “engaging brand identities and powerful marketing campaigns that help people grow their businesses”; it might be that you’re the “UK’s leading colour consultancy” or that you’re a “gardener with knowledge”.
Once you’ve defined this, map out what marketing activity you’re going to undertake to communicate this. This is such a powerful thing to do because not only will you save money (ie, you won’t be tempted by that last minute “deal” in the local newspaper to take a full page advert), you’ll also find that your marketing is a whole lot more effective because your target market will be attracted to what you do; and they’ll “get” it much faster because throughout the year you’ve been talking to them consistently. So how do you do this?
Well you find activities that will support this, and you also make sure that at every opportunity you’re reinforcing and re-communicating your brand strategy. In other words, you stay focused. Many small businesses make life difficult for themselves because they fail to carve themselves out a niche, and once they’ve got that, they rarely communicate that niche via their marketing activity.
I’m going to visit a potential client this afternoon who owns a children’s shop. This is an enormously competitive marketplace to be in: you’re competing with the multi-million pound marketing budgets of the likes of JoJo Maman Bebe, Gap and Monsoon. You can compete on a smaller scale, but you’ve got to be focused.
Once we’ve worked out what her niche is, we need to communicate that in everything she does. She already has a plan to run a competition (fantastic idea!) but she’s got to be clear on what the style of the shop is and who her target market are. She needs to make sure that when the winners’ photo shoot happens it’s done in a location that supports her brand strategy and that will appeal to her ideal client. And all the design of the entry forms and adverts needs to look instantly engaging and attractive to her audience. Once she has these photos, she needs to use them in a way that backs up her niche and makes the most of them – and that’s just one piece of marketing that she needs to think about!
“Owning” your niche is hard work. It takes focus, determination and, frankly, some investment of your time, if not your money and someone else’s time, up front. But it WILL pay off. You’ll find that you spend less time and money in the long term on marketing that doesn’t work; and you’ll also find that your marketing is much, much more effective for it.
Fiona Humberstone of Flourish
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