2. Identify your “fall-out”

3. Don’t save pennies at the expense of pounds

4. Back to basics

5. Prepare for the press

Below are this month’s top 5 marketing tips – simple tips to help you improve the effectiveness of your marketing.  If you would like to discuss these in any more detail with a marketing consultant please call 0113 2008766.

1. Turn yourself “Outside In” –  What I mean by this is that the vast majority of businesses look at things “Inside-Out” – they look first at what works best for them as a business and then look at how they can shape it to work for the customer.  This is all wrong.  The most successful businesses first look at what works best for the customer and then works out how they can achieve this to the mutual benefit of the business.  This could be across a range of different parameters such as convenience, price, process, or even the actual product itself.  The “Inside-Out” model is often heightened when there is a middle-man involved in the process – such as a retailer or reseller.  You need to make sure that you are making that middle-man’s life as easy as possible.  So next time you identify an issue that is affecting the customer experience or the middle-man, don’t just look at what is in the best interests operationally or financially to your business.  Address the issue and then solve the problem of how your business can work around a solution.  Apple have built their whole business around the “Outside In” philosophy – identifying the customer’s need and wants and then working out how they can create the solution!

2. Identify your “Fall-Out” – Are you converting all of your enquiries into paying customers?  Of course you aren’t, which means that somewhere in your sales process – from initial enquiry to the point of purchase, your prospective customers are “falling out” the pipeline.  The first thing you need to do to radically improve sales within your business is to identify that “fall-out” point and understand why. If there is a clear pattern in terms of where prospects are leaving the process then there is clearly an issue to address.  View like Google Analytics on your website.  If your stats are telling you that 75% of visitors are not browsing past your homepage – then there is something obviously wrong with your homepage.  If 60% of those people who add products to the basket then leave the site when they payment details are asked for, perhaps they do not trust your site for some reason?  Moving offline again and talking about any sales process, the solution could be very simple – you may be leaving too long between follow-ups, you may be too aggressive in your follow-ups, you may not be providing enough compelling information for them to make the decision to buy?  Whatever it is, take the time to analyse it and identify where it is happening so you can work out how to address it.  A simple resolution could have a massive impact on your conversion rates!

3. Don’t save pennies at the expense of pounds - I hate Vistaprint.  There, I have said it.  When someone gives me a Vistaprint business card I feel a bit sad, empty and cold.  I can’t really explain why but the papery flimsiness of the card, the less than vibrant print quality, the lack of effort.  It turns me off of a business immediately.  Does this mean I am a bit shallow?  I don’t know – maybe I am a business card snob? But if I am, there will also be lots of other people out there who are as well, who could be your potential customers.  I know you can get 250 cards for about £1 from Vistaprint but how much business are they going to cost you?  Imagine there are two start-ups offering exactly the same product. Start-Up ABC gets 250 Vistaprint cards at a cost of £1 and Start-Up XYZ gets 250 quality cards printed by a reputable quality local printer for £65.  Initially company ABC thinks they are “ahead of the game” as he has his business cards and has only laid out £1.  Both companies go networking to the same events and both of them distribute all of their cards.  Mr Vistaprint generates 1 client as a result of his networking – and guess what? His client is the cheapskate who wants to pay under the asking price for Company ABC’s Service and spends around £350 with them (because he looked cheap).  Meanwhile company XYZ generates 5 new clients who each spend £500 with him.  The net result….Company ABC generates £349 profit (not accounting for the networking costs), Company XYZ generates £2435 profit.  The thing is that this sort of behaviour can be applied to many areas of marketing your business – a £50 logo from India, a badly photocopied Microsoft Word generated leaflet campaign, a £100 website from your neighbour’s son’s best friend.  It goes on all of the time and it is a false economy.  Don’t view these things as a cost….they are an investment into your business!

4. Don’t be afraid to go back to basics – Most business are cyclical and the lifecycles of businesses tend to be quite similar – albeit over varying timescales.  When a business starts up, the business owner puts all of their effort into perfecting their proposition.  Once perfected, they launch and, if they have done a reasonable job with their marketing plan, they will win a few clients.  If they have a quality proposition then they will then start to grow the business through repeat business and word of mouth.  The business owner will then start to identify different revenue generating opportunities and their eyes light up.  Before you know it the company has doubled or trebled in size and so has its product range.  A few years pass and the company starts to falter and move backwards a little.  Sales have dried up and it is finding it difficult, for the first time, to win new clients.  This is the point when you need to pause and take an “outsiders” perspective on your business.  What is your offering?  Is it clear?  Or has it been lost in the all noise of the other products and services you bolted on to your core offering (which was what your business was built on)?  You see 9 times out of 10 that original core offering will still be the same core of the business – however it is no longer being effectively communicated.  Don’t be afraid to strip back the “added value” noise from your communications and go back to basics.  You can still offer these other products and services – you just don’t lead with them.  Imagine that each product or service is a brightly coloured ball of plasticine.  On their own they are eye-catching, mix them all together and they turn…….brown! Some of the biggest companies in the world have fallen foul of this….and I can think of a few currently who are making the same mistakes.

5. Prepare for the press? – Most companies love to be in the public eye – they love to get column inches in the local press or appear on the radio.  All publicity is good publicity, right? Wrong.  Good publicity is good publicity.  Bad publicity is bad publicity.  If you have identified that PR is an area that is a crucial part of your marketing strategy then please invest in the services of a good PR company.  As with Tip 3, don’t just try and do it yourself.  The reason being is that media is a huge animal and unless you are correctly prepared in how to deal with them and speak to them, it could all go horribly wrong!  I remember in my first job, freshly graduated, as a marketing executive of a printing company, I was doing the PR in-house and trying to raise the profile of the business.  During this period our parent company decided to merge another division with us and the printing press got wind of the move and rang me (as opposed to the parent company) to find out what the strategy behind the move was – only they had found about it before even the staff knew somehow.  So when I innocently said “I don’t know” an article got published that made out the new division’s future (and staff) was in doubt.  What I should have said is that “I will find the correct answer out for you and ring you back” or “I will get a director of the group to call you back”.  You have to be prepared for questions in a certain way otherwise the press can turn a positive story on its head.  A good PR company will either train you fully on how to deal with the media or in some cases they will become the voice of the company! Either way it is a better option than becoming the next Gerald Ratner!

According to Harvard Business School, Word of Mouth marketing is the most effective form of marketing.  You can see why this is so – we all like to be recommended a company before we take the plunge.  I bet every single person who reads this blog has had a terrible experience with a company that they “took a punt on”.  One of the reasons why I can state that with confidence is that, as a country, we have an appalling attitude to customer service.  Excellent customer service is actually the exception in the UK – and when we experience an excellent job done we are more than happy to share our experience (especially if provided at good price).

Therefore, it makes sense, that as business owners we should have a strategy for utilising word of mouth marketing in our business.  Now “networking” is usually associated with the spread of positive word of mouth and can be a very useful marketing tool for any business but there are a few key elements to doing this properly – otherwise you will find that networking becomes an expensive waste of time (almost in a ninja-like way).  Here is my 5 point checklist to ensure that you are networking in a way that is going to benefit your business.

• Ensure you have clarity over your proposition – can you convey the value you add to clients succinctly within seconds?  After all if people don’t get what you do – how can they refer you?

• Are you networking in the right place?  There are a host of networking events – some specialised, some restricted by category, some a free for all.  Make sure you are mixing with the right people!  It only takes 1 visit to an event to assess the quality of people.  Avoid serial networkers – these are the energy sapping leaches that will put you off for life.  You know the ones – they cross you palm with a business card with seconds of meeting them!  You don’t need a fortune teller to tell the sort of person they are!

• If you are networking via organised events, (which isn’t always necessarily the best way for you or your business), make sure you are happy with the event format.  Some are like speed dating, some are more social events, some are referral driven and focussed on generating business.  Work out what it is you want and also enjoy.

• Are you trying to help/connect people?  That, after all, is what a network is.   Good people will always try and reciprocate.  You will get to a place where you can be very selective on whom you actually meet up with.  Assess who introduces you to the best people and build closer relationships with them, and people like them.  Keep in touch – don’t just become a business card (in a drawer).

• Track what you are giving and getting, from which events and from whom.  Do more of what is working and ditch what isn’t.

If you fail to follow the above points – networking will not work for you.  All you will be doing is having lots of cups of coffee with people who are going to sap your time and energy.  You will find the whole process exhausting, time consuming and misleadingly expensive (when you take into account how many business hours you are devoting to it).

If you follow the above pointers, networking can be a really effective way of marketing your business.  Personally, networking (and in particular BNI), has been a critical element in my own marketing activity to both launch and establish my business (and still is).  Some people will tell you networking doesn’t work – that is rubbish.  They are just not doing it properly (and there are a lot of those people).

One of the key elements to consider when communicating to your target audience is which are the right channels and media to choose.  Get this wrong and your whole investment into a specific campaign is likely to go up in smoke.  It doesn’t matter if you have an award winning creative campaign, if it is not reaching the right audience it will not achieve anywhere near the maximum potential returns.

The first element is to understand who your target audience are.  What do they look like, what do they like doing, what papers or magazines do they read, what TV programmes do they watch, what websites do they visit, what shops so they visit etc?

Long gone are the days when you could place an advert on ITV and know you were communicating to roughly a third of the population.  Technology and media has moved at an incredible pace over the last 30 years.  I can remember the excitement of when we got a fourth TV channel (only to be extremely disappointed – with the exception of Countdown and Italian Football).  Today I couldn’t even tell you how many TV channels I can access from my home – I would imagine there is close to 100?  What’s more I rarely watch a programme when it is on – meaning I can whizz through the adverts via Sky+ (although there are suggestions subliminal marketing is at work here!).

In addition we now have more radio stations than ever before thanks to the evolution of digital broadcasting, the internet, mobile phones, apps for phones and tablets, iPods, Kindles and I don’t even need to go to the paper shop anymore to get the daily paper!

However all of this change is good news for marketing – and I don’t mean for the marketing industry I mean for you marketing your business.  You can now be more targeted than ever before.  If you want to target 18-25 year old females who enjoy clubbing – there is a selection of specific media you can use to reach them.  If you want to target sport loving middle aged men – again they are easy to reach!

The good news is that you no longer need to take a scattergun approach to marketing – if you know who you target market is you can use a sniper rifle.

One last comment on media is that now is the time to invest in marketing.  With the doom and gloom engulfing the world around recessions and national debts you can actually get a much better deal on your media buying opportunities.  Couple this with the fact that there is less noise in the marketplace (as less competitors are active) and that you can ensure the right audience is seeing your message (less wastage),  the net result is that marketing has never been more cost effective!

Loyalty is an important element of any marketing strategy for any business – and comes in various guises, depending on the type of business model you are operating.

How important are your clients to the continued success of your business?  It seems like a ridiculous question, because it is obvious that clients are the lifeblood of any business.  Without customers you simply do not have a business, just an expensive hobby that won’t last very long as you will eventually run out of money (unless you are Roman Abramovich).

Unfortunately, many businesses view marketing purely as a function that generates client interest and then feeds enquiries into the pipeline for the sales team to then convert.  There is no doubt that this is one element of the role that marketing plays.  However, once a prospect has been converted into client it doesn’t stop there.  There should then be a huge marketing effort to build a relationship with that client in order to foster loyalty to your brand and company.

You may have heard before that it can cost 6-7 times more to attract a new client than to generate the same revenue from an existing client.  What is more, maintaining an existing customer is much easier and requires less effort!  The key is to making the customer feel like a valued client and then fostering brand loyalty within them.

This can be achieved in a variety of ways:

• Service excellence – create such an awesome customer experience that they will never desire to go anywhere else.  This is an essential component whether it is a low value, regular purchase type of business or a high value, infrequent purchase.

• Loyalty rewards – this is financially incentivising the customer to stay loyal through schemes like loyalty cards or member schemes.  If you are truly offering service excellence this method shouldn’t be needed but it works particularly well when trying to get your clients into an “autopilot” habit – i.e coffee shops, supermarkets, petrol stations etc.

• Price – offering existing clients a reduced renewal deal.  Unfortunately most businesses get this wrong, such as insurance companies, financial services and utilities, offering the best prices for first time clients – and then putting the price up in year 2 (which then drives them away).  Madness – a lesson in how not to foster loyalty.

• Recognition – purely showing clients’ that their custom is truly valued and appreciated.

Loyalty is the hidden goldmine of marketing.  Your existing clients hold the business growth that your company is seeking and it is right under your nose.  If you can foster loyalty you will benefit from repeat purchases, frequency of purchases (potentially), added value purchases, cross selling of products and a solid foundation from which to base your marketing strategy.  What’s more, if they become true brand ambassadors (they really love you) they will do your marketing communications for you – which has become even easier and more powerful with the recent social media boom!

2. Avoid Overkill

3. Don’t Tweet for the sake of it

4. Educate to sell (Don’t sell to sell)

5. Understand Why?

Below are this month’s top 5 marketing tips – simple tips to help you improve the effectiveness of your marketing.  If you would like to discuss these in any more detail with a marketing consultant please call 0113 2008766.

1. Content is King –  For those of us who rely on their online presence to drive enquiries for their business, a major paradigm shift is currently happening in the way Google is ranking websites.  Firstly, don’t panic.  It is a good thing – and will improve Google as a search engine.  Secondly it is good news for the smaller businesses with smaller budgets as it will provide a much more level playing field – meaning that throwing thousands of pounds at search engine optimisation won’t particularly help you.  Google is placing much less emphasis on links into your site and placing much more emphasis on content.  Content is truly going to be king, as it always should have been.  What this means, as website owners, is that we just need to ensure that we focus our efforts and attentions on building lots of relevant content in line with the search phrases we want to be found for.  What’s more,  it needs to be unique – there is little point in just plagiarising someone else’s copy.  Unique and relevant content (and plenty of it) is going to be the way to get to the top of Google.  Blogs and social media platforms are going to play a greater role in SEO.   Basically those businesses who can display that they actually know what they are talking about and provide useful information to their website visitors are the ones who will prosper.  Those companies who have created monster sites with pages and pages of rubbish and duplicated content and thousands of links will soon be feeling the wrath of Google.

2. Avoid Overkill – Are there companies that annoy you?  I mean really annoy you?  Have you ever ordered, opened an account, or even just shared your data with a company that then sees this as an opportunity to pester you to death with emails and phone calls?  Who likes being sold to? They are generally a few weirdo’s who do enjoy it but the majority of us don’t (unless the timing is perfect).  Unfortunately because email marketing is a relatively cheap way of communicating with your database – this medium gets abused.  Your contact database does not want to hear from you twice a week – particularly if the content is not very useful or engaging!  If you are just putting sales messages in front of your database – just ease off before you risk overkill.  Not only will your database start getting smaller and smaller,  as people opt out and unsubscribe, but you are also in danger of building up a negative reputation for your brand – the exact opposite of what you are trying to do.  Take a step back and evaluate the situation.  What are you selling?  How often is it acceptable to speak to you target audience?  If you were a customer what would you like to receive and how often?  Don’t annoy your prospect and customer database – you should treat them like royalty, not a marketing number!

3. Don’t Tweet for the Sake of it – Twitter has become a social media phenomenon over the last 3 years.  Initially viewed as a platform for the sad and lonely who wanted  to know what type of jam their celebrity idols were spreading on their toast, the medium has grown to become a useful tool for many businesses.  For larger organisations it can play a key role in monitoring and responding to customer comments about their brand.  For smaller companies it provides a platform through which you demonstrate your expertise in a particular field.  In addition, for very small businesses, where the business owner is directly linked to the brand – it enables followers to get an insight into your personality and values.  However, like with the majority of marketing channels, some people are using Twitter just for the sake of being on Twitter.  There is little strategy behind their activity and all that is happening is that their tweets are consuming hours of their time and delivering little return.  Before you start devoting time to Twitter, make sure there is a valid reason to do so.  Step back and evaluate how you can use the medium – if indeed you can.  Twitter is not an essential part of the marketing communications mix for everyone.  If you can’t decide if and how you should use it – get an outside experts opinion.

4. Educate to Sell (Don’t Sell to Sell) – The world is changing fast and the marketing channels available to you to communicate your message are increasing every day.  Go back in time 25 years and your marketing channels involved 4 TV channels, direct mail, in-store, local radio, door to door selling, telesales, exhibitions, poster sites and press advertising.  There was no “online”, no social media, no demographically targeted TV stations, no SMS and no Apps.  What we face now is almost unlimited information available to us within minutes.  We, as consumers, can quickly find out what we need, which brand is best and where to buy it to get the best deal.  This has turned marketing on its head.  We are now responding and interacting with educated consumers who are actively in the market for our products and services.  25 years ago we were mass marketing – and so our messages and communications were all very sales based as we were talking to everyone and we were “fishing” to sell what we were offering.  Today we need to shift our emphasis away from selling and into educating.  Through many of the modern day channels our prospects have already identified themselves to us – we merely need to educate them as to why we are the type of business they should be using – communicating what makes us different and the client benefit of what we offer.  If we can continually provide our prospective client base with information that they value and which helps them in some way – then we are positioning ourselves as a brand/company/individual they will trust.  Remember, no-one likes being sold to – in fact overt sales messages can cause mistrust and do more harm than good.

5. Understand Why? – One of the key questions to answer that will help you in your marketing strategy is to understand why your customers buy from you.  If marketing is something you have done little of to date and you have relied purely on word of mouth recommendations and the natural momentum a new business generates, then this question is key if you want to start proactively generating more business.  Many businesses do not have a clue why their customers choose to buy from them.  If this sounds like you – then just ask them!  Conduct some client research and find out why your customers selected you over the competition in the marketplace.  It could be a host of different things: product quality, service excellence, convenience, reliability, price, eco credentials, branding, location etc.  Once you find out what the most common purchasing drivers are, then you can start to work these into your external communications.  If you are lucky you may even discover that you have a completely unique proposition in the marketplace (from a customer’s perspective).  However, please note, it is important that you don’t try and second guess the reasons.  This can often lead to a complete mismatch between perception and reality – which can lead to disaster!

2. Keep the pipeline flowing

3. Re-evaluate your pricing

4. Work to your capacity

5. Review & revise regularly

Below are this month’s top 5 marketing tips – simple tips to help you improve the effectiveness of your marketing.  If you would like to discuss these in any more detail with a marketing consultant please call 0113 2008766.

 1. Use your data wisely – If you have a database and/or CRM system in your business, this is a great first step.  If you haven’t then invest in one – even if it is only a very simple one, as it will save you invaluable time and money.  If you have – make sure that you are fully utilising the data filters within it whenever you are creating a campaign.  I recently received a beautifully designed and quite clever direct mail piece through the post from a national insurance company.  I read the mail piece – so from that point of view it worked.  However I binned it.  The reason being I am already halfway through a contract for that insurance policy – WITH THEM!!  If they had used their database wisely then they could have seen that I already buy that policy from them – yet they were talking to me as if I was a brand new prospect who had never purchased from them, not a valued customer.  Has this error negatively affected my opinion of the brand?  To be honest, not massively.  But what a waste of money?  If all of their existing clients received this mail-piece then it is a massive own goal in terms of return on investment.

2. Keep the pipeline flowing  – Sales are the lifeblood within any business.  Without sales you have no customers and you have no business.  However don’t fall into the trap of easing off your marketing activity when times are good and you are really busy.  Business is very cyclical and the reason you have got very busy is that you have been working hard to generate enquiries.  Naturally, if you take your foot off the gas when times are good, guess what….times are going to be less good in the future.  Even if you can’t physically take any more clients on, keep your sales pipeline warm so that when you are in a position to do so you have some warmed up prospects rather than starting from a blank sheet of paper again.  This will ensure any troughs in the business are much shorter, thus alleviating potential cash flow issues arising.  View marketing as an ongoing discipline rather than short campaign bursts when sales start to dip!

3. Re-evaluate your pricing – Businesses, particularly in their early years, struggle to get to grips with the optimum price point for their products and services.  Like every other aspect in marketing, it needs to be tested and measured on an ongoing basis so that you get to a point where you are comfortable that you are pricing your offering accurately.  In the early days business owners usually undercharge for their services as they want to build up a track record of clients and get cash into the business.  However if you quickly reach capacity for your business it is worth reviewing your pricing again to see what effect an increase in price would have on the balance between effort and reward.  In tough times many businesses make the knee-jerk reaction to cut prices to be the most competitive option in the marketplace.  Basically, in a service environment, if you reduce your prices to increase demand you are then doing more work for the same (or less) money.  As a rule of thumb if you are working at a margin of 20% and cut your prices by 10% that would mean that you would have to sell twice as much or work twice as hard to stay at the same profit level.  The other side to the coin is that if you gradually increase prices you will lose some customers who refuse to pay the increased level (who don’t value your service accordingly), some clients will grumble but accept the hike (because they ultimately know your service is worth more than they are paying) and more than you realise will accept the increase without even flinching (your premium clients).  Your net result is that you are making the same profit, but you have freed up some capacity to take on more higher margin work.  As I said at the onset – always test and measure.

4. Work to your capacity – Make sure that you know what the capacity of your business is – whether this is man hours, units of volume, or number of clients.  If you haven’t got a grasp of what your capacity is there is a danger that you make take on more clients, or larger contracts than you can actually deal with.  The easiest and most cost effective sales to your business are your current clients.  Don’t over commit your business for work that seems attractive, you are in danger of neglecting your existing client base.  Make sure if you take a new client or contract on, it is not at the detriment of what is in effect already “cash in the bank”.

5. Review & revise regularly – Every business should be working from a clear marketing plan or strategy.  There should be some very clear objectives for the business and an action plan of how these objectives are going to be achieved.  However once this has been created it is important to continually review and revise that plan.  The reason being is that everything surrounding that strategy involves organic elements that evolve and change.  Your own business will grow and evolve, your clients will evolve and change, the external factors on the marketplace will continually be changing – whether social trends, legislation, economic climate or advancements in technology.  You can also be sure that if you are standing still, your competitors will be evolving.  Nothing that ever stands still survives, change is the only constant.

For those who have worked within a marketing environment before will recognise the KISS principle – which is an acronym for Keep It Simple Stupid.  Basically it means exactly what it says – just keep your messaging as simple as possible.

It is estimated that the average person is exposed to around 2000-3000 marketing messages per day.  At first that sounds ridiculous but then when you think about the media we are exposed to daily – TV, radio, magazines and newspapers, shop fronts, van signage, billboards, buses, clothing, websites, direct mail, phone apps, promotional merchandise, e-mails, logos etc  and you realise that it is probably quite accurate.   So, when the average person is constantly being bombarded with marketing messages, if your message is anything other than simple, it has no chance of cutting through the marketing “noise”!

You also have to bear in mind that the human race is made from a plethora of different personality types and intellects.  Some of us like lots of information, however the vast majority of us prefer to get to the crux, quickly and simply.  It is no coincidence that some of the most successful people in business over the last 50 years share a similar trait.  Richard Branson, Henry Ford, Charles Shwab, Bill Gates, Theo Paphitis, William Hewlett and Simon Woodruff (Yo Sushi) all share one very similar trait – they all suffer from dyslexia.  It is their determination to make things as simple to understand as possible – that has enable them to communicate more effectively, with clarity, with their client base.

So next time you are creating some form of marketing communication, please remember to KISS your customers!

2. Create a habit

3. Work out your averages

4. Nail the proposition

5. Control the environment

Below are this month’s top 5 marketing tips – simple tips to help you improve the effectiveness of your marketing.  If you would like to discuss these in any more detail with a marketing consultant please call 0113 2008766.

1. ‘What’ before ‘How’ – When I start dialogue with many companies they often want me to tell them how they should market themselves.  However, before we can even begin to look at the ‘How’, we need to take a step backwards and first understand ‘What’ it is the business is trying to achieve.  In order to do this effectively I take clients through a “Back to the Future” process where we start, in effect, at the end.  We look at where the business owner wants his business to look at, at some point in the future, usually 5 or 10 years time, and then work backwards.  By doing this we can outline what the company needs to do over the next 12 months in order to take it towards its ultimate goal.  Once we have a clear idea on what we need to achieve this year, we can break it down further into monthly and weekly targets and then take a look at how we are going to achieve it.  If you rush straight into the “how” without a clear idea of what it is you are trying to achieve – then how will you know if what you are doing is working?

2. Create a habit – By and large I work with entrepreneurial business owners.  What makes a business owner entrepreneurial is the self-driving energy that they feed off from new ideas.  Unfortunately, this is also what holds many entrepreneurs back as this continual buzz from new ideas distracts them from the core focus of what they should be doing.  Similarly, most marketing activity that the business needs to undertake often gets started with a wave of enthusiasm, but then fades away as they look for something new and exciting to do.  However, most marketing strategies will consist of a number of different tactical activities that need to be carried out, followed up and measured regularly.  Because the whole process thus becomes repetitive, the business owner loses interest – and then the marketing activity slows down and, ultimately, stops working.  To overcome this happening, make those key tasks a habit of your working week or day.  If your activity plan relies on social media activity on a regular basis or following up on direct mail campaigns – make sure that you set time aside (and the same time regularly) so that the activity becomes a habit.  Start to divide your weekly timetable into blocked out time of marketing activity.  After a few weeks you won’t even need to refer to the timetable because all of your activity will become habitual.  If you just can’t make it work – get some external help to make sure it happens.

3. Work out your averages – in the world of marketing, understanding averages is crucial.  Most businesses struggle with averages because they don’t feel an average client exists.  This doesn’t matter.  Although many believe that marketing is a creative industry – it is actually more mathematical than creative.  The whole field of marketing revolves around results – return on investment.  If this has not been achieved then your marketing activity has spectacularly failed – no matter how creative your communications were.  Results and returns are measured in numbers.  So in order to calculate whether a certain channel is worth pursuing we need to know the figures involved and whether the potential returns far outweigh the initial outlay.  Even if you only have very crude average figures, this is better than none at all.  For example, to work out your average annual client value, simple divide your sales turnover by the number of clients served.  Similarly if you want to know the average transaction value, divide your turnover by the number of individual orders (not clients).  If you feel that a couple of your largest clients are skewing your figures too much – just ignore them and leave their figures out of the analysis.  Until you understand the averages within your business, such as client lifetime profit value and enquiry conversion rates, then you are never going to be able to accurately forecast whether a specific marketing activity is likely to be profitable or not – which means you may waste a lot of money on activities that were never financially viable in the first place.

4. Nail the proposition – I know that this seems like the most obvious marketing tip ever but, believe me, there are plenty of SME businesses out there who still have not nailed exactly what their proposition is.  This is worrying because the proposition of what the business is offering, is the central core to all marketing activity.  Can you clearly communicate what your business does and offers to its clients in less than 25 words?  If you can’t then I suggest that you work on simplifying your business offering.  If you think about all the best brands in the world, or even locally to you, the one thing that they will all have in common is that they are excellent at marketing themselves, because they have a very simple and universally understood proposition.  I know it is an overused saying but “less really is more”.  Until you have absolutely nailed your proposition, your marketing activity will never generate its full profit potential.

5. Control the environment! – There is never a guarantee that any specific marketing activity is going to work.  This is because there are so many variables involved in the process and, ultimately, we are dealing with human beings making a decision – who are very difficult to predict.  Have you ever used the Google Adwords tool to look at the keyword searches that people are using to find your type of products and services?  It always amazes me what people type in to Google – things that would never have even crossed my mind.  Because marketing response rates are difficult to predict you need to make sure that you test and measure all activity within a controlled environment.  What do I mean by this?  Well imagine you placed an advert in the press and the response rate was very disappointing – there would be a clear temptation to, either, axe the specific advert, axe the publication or axe advertising completely from the marketing budget.  However why did the advert not work?  Was it because it was the wrong publication (target audience)?  Was it because it was the wrong day of the week or month of the year?  Was it because the advert headline didn’t grab enough attention?  Was the offer or message not filtering through? Was it because the call to action wasn’t clear enough? Did you actually get enough enquiries but your conversion rate was poor (problems in the process)?  If you don’t find out why the advert didn’t work – then you could make the same mistake again!  So in order to work out why the advert didn’t work, you will need to tweak things gradually in a controlled manner.  First, perhaps place the same advert in a different publication – does the response rate improve? Next, try the advert on a different day?  Then tweak the headline, then the perhaps the imagery, change the call of action?  If you change one thing at a time you can measure what difference each element makes – until you get to an advert which generates a great return on investment.  Don’t fall for the temptation to make wholesale changes after one disappointment.  Refine gradually.

J = Jelly…..what are you on about?  It sounds like a terrible way of finding a blog for a difficult letter of the alphabet.  However Jelly is in reference to a great business/marketing book called The Jelly Effect by Andy Bounds.

Jelly is, in effect, the unnecessary information we throw at people in most scenarios – whether we are in a sales meeting, networking, a presentation or in our everyday marketing material.  So how do we determine what information is worthwhile and what is “Jelly”.  It is actually not that difficult to identify.  Any information that we are firing at people that doesn’t explain the benefit of what our product or service does for them (i.e. what it leaves them with), is not relevant and is unnecessary.

As business owners and marketers we need to stop throwing a bucket of jelly at people and hoping that some of it sticks.  How more powerful would you marketing communications be if 100% of what you said was relevant to the recipient?

In the job that I do I end up looking at a lot of companies website – it is the first step for many in checking out a potential prospect, supplier or competitor.  How many times is “About Us” the first tab on the menu bar? It should be the last.  We are visiting a site to try and find out about what you can do for us, but first you insist on telling us all about you and how great you are.  How many years you have been in business, how big you are, how many staff you have, how many offices, who all your clients are etc.   It is a turn off and unnecessary information.  Just because you have over 200 staff doesn’t mean you are going to serve my needs any better.  In fact it could mean the opposite?

Only communicate what is relevant.  Less is more.  It can be very difficult, especially for a business owner, to a step back and decipher what really is relevant.  The only way you can really do this is to put yourself in the mind of the customer.  If you can’t do this then get someone in from outside of the business who will see everything completely objectively.  Alternatively buy a copy of the Jelly Effect and carry out the exercises within it.  It may not solve all of your problems but it will certainly make you more aware of the mistakes you are making!

Inbound Marketing is a term to explain a different way in marketing your business.  Historically marketing has very much been viewed as an outbound discipline, also known as “push marketing”.  In short what this means is a company proactively pushing a message out to a marketplace – quite often through channels such as advertising, exhibitions, PR, e-shots, direct mail or a commission driven sales team.  It is a scattergun “look at me” approach, often to a mass audience, where you may get lucky and secure some sales – but the chances are your return on investment won’t be too great.  Obviously the more targeted this outbound marketing is – the better response and return rates you will get.  However bearing in mind the average person is exposed to an average of around 2000-3000 outbound marketing messages per day – you have to cut through a hell of a lot of “marketing noise” to get your message heard.

Inbound marketing , also known as “pull marketing”, is centred around placing yourself in a position where prospects naturally come to you when they are actively in the market for your product or service.  Because they are ready to purchase, they are far more receptive to your messages and communications and so your conversion rates are far greater.  Your “marketing noise” is actively being seeked.  Surely all of us would like to be in this scenario?  Customers, ready to buy, actually contacting us and looking for us to solve their problem or need?   If we can’t convert these types of prospects there is something seriously wrong somewhere!

So Inbound marketing is all about being findable.  Key channels in mastering the art of being found are online and also building up a positive reputation that will enhance the natural word of mouth referrals you receive.

Taking a look at your online strategy, there are a number of components that all contribution to your inbound findability – search engine optimisation, blogging and social media activity.  All of these will lead an active prospect to your website.  It is then the job of your website to engage and communicate to a level that is going to make that prospect contact you for more information.  It is no good getting the first half right and driving lots of traffic to your site if your site then turns the hot lead cold.  Similarly there is little point having an awesome site if you are not getting the active prospect to find it.

Inbound/outbound and push/pull marketing is a conundrum that many marketers take the wrong option with.  Whatever industry you are in, the likelihood is that you will need a mix of both.  However more of your efforts should go into creating an inbound marketing strategy as it will be far more cost effective in the long run!