... is a huge subject and not one that can be adequately covered in 30 minutes I have titled this talk as 'Marketing Made Manageable' - not just because I like alliteration - but because I am sure that most of the audience will be small or medium sized businesses who are looking for a straight forward, manageable approach. If you are a marketing director of a large business - then this may not be the place to be.... I want to explain the simple steps any business could and should take to get their marketing moving But first.... The CIM definition of marketing is:- Linda – make this big please 'The management process for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably' The important thing here is 'the customer' as it should be the customer who comes first This is exactly the opposite of the 'old British' way where we would make widgets whether the market wanted them or not and the customer came last! One very good example of this for us is the fact that our clients have had a greater need for web sites and digital work in recent years – we could either see this work go to our competitors – or train up and make sure we could deliver what is wanted…. But I suspect we are all marketers of a kind as you wouldn't be doing what you do if you didn't think (or probably know) that the market actually wanted your product or service The very first thing any business person does before setting up is to test the market
All businesses have to 'do' marketing - and they probably do so now without knowing But I suspect lots of companies dabble at it and never get it quite right What I want to do is give you a simple sequence to follow to make sure you do the marketing properly So why do companies dabble? Two reasons - cost (or the fear of cost from outside professionals like the dairy) and the fact that we all think we can do it! Everybody in the company thinks they are a marketer or at least wants to have an input to it There are lots of stories about the MD taking the new advertising ideas home to their partner to get an opinion. However, I have never heard of that same person taking the profit and loss sheet home for a view on the numbers.....
Understand your market - Getting to know your customers is the most important stage of process. The more accurate your information and knowledge, the more effective you will be at selling to that market. Try to analyse and understand who they are, what they do and what their requirements are. This information should effect your major business decisions and allow you to start to write a marketing plan (or at least help with your planning). You might have to put a simple questionnaire together and do some phone research direct to your market to build or confirm this knowledge. Understand the environment - Look around you at what is happening in the world. Which way are markets going and what are the latest innovations and emerging themes. Recession is the current watch word and in a recent poll 74% of SME's expect the current down turn to go on for a further couple of years. So build this in to your thinking and planning Know what you do - Stop and take stock of what exactly you do. Analyse your offering and discuss it with colleagues to make sure everyone knows what they are doing and trying to market. This becomes your proposition and is the key thing you will need to communicate to your audience. You will have seen from our web site home page that we have the word ‘OPEN’ followed by our strap line…. This is what we want folks to know us for and remember us by – we are open and honest and want our work to be accountable.
Understand your market - Getting to know your customers is the most important stage of process. The more accurate your information and knowledge, the more effective you will be at selling to that market. Try to analyse and understand who they are, what they do and what their requirements are. This information should effect your major business decisions and allow you to start to write a marketing plan (or at least help with your planning). You might have to put a simple questionnaire together and do some phone research direct to your market to build or confirm this knowledge. Understand the environment - Look around you at what is happening in the world. Which way are markets going and what are the latest innovations and emerging themes. Recession is the current watch word and in a recent poll 74% of SME's expect the current down turn to go on for a further couple of years. So build this in to your thinking and planning Know what you do - Stop and take stock of what exactly you do. Analyse your offering and discuss it with colleagues to make sure everyone knows what they are doing and trying to market. This becomes your proposition and is the key thing you will need to communicate to your audience. You will have seen from our web site home page that we have the word ‘OPEN’ followed by our strap line…. This is what we want folks to know us for and remember us by – we are open and honest and want our work to be accountable.
Understand your market - Getting to know your customers is the most important stage of process. The more accurate your information and knowledge, the more effective you will be at selling to that market. Try to analyse and understand who they are, what they do and what their requirements are. This information should effect your major business decisions and allow you to start to write a marketing plan (or at least help with your planning). You might have to put a simple questionnaire together and do some phone research direct to your market to build or confirm this knowledge. Understand the environment - Look around you at what is happening in the world. Which way are markets going and what are the latest innovations and emerging themes. Recession is the current watch word and in a recent poll 74% of SME's expect the current down turn to go on for a further couple of years. So build this in to your thinking and planning Know what you do - Stop and take stock of what exactly you do. Analyse your offering and discuss it with colleagues to make sure everyone knows what they are doing and trying to market. This becomes your proposition and is the key thing you will need to communicate to your audience. You will have seen from our web site home page that we have the word ‘OPEN’ followed by our strap line…. This is what we want folks to know us for and remember us by – we are open and honest and want our work to be accountable.
4. Plan - Lots of smaller businesses say that planning is too time consuming – well, the old adage goes 'Fail to plan and plan to fail'. Time spent planning should be seen as an investment in the longer term that can focus activity and avoid wastage (of time and money). The plan could be in the form of a word document or an action plan on a schedule. It simply needs to identify what you want to achieve and how you plan to get there
5.Build a Database - if you operate in a B2B or a manageable B2C environment. It is surprising how many companies I deal with whose client and prospect list is not written down anywhere. It is a very simple task to get a neat, clean list perhaps split into three - prospects, existing clients and suppliers. You can then immediately start to market to each of them. A simple Excel spreadsheet will do the job, or for more bells and whistles, branded software such as ACT by Sage can be bought for a few hundred pounds. The trend now though is for all software applications to be lodged and used in the cloud - so an offering like Zoho could do the job. I am a firm believer of talking direct to the market through the various direct mail routes available. Broadcast advertising is great for large scale branding but not so good for direct selling - so a direct mail approach should be thought about…
6. Deploy the Plan - time to do some marketing! We need to communicate with our audience so it would be good to talk to an outside design agency and brief them on what we want to do (I would say that wouldn’t i!!) . This could be a simple mailer, a series of e-mailers or a complete range of sales literature - depending on what you have said and agreed in the plan. Remember, we have to be consistent in what we do and we have to consider the customer - so lets sell them the benefits of what we are offering rather than the fact that we are a nice company! Benefits are good - but if you add in actual case studies - even better. If you can show potential customers that you have worked and produced great results for a company similar to theirs - they will believe your offer even more 7. Follow it through - it would be folly to send out a mailing piece in isolation (this is dabbling!!!). You need to make sure the message is everywhere and that your team know what is going out. You may or may not be up to speed with web and social media - but if you are (and you should be) make sure the same message is appearing on your web site, blog, news section, Face book site and Twitter account. Ensure you have google analytics active for your web site
6. Deploy the Plan - time to do some marketing! We need to communicate with our audience so it would be good to talk to an outside design agency and brief them on what we want to do (I would say that wouldn’t i!!) . This could be a simple mailer, a series of e-mailers or a complete range of sales literature - depending on what you have said and agreed in the plan. Remember, we have to be consistent in what we do and we have to consider the customer - so lets sell them the benefits of what we are offering rather than the fact that we are a nice company! Benefits are good - but if you add in actual case studies - even better. If you can show potential customers that you have worked and produced great results for a company similar to theirs - they will believe your offer even more 7. Follow it through - it would be folly to send out a mailing piece in isolation (this is dabbling!!!). You need to make sure the message is everywhere and that your team know what is going out. You may or may not be up to speed with web and social media - but if you are (and you should be) make sure the same message is appearing on your web site, blog, news section, Face book site and Twitter account. Ensure you have google analytics active for your web site
8. Evaluate - part of the planning and consistency mantra should include a review of the marketing work. All too often companies will get this far and then let things slip. To do the job properly, we need to ensure we gauge the effectiveness and then move on to the next stage. With e-mailers and web usage, this can be quite simple, with printed mailers - it can be more tough! If you use e-mailers through a broadcast platform such as Campaign Monitor, it is very simple to see results in terms of how many recipients opened the mailer and how many times, if they went to your web site and if so, which pages they viewed and for how long. We had one example where a prospect had opened our mailer a number of times and had then been to our web site a few times over a number of days. A couple of days later - she phoned us wanting us to call in for a first meeting - I nearly said that I had been expecting her call! 9. Keep calm - Carry on - don't stop - once you have laid your plans - stick to them and continue to talk to your market and refine your offering and proposition to gain better results
8. Evaluate - part of the planning and consistency mantra should include a review of the marketing work. All too often companies will get this far and then let things slip. To do the job properly, we need to ensure we gauge the effectiveness and then move on to the next stage. With e-mailers and web usage, this can be quite simple, with printed mailers - it can be more tough! If you use e-mailers through a broadcast platform such as Campaign Monitor, it is very simple to see results in terms of how many recipients opened the mailer and how many times, if they went to your web site and if so, which pages they viewed and for how long. We had one example where a prospect had opened our mailer a number of times and had then been to our web site a few times over a number of days. A couple of days later - she phoned us wanting us to call in for a first meeting - I nearly said that I had been expecting her call! 9. Keep calm - Carry on - don't stop - once you have laid your plans - stick to them and continue to talk to your market and refine your offering and proposition to gain better results
I started by saying that marketing is a huge subject but at its heart it is pretty simple I’ve not been able to cover much in 30 mins – but I hope it has given you some food for thought and a hunger to find out more Remember the two most importsant things:- Do some planning Keep consistent You can put a plan together yourself or within your team – but if you want to really go for it - it would be wise to pull in some outside help The first thing I did when I set my business up was to employ a good firm of accountants. 8 years on they are still a good firm of accountants, I regard them as part of my team and they have saved us money over the years and advised us well.\\I don’t see marketing as any different Whatever you do though – get on and do it as well as you can …. Don’t dabble!!!
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