Everything you wanted to know about Marketing…

…but were afraid to ask!

The Obvious

Well, you’d think it would be obvious!

Always carry business cards

Check emails every day

Keep all logos/branding the same

Contra DealsBarter, barter, barter!

Double or triple your marketing budget without getting your chequebook out

Advertising – radio, newspapers, magazines, corporate hospitality, etc.

Photography, web design, graphic design, restaurant, training, etc.

… virtually any service!

Help A Charity – Help Yourself

Cause-Related Marketing (CRM)

Support a charity

Win, win!

- Inca Trail for the Children’s Hospice South West

- Crimestoppers Golf Day

Client Referrals

Word of mouth is the best form of advertising!

Let your happy customers spread the word

Simple postcard design – referral details on the back

£25 M&S voucher, bottle of champagne, petrol voucher, etc.

Memory jogger, e.g. Sky TV

Keep An Eye On The CompetitionEssential for success – their campaigns, news,

changes in pricing or policies can affect your customers’ perceptions.

Stay ahead of the competition – pre-empt /react to their news: Where do they

advertise?

How do they advertise?

‘Borrow’ good ideas!

Video FootageAdding video to your website boosts your Google

ranking.

60”/90” introduction to your company

Gives people a sense of security – they can ‘meet’ you before initial call/purchase

Promote on your email signature

Upload to YouTube

Personal Touch

People buy people!

Photos of you (and your team) on your website

Photo on LinkedIn

Personal

Approachable

Testimonials

‘Don’t just listen to what we say – listen to what our customers say about us’

Video testimonials?

Be honest – your customers will be!

Market Research

What do you think your customers think about you and your business??

Find out what they really think

www.surveymonkey.co.uk

Professional

Invaluable

Free of charge!

Positive Mental Attitude

As Henry Ford said:

There are two types of people in life: those that think they can, and those that think they can’t… and they’re both right.

Glass half full or half empty?!

FacebookLaunched 2004, currently 400 million +

Set up a business profile

Use status updates to promote your business

Fan pages – indexed by Google, searchable outside Facebook

Your fans’ profiles display: “Joe Bloggs has become a fan of…”

Fan pages can spread virally

LinkedInLaunched 2003, 60 million + registered users

Why are you on LinkedIn?

Investigate your connections’ connections

Position yourself as the expert in your field

Join groups

Reply to threads/ blogs

TimingE-newsletters

Mailshots

January 1st – new calendar year = new financial budgets

April 1st – new financial year

Public Sector – use it or lose it!

Sense Of HumourBecause life’s too short!

Attention To Detail

First impressions count!

Don’t forget to check the details …

TwitterLaunched 2006, one billion tweets per

month, number of active accounts??

How to use it

Small businesses are using Twitter to:

Network with suppliers, trade groups and other businesses.

Recruit staff. Success stories.

Quality not quantity.

Set GoalsHow do you eat an elephant?!

Set manageable goals

If the idea of selling 10,000 widgets a year overwhelms you, think of it as selling 27 widgets a day

Sales – cold calling

Just 5 calls a day = 100 per month = 1,200 per year

E-NewslettersDid you know it costs six times more to make a sale

to a new customer than to an existing one?

Seasonal or monthly?

Content – latest news, new technology, recent awards/press coverage, photos, special offers, client testimonials…

Data protection

www.mailchimp.com

Statistics

Networking BNI (Marmite?!)

Federation of Small Businesses (Lloyds)

GWE Business West

Prepare a memorable 60” presentation

Women in Biz, Ladies Who Latte, Business Inspired

Events

Business Link events

Learn

Networking

Sign up to Events newsletter

Two Heads…Ask the team

Brainstorm

What would you do if I gave you £100 to spend on the business?

What about £1,000?

Who Are You? What Are You?

If your business was a car, what exactly would it be?!

Mercedes? Vauxhall? Aston Martin? Kia?

A 30-year-old, rusty Trabant?

Do your staff/customers share your opinion?

Free Listingswww.yell.com

www.thomsonlocal.co.uk

www.freeindex.co.uk

www.gumtree.com

www.hotfroguk.co.uk

Diary date to revisit sites every 3 months

The Shop WindowFirst impressions matter!

Blu-Tack all over the office walls?

Pirelli Calendar?!

Messages to staff?

Dead plant in the corner?!

Promotions

Star FM chocolate

campaign

The Queen of Hearts

Reverse Psychology

It makes sense!

If you wanted to guarantee that you made zero sales in the next 12 months, what would you do?

Signage

Branding

High-profile

Focus GroupsA focus group is a form of qualitative

research in which a group of people are asked about their perceptions, opinions, beliefs and attitudes towards a product, service, concept, advertisement, idea, or packaging.

Questions are asked in an interactive group setting where participants are free to talk with other group members.

WebsiteOffer live help to make more sales on your website.

Use simple live chat on your website

www.olark.com

Photos for your website

Do you ever take images from your camera, and try to use them on your website? Digital cameras produce massive, high-resolution images which will use up all your webspace allowance. What’s worse, they will make your website slow to load, and drain the user’s bandwidth.

Resize your images with www.imagemerger.net Just specify by what percentage you want your images reduced, and the site will do the rest.

FREE OF CHARGE!

How others view your website

Did you know each user sees a slightly different amount of each website? Computers have lots of different screen sizes, and users set up their browsers with a range of toolbars.

See how users actually view your website with www.screen-resolution.com

Type your website address into the main box, choose the size that you want to investigate, and click ‘go’

It then launches a new browser that shows your website in the exact size you specified

FREE OF CHARGE!

Get feedback on your website

Bounce rates are one of the biggest problems for web designers. Visitors to your site need to be able to see what it’s all about in the first 5 seconds – if they can’t, the chances are that they will leave.

Test whether your design is clear and easy to understand. Submit it to www.fivesecondtest.com

Your website is revealed to volunteers for 5 seconds

The community of web designers will give you feedback

FREE OF CHARGE!

File ConversionHave you ever wanted to convert files without the

need to download software? You can change almost any file to almost any other:

Word doc to a PDF? Excel file into a jpeg?

www.zamzar.com

It works with most document, video and music files:

.rtf; .docx; .doc; .ods; .odt; .ppt; .pptx; .odp; .wpd; .ps; .pub; .xls; .xlsx;

.cvs; .wps …

FREE OF CHARGE!

Joint PromotionsReach a whole new pool of potential

customers and achieve a large number of sales for a very low cost – set up joint promotions with other small businesses!

Contact some non-competing small businesses serving customers in your market

Offer to publicise their products or services to your customers in exchange for their publicising your services to their customers

Measure Your SuccessWhatever activity you choose, set targets to

measure the impact of your actions:

Monitor enquiries from a direct mail campaign.

Increase hits to a website.

Increase sign-up for your customer newsletter.

Do Something Unexpected!How amazing would it be if your supplier rang

to say they had dropped their prices by 10 per cent, for no reason?

Or an owner rings to say thanks for your continued business?

In the internet age, business can be so anonymous that even picking up the phone now and again can be seen as unexpected.

Mystery ShopperFocus on how your staff represent your

company

People will judge your business on the people within

Use mystery shoppers to work out what the experience is like

Ask An Expert

Make use of FREE resources!

www.businesslink.gov.uk/southwest

www.cim.co.uk

www.googleanalytics.co.uk

12 Month Marketing PlanSimple

Effective

Memory jogger

Seasonal E-newsletters, Networking, Event attendance, B2B shows, LinkedIn, Twitter

Marketing is an ongoing process – the key to successful marketing is to analyse, review and adjust. It should be tweaked, tailored and updated regularly.

Thank You!

Dev Chakraborty

Business Link

E: dev.chakraborty@businesslinksw.co.uk

Slides available from

www.businesslink.gov.uk/southwest/eventspresentations