essential business tips to grow your business - 30 marketing tips2011
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Business Link's Essential Business Tips event - 30 Marketing Tips by Dev ChakrabortyTRANSCRIPT
Tuesday 14th June, 2011
“30 Marketing Tips”
CIM Definition Of Marketing
The management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably
An (Old) Definition Of Marketing
If you can get the Mayor to laugh about it – that’s PR
And if you planned the whole thing – that’s Marketing!!
The circus is coming to town! If you paint a sign saying: “Circus coming to the fairgrounds this
Sunday” – that’s Advertising
If you paint the sign on the back of an elephant and walk it through town – that’s a Promotion
If the elephant walks through the Mayor’s flower bed – that’s Publicity
Marketing Today
In the modern world, we could add:
If you spread the word via your website or blog, or using Facebook and Twitter, perhaps on your iPhone – that’s Social and Digital Media!
Market Research
What do you think your customers think about you and your business??
Find out what they really think
Focus groups
Mystery shopper
Surveymonkey.co.uk
SWOT analysis
The future of web design
Build your own website, zero experience required
www.moonfruit.com
Add pictures, audio, video
Track website traffic
Built-in SEO
Free of charge! (as long as you update it once every 6 months)
Free Listings
www.yell.com
www.thomsonlocal.com
www.freeindex.co.uk
www.gumtree.com
www.hotfroguk.co.uk
Diary date to revisit sites every 6 months
Video Footage
Adding video to your website boosts your Google ranking.
60”/90” introduction to your company
Virtual tour......meet the team......client testimonials
Promote in your email signature, Facebook, E-newsletter...
Upload to YouTube
File Conversion
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 to 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!
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
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: www.fivesecondtest.com
Your website is revealed to volunteers for 5 seconds
The community of web designers will give you feedback
FREE OF CHARGE!
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?
How others view your website
Type your website address into the main box, choose the size that you want to investigate, and click ‘go’
It launches a new browser that shows your website in the exact size you specified
FREE OF CHARGE!
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
Timing
E-newsletters
Mailshots
January 1st : new calendar year = new financial budgets
April 1st : new financial year
Public Sector – use it or lose it!
Photos for your website
Take images from your camera, and tried to use them on your website? Digital cameras produce massive, high-resolution images which will use up all your webspace allowance.
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!
99designs.com 99designs is the #1 marketplace for ‘crowdsourced’ graphic
design
Connecting 93,335 passionate designers from around the globe with small businesses who need design projects completed
Gold, Silver, Bronze or Custom prices
Create a design brief, i.e. what you need designed
Designers then submit concepts to compete for your prize. Be sure to provide continual feedback to help the designers deliver a concept you love
At the completion of your contest, you'll need to pick your favourite design and award a winner. You'll then receive the final design along with copyright to the original art work
www.bigstockphoto.com
BigStockPhoto is your fast, easy-to-use marketplace for quality stock images
It offers over 4 million royalty-free photographs and illustrations from talented photographers and artists around the globe
Launched 2004, currently 600 million+ users Not the leading social network in Russia, China or
Japan Current value $150 billion?!
Average number of friends is 130
Advertising opportunities, eg Leigh Court wedding venue – ‘Single’ to ‘Engaged’
Add video footage
Carefully phrase your status updates
Post your E-newsletter subscription information
Integrate Twitter feeds... NB can be overwhelming!
Set Google analytics on your Facebook page
Over 100 million professionals use LinkedIn to exchange information, ideas and opportunities:
Stay informed about your contacts and industry
Find the people and knowledge you need to achieve your goals
Adds 1 million new members every 12 days
Add a photo: people buy people
Join industry-specific groups
Join geographical groups: FSB, local Chambers, GWE Business West
Reply to threads, position yourself as the expert
Ask questions
Testimonials
Investigate your connections’ connections
Remember your manners! If you wouldn’t do it, say it or share it in person, don’t do it, say it or share it on LinkedIn
Search status updates with LinkedIn Signal, find out who’s talking about your favourite topics
“The next 50 years will see new forms of marketing, tailored in greater ways to our lifestyles.
“Traditional advertising will remain on bus stops, through the iPhone, on television, via the internet and posted through our letterboxes.
“But word-of-mouth marketing will forever be the most powerful way of persuading customers to join us.
“It’s the product that really forms the future of marketing – as it has done in decades past.”
“The next 50 years will see new forms of marketing, tailored in greater ways to our lifestyles.
“Traditional advertising will remain on bus stops, through the iPhone, on television, via the internet and posted through our letterboxes.
“But word-of-mouth marketing will forever be the most powerful way of persuading customers to join us.
“It’s the product that really forms the future of marketing – as it has done in decades past.”
Sir Richard Branson
Thank You!
Dev Chakraborty
Business Link
Slides available from:
www.businesslink.gov.uk/southwest/eventspresentations