Marketing Hints and Tips for your Business
Below are some hint and tips from Merlin Marketing to help your business grow!
- Marketing is not just selling and advertising
- Advertising and Promotion
- Available mix of methods
- How to choose the best methods?
- Choose external agencies carefully
- Don’t use jargon
- What benefit does your product/service offer?
- Advertising costs and responses must be measured
Marketing is not just selling and advertising
Marketing is, very simply, the way by which a company makes itself known to its audience as well as how it behaves and interacts in its specific market.
So it is vital that the company’s values and methodologies are consistently reinforced by every aspect of marketing.
In practical terms you need to consider:
- STAFF - are your people aware of your aims? Do they know what their responsibilities are? Your people are the most important part of your company and your success is highly likely to be wholly dependent on them;
- CUSTOMERS – customer service is a paramount feature in any company’s offering. One important rule about customer service is that it's not so much the failure to meet standards that causes major dissatisfaction among customers - everyone can make a mistake. Most customers get upset because they are kept in the dark about late deliveries, or problems, not receiving any apology, not getting any explanation why, and not hearing what's going to be done to put things right.
So keep on top of this by establishing customer service and staff performance measurement criteria, and monitor the results and make them available internally and externally;
- COMMUNICATION – open communications and ongoing customer feedback are essential to success. Having an open dialogue with your customers is vital. There is a twofold benefit to your business by ensuring this happens - you nip problems in the bud and stay aware of how you're performing; and your customers feel better about the service you provide as a result of the communications, or from the fact that the channel is open even if they don't use it.
Whilst these aspects may not seem like ‘traditional’ Marketing aspects each and every item reflects how your customers and potential customers view your organisation, and so are very much part of the marketing effort. Can you afford not to review how you manage your customer service?
Advertising and Promotion
The guidelines within this document are mainly aimed at small businesses, but are just as applicable to very large businesses, because it is common for very large organisations to forget these basics so read on…..
Available mix of methods
Advertising is complex and an ever-changing science. New ideas and new media uses and forms are being devised all the time so new advertising and promotional methods need assessing and comparing with traditional methods to determine which is more or less cost-effective to meet your needs.
These days internet advertising is arguably now more popular than radio advertising, with websites and internet listings now of great importance for small local businesses as well as larger corporations. But what will work best for your company?
How to choose the best methods?
Advertising campaigns can traditionally be broken down in terms of ‘cost per thousand’, and if you are seeking a direct response, it should be monitored according to cost per response and also cost per conversion. Advertising costs include design elements, production and media, such as local radio or display adverts etc.
Companies will pay a higher cost per thousand for better targeted methods, but in return you should expect a higher response rate, so the cost per response can be lower than cheaper methods. Choose advertising and publicity methods that suit your targeting (but if you haven’t done your research you may find this difficult to select effectively).
Getting and building evidence of advertising effectiveness is a vital part of the decision-making process, and managing your advertising and marketing mix. Why guess if you can base decisions on experience and previous statistics and data? Major programmes should only be committed to after accumulating response data, possibly from pilots and previous campaigns, if not from secondary date available in the marketplace. Any large scale activity must first be tested and the response measured for quantity and profile.
Choose external agencies carefully
Your advertising helps to form your image, so make sure you are happy with the design, and make sure typefaces and logos are used in a consistent way, and if you can get the help of a good designer early this will set the tone and rules for use later, which will save time and money in the long term.
You may already have a perfectly satisfactory 'corporate identity' and if that is the case don't feel pressurised to change for the sake of it. Brand loyalty and the names and identities associated with it takes years to build so don't throw away perfectly good branding just because an agency persuades you that a change is necessary. When making any change consider your real purpose and implications.
Advertising agencies are most commonly concerned with planning and implementing advertising and/or promotional 'campaigns' on a client's behalf, and can be a very effective way of managing your advertising campaign. When working with external agencies companies should appoint people who come recommended and who have experience in your sector; agree written briefs for all work, keep things simple and maintain a balance between what you want to say and how they want to say it.
Are you advertising to build awareness or to generate response
You must determine whether you want to create awareness or to generate a direct response. Effective marketing generally demands that each is employed, but if your budget is limited you may be restricted to concentrating on one or the other, so think carefully about what will help most.
Different media and methods are better suited to one or the other. Direct Mail is very good at generating a direct response, as are magazine and newspaper adverts, and inserts. Posters, TV, radio and press editorial are all much better at creating awareness and building credibility.
Don’t use jargon
In all of your advertising material take care to see things and hear things form your customers' viewpoint. As a knowledgeable supplier there is always a tendency to write copy and present information from a technical and 'product/service' standpoint. Remember that your customers are people without good technical or detailed understanding of your products and services.
You need to help them understand things in terms that really mean something to the reader - as it relates to their needs and priorities and challenges. Focus on what your propositions do for them, not what your propositions are in technical detail. You should spell things out, using clear simple language. Do not fall into the trap of thinking that complicated language will help build an image of professionalism and intelligence - people will just turn off. The mark of truly effective advertising and marketing is the ability to convey complex issues to the audience in a manner that is interesting, relevant, meaningful, and easy to digest very quickly.
Thomas Jefferson suggested that "The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do" and this is a good maxim for writing good advertising material.
If you or the 'copy-writer' at your advertising agency cannot achieve this in your advertising and marketing communications then find someone who can, or you will be wasting a lot of your advertising effort and investment.
What benefit does your product/service offer?
Your message needs to focus on a few key strengths ie. your 'service offer' or 'proposition'. These MUST be expressed in terms of benefits to your customers. What does it all mean to them? Give them something to relate to, so that you explain more than simply what you do or provide - explain what your proposition means to your customers.
How will it make their business more profitable, more streamlined, more ethical and sustainable, more socially responsible? How will your proposition improve the quality of their service to their own customers?; how it will make their employees lives' easier, better, less stressful and so on….
Advertising costs and responses must be measured
Start measuring the effectiveness of your advertising from the very beginning. Keep records of what you did, when, to whom, for how much, and what the results were.
The results of certain advertising can be quite difficult to measure, particularly where no direct response is sought but measure everything in whatever way you can. Starting a business and a completely new advertising campaign inevitably involves a bit of calculated guesswork, but if you start measuring and recording results from the beginning then you'll make your task much easier next time around.
A very basic method of measuring and recording advertising effectiveness and results is to ensure that every enquiry is greeted at some stage with the question, "How did you hear about us?" or "How did you find us?" Even very large 'professional' organisations commonly fail to use this basic, but effective, principle within their customer service processes, even though it is very important.
Remember - advertising forms part of your business plan, which is aimed at being profitable. If your advertising does not produce a gross profit in excess of its cost you need to know why. As a minimum, you certainly need to know whether it does or it doesn't. Contact Merlin Marketing for more Details.