MarketingMoment

Holding a competition is a great marketing tool, giving you:

• brand recognition
• positioning in the marketplace
• goodwill in the community
• publicity
• the ability to fish for product name ideas
• leads
• new customers and/or sales

It needn’t be complicated or costly to set up, either.

If you’re looking to build your customer base, then a simple ’send-in-and-win’ tear-off reply coupon is sufficient. You can do the same via email (”Send the answer to the following question to contest@yourdomain.com”). 

You can also get ideas for a new product or service. For example one of my colleagues is giving away $1,000 (approx £550) for the person to come up with the best title for his forthcoming book. This is all being done via social media. 

If you’re a life coach with a local client base, you can ask your clients and prospects to choose their best restaurant, doctor, supermarket checkout assistant, bus driver, milkman or postman and give away six months of coaching to the winner. 

If you’re a gardener, hold a “name that tree” competition, and then donate a tree or two to the local park in both your names. You can do the same if you’re a carpenter, only donate a bench instead… 

The ideas are endless. You just need to get a bit creative. 

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I heard on the news (BBC) this morning that supermarkets are spending more on advertising and less on branding, in an attempt to lure shoppers and defeat the credit-crunch fallout.

Does this mean that you should follow suit?

Advertising – whether it’s advertising in magazines, newspapers, the trade press or online – CAN be yield a good return on business. But it’s generally more appropriate for larger brands with the advertising budget to match their size.

That said, advertising DOES work, and it can work for you . . . providing you advertise the right things to the right people in the right places and in the right way.  

If you do wish to dip your toe in the advertising arena, then I would suggest spending your budget very carefully to ensure you receive maximum returns for your expenditure.  

My step-by-step, lead-generation system High-Powered Ads that Generate Sales reveals where to place your ad – and where NOT to advertise – as well as how to triple the results of ANY ad you write . . . guaranteed! For more information, point your browser to: http://mediaminister.co.uk/products.htm#HPA 

But back to the question of whether you should ditch your branding efforts. I think not. Branding is crucial to any business – at any time and regardless of the state of the economy.

It can reinforce your image so that you stay in your existing customers mind, as well as grab the curiosity of potential new customers. 

Central to effective branding is the concept of consistency. No matter what you do, you absolutely MUST be consistent with your core marketing message. That’s because you want your business image and brand to be easily recognisable, and you want your prospects to conclude that your company is a confident, credible and stable one.

To really strengthen your brand image, as well as being consistent, you should be educating your potential customers about WHY they should buy your product or service (no one likes to be sold, right?). The use of case studies and testimonials is a great way to achieve this. You’ll find plenty of other ideas in posts here on MarketingMoment.

So what about you? How are you educating your customers to increase sales?

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Perfect for testing an idea before making a commitment, a mini or condensed version of the standard marketing plan can prove valuable in a number of ways. Not least to analyse the year before, review where you are now and focus on what you wish to achieve over the next six months.

Start by heading over to this handy page where you can download a variety of one-page marketing plan templates – F.R.E.E. of charge.

By putting it in writing, you will identify tactics and strategies to help you with your business goals. 

Psssst . . . Not sure where to start? As well as offering worksheets and home-study tools, I can give you profit-multiplying advice and pointers on things you can do straight away to attract new business with my Powerfully Effective Marketing sessions.  

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Top web advertisers and marketers favour search and email marketing, according to a recent survey carried out by industry leaders ad:tech and MarketingSherpa. The annual survey is a good indicator of what’s working online and what’s to come.

Behaviorally-targeted ads rated higher than any other online performer. The advertisers and marketers questioned plan to invest more in PPC and behavioral ads this year, and move away from poorly-targeted display ads.

Other top tactics include:

- House email lists.

- Testing. Marketers are measuring, testing and split-testing more than ever in almost all categories surveyed.

- Search engine optimisation (SEO) is delivering a strong return on investment.

- Agencies are urging marketers to explore viral marketing and advertising in mobile phones, online video sites and virtual worlds.

The latter reflects the changing landscape of the online advertising world. 

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If you read copy written by someone other than a copywriter, chances are it will scream Features! Features! Features! OK, features are a very good thing indeed and, yes, readers do need to know about them. But not all of them. And NOT right up front. 

Instead, you need to do what every good copywriter 
MUST do in order to educate or make the sale: turn features into benefits, and put those benefits at the beginning of your copy. 

These benefits must be tied into your readers’ desires, needs and wants. So, when you solve your readers’ problems, they’ll go looking for the features — meaning they WILLl bother to read the rest of your marketing message. 

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There you are sitting at your desk sneaking in a quick game of WordTwist on FaceBook. You know you should be writing content for your first email newsletter. But somehow you just can’t get motivated. That blank screen beckons. Another game? Help!

Don’t panic!

There are a number of ways – ranging from the ridiculously easy and quick solutions, to the more involved.

One of the first options is to start with what you have to hand. 
Have you kept any interesting emails – either from customers, quizzes, quotes, competitions or even junk mail? How about questions from clients, prospects, colleagues, friends, etc?

Think about what came through the door today – is there anything you can share with your readers? What about industry news, statistics or trends? Perhaps you have new products or services to offer. You can write about those. How about a ‘subscriber only’ special? An interview with your marketing director or an industry leader?

All these nuggets – and more like them – will form great fodder for your newsletter. They could take the form of articles, news, events, competitions, ads, interviews, tips, and so on. I’ve written pieces on how social media impacts on business, the secret to turning a postage stamp into a stampede of customers, the significance of proofreading a business document, how to write good headlines and so on.

Excerpt from ’Newsletters that Build Customer Relations AND Fill Your Inbox with Orders‘ – my step-by-step  MasterClass home-study system shows you just how easy-peasy it can be to create or polish a so-so newsletter that reflects your business in the best light. Chock-full with useful tools and specific examples on how to set-up, write and send out your business-building newsletter, it really does remove the pain from newsletter publishing. Get the full scoop here.  

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Many businesses are suffering from ‘credit crunch fallout’. But what if you mimic those companies who have swam the rough seas of an economic downturn in years gone by, and survived to reach a fairer shore?

The following steps should help you turn the current downturn into an opportunity to give your business the competitive edge it needs:

•  Be honest about your company’s position and the steps you need to take in the short term to shore it up economically.
• Plan for the future before you reach rock bottom. That is the point at which you should implement your marketing ‘recovery’ plan, NOT when you start thinking about what it should be.
• Look for ways you can outdo the competition.
• Increase, not decrease, your marketing spend.

An organisation that builds confidence in adverse conditions will emerge far more strongly than one which collapses under the pressure and starts sacrificing marketing budgets.

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The lead article in the latest issue of MediaMinister’s Communiqué for Success reveals that far from being the kind of lovely lady who rejoices in handing out cough drops while sipping chamomile tea, Aunty AIDA is more akin to Checkpoint Charlie in character.

AIDA is in fact one of the most useful formulas for keeping your creative thinking on tap. And it has the potential to substitute flagging sales with a roaring trade . . . BUT only if you pay attention.

To read the full article and gain hidden links to recent CfS newsletter editions, you’ll have to become a subscriber. As well as being FREE, you’ll receive a business-building report and audio CD simply for signing up and trying it out. 

Subscribe here.

Recent CfS newsletter issues cover:

• The Most Important Action You Can Take For Your Business This Year 

• Recession-Proof Your Business
• Stand Apart From ‘Me-Too’ Competitors 
• Stop! Don’t Post that Letter!
• Common Mistakes that Can Kill Business
• When Push Comes to Shove
• How to Bolster Trust on Your Website 
• Just How Believable Are You? 

Subscribe here. 

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“Brace yourselves: We’re heading for a recession…” says one paper. “We’ve never had it so good,” says another.

While pundits argue (and confuse us) about whether there is an official ‘recession’ on the horizon – or not – what matters to those of us who are self-employed is how are we supposed to survive the very real credit crunch ‘fallout’.  

Some solopreneurs and SMEs are cutting costs where they can. Unfortunately, this happens to be in the very area where no one interested in staying in business can ill afford to ‘downsize’: marketing.

Experts agree that now is NOT the time to wind down your marketing spend. On the contrary, you’d be wise to up the spend. For investment in marketing now will help shield against any future revenue losses.

As the study Turning Adversity into Advantage: Does Proactive Marketing During a Recession Pay Off?, shows organisations that a) value marketing, b) feature a corporate culture that rewards risk-taking, and c) are willing to up the ante on marketing efforts are those who come out on top.

“The firms that had all three characteristics did very well in a recession. But firms that are missing any one of them, they’re in trouble,” says As Dr Gary Lilien, one of the report’s authors. 

It’s true that when times are tough competitors often fall by the wayside. Any steps you can take to enhance your efforts to find new customers/clients, and to turn existing ones into loyal long-term buyers of your goods/services will help you come of any recession [whether real or imagined] really, really well.

So do yourself a favour: Be bold and rejuvenate your marketing. You’ll thank yourself in the long run – regardless of whether or not we slide into a full-scale recession.  

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Without a marketing plan, your business will meander along the ‘hit and miss’ path. For you will tend to set no specific goals, and therefore not really progress. Your budget, time and other resources allocation will be either non-existent or haphazard at best. And generally you will – intentionally or not – let things slide.

But all you need to get started is three minutes. Not much, really now, is it?

Sure, a big international player such as Cadbury Schweppes may have a marketing plan that runs to 100 pages. However, your first marketing plan need not be more than one single sheet of A4.

Here are the key steps to getting your marketing action plan moving:

1. Write down in one or two short sentences the purpose of your marketing. Be specific. Examples include:

   • To get published in the local media.
   • To get more repeat customers.
   • To attract new women customers within the age group 30-45.    

   Your goal here is to make sure your marketing goal is a ‘doable’ one. Do not set yourself up for a fall at this stage. Think small, work towards big…

2. Write down your budget for achieving this marketing goal. Be sure to budget enough of your money, as well as time and other resources (eg, staff) to get the desired results from your marketing plan. If you are a start-up, then ideally you will be allocating the majority of your time to marketing. If you are more established, then you may be too busy to put 80-100% of your time towards marketing activities. In that case you would outsource the majority of the marketing tasks to freelance professionals (ie, copywriters, marketers, and so on). 
    
3. Now schedule what you will do and when to get things moving. Eg:

   • By the end of next week I will have achieved…………………………….
   • To do this I will spend ………. hours on marketing activities.
   • These activities will include…………………………………………………….
   • Within one month, I will have completed/acquired………………………
   • The days and hours I will dedicate to marketing each week will be..
   ……………………………………………………………………………………………..

Taking your first mini-marketing plan as an example, you can now go on to develop several for each marketing or business goal. Start right now: one for ‘creating a monthly ezine’, one for ‘referral or word-of-mouth marketing’ and one for ‘developing free samples of your services’. These are just examples; you are, of course, free to choose your own!

Obviously, the above mini-marketing plan assumes that you have already worked out who your target audiences are, as well as your positioning statement, USP and so on. If you need any help in these areas, then there are a myriad of both free and inexpensive tools to guide you.

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