All of your Social Media accounts created – FANTASTIC! Now you can just sit back and let your fan base grow without any further intervention!
Not quite!
Ok…to a certain extent your audience may grow organically just by creating Social Media accounts i.e. by completing your profiles, posting statuses, tweets, blogs etc but there is a lot more that you can do to increase your online presence and start building relationships which could lead to business opportunities.
It’s all about making people aware – if people aren’t informed then they probably won’t have the time to ‘find’ you online and become part of your online community.
Don't forget your offline channels. As part of your regular marketing mix you should build in your Social Media channels such as Facebook or Twitter name, into you brand touch points. So what do we mean? Well let's start with your business cards, just think how many of these you give out and if a prospective client has one, they may want to follow you and find out what people are saying about you online. What about your next leaflet or postcard campaign? Visually you could also include the logos as well as actual account names.
Your printed business stationery along with your other forms of contact such as email signatures including your iPhone and iPad, website, online directories, networking groups such as Business Networking International, BNI are all potential touch points to your brand and lead generation tools. So next time you’re getting your business cards, flyers etc reprinted then be sure to factor social media in.
As an additional optional, you will probably have seen QR codes appearing on adverts and leaflets.These are basically a bar code that people can scan which will divert them to a dedicated online page which may be your Facebook, Twitter, Blog or YouTube page or a specific page on your website. If you feel your audience would be receptive to it then put one on.
Other opportunities you could leverage are shop signs, restaurant menu’s, staff clothing, vehicles….really, whatever your product or service, there is always a way of increasing online awareness. The opportunities are endless!
DON’T WASTE THESE OPPORTUNITIES TO PROMOTE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE AND AIM TO BECOME THE GO TO PERSON FOR KNOWLEDGE AND ADVICE IN YOUR GIVEN INDUSTRY.
Do you have any other tips and suggestions that have worked for your business? Please do share them.
Welcome back! Here's Part 3 of our Heroes Selection of top tips. Please get in touch with any feedback you may have!
Serious thought and consideration needs to be put in to the creation of a successful website. If not, then a poorly considered website could actually do nothing but harm a business by creating the wrong perception of the service/product that is to be received!
There are a large number of factors that need to be thought-out when creating an effective website, some specific to the type of industry being communicated about! However see below for a few top tips on points to consider.
So if you plan on creating a new web page or perhaps spruce up an existing one, it is worth considering the points above.
There are numerous other elements to consider aswell as those highlighted but please do let us know your experiences of what works and what doesn’t work for you and your business.
Here is the second of our Heroes hints and tips...do let us know your thoughts!
DESIGN
When it comes to the design of your marketing materials, whether this is internet based or printed materials, all businesses need to ensure a few objectives are considered and built in to the end results for the plan to effective.
AIDA is a widely used acronym that is used throughout the marketing world which focuses attention on the desired outcome.
A – Attention or Awareness. To attract the attention of the customer.
I – Interest. Raise the customers interest by communicating advantages and benefits.
D – Desire. The customer will want/need the product/service.
A – Action. The customer will take action/purchase.
With this acronym in mind you will want to ask yourself some questions about your marketing materials design and content to achieve such goals, for example:
As E. St Elmo Lewis (American advertising and sales pioneer) stated:
The mission of an advertisement is to attract a reader, so that he will look at the advertisement and start to read it; then to interest him, so that he will continue to read it; then to convince him, so that when he has read it he will believe it. If an advertisement contains these three qualities of success, it is a successful advertisement.
The HEROES SELECTION are a series of hints and tips on how to achieve more business. Over the coming weeks we'll give you this essential information to unwrap!
To begin with here's the first of our HEROES...enjoy!
EMAIL MARKETING
Isn’t email somewhat dated given the explosion of the use of Social Media?! Absolutely not!
Email marketing works and there are a huge number of surveys that have concluded as such. For example, the recent Digital Marketing Outlook Survey from the Society of Digital Agencies revealed that 70% of brand marketers planned to invest in email marketing.
I’m not going to throw a load of figures at you but to summarise, as long as constructed in the appropriate way, then email marketing can work because it can be targeted, it builds relationships and can drive direct sales.
There are a number of things to consider when building an email campaign but here are a few points to get you started:
So there’s some food for thought to get you started!
Please add your comment and links to any stories related to Email Marketing – perhaps you had a successful campaign for your business, do let us know. If you need help then also drop us a question.
Due to a number of economic factors, the art of Marketing is far more complex than it once was!
All organisations, large or small, need to regularly ensure they are differentiating themselves from their competitors. To help you achieve that over the coming weeks we’ll be divulging our Top 10 Marketing Tips.
If you work through you should be able to recognise where more focus or change is required for your own business and as such gain more business as a result!
NUMBER 1 - Where to put your company name?!?!?!
It may seem like common sense to use as the heading for any marketing materials but this is not the case. Create some intrigue!
Marketing materials generally have just seconds to make an impact and draw potential clients in. As such it may be more pertinent to understand the purpose of your marketing material and focus on that instead, for example, consider the benefit of the product or service, what’s in it for the customer?
Obviously it goes without saying that you still want to include your company name and contact details but once you’ve drawn the individual in then they’ll be wanting to find this information in any case! Don’t necessarily be exhaustive with the contact information – perhaps just include the company name and website for example, in turn this will direct people to your website where you can then communicate further detail accordingly.
As for business literature such as letterheads, compliment slips etc – be different! Perhaps put your logo at the bottom rather than, as usual, at the top. The font size, colour and style are also important but at the same time you want the name to stand out not the font! Perhaps make the company address smaller and in a different font to generate interest.
To conclude, you need to consider the medium you’re designing, the message you want to portray to customers and how you want company’s identity to be perceived.
We would love to hear what has and hasn’t worked for you and your business – please do get in touch.
We all have moments where we’ve cursed that repetitive email popping in to our Inbox with an automatic response of hitting the ‘Delete’ button. That’s even without reviewing it’s content! We just know that it will be a waste of our time looking at it – the content isn’t pertinent!
Needless to say no business wants to make their audience have such a response to their communications.
Within our previous Blogs we’ve discussed how to ensure the content of any email marketing campaign remains specific to your clients and also given numerous ideas on types of content. The next thing to consider is the frequency of such emails – what is the right balance? a few points need to be continually considered:
This is an ongoing task that needs constant assessment and as such reflected in the email marketing strategy.
Once you’ve assessed your audience’s responses this will assist in finding the right balance between over and under exposure with future emails.
One final point to make is that perhaps this Blog reaches you a little late and you’ve lost the interest of a number of customers already – all is not lost! Perhaps once you have your newly considered email marketing campaign organised it’s worth distributing a re-engagement campaign with an offer.
Ensure your customers understand and appreciate your value by fully considering all the aspects we’ve discussed in this and previous Blogs…lets make sure your email isn’t one of those thrown in to the Trash!
In our previous Blog we spoke about how businesses can ensure their email marketing newsletters are specific to their recipients - the last thing any business wants is to be considered as a nuisance and as such lose potential valuable custom!
As well as considering those ideas previously provided in respect to how to manage the content of your newsletters, we wanted to offer some additional thoughts on what type of varying content you could consider inserting in to your newsletters.
The list above just skims the surface of possibilities but hopefully it will help to build on the commitment of your customers.
Email marketing is all about building relationships so take this information and go and add value to your customers inbox!
How many times throughout the week do you find yourself disappointedly sighing at another nuisance marketing email clogging up your Inbox?!
Why is this though?! Surely you subscribed to receiving these emails from a provider so that you’d be better informed about a product or service or maybe, if you’re lucky, offered some form of discount.
A recent study of such email marketing behaviours, identified that over 60% of people would consider defecting to an alternative brand or even ends a relationship, due to being repetitively sent irrelevant messages.
So how do businesses ensure they keep their marketing email content relevant to retain subscribers and keep them loyal to their brand?
There are numerous actions businesses should consider such as:
In conclusion it’s all about ensuring your content is relevant and up to date with latest news.
So now you understand how to ensure your content is focused what sort of content can you consider? ….another Blog to follow shortly…
