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Business Link's leaner meaner marketing workshop presented by Dev Chakraborty.
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Leaner, Meaner Marketing
High Fidelity... ‘Top 5 records...’
Today, we will be covering:
Networking
Business cards
Time management
How to improve traffic to your website
E-newsletters
PR
Useful marketing websites
Creative marketing ideas
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)
How To Improve Traffic To Your Website
Get your site listed on directories
Get listed in search engines – submit your site (individually) to all the major search engines
Search Engine Optimisation – decide your ‘keywords’
Search engines look for certain things – titles, headings, meta tags – so it is crucial to make sure your site is ‘search engine friendly’
Add no more than 15 to 20 keywords to keep the search engines from flagging your site for keyword spamming
Use keywords at the beginning of sentences and higher up on the page
Get people with complementary sites to link to yours
Use offline marketing – promote your website in all your marketing
Provide useful resources on your website, resources that make people feel thankful that you put in the time and effort… and they’ll spread the word for you
Provide a subscription box to your E-newsletter on your most-viewed business website pages
E-Newsletters
It costs six times more to make a sale to a new customer than to an existing one!
Frequency? Weekly, monthly, quarterly?
Objective? Customer retention, sales generation, PR?
Offer tips and advice
Case studies/client testimonials
Mailchimp.com less spam, reports
Keep it short... link to your website whenever possible
Data Protection - unsubscribe facility
Call to action
Include a ‘forward to a colleague’ call to action
Test, test, test! Email to Hotmail, Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo email accounts
Public Relations
Know your target market – what do they read? FT or The Sun?
Make sure your product or service is ready
Don’t forget local radio
Be clear and concise... so what?!
A picture speaks a thousand words
Deadline is king
Piggyback national/international stories
Always send to a named individual
Follow up… polite persistence
Explore possibility of a regular feature
10 Useful Marketing Websites
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
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!
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!
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
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!
Website Chat
Offer live help to make more sales on your website.
Use simple live chat on your website
www.olark.com
Google Analytics
Search Engine Optimisation
What?
How?
Reports, reports and more reports
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
Business Link.gov
Fantastic small business resource:
Online articles
Workshops
Advice
10 Creative Marketing Ideas Not To Forget…
Contra Deals
Barter, barter, barter!
Double or triple your marketing budget without getting your cheque book out
Advertising – radio, newspapers, magazines, corporate hospitality, etc.
Photography, web design, graphic design, restaurant, training, etc.
… virtually any service!
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 Competition
Essential 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 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
Timing
E-newsletters
Mailshots
January 1st : new calendar year = new financial budgets
April 1st : new financial year
Public Sector – use it or lose it!
Set Goals
How 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
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?
Joint Promotions
Reach a whole new pool of potential customers 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 Success
Whatever activity you choose, set targets to measure the impact of your actions:
Monitor enquiries from a direct mail campaign
Increased hits to a website
Increased sign-up for your customer newsletter
Ebay Shop
eBay founded in 1995
Pay a monthly subscription fee (from £14.99 per month)
Each item you list in your eBay Shop incurs an Insertion Fee (from 20p)
If it sells, a Final Value Fee applies (average 8.5%)
Launched 2004, currently 550 million+ users Not the leading social network in Russia, China or
Japan Current value $68 billion?!
Average number of friends is 130
Advertising opportunities, eg Leigh Court wedding venue – ‘Single’ to ‘Engaged’
Keep your personal profile separate from your business profile
Be personal and authentic
Make it interesting, don’t always be commercial, add industry specific news
Add video footage
Add your Facebook URL to your email signature, business cards, etc.
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
Incentives for fans
Over 90 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
Control your professional identity online
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
Create unique content yourself, e.g. a blog... share this on LinkedIn
Company profiles: keep your friends close... and your competitors closer still!
Doctor: “I’m sorry, I don’t follow you”
Patient: “Doctor Doctor, I think I’m addicted to Twitter”
Be authentic – don’t be afraid to show your personality
Avoid self-promotion – you’re building relationships
Generate business from Twitter by directing customers to your website through clickable links within your tweets
Engage with your followers, get to know them
Be positive!
Be multi-dimensional: don’t just tweet about your business... tweet about hobbies, funny stories, etc.
Co-workers can share ideas, close-of-business figures, while working on projects over different sites
Great for market research: send out a question to thousands of potential customers who can each respond instantly with a short answer
Numbers mean nothing. You are better off having 25 true friends than 2,500 strangers who care nothing for you
Never tweet anything you wouldn’t want your mother or your boss to see
Networking
Should I be here?!
Fail to prepare, prepare to fail … prepare a memorable 60” presentation
Two of you from the same company at the same event?
Post event follow-up
Evaluate
Business Cards
Never leave home without them!
Continuity
Quality vs price
Add one line on the back of your card: ‘What I can do for your business’
QR barcode – video testimonial
iPhone application – bump
Time Management
Plan your day
Take breaks
E-newsletters… unsubscribe
Stop procrastinating
Emails/social media... don’t reply straight away
Running your own business can be lonely... mix with inspirational people
What are your time bandits?! Internet surfing, social media, eBay?!
Learn to delegate... outsource ...
Organise your desk and office – “a place for everything, everything in its place”
Avoid Vampires!!
Marketing Plan
How to prepare a practical, useful but – most importantly – a realistic 12 month marketing plan
Over To You!
Sharing best practice ...
What has been the most effective marketing tool for your business?
“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
