To fail to plan is to plan to fail.

Hackneyed maybe, but definitely true!

I gave a seminar to an audience of SME business owners. Taking a bit of a flyer, I asked for a show of hands. “Do you have a live marketing plan that you actively use?“  Not a single hand was raised!

Over the next few weeks we are planning a series of blog posts to help address this situation. By following the ideas outlined in this series, you can develop and implement a sustainable marketing process within a modest and realistic budget.

We marketers love our acronyms and we really couldn’t launch a programme such as this without our own so we have PIMMS.

PIMMS is a model developed by BSA that takes you through the process of creating and implementing a marketing plan for your business.

You may find this PIMMS proforma document useful. We will be looking at 1 stage at a time but feel free to look ahead, I’m sure you will anyway!

The steps of the process are:

• P – PLANNING
  1: Your Objectives – What do you want to achieve?
  2: Your Proposition – What is so good about your business?
  3: Your Target Market – Who do you want to sell to?
• I – IMPLEMENTATION
  1: Get your message visible
  2: Don’t wait for people to find you – go out and tell them
• M – Monitor
  Use web tools to check what sort of impact you are having
• M – Manage
  Use market feedback to improve your marketing
• S – Sustain
  Stick at it. The best results come from INTELLIGENT PERSISTENCE

We are happy to help you if you wish but the entire process can be completed using common sense, internal resources & free tools available on the Internet.

If you would like to follow this series, then why not follow us on Twitter or sign up for our newsletter, and we will make sure we tell you when new posts in the series are added.

To get the ball rolling we are looking at the first step – Your Objectives – next time!

I know a lot of people who are on LinkedIn and it intrigues me that when you ask how they use it to promote their business, a blank look is the common response. They can have a real focus on building their connections but other than getting an ever-increasing number, what else can you do?

There is a general view that LinkedIn can be a great way to ‘tout yourself about’ when you are looking for a new job. Equally, if you are recruiting then LinkedIn can be a useful tool to sort the wheat from the chaff of all of the CVs you have to wade through  – though often Facebook can be more revealing!

But what if all you want to do is promote your business? Here are 2 ideas you may find helpful:

1. Integrate LinkedIn with your blog/news posts

One thing you should do is keep your LinkedIn profile up to date. This can be a pain to do manually but wouldn’t it be great if you could post once (say on your website news page as we all do regularly – don’t we?!) and have this automatically published to your LinkedIn account (and the rest of your Social Media network too should you wish?)

Well you can! Check out www.linksalpha.com; a neat utility with both free and subscription services

The service is easy to set-up and use but if you want to find out more please get in touch with us

2. Real networking with LinkedIn

I was talking with someone at a networking session this morning and he was telling me he was  really keen to get an introduction to the chief exec of a local firm as he felt there was a good synergy between their two companies. He was asking around to see if anyone knew the chief exec – and not getting very far!

This is where LinkedIn can really work. As a LinkedIn member, my colleague was not directly connected to his target contact – but he was connected to someone who is! This can be particularly effective if you work in a niche sector.

All he needs to do is to ask hs connection for an introduction – bingo!

The above scenario is based on a 2nd degree contact but the process can be effective even with only a 3rd degree contact – i.e. you have to go through 2 steps. I’m not sure you should try if your connection is more distant than this – but do feel free to give it a go!

And most important….

When you make a contact make sure you keep it even if there is no business opportunity straight away. Keeping in touch with people is the most sustainable way of building your business – oh, and doing good job helps too!

To talk about developing joined-up marketing for your business, give me a call

I recently reviewed a book looking at Social Media and, in follow up to this, I was reminded of a freely downloadable ebook which gives a great introduction to Twitter.

There is no question that there are a lot of people on Twitter who spend their time telling us thing we really aren’t that bothered about  – a classic example of focusing on what you want to say rather than what people might be interested to hear – but it can’t be denied that Twitter can be an incredibly powerful communication tool which can really help you to get your business message out to your market. Never forget though, Twitter is simply a medium….

….You are responsible for the message.

If you are new to Twitter, this ebook will show you:

• Why Twitter has become such big news
• What Twitter is and how it works
• How Twitter can help your business
• How to set up your profile
• Who to follow
• Etiquette on Twitter

Whether you decide Twitter is right for you and your business or not, this ebook can give you the insight and knowledge to help you make that decision.

The ebook is available on www.smarta.com and can be downloaded from the link here

If you decide to take the plunge, you will be helped to take your first Twitter steps through to learning more advanced strategies such as:

• How to super-engage with your community
• Using search to find new customers
• Using Twitter for customer service
• Becoming an indispensible resource for your industry
• Getting your employees on Twitter
• Measuring your success and developing a strategy
• Determining whether you need a social media agency

SMARTA.COM

Smarta.com is a collaberative business information portal which, in its own words:

• Is the ultimate advice and networking resource for anyone starting and running a small business.
• Provides independent, entrepreneur-led support and is backed by some of the UK’s top entrepreneurs.

The site can be a bit overwhelming as there is just so much ‘stuff’ in it! Inevitably there is the ‘…even more information – for a small fee…’ but there is a great deal that is available for free.

If you have a few minutes to spare it is worth a look.

For a while now, we have been encouraging people to make more use of social media in their marketing mix, but doing this can become an administration headache when you are trying to manage multiple profiles all with slightly different target markets & user profiles.

With this in mind, we thought it worth devoting a blog post to this subject, so here goes.

Laying the groundwork

We would always advocate that you should have a central web presence that you are 100% in control of. This is usually going to be your website, and if that website is based on our favourite (and FREE!) development platform, WordPress, then there are some great tools for publishing your posts out onto social networks. The tool we recommend is LinksAlpha, coupled with the Network Publisher WordPress plugin. This combination enables you to link your website to your social networking profiles. Every news post that you put onto your website will be automatically published to your chosen sites. This creates a good regular “bedrock” of content going out to your social media audience, and keeps your website fresh with regular new content.

Naturally, you retain full control to not publish particular posts or specify a particular phrase or sentence as the basis of your Tweet etc.

Building on this foundation

Once you have laid this foundation, the key is to accept that Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms are different, they have different strengths and tend to be used by different audiences.

The level to which this is true will depend on you specific situation, but a review of one client who is active on both Twitter & Facebook showed that less than 10% of contacts follow them on both platforms, suggesting that the two should maybe be treated separately. I am sure it is not unreasonable to extrapolate these findings to other social media platforms like LinkedIn.

Once we acknowledge this, it would then seem sensible to have the flexibility to post to individual social media platforms separately, in groups or to all platforms as appropriate.

And there is a great tool that gives you this flexibility. Hootsuite, is a suite of applications for PC and/or mobile, that allows you to manage your social media profiles in one place, and to post to some or all of them as appropriate. It also allows you to schedule posts, thus making the management of these account even easier.

The whole structure

If we pull all this together, we have a cohesive platform for delivering a manageable & sustainable social media presence that delivers regular, targeted content as efficiently as possible.

Useful Links

Network Publisher WordPress plugin – wordpress.org/extend/plugins/network-publisher/

Hootsuite – hootsuite.com

Question
What are those strange black and white squares that seem to be cropping up everywhere?

Answer
QR Codes…

By including a QR code on your leaflets, brochures, posters etc. you can give your customers easy, instant access to your website and other online marketing.

QR codes were invented in  the mid 90′s, and were initially intended for use in logistics to track packages through the supply chain, but they took a foothold in the marketing arena in Japan where they are now heavily used.

Put simply, they are 2 dimensional (2D) bar codes, (as opposed to the normal 1 dimensional codes we see on pretty much every package), that when scanned by a Smartphone, will direct the user to some online content or perform an action like sending an email or SMS.

Though do remember users are likely to be viewing your content on a phone so make sure it works on a small screen. See our post here for more info on this

How do I create them
Although there are some companies who will charge a small fortune for creating print ready QR codes, they are in fact very simple to create and can be produced using an online tool like qrcode.kaywa.com a service that is free and very simple to use. All you do is tell it what content you would like the code to point to, select a size and hit generate.

The system will then create a code thay you can save as an image.

How big should it be?
The rule of thumb is that for every 1m away that the scanner will be from the code, the code should be 10cm square. ie, a code 40cmx40cm should be scannable from around 4m!

Fortunately, because they are simple black and white images, you can safely scale them up using any graphics package, without loosing any quality.

The Fun Stuff
QR codes in their native form are pretty dull, but because they have  a lot of redundancy built into them, you can remove or alter up to 30% of the dots, and they will still work.

Designers have used this feature to create some pretty funky codes. You will find a few of these here. Our advice would be though that if you want to do anything but the most basic customisation, then it would be best to use a specialist designer who knows what they are doing. And in any case, TEST YOUR CODE before you use it.

The Important Stuff
Yes QR codes are new to the UK marketing scene, but should you be using them? The answer is, as always, “It depends”.

The question is, do they add anything to your campaign from a marketing perspective? If they do, then use them, but if not, then don’t!

There is no doubt that QR codes can add a really effective link between on-line and off-line elements of a campaign, and can be a great tool for driving people to your website from printed materials like PR and adverts.

We have two good examples of this in a recent campaign we have been running in connection with the Bankswoodberry Music festival.

• QR codes on a promotional banner The BSA banner, that we will be using at the festival, has 2 QR codes, one that links through to this blog, and a second that will send an enquiry email. This gives a simple way for interested parties to interact with the banner and obtain a copy of our contact details.
• QR codes to request additional info about the Festival PR concerning the festival contains a QR code, that when scanned will send an email to the users phone containing details of the bands playing over the weekend of the festival.In addition, lineup posters at the event will contain the same QR code to save people having to note down times of bands manually.In both cases scans are tracked to aid the measurement and assessment of the campaigns effectiveness.

You may notice that we have recently ditched our 0845 number in favour of a geographic 01457 number (01457 851111).

The reason for the change is primarily that 0845 numbers are increasingly being perceived as premium rate and are charged outside bundled minutes when called from a mobile. For this reason we believe that they have had their day, and thus have taken the decision to stop using them.

Although there are new non geographic numbers (eg 0844…) that are included in mobile bundles, we believe that the confusion over what is and isn’t a  premium rate number means that for the time being, their benefit from a marketing perspective is less than clear.

Our New Numbers are:

01457 851111 – Replaces 0845 050 1023 as our main number

01457 851112 – Replaces 0845 050 1262 as our fax number

If you too are getting tired of 08…. numbers, you might find this site useful:

www.saynoto0870.com

The site lists the standard geographic number alternatives to the 08…. numbers for many bigger companies.

For those of you who don’t already know, I am a great fan of the Ipad. I am also a fan of Blogs, Twitter et al. So when I learned of a great new app that tied the two together I thought that I had to check it out.

Flipboard, is a cool app that allows you to amalgamate all your Facebook, Twitter, and RSS along with feeds from major publishers & news organisations into your own personalised magazine all presented in an easy to use and interesting way.

You can download Flipboard from the App Store on your Ipad, then it is a simple process to add your social network & blog RSS feeds, and you have your own personalised magazine.

Once you have Flipboard, why not follow BSA Marketing on Twitter, or add our Blog RSS feed via Google reader, and you will never miss any of our blog posts again.

From a marketing perspective, as these tools become more prevelant, it gives people great new ways to receive your messages, making social networks & blogs even more powerful tools in the quest to:

Be Heard and Be Valued.

In recent times, social media has become a serious marketing tool, but with a growing number of sites, it can become a nightmare trying to keep them all updated with your latest messages.

To contain the problem, I would suggest that there are three that you need to take seriously when considering marketing, namely, Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook.

Considering Linkedin and Facebook for a moment, I think in the vast majority of cases it is an either/or decision based on that old marketing idea of “your target market”:

Facebook – If your target market tends to be individuals in their role as consumers, then facebook is probably the right place to put your messages. Some examples of clients who are effectively using facebook in this way are:

Mettricks butchers
Fendequip Direct
Howarths of Flixton

Linkedin – Historically, this has been a site used by individuals to network amongst their colleagues & peers, but it is becoming a useful marketing tool if you are looking to target individuals in the course of their work, hence it tends to be the better choice for B2B marketing.

Then there is Twitter. Given the extremely transient nature of Twitter, unless you have a steady stream of things to say, it should be seen as a by-product of Facebook/Linkedin activity, ensuring that posts on these two sites are replicated on Twitter.

The other useful thing to monitor on Twitter is “mentions”. Tracking when you are mentioned on Twitter can throw up some interesting marketing opportunities.

Good news! There is  a tool to help you manage your activity on these sites. LinksAlpha, is a site allowing you to post simultaneously to a number of social networks through a single interface , removing the need for posting separately to individual sites.

Furthermore if you are running a wordpress based blog, there is also a wordpress plug-in that will automatic all copy all your blog posts to your chosen social networks. What could be easier?

If you would like to discuss the potential opportunities presented by social media then don’t hesitate to contact us.

Twitter is rapidly breaking out of the realms of news & celeb gossip, and becoming a valuable marketing tool in the real world. If you are in consumer markets, then twitter is already a must have part of your marketing mix, and its use in Business to Business marketing is rapidly on the increase.

This said, knowing what to tweet and keeping track of your twitter activity can become tricky. With this in mind, here are three free tools that may help.

This is an analysis tool that allows you to look at who is tweeting what, thus allowing you to target your twitter activity & keep it relevant. It’s a great tool for spotting and monitoring trends in what people are talking about and who is doing the talking. Both key factors if you want to keep your Twitter activity relevant.

The system is free at the moment and you can check it out here – archivist.visitmix.com

HootSuite

Hootsuite allows you to manage all your social media activity in one place. One very useful feature is the ability to schedule activity, so rather than having to tweet regularly throughout the day, you can write all the tweets at once and then schedule them to go out over time. This means that simply by dedicating a short time to this each day, you can keep your tweet stream flowing.

Again HootSuite is free and can be found here

Links Alpha

This is another tool that facilitates your social Network posts. Available as a standalone tool at www.linksalpha.com, or as a plugin for WordPress, it allows you to make your posts in one place, and then distribute them automatically out to your chosen social networks.

We use this system to distribute our blog posts to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. So join us on any of these social networks and you can keep up to date on our blog posts.

You can also keep up to date by signing up to our Marketing Matters newsletter via the form on the right of this page.

We are always extolling the virtues of Google analytics, and one reason is that Google are continually developing it to make it easier to interpret the data. Their New feature “In page analytics is just such a development.

The feature, which can be found under the “Content” menu allows you to view analytics data overlayed on the relevant page of your site, making it much easier to interpret.

A recent blog post from Econsultancy website is a great overview of the new feature.

You will find the blog post here:

http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/6730-google-adds-visual-context-to-analytics?utm_medium=email&utm_source=topic