Networking events can be a great source of new business contacts – and potential customers – but a brief conversation over a chicken sandwich (read bacon butty for the early risers) isn’t always enough to establish a common interest – and potential business relationship.

While you might get to meet people at a networking event, relying on future events to meet them again and develop opportunities can be slow – not to say hit and miss – will they even be there next time? 

We are always banging on about effective marketing being a process – not an event, and that your best prospects are people who know you. Keeping in touch regularly with everyone you meet is a sure fire way of maximising business opportunities – but how?

E-mail is a great way of keeping in touch and with a dedicated e-mail marketing system you can get great feedback on just who is reading your mail and following your links. Check out BSA E-mailworks online e-mail tool - it is a great system, simple to use and effective.

Stop trying to attract customers, and start focusing on making your offering attractive to your marketplace.

Or so the author of a post I recently found on the web believes. You can read the full post via the link below!

Why you need to forget customers and focus on fans

It’s a subtle difference maybe, but one which can completely change your marketing approach.

Although I whole heartedly agree with the sentiment, I hope he is being a bit extreme in his views to make a point. Customers (people who buy from you) are vital to the success of a business, Apple’s huge fan base would be commercially useless if none of them bought any Apple products!!

But turning people into customers when they are fans is a much easier process. Focus on turning people into fans, and make it easy for them to buy your products or services, and the process of them becoming customers will take care of itself!

Obviously part of this process is communicating your message, but the web offers some great tools through websites, email, social networking, blogging, and if you get the offering & message right, word of mouth (probably the most valuable marketing tool!!).

If you read this & think “That’s it, but where do I go from here” give us a call, we would be happy to talk, and we may be able to secure some grant funding to get the ball rolling.

A couple of incidents recently have caused me to ask this question, and it’s is one you should be asking too. In many cases you may find that it is not be as secure as it needs to be.

In simple terms your on-line brand consists of 2 elements:

1. Your domain name
2. Your website

There are a few things you need to check with both of these elements:

Your Domain Name

This is arguably the most important factor as this IS your on-line brand. It is therefore essential that it is secure. To confirm that it is, you need to check that the domain registered to you. If it is not, get it changed NOW.

You can check this by doing a Whois lookup (here is a link to the one we use – www.dnsstuff.com) and check the Registrant Details. This should be your company. If it isn’t you need to get on to your domain supplier & ask them to change it.

Your Website

The big question here is “Are your website and any associated databases backed up regularly”.

Ask yourself the question:

“If I woke one morning to find my website was gone, or worse still had been hacked & replaced with someone else’s content, what would I do?”

If you have a back up the answer is simple – restore the back up and you are sorted. If its not, then the result could be an expensive rebuild from scratch!

You should check with your web provider that your site is backed up regularly and what they would do in the case of a “disaster”.

If you have any concerns that your web presence is not secure, feel free to contact us, and we will be happy to give you our input.

This is a question I have been asking for a while now, and finally, I have come to the conclusion that the answer is Yes.

Video is a great way of connecting with your marketplace,and communicating your message in a user friendly way. It is also a great way to enhance your image, and reinforce your experise in your field (both key marketing objectives).

In addition to this, because search engines now also include video results in their indexes, it is also very helpful an SEO perspective.

A great expample of the use of video in this way can be found on www.mettricksbutchers.com.

www.mettricksbutchers.co.uk/Videos/c10/pages.html

You will also find the videos on YouTube.

If you would like to explore how you could use video as part of your web marketing mix, get in touch.

Having worked with clients on the development of their web presence over the last 10 years, one of the key issues we have identified is ensuring that a site is kept up to date. A static site which is updated a couple of times are year is likely to do your image more harm than good, so the question is how do you keep your site fresh & up to date.

In my view the answer is content management in some form or another. In is most basic form, a content management system (CSM) allows a non technical user to update & edit content on a site through (usually) a web interface.

Historically, CMS systems have been very expensive to implement, but this is no longer the case, and there is really nothing to prevent the use of a content management system on any site, but the question is which one.

In my opinion, the answer is “It depends on what you are trying to achieve”, as different solutions offer different benefits. For this reason, we would use a range of tools to meet the clients requirements. Our starting point is always:

“What are your business & marketing objectives, and how can we use the web to help you achieve these?”

With this in mind, we now focus on the use of the following systems:

• CRE Loaded – For E-commerce sites, where the prime objective is direct online trading
• Joomla – For information based sites where dialogue with users is a priority
• WordPress – for blogging functionality
• Slideshow Pro – For image & video gallery functionality

With the exception of the last (Slide show pro) these are all open source, and all have basic versions that can be downloaded for free (you will find links to them on our links page).

What we bring to the party is the experience of working with these tools to ensure that they meet your objectives.

Having developed many sites using these tools, we have the skills to maximise functionality & cut development times (our record is 4 days from agreement of design to the site going live!).

We also have the marketing skills to ensure that your new site will become central to you business development programme.

But ultimately, whether you do it yourself, or use a company like ourselves to develop your site, the benefits of a site that you can manage yourself are extensive, and definitely worth consideration.

If you are looking for help in developing your web marketing, or are after some advice on the best direction to take, feel free to call us for a chat, we are always happy to talk.

Following a highly successful seminar series, where over 50 people learned how to promotet here businesses on a tight budget using the internet, we are happy to make the presentation slides available to everyone.

These can be downloaded via the resources page on our site.

The key presentations which covered

• Copywriting
• Getting your site found on the internet
• E-mail marketing

These were filmed on the day, and will be available via this site over the coming weeks.

If you are looking for evidence of the power of the blog and on-line marketing, this article that appeared in the Times over the weekend may be of interest.

Currently, there is hardly a week goes by without news of another high street name going to the wall.

However many high street failures can be put down to more than the economic slowdown:

For example:

Max Spielmann – Did not move with the technology
Woolworths – No real identity

Interestingly the one failure that has been rescued is Whittards – a company with a strong brand and a focused approach to the market.

What can we learn from this?

You are best positioned to survive & thrive in harsh economic times if you have a clear, well researched business strategy and are able to communicate this position effectively to your marketplace!

So what should you do in light of this?

Ask your self 3 questions?

1. Do I know why my customers buy from me
2. Do I know what makes my offering stand out from my competitors
3. At a party, If someone asked you “what do you do?” would your answer keep their interest?

If your answer to any of these was no, then maybe you should take some time out to think about your offering and how to differentiate this in the market. In doing this, you may find the SOSTAC planning guide a useful tool.

If you can answer yes to all these then the next thing to think about is how to communicate this to your marketplace.

Now ask yourself 3 more questions

1. Do I know who my customers are, and do I have the relevant information to communicate with them?
2. Can I define my wider marketplace?
3. Do I have an effective and measurable mechanism to communicate with these individuals?

If you can’t answer yes all of these, then you need to take some time out to consider your marketing communications process. In doing this you may find the CLEVQO model a useful tool for understanding the process & identifying where you should apply your resources to best effect.

Although the document focuses on the B2B business development process, it is equally relevant to the on-line retail (B2C) process.

Ask any consultant, business adviser or successful business owner what you need when starting or developing a business? The answer will invariably include “A Good Marketing Plan”.

It is certainly the case that if you want to successfully build a business, a plan of where you are going is essential.

What some people forget when looking at web marketing, is that this still holds true. Good planning is still an essential part of any marketing campaign, whether on or off line.

Ok, So Planning is essential, but it can be little help if this plan is simply an overview of objectives and strategy. It is important that the plan is a practical document, actively used in the ongoing management of the business, rather than a nice report that sits on a shelf gathering dust.

Over many years working with clients in developing effective Marketing Plans, we have found that the SOSTAC Model developed in the 1990’s by PR Smith is difficult to beat. It is a straightforward model that goes systematically through the steps to build a
marketing plan, and helps to ensure that all relevant factors are considered, without the need to go into excessive and expensive detail.

The model then continues to look at the practical issues of putting the plan into practice. SOSTAC is an Acronym for the 6 basic elements of the Marketing Plan:

• Situation Where are we now?
• Objectives Where do we want to get to?
• Strategy How are we going to get there? – The Big Picture
• Tactics How are we going to get there? – The Detail
• Actions Who is going to do what and when?
• Control How can we control, measure and develop the process?

Each element relates to a key step in the process. Simply work through the Pro-Forma on the following pages step by step and fill in the gaps to suit your business and your goals.

One thing you need to be aware of: Often people deal with the SOS as a wish-list of achievements and then fail to develop and implement a detailed, controllable & measurable action plan (the TAC). This leads to a statement of great goals with no clear idea of how – or even if you can achieve them.

You will find more info on Marketing Planning & full details of the SOSTAC planning system on our main website

Marketing people love acronyms and Mnemonics, and when it comes to writing effective marketing letters, the Mnemonic to remember is AIDPA Attention Interest Desire Proof Action:

By following this model, you should be able to produce letters which will really get results. An explanation of each of these steps is outlined below:

Attention
The first step if the letter is to be effective, is to get the readers attention, and to encourage them to readyour message. It is generally accepted that you have the first line (at most) to get your readers attention. You should therefore look to highlight the purpose of the letter clearly in the first line. To this end it is best to present this as a “Headline” that can not be missed:

“A cost effective way to find new customers”
“Say goodbye to your ……… problems”
“A solution to ……”
“Lowest prices ever on …..”

There is only one purpose for this line, and that is to get the reader to read on, and not to throw the letter straight in the bin.

Interest
So you have the readers attention, and they are reading on. You now have to keep and develop their interest by telling them something more. This will normally be the first paragraph, and it should expand on the claim you made in the headline.

If we expand on the first example above “A cost effective way to find new customers”

The first paragraph might be.

“For most companies, finding new business is a priority. However in many cases, resources for achieving this are limited, so a highly cost effective solution is required. BSA marketing have 15 years experience in helping SMEs to generate new business on limited promotional budgets.”

If you have got it right, the reader is now interested in knowing what you have to offer, and you can move on to the next step.

Desire
Here you are presenting your offer, with the aim of generating a desire for that service in the mind of the reader.

Continuing the example above this section might read. “At BSA Marketing we focus on working with clients to identify companies who have the long termpotential to use their services, and then through carefully targeted direct marketing, to build arelationship with these contacts. In this way, it is possible to proactively identify opportunities as theyarise, and ensure that our clients are in “the right place at the right time” to capitalise on these opportunities.

Proof
So you have got your interest, and laid out your offering, but why should they believe your claims? The next step is therefore to back up your words with some proof of your capabilities. This could be a statistic, a testimonial quote from an existing customer etc. Continuing our example:

“As one existing client puts it, ‘Over the years we have worked with BSA, our customer base has constantly developed, without it costing the earth”.

Action
If things have gone to plan, the reader is now asking himself “where do I sign”. So the final step is to tell them how to get in touch . The key here is to make it as easy as possible, ideally via a faxback, or freephone/low call number, or via your website. The advantage of the latter is that you can also make further information available.

Concluding our example: “So telephone us today on 0845 050 1023, and find out how BSA Marketing can help you find morebusiness, you won’t be disappointed. Alternatively visit our website at www.bsamarketing.com andread more cases about how we have helped our clients”.

Following these steps, should maximise the number of recipients who will read the letter, and thus should maximise your response rate. Putting it all together, overleaf I have put the sections together to show how it might look as the completed letter.