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Top 5 Bad Marketing Ideas

Posted on October 20, 2011 by BSA Marketing

We are always trying to bring you good ideas and tips to support your marketing efforts, but I thought it would be interesting to take a different tack and present some bad ideas (or marketing ideas that you may be encouraged to take up!) that we would recommend avoiding.

The inspiration for this came from a post on a US site www.goodmarketingideas.com highlighting the top BAD marketing ideas both on and off line. If you want to reat the full article, you will find a link to it here.

When it comes to On-line Marketing, here are my Top 5 Bad Marketing ideas:

1. Chase The Next Big Thing

If there is one thing that web marketing thrives on it is “The Next Big Thing (TNBT)”. Invariably, the next big thing is sold as the answer to all your marketing desires.

Whether it is:

a. Get to the top of Google
b. Win with Social Media
c. Beat your competition with Marketing

or whatever…

However useful TNBT may be as part of your marketing toolkit, you can be sure that it will not be as big as the hype.

I use the 3 examples above for a reason. All can very valuable when used as part of a sustainable marketing plan, but none will individually solve your marketing problems overnight.

Be vary wary of anyone claiming to be able to solve your problems overnight….for a modest fee!

2. Ignore Offline Marketing

We spend a lot of time promoting on-line marketing, because it offers may sustainable marketing opportunities to SME Marketers. But this does’t mean we have dismissed offline marketing. On the contrary, in its place it too can be very effective, especially when mixed with online campaigns.

Take a look at a couple of recent posts on our blog, and hopefully, you will get the idea:

3. Focus On You

Sure, you need to make sure that your customers know what you have to offer, and what your strengths are, but make sure you do this from their perspective, and from the context of how your product or service can benefit them, rather than how great it is!.

An example:

You are writing a marketing piece to tell your contacts about the fact that you have just invested in a new piece of equipment. Here are two ways you could write this:

“We are delighted to announce that we have just invested £gazillions in the latest state of the art equipment that has so many bells and whistles, that we could hardly get it through the door of our office”

“As part of our commitment to giving you the best service, we have recently invested in a new machine that will allow us to deliver higher quality results, more quickly, and at a lower cost to you than was previously possible”

Which do you think will work better?

4. Buy bulk email lists

I am not saying that it is never a good idea to buy email lists, but I am saying that is my default position, unless some-one can give me a very good reason why I should do it. The less you can target your list, the more likely it is to be a bad idea.

There are some very big, very cheap e-mail lists for sale out there. You work it out!

In our experience, the results that are achieved from sending emails to a list of customers and contacts that you have built up yourself in the course of your business are orders of magnitude better than those achieved with bought lists.

If you are thinking that you don’t have any lists of your own, or don’t see the benefit of emailing people you already know, you might find these posts interesting:

5. Give Up Too Easily

This is something that many, if not most, small business marketers (myself included) are guilty of. It is very easy to have what seems like a great marketing idea, implement it, and then give up in disgust when your sales haven’t doubled in a week.

The fact is is that whatever anyone might tell you, there are no quick fixes in marketing and most really successful SME marketing initiatives that deliver sustained and sustainable success take time to develop. This is why it is important to develop strategies that you are happy to sustain over time so that become part of your day to day business activities. By all means, monitor, measure, review and evolve these activities on a regular basis and adjust and tweak things as appropriate.

Ask yourself objectively, ‘Is my business position progressing and improving?‘ If the answer is “yes”, then don’t give up!

Posted in General Musings, Marketing Tips, News | Tagged Best Practice, marketing, marketing fundementals, online marketing, search engine optimisation, search marketing, SEO, Social Media, Web marketing | Comments Off

Selecting a supplier – your choice

Posted on October 13, 2011 by David Wright

Overheard conversation between 2 people negotiating a contract:

Customer: "What's your best deal for delivering on the contract?"

Supplier: CHEAP - SPEEDY - QUALITY - pick the two you want!

Simple but oh so true!

Posted in General Musings | Leave a comment

Getting started with targeted e-mail marketing – ‘but I don’t have a list…’

Posted on October 13, 2011 by BSA Marketing

But I don’t have a list…

How often have we heard this when we are talking to clients about the possibility of starting to use e-mail marketing? – Lots!

But it isn’t true. It just requires a bit of lateral thinking… …and a glass of your favourite tipple helps!

The problem normally starts because when people think about e-mail marketing lists they think in terms of lists of 1000s or more – I once saw an e-mail offering a DVD claiming to to contain a BILLION e-mail addresses – you get the point, e-mail marketing is normally thought of as bulk marketing which is both off-putting and overwhelming to many people.

But here we are talking about TARGETED marketing – using e-mail as a platform to keep in touch with with people we already know. It isn’t the quantity of the list we are bothered about – it’s the QUALITY.

One of our longest-standing e-mail marketing clients started with a list of only 54 names – yet their e-mail marketing consistently produces results – even now, some 4 years later, the client’s list is less than 200. As I say, quality is more important than quantity.

So where to start:

First, go and raid your desk drawers, briefcase or anywhere else you put business cards (while you decide what to do with them) and gather them all together – If your collection is less than around 30, I suggest you go and have a ferret around the various storage bins in the car too.

Second, open a blank spreadsheet using your favourite ‘Office Suite’ – if you use MS Excel, you can get a simple E-mail Target List Template here.

Third, – this is important – pour a glass of your favourite tipple.

Fourth, transfer the information from the cards into the the spreadsheet – I think 1 sip/glug every 10 names is reasonable.

Once you have finished I think another glass is a reasonable reward for a job well done!

And then (a bit of discipline is required here) WHENEVER you get given a business card, add the details to your list. This will build your list using the principle of little and often which can produce good results in a surprisingly short time.

Now you have your list and you CAN start your targeted e-mail marketing.

Posted in E-mail Best Practice, E-mail Marketing, Marketing Tips, News | Tagged email Marketing, marketing fundementals, online marketing | 1 Comment

Adding a Google+ Share button to your blog

Posted on October 13, 2011 by BSA Marketing

Share your blog posts on Google+

Google+ still has a long way to go to prove its usefulness in social media marketing and although the signs are positive, one big downside is the lack of support for integration into other areas of the social media mix.

Unlike Twitter & Facebook with their tweet & follow buttons, if you want to add blog posts to your Google+ stream, there are no such tools…

..until now (If you are using WordPress to power your blog at at least).

If your blog is ‘powered by WordPress’, all you need to do is add the following code to the relevant place in your WordPress template.

(If you don’t know how to do this, we would be happy to assist)

<a href=”https://m.google.com/app/plus/x/?v=compose&content=<?php the_title(); ?> – <?php the_permalink(); ?>” onclick=”window.open(‘https://m.google.com/app/plus/x/?v=compose&content=<?php the_title(); ?> – <?php the_permalink(); ?>’,'gplusshare’,'width=450,height=300,left=’+(screen.availWidth/2-225)+’,top=’+(screen.availHeight/2-150)+”);return false;”><img style=”float:left; margin-right:10px;” src=”http://i52.tinypic.com/xfohg4.png” width=”55″ height=”22″ alt=”Share <?php the_title(); ?> on Google+” title=”Share <?php the_title(); ?> on Google+”></a>

Once installed, a button will display against your post. When clicked, the button will add the post to your Google+ stream.

Although it is a little technical at the moment, my thanks to Alex at AVItricks.info.

I am certain it won’t be long before someone offers a plugin to simplify this process, and when they do, we will be sure to post it here.

Posted in From the forums, Social Media Marketing, Tricks & Tips | Tagged google, Social Media, Web marketing, Wordpress | Leave a comment

Making the most of LinkedIn

Posted on October 5, 2011 by BSA Marketing

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

Posted in Free Tools, Marketing Tips, Social Media Marketing, Tricks & Tips | Tagged Best Practice, LinkedIn, Links Alpha, Social Media | 1 Comment

Using Images and Graphics in E-mail – Dos and Don’ts

Posted on September 30, 2011 by BSA Marketing

Image not found graphic Adding images to email, is obviously very desirable from a marketing perspective, as they add significant impact to newsletters. However, with an increasing number of email clients blocking images by default, their inclusion has always meant the battle to get them seen in your recipients inbox.

This is a battle that gets ever harder as more and more clients block images by default, so we thought it would be worth revisiting the issue.

First of all, we though it would be good to give an up to date picture of the situation, and to this end, have found an interesting post on the Campaign Monitor website:

Image Blocking in Email clients

Of Particular interest is that fact that they list the current status re-image blocking for all the major email clients.

The post does go on to give some innovative (if slightly extreme) ways to get around this, including converting your images to a matrix of HTML color blocks (Think 80′s video games and you will get the idea of what’s possible!).

More realistically, this issue need not cause too many sleepless nights if you follow the following simple rules:

Don’t use image only emails as all your recipient will see is an empty box.
Make sure the message is clear even without the pictures (Use the pictures to enhance rather than deliver the message).
Make sure you fill in the ‘alt tags’, as these will display instead of the images until the images are downloaded.
Use cascading style sheets (css) to style alt tags to give them more impact. (There is more on this in the Campaign Monitor post.)
Encourage people to add you to their address book, as many clients, including outlook will display images by default if the sender is in the address book.

Most importantly, make sure your recipients value your messages by keeping them relevant & interesting, that way they are more likely to click the “download images” button, and get the full benefits of your design efforts.

Posted in E-mail Best Practice, E-mail Marketing, From the forums, Marketing Tips, Tricks & Tips | Tagged Best Practice, Deliverability, email clients, email Marketing, image blocking, image to html, online marketing | 1 Comment

Free introductory guide to Twitter plus lots of other useful information

Posted on September 27, 2011 by David Wright

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.

Posted in Book Review, Free Tools, From the forums, Marketing Tips, News, Social Media Marketing | Tagged marketing fundementals, online marketing, Social Media, Twitter | 1 Comment

Google+ Now open to everyone

Posted on September 22, 2011 by BSA Marketing

I was about to make a post offering a Google+ invite to anyone who would like to try out this new social networking platform when the news came through that they had opened it up to everyone, so you are now free to add Google+ to your range of social network tools, but is it going to be worth it?

With the backing of Google, I think it would be dangerous to ignore Google+ – and it does have some neat features.

To date there has been a dilemma with the leading Social Media sites; should I be using it for my personal friends, my business contacts, or both? For many people, the sort of information and news they might share with friends is different to what they want to show on their work or business profile.

Google+ offers the ability to split your contacts (friends in Facebook speak) into Circles, so you can differentiate between friends, family, work colleagues & business contacts etc.

With features like this, and a promise that buisness profiles are on the way, it has to be worth a look as part of your marketing mix.

To get you started, I have found this concise guide to Google+ that you might find useful:

How to get started with Google+ your complete guide

Although the guide talks about the requirement to be invited to join Google+, I understand that this is no longer the case. You may have seen the animated blue arrow pointing to the new Google+ link on the Google menubar:

If you would still like an invitation to join, simply leave a comment on this post with your email address and I will send you one.

I am sure we will be featuring Google+ in more detail in the coming months, but for now check it out and when you do please add me to your circle (duncanw@bsamarketing.com), as we will be adding our blog posts to our Google+ stream in due course.

If you would like to talk through whether Google+ is right for you, please feel free to give us a call.

Posted in News, Social Media Marketing | Tagged Facebook, google, marketing, online marketing, Social Media, Web marketing | Leave a comment

Client Testimonial: BSA are efficient, approachable and knowledgeable

Posted on September 22, 2011 by BSA Marketing

Some more great feedback from one of our wonderful clients. Our work with them includes:

Web development & hosting
E-mail marketing
Website maintenance and support

This is what they think:

“We’ve worked with BSA for eight years and found them to be efficient, approachable and knowledgeable. They avoid talking technical gibberish with our non-technical staff, are pro-active with their advice and any issues are addressed speedily. “

C.O., Hampshire

Posted in Testimonials | Tagged Best Practice, marketing fundementals, online marketing | Comments Off

Selecting a supplier – your choice

Getting started with targeted e-mail marketing – ‘but I don’t have a list…’

But I don’t have a list…

So where to start:

Using Images and Graphics in E-mail – Dos and Don’ts

Client Testimonial: BSA are efficient, approachable and knowledgeable

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