Month: March 2015

What is the biggest barrier to sustained, effective content marketing?

I reckon it’s something else…. Sure, all of these are important but in my experience, none is the biggest barrier. While most businesses can come up with content when they first start their marketing, it’s after a few weeks of sustained engagement with customers and prospects that the cracks start to show…

I can't think what to say next. I don't know how to say it

…yet it is normally only after a period of regular communication that people start to notice it! Why do you think major brands will sponsor TV programmes for months – even years?

The importance of sustained marketing

Marketing is a key function in any business. Just like accounting, HR, production etc., marketing is something that should be an integral part of your business. OK, there will be times when your marketing is higher profile and others when your main focus is on different areas of the business but developing a base level of sustained marketing communication creates a strong platform on which specific campaigns can be built. The mere fact that individual campaigns are built on a platform of regular contact with your market  can immediately give them more recognition and impact than if they were disconnected and ad-hoc.

The value of planning

Don’t get me wrong. Regularly creating new content can be challenging, and all too often it is easy to assume that your marketing efforts don’t produce worthwhile results (though real-world engagement rates can be surprising – check out this post) “Allowing things to drift” is, I believe, the number one reason why sustained marketing programmes don’t continue.

I know what it feels like to be faced with a blank screen when you have a newsletter due to be sent out today!

The best solution is to have a plan where you set out what you are going to say and, importantly, why you are going to say it. I know what it feels like to be faced with a blank screen when you have a newsletter due to be sent out today! Not only is this quite stressful, it also puts your focus on getting words written to fill the space rather than thinking about what the point is you are trying to make and how this will reinforce your brand message. Having a ‘Content Calendar’ gives you chance to take time over your articles. Sometimes it is better to write no more than a title and a few headings or bullet points then come back and fill in the gaps later. Planning ahead also makes it easier to get other people to have input in your content or to review and assess what has been written; not just does it read OK but do you make the point you intend?

Build a Content Calendar

Here are 5 simple steps to keeping your content flowing with a Content Calendar

1. Draw up your Content Calendar –
   • Plan over at least 6 months, preferably 12
2. Break your calendar into monthly themes
   • Themes should reinforce your proposition/brand
3. Write article titles for each theme
   • What point do you want to address under each title?
   • How does point relate to your proposition/brand?
4. Build content from each title
   • Make sure you have a beginning, a middle and the end
   • Focus on your reader
   • Remember it is OK to start an article the come back to it
   • Avoid waffle or unnecessary detail
5. Review content in light of point and theme
   • Does everything tie together?
   • Is your key point well made and clear?
   • Finish an article then review it after 1-2 days. Are you still happy with it?

Download a Template to get you started: We have prepared a template (in MS Excel format) to help get you started. Feel free to download it to use in your own business.

• Version 1 – Blank Template ready for you to fill in
• Version 2 – Partially Completed Template to give you some ideas

If you need any assistance, please get in touch From now on, you should have well written, relevant things to say ready to engage with your market Your marketing communication will be joined-up and sustainable! Enjoy!

I ran out of business cards this week, and took a strategic decision not to print more! LinkedIn was a key factor in my decision. Increasingly LinkedIn marketing is becoming a must have tool for any company working in the Business 2 Business arena, and a great tool for getting your name out and engaging with contacts. Once connected, contacts will be informed (via their update feed) every time you post on LinkedIn, whether it is a personal or company update, or more recently when you make a post on LinkedIn Pulse (More on that here). So every time you post – of course you you are being thoughtful and joined up about what you post, aren’t you? – your LinkedIn marketing network will see that content and so….

• Get a reminder that you are around
• Learn more about how you think, what you offer and where your strengths lie

So, back to the business cards: My thinking was that probably 98% of my business cards are used at networking events, where business cards have 2 purposes:

1. Save you writing your email address down every time you meet someone
2. As a tool to build your contact network

More broadly, they allow you to start a connection with someone you meet.

Skip the business card – go straight to LinkedIn!

Now, rather than exchanging cards with someone I meet, I go directly to LinkedIn on my smartphone and invite them to connect there and then. This way I have the information to contact them directly if needs be, but in addition they will also be updated automatically every time I post on LinkedIn –  unlike the scenario with the business card, where they will probably file it and forget our meeting fairly quickly, That’s great after a reasonably in depth discussion, but what about the “Hi I’m Duncan, have my card” type engagements which are still common at most networking events? In my view, the vast majority of these are pretty much worthless. They are transient, and unless the recipient of your card happens to be actively looking for your skill at the time, you will be quickly forgotten. What’s more, simply pushing your card on someone is increasingly seen as disrespectful. Why should you want someone’s card if they don’t have the time or inclination to have at least a brief conversation? My aim at networking events is to focus on the real conversations, and then afterwards, to look through the delegate lists (often only available after the event), and select delegates where I believe there could be a relevant connection, even though we didn’t get the chance to speak on the day. I then go to LinkedIn and (assuming I can find them!) invite them to connect with the message “Sorry I didn’t get a chance to meet you at the  …… event yesterday”, but I would like to add you to my linked In Network”.  In my experience the majority of these invitations are accepted thus creating a connection with these people, and an increased audience for my LinkedIn marketing content! Assuming that my content has value (hopefully it does!), there is at least a chance that some of these will remember me, and what I do, as and when they have a need! There is much more to using LinkedIn as a marketing tool, and we will cover this in more detail in future articles, but much of its benefit is based on having a growing and more importantly RELEVANT list of connections. I believe my lack of business cards and my switch in strategy will enhance this process!

Activity. In my opinion, that’s the key to a successful Twitter account. This doesn’t mean that spouting random and unrelated drivel delivers good followers and good engagement. Any increase in activity will attract both followers and engagement, but it won’t be useful to you or your business. Rather 10 relevant followers that add value than 100 valueless ones. Of course, the above points are all opinions, opinions which I have developed whilst running the BSA Marketing Twitter account over the past 2 months. Quality not quantity. That old adage rings true for me when looking to post content. I have steadily increased the activity on the account during the past 2 months, with selected daily content being released. As a marketing company, naturally, I am releasing marketing related content. This might sound easy enough as there are an abundance of blogs and content sources available, although there is also an abundance of tripe, so it’s all about curating the feed and making sure that only quality content gets in. I post daily content under #MidMorningMatters and these posts usually create good engagement, as shown in the graphic below (Text size in the tag cloud indicates level of engagement).   A useful following. When I started working on the account, there were 182 followers, of which only a few  were in our target market, some were random local people and some were just plain irrelevant. This number has since grown steadily to over 300, with an increasing proportion withing our target market. This steady increase in followers,has been a result of thoughtful and effective posting, as a result they are far more valuable to BSA than accounts which promise “5000 followers for $5”.

Follower graph: Here you can see the positive follower graph for the last 2 months.

  Following : Follower Ratio People judge Twitter accounts. Very soon after landing on the page, a user will decide if they wish to follow your account or not. A major factor in this is the ratio of accounts you are following to the accounts that follow you. In the ‘Twittersphere’, if you are following 1000 people and only have 10 followers, you are viewed as a poor account to follow, regardless of your posts. Obviously there are exceptions. For example when a new account starts up, this will usually be the case. I have always been mindful of an ideal ratio (1:2 in favour of followers) during the past 2 months, and is certainly something to be aware of when running a Twitter account. Building you followers I have not been able to rely purely on accounts following the BSA account without encouragement. I have actively had to seek accounts that I feel are in our target market and add value to our account. I have a strict mental checklist when choosing whether to follow an account or not. They must be active, in the UK and be relevant to what we do.. It is important to do this so as to stick to the following, follower ratio guide. If an account becomes inactive for sustained periods, I cut ties with it.  By being active in my following, I have been able to build up a good number of active followers that BSA are interested in with both the number of followers and the proportion of relevant accounts growing as a result.

Is there a ‘right time’ to do marketing?

Some people say marketing is all about timing but does this mean there are times when you should do marketing and other times when you shouldn’t?

I say, just do it! 

It is so easy to put off your marketing until the things you are dealing with at the moment, or your current busy period are over and you ‘have more time’. The truth is there is no good time to start marketing (except at the beginning!) and actually you should be doing it all the time! Sure, sometimes you might be doing more and other times less but the underlying process of communicating with your customers and markets and building your brand should be constant.

So what about the ‘timing’?

There certainly is good timing in marketing; being able to pick up on events, whether in your business or outside, and turning them to your advantage to make a  particular offer or demonstrate how you really can help people. The danger is that if you have no marketing processes in place, you might miss the boat. By the time you pull together the resources to get your message out, the opportunity may have passed, or you may have to spend a lot of money to get things moving quickly, with inevitably less opportunity to plan your approach. On the other hand, if you have a sustained marketing communications process (even if it is only low-key) it is relatively easy to turn the gas up to exploit opportunities as and when they arise.

But I need to sort things inside my business

Good marketing can be a bit of a waste of time if you don’t actually fulfill your promises! If the people and processes in your business aren’t lined up to deliver to your customers, getting people interested in what you offer can backfire. Conversely, ignoring your customers while you work to ‘get things right’ inside your business doesn’t really help either. Being too ‘inward-looking’ can risk losing your presence in your market. This is where a joined-up approach is so powerful. By developing internal people/processes and external communication as 2 elements of the same thing; both focused on the goal of effective growth of your business means nothing gets left behind. Sure, your emphasis will inevitably be on one or the other sometimes but keep up with both internal and external development even if it is at a modest level, ready to expand when appropriate. As a direct reflection of this approach we find that with more and more of our clients, we work in partnership with clients and growth consultants to create powerful business growth teams which focus on the development of both people and market communication in parallel. If you would like to discuss the potential for a joined-up approach to growth in your business, get in touch – we might even be able to find funding to support the programme.

Just do it!

There is one more issue; you are just too busy to think about growth! And the answer? Just do it! I have a simple view of business: It’s all about Time and Money. If you are very busy (i.e. no time) then I would hope you are making some money so be in a position to fund your growth. If, on the other hand, your bank account is a little light then maybe you are quieter so will have time. If you have neither time nor funds then (unless it is all planned on the critical path of a well-structured growth programme, of course) I suggest you need to look at the fundamentals of your business! Hopefully this isn’t how you find yourself and you do have some resource (time or money) to invest in your business growth. In this case, even if it feels like you are too busy, my advice is to just do it. Get the ball rolling and make sure you have good people around you. I would always recommend working with people you know and trust. If you have built up good working relationships and have confidence in someone’s ability to help you achieve your goals, work with them. If, on the other hand, you are looking for a ‘fresh pair of eyes’ or want to develop a joined-up business growth team, I’d be happy to talk