How To Market Your Business

I have had thousands of people (well 7 people at least) come up to me and say, "My marketing isn't working for me, I am not winning any new clients - do me a cost effective campaign". When we sit down and talk through what has happened so far with their marketing campaigns and what has worked and what hasn't, the majority kind of just look at me and say, "I don't know".

This newsletter is aimed at getting you ready for a marketing campaign, and even a few practical ideas for a simple campaign.

Quite often businesses take a shotgun approach to marketing, they get a load of different ideas, such as a mailshot1, press release, small ring a round to a few business or alike and then fire them all at once to see what comes back.

I mention this newsletter on sales letters I put out, in conversations I have with people on the phone, on various websites I post messages on and if I had chance, on a banner attached to a plane.

What people don't realise is how vital it is to understand which of the marketing channels2 you have used have worked. What is more, understanding this is really easy.

Take this newsletter, I don't hide the fact that for me it is a marketing channel, I want you to get ideas from reading it, but I would also like it if you came to me off the back of it for a campaign of sorts. I track how successful it is by asking people to tell me how they have heard of the newsletter when they come to subscribe or download it from my website. I mention this newsletter on sales letters I put out, in conversations I have with people on the phone, on various websites I post messages on and if I had chance, on a banner attached to a plane. When people come to get the newsletter and they say where they found out about it I can then see which messages people are more receptive to.

"Big wow" I hear you shout... but no, stick with me. After a while I can see what marketing areas are working for me, even to some extent I can then begin to measure the financial value of a particular marketing channel by reading the data in the box that simply says, "how did you hear about this newsletter".

If from that data, the majority of people say that it has come via a web post I can see that for me so far, this is the most effective message and I can concentrate on that area rather than moving into another more expensive area such as telemarketing or advertising. Now, experienced marketing people will say this is a flawed idea as it depends how good each message was i.e. how well written the sales letter was etc, but in the SME market you need quick client wins and this is why understanding where leads have come from is vital.

Understanding the origin of a lead is also a real good conversational ice-breaker when you are talking to someone for the first time, a simple "how did you hear about us" gets the conversation moving and gives you a vital bit of information to log somewhere. Hopefully you are starting to see the benefit. It is important that you ask your staff or colleagues to do this to, if you give them the thinking behind it they will, hopefully, also see the benefit.

There is no point getting the phones ringing but not being able to help everyone within the timescales stated on the marketing material.

Another important area for you to think about before you start a campaign is, can you service all the enquiries that are generated by a campaign. There is no point getting the phones ringing but not being able to help everyone within the timescales stated on the marketing material.

A good national example of this is in the mortgage world. In the Guardian on Saturday 16 April there was a piece about a leading High St Bank having a very low rate mortgage that was attracting thousands of enquiries. The down side was that they could not cope with the response and were in fact losing big clients such as mortgage brokers (who they rely heavily upon for long-term business). This will have a huge long term effect, and all the people they have upset by not servicing on time will be unlikely to use them again, or worst case scenario, recommend to their friends that they do not use this company. The fact it got into the paper makes the situation even more bleak.

At the other end of the spectrum you need to think about this as well. You need to have a really realistic idea of how many clients/enquiries you could cope with without struggling. At this vital stage in your business development, can you cope with losing clients by not responding quickly enough?

There are technical aspects to think about to, can your website stand up to high volumes of traffic, can your phone system cope with loads of calls and what is the effect of an ‘engaged’ phone line to a new customer trying to get through?

All this quite often leads me to suggest to people that they try a few ideas at a time, or even, one marketing idea at a time. This can work really well for keeping your message in front of your target audience. If you keep having various marketing material appearing in front of them, maybe a press release one week, then a mailing the next, then a small advert the following, you are going to start sticking in their mind.

Moving on... as promised, three very short but simple marketing ideas:

1 Do you market your business in all the ways you can? Do your invoices carry not only your logo, but also details of your new range or new service? Do your envelopes have your logo on, or at least your company name? Can you put a sign up outside your business?

2 Do you have case studies of satisfied customers? These can be used in marketing literature, in conversations with new clients and quite importantly, if you are submitting a press release to media - a case study is a really strong idea.

3 Do you contact existing customers to see how they are getting on? Sounds really straight forward, but not many businesses do this and it is a great way to stand out and get a good reputation for excellent customer services. Plus, it is a good way of getting repeat sales.

1. JARGON BUSTER - Mailshot = sending a bucket full of sales letters introducing your service or product.
2. JARGON BUSTER - Marketing Channel = Each area of marketing is called a channel, i.e. sending a press release is one marketing channel, sending a mailshot is another channel, a radio ad is another channel etc etc.