What's your marketing objective?

#1.  What does the business need to achieve?

Where do I start?

- Increased turnover?
- More customers?
- Increased profit?
- Product diversification?

Whatever your business objective, your marketing objective should filter down from it so you can realistically achieve them both.

To make your marketing objectives more achievable, make sure they're SMART!

S Specific
Be specific in what you're going to do. 
"I'm going to promote our new set of golf clubs to every golf enthusiast in Hampshire"

M Measurable
Build in some way of measuring responses so you can see how effective your marketing initiative is
"Customers will only be able to purchase the new set of golf clubs by clicking the link to a specially designed web page, which will only be promoted in this campaign"

A Achievable
Make sure it's a target you're likely to be able to achieve.
"I've set aside a budget of £XXXX for my marketing activity and expect to make XXX number of sales"

R Realistic
Make sure your anticipated response is a realistic one otherwise you'll only be disappointed and far better to outdo your own target.
"We want to get a 5% response rate with an 75% conversion to sale.

T Timely
Set yourself a timeframe so you have a deadline to work towards, go back and measure actual results versus anticipated.
"The campaign will begin in April and be spread over a 12 week period, through the Spring as golfers take to their greens, we'll review results on an ongoing basis but analyse results in June"

For more marketing tips contact vicksward@gmail.com



Google rebrand

Did you see the way Google announced their new logo this week?

It was so simple it was brilliant!

We landed on the Google page with the old logo, a graphic appeared with a board wiper which scrubbed out the old logo and then simply drew in the new one.  Every time I've landed on Google since the new logo has appeared.

Simple.  Neat.  Effective.

For marketing tips contact vicksward@gmail.com

Lazy or brilliant?

 I just got home and found this on the drive.

 In fact, there were two. 

Good job it wasn't raining otherwise I'd have come home to a soggy mass!  But it got me thinking....

Ikea must have spent a small fortune on; photography, catalogue design, printing and finally door to door distribution, only to stumble at the final hurdle.   Although you can't say I didn't notice it, it's now on my 'to flick through' pile.  So door to door distribution is a good way of getting your leaflets, catalogues, brochures into the households you wish to get into.  But, the moral of the story is, be warned, it's down to the individual delivering whether it actually reaches the letterbox or not!

 Then again, it is a Sunday, so perhaps he/she had a heavy night!

For marketing tips contact vicksward@gmail.com

 

Marketing must go............

Don't do it!!

"Marketing is always the first to go when it comes to budget cuts" an 'oh so wise' friend told me this week.

Although not news, it does baffle me!
 
Who decides "we don't need to communicate with our customers anymore" or "we're doing well today, it's bound to stay like that for the foreseeable?"

No-one.  Because it doesn't make sense so why cut out the very thing that enables you to communicate with end users?
 
When times are tough and budgets need slicing.  Surely your marketing effort is even more important.
 
Don't let customers get wind of the fact times are hard ... keep finding ways to communicate the great things your company do.  Remind them you can give them what they want or need. If you don't they'll soon find someone else who can!

If the market's quiet, chances are your competitors are feeling the pinch too, so DON'T be the one to lag behind. Remind and reinforce your brand.  BE the brand of choice.
 
Never assume your customers will remain loyal.  Chances are they can get the same somewhere else and if you pull all your regular communications they'll soon forget you.

Instead of cutting marketing altogether how about shaving costs by being a bit cleverer?  There are things you can do better without spending a penny:

• Improve your SEO on your website (if you use Wordpress there's a traffic light system which shows you when your Search Engine Optimisation is at its best on every page)
• Post regular news stories and share via your social media networks
• Get the press to publish the 'good news' ... there is power in PR
• Hook up with a local charity for a fundraising event
• Become an expert in your field and get blogging
• Sponsor someone, something, somewhere..........

Never let the grass grow under your feet, keep their attention!

 

Be the motivation ...

... not the distraction

My thought for the day which could apply to your advertising efforts.

Motivate your customers to buy from you, rather than distracting them with all the clutter in your ads.

What does your customer look like?

Let's build a man

To be able to reach your ideal customer with your marketing communications, you need to understand him or her. 

Let's imagine your 'ideal customer' is called James.
 
Let's get to know him.  This is called "building a customer profile."

Imagine you've invited James out for coffee?

He's sitting opposite you in your favourite coffee shop. Make some notes while he makes himself comfortable and orders a coffee.

What does he look like? How old is he?  Where does he shop for clothes. Where does he live? Does he own or rent his home? Does he drive a car? What kind of car? Is he married? Does he have children? What matters most to him in the world? What does he do for a living? What's his job title? Where does he work? What newspaper does he read? Does he read the local paper? What does he do in his spare time? Does he have a hobby? Is he sporty? etc etc.

I could go on.........

This is your customer profile and not only will it inform you where you need to put your marketing messages so that James sees them but also what sort of messages are most likely to appeal to him.

For more marketing tips contact vicksward@gmail.com
 

It's not what you say, it's how you say it.

The power of feelings

A great example of associating products with emotional needs demonstrated this week by Benson For Beds new TV advertising campaign.  I think it broke on ITV yesterday.

Strong visuals, soft focus imagery, few words on screen, nice 'plinky plonk' music, softly sung, hardly any actual full blown product shots.  Simply an implication that the manufacturer is focusing on what customers need and demonstrating visually that they're providing just that; ultimate comfort.

Much more effective than if they'd spent 30 seconds trying to ram their entire product range down our throats.

I'm going to be much more engaged by images of nice looking people languishing in soft, comfortable beds!  Made me feel sleepy just watching it.

Topped off with a strapline; "Whatever you want to be, be comfortable, be Bensons."

What do you reckon the creative brief said?

Make Bensons synomyous with comfort!

Click here to see for yourself if they did it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfO2QL8MjAM