Marketing Advice Bedfordshire

When I sat down to write this article I was conscious of the time constraints that we all face. So here I’m asking for just a 60 minute investment to make a significant impact on your business.

If you spend a concentrated 15 minutes on each of the areas discussed below I guarantee you will come up with ways you can get more from your marketing investment.

DECIDE a compelling message
What is the single most important message you want clients and prospects to know about you and your business?

Grab a piece of paper – write down everything that’s occurring to you. Ask others in the office to shout out their own answers to the question. Consider what your best clients say about your service too. Write it all down.

Now for the hard bit – look through your list and pick out the ONE thing you want your business to be known for. Bear in mind it needs to be something that matters to your customers, not just something that matters to you.

You’ve now got the essence of your unique selling point and something that you should be communicating at every opportunity.

DEFINE your ideal client
Who would be your ideal client? Create a visual picture in your mind’s eye. Describe them in terms of the age, sex, job title. If you sell to businesses consider also the size and type of business, who the decision makers are, the age of the company, its structure (ie is it family owned or a plc?). Consider all the facts about your ideal client – and write them down. It’s unlikely you’ll have a single ‘ideal client’. For example my ideal clients include: niche law firms run by men who have marketing ideas but need someone who can put those ideas into practice, financial services businesses with a local client base who want to attract regional business and IT companies wanting to dominate in a particular market niche.

Now think about the problems that your ideal client might experience or the opportunities that you / your product can deliver to you ideal client.

List as many potential ‘points of contact’ as you can for each ‘ideal client’ group. What do they read? What events do they visit? Which websites might they use? Who advises them? What professional bodies are they members of?

Do this quickly – you’ve only got 15 minutes remember – but by the end you should have the basis of a series of marketing actions you can take to reach your ideal client – as well as the bones of the message you need to communicate.

DETERMINE the measurements you need
List all the ways you measure your current marketing activity. In terms of sales figures, number of visitors to your website, number of new enquiries each month and so on.

Are you doing any marketing activity that you don’t currently measure? Are you advertising in Yellow Pages for example – if so do you measure how many enquires you get as a result? I ask this question...

(first appeared in June 2009 edition of Practical Marketing e-bulletin - subscribe here )

Everyone else is doing it, so why not apply the recession beating approach to your marketing this month. Here are some simple tips for improving your marketing at no cost to your business.

1. Ask for referrals from existing customers
If your clients and customers are happy with what you do for them why not ask them to refer other people to you? Larger organisations often have formal ‘introduce a friend’ promotions (I see Sky are running one at the moment) but just asking is the first step and when you do ask you are often surprised at the response. I’ve had clients report that people have said to them ‘Oh, I didn’t think you wanted any more clients at the moment’ or ‘I didn’t realise – yes of course I’ll recommend you’.

As they say – ‘ask and you shall receive’.

2. Give better service
Delight and amaze your customers. Just doing this can create a real buzz around your business and once customers start talking about how great you are, especially if they do it online via industry forums, or social networking sites like Twitter, you’d be surprised how quickly the word can spread.

To illustrate the point I was reading an article earlier in which someone referred to a great example of exceptional customer service by Bose. A businessman bought himself a new set of £100 Bose headphones for a series of long flights. Towards the end of his first flight using the headphones the passenger next to him tripped over the wire rendering the headphones useless. You can imagine how annoyed he felt.

At his next airport stop he decided we would buy himself a new set as he couldn’t imagine the remaining flights without them. He wasn’t best pleased at the thought of spending another £100 but the decision was made. He walked into the Bose shop at the airport and asked the assistant for a set identical to the one’s he already had (in working order of course). Having explained what had happened to the sales assistant he was GIVEN a new set of headphones for nothing. Now that’s customer service.

It actually cost Bose very little to engender a massive feeling of good will from that customer and create such a positive response that this story has been repeated over and over again not only raising brand awareness of Bose but also creating a very positive impression of a company that some might have seen only interested in selling expensive gadgets.

3. Create the news
Come up with a newsworthy story about your business or products and get the local newspaper or radio station interested. This sort of no cost publicity is obviously ideal if you have a new product or service that you are launching but can also work if you are creating or bucking trends. So if for example your business is doing really well inspite of or because of th...