Just a big thanks to everyone we met on Wednesday at the Business in Berkshire show – it was a good show for us and I hope you all enjoyed it too.
Really interesting going to these types of events where we met so many different people from all sorts of different companies at different stages of their evolution. Start-ups to mature businesses all looking for help with their marketing.
Trends from the show – a lot of people looking to refresh their website design and development and LOTs of people looking for help with getting their websites ranked in the search engines – SEO in other words. The marketing audit was also popular – gives a useful insight into areas that need addressing.
Interesting also how much optimism there is at this time compared with 6-9 months ago.
Now comes the fun bit – following up all the leads we collected.
Matthew
These days, when business is tough we have constantly think of ways to compete better and when we are going through a recession as bad as the current one, there is a great temptation to cut prices or even to think you need to cut your prices just to compete. It is simplistic to suggest that you never have to do this but its worth fighting hard to ensure that this doesn’t become a habit.
Key to giving you the best chance of holding prices as high as you can, is to have a strong brand, (see our article on building a strong brand here www.snap-marketing.co.uk/articles) and we talk there about defining the value you offer to your customers. Communication of your products or services in the conext of the value you deliver to your customers gives you greater control over your pricing. But here are some other tactics you can use to make sure the sales conversation is about issues other than purely price.
Bundle your products to extend your product range and create a range of low- to high-value offerings and set pricing price accordingly. This will enable you to satisfy both ends of the market simultaneously without seemingly cutting prices.
Reducing prices to generate more sales (or to stay competitive) will not improve your business over the long term, but you can mitigate their effect on profits by control company costs and reducing inefficiency. Streamlining operations and outgoing expenses is good practice. We tend not to prioritise this when times are good but we can’t afford not to now.
Try and innovate in order to offer something unique – this applies to the products you offer as well as your business model. Increase resourcing (even if its intellectual resource if you don’t have the funds) to generate new products or ways of doing business that give you an edge either negotiating customers or in the market. Innovative products are great but don’t forget that it took 5 years for the iPod of slow sales before to become an ‘overnight’ sensation!
If you simply cut your prices just to compete sends out all the wrong messages. Getting into a price war with the competition or a horse-trading battle with your customers– will just send you into a downward pricing where no one wins, unless you adjust the value of the product in line with the price drop. Disguise any price cut or bundle an offer.
Typically high-value products priced appropriately are more price-elastic so it will be a waste of time discounting pricing – it is unlikely to change sales uptake, lower-value products will be responsive to price cutting.
If you do get into a price fight, and price-driven customers threaten to take their business elsewhere keep pressing on the unique value of your product to their business, thus justifying the price, or simply let the customer take his business elsewhere. If he is so focused on price alone, he will always do this. Relentless price-driven customers are mercenary and will not be loyal – you might cut to keep the business now but he’ll be back next year for more.
Matthew
Marketing Berkshire
These days, when business is tough we have constantly think of ways to compete better and there is no better way to survive a recession, like the current one, than to build your brand into a really strong asset.
A properly constructed and executed brand will convey the correct messages, ensure that none of your marketing spend is wasted, and will attract the right sort of customers – not just those who haggle solely on price.
So, as branding experts, how do we go about this at Snap-Marketing?
Crucial to building a great brand is the groundwork before a single key stroke is made in Quark, or an image edited in PhotoShop.
Researching the market and then defining the Product Positioning Statement (see www.snap-marketing/articles for a detailed framework for doing this) will enable you to laser target your marketing based on the knowledge you now have about what your ideal customers looks like, what they think, where they feel pain (that you can solve), how they behave, how your competition act.
Write all this down – what is your prefect customer (if a consumer, age, sex, region, category of behaviour, or business size, employees, type of activity, geography, behaviour etc), what are their needs (ie the pain), where do they buy your sort of stuff, what is the size of the market opportunity for you, what is the competition up to – their pricing, product positioning, activities.
Narrow your focus as much as you can in terms of defining both your perfect customer’s profile and your product positioning. The narrower you are, the greater the opportunity there is for you to differentiate your offering from the competition and create VALUE.
This means you are not being forced to compete on price all the time and you will be able to target channels to market with precision and your marketing spend will suffer less waste. Your marketing messages can be clearer and targeted with laser-precision to receptive targets. So you have just saved money and created a system for justifying a higher price and this means more profits!
To summarise, you need to know exactly who your customers are and what products they need. Be different, differentiate yourself from your competition and then you won’t get into a price comparison battle. Communicate with your target customers in the media they interact with and give them a message that is clear that they can relate to. Lastly, having invested in the time, effort and money to create a great brand, be totally ruthless about making sure that your logo, brand-colours, brand-fonts, are used on every single piece of marketing, (internal and external) in a totally consistent and repeated fashion.
And don’t forget that creating a brand is just as important for a small local business as it is for big ones – its not just important – this days its non-negotiable. In this economic climate you need a strong brand to differentiate yourself and SURVIVE.
Matthew
Here’s 5 Great Tips from Snap-Marketing, that will GUARANTEE you page one listing on Google – and they are things that anyone can do to boost their page ranking on the search engines.
Lets kick off by busting the myth that Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) can ONLY be executed properly by geeks. This is simply not true!
If you can create web-pages or even edit them then great – you have definitely got a head start and there is a bunch other stuff you can do on top of what I will outline here that will have a further impact, but the insider tips I am going to share with you today are steps that can be taken ANYONE even with limited IT skills (plus a little help from your friendly Webdesigner) – and they really WORK.
Google is the biggest search engine by user share by far, so lets assume that stuff we do for Google will work for the other main search engines – Ask, Yahoo and Bing. So where do we start?
Product Positioning – Get as narrow a focus as you can
Regular readers of our blogs and articles will know our mantra by now, but you need to kick off with your Product Positioning. Really define your target customer by some rigorous research of the market and output this in the form of your Product Positioning Statement (see www.snap-marketing/articles for a detailed framework for doing this). This will enable you to laser target what your ideal customer looks like, what they think, where they feel pain (that you can solve), how they behave, how your competition act.
Write all this down – what is your prefect customer (if a consumer, age, sex, region, category of behaviour, or business size, employees, type of activity, geography, behaviour etc), what are their needs (ie the pain), where do they buy your sort of stuff, and look at what the competition up to – their pricing, product positioning, activities –and most importantly where they rank on Google and for what search terms.
Narrow your focus as much as you can in terms of defining both your perfect customer’s profile and your product positioning. The narrower you are, the greater the opportunity there is for you to differentiate your offering from the competition and create VALUE.
Keywords – Don’t go Mainstream
Having worked out your product positioning, you can now pinpoint your ideal target customer and work out what pain he feels in the area that you have solution. The next step is to define him by what he is searching for.
Knowing this and how you solve his problem gives you the clues with which to research the Keywords he is likely to use when he searches Google for a solution. Now you aren’t going to like this, but actually this customer really doesn’t care about you at all at this stage. He is focused only on his pain and finding some relief.
So ask yourself what it is that the CUSTOMER will be looking for to solve the pain and not what YOU can provide. It might be he needs more sales – and hasn’t got in-house marketing – in which case he might be searching for a Marketing Consultant in Hampshire to help him grow his business – and by the way around 70% of Google searches are for local results. Or he now knows the value of having a great website, and is looking for Website Design in Reading.
You’ll start to get a picture here of where I am going with this. You need to start thinking like your customer and a real great tip here is the oldest in the book – when someone buys a drill they don’t need a drill – they need a hole in the wall – the drill is the best solution for achieving this – its not the problem.
So with this in mind, write down a list of these potential search words and phrases. A great tip here is to get a Google Adwords account (which is free – until you start advertising) and use their built in Keywords research tool. Input your potentials and the Google tool will spit out a whole bunch of Keywords and Keyphrases that relate to your ideas. They even show you the likely traffic AND let you download it all as an Excel document! All for free – I love Google!
Analyzing the Gaps
This is now where you start to get smart and where your SEO guy starts to earn his money, because you need to analyse all this against the competition and see what words they are getting ranked for. Your task is to identify those search words and keyphrases that haven’t yet been exploited (fully) by your competitors. As I said in the product positioning part – be as niche as you can get.
A home truth here – trust me, you are not going to get to the top of Google for the popular phrases without a fight and a stack of cash – and our philosophy is that its better for a SME to get good page rank, and therefore some quality traffic in a great niche (where your prospects will be actually PRE-QUALIFIED for you), than to try and compete on mainstream searches and get no traffic because your are down on page 5.
You are looking for gaps – and believe me they exist – and you will find them with the tools I have suggested.
Exploiting the Gaps
Your output from this process will be 5 Keywords and/or KeyPhrases that Google predicts will get some traffic – and think local here if appropriate. If your customer base is all based around Bracknell – put that into the key phrase – or perhaps the county. Lets assume you are tax accountants in Bracknell specialising in sole traders.
This is now where you need to get your web designer to do some work. He needs to do these 6 key things.
Do you see where I am going with this – the whole keyword/phrase thing? Great!
There is some other stuff you can do, but if you get these things 6 right you are a long way down the track.
Getting Google to really Love you – Create Inbound Links
Now with all this new-found knowledge, you need to create content around these keyphrases and put it out there on the internet and link back to your site.
Google LOVES inbound links, and tends to rank site with lots of them highly, but it is also clever enough to make sure that the context of the 2 linking sites has relevancy. So create as many links as you can using the 5 keywords/phrases you have chosen to create ‘Anchor Text’. This is text that helps Google like the context of the link back to your site.
So for example, on your networking forum signature, don’t just link from your logo. Put text, based on your keywords into your signature and link it back to your website – its even more powerful if you have a page with keywords in the URL. So instead of a signature like:
Joe Bloggs
Bloggs and Bloggs Accountants
www.BBA.co.uk
Why not put something like –
Joe Bloggs
Bloggs and Bloggs Accountants – Tax Accountant in Bracknell – link this text to the home page
Taxation, and VAT returns for Sole Traders – link this text to the VAT Product Page
Taxation, and Year End Accounts – link this text to the Year End Accounts page
Never again write “Click here to visit our Website” – I hope you understand why by now!
Now Start to Drive that Page Rank
Your next step is to list your business in free directories, release press releases to the press releases sites, Blog or comment on other peoples Blogs (with the signature).
Create articles relating to your expertise, a bit like this one, and submit them to article directories and post them to networking site – ALL embedded with your chosen keywords at about 10% density – ALL with your links attached to
keyphrases.
Join Twitter, join business networking sites and spend a day or so at first doing this.
Join Social Bookmarking sites like Digg and Delicious and use them to bookmark your content – each one will get you an inbound link.
And then keep at it – a couple of evenings a week and you will see some progress. It may take a couple of months – maybe up to 6 – but you WILL get to the top of Google for your niche if you have followed this process.
In this economic climate you need a strong brand to differentiate yourself and SURVIVE.
I hope you enjoyed this short article and that it has given you an appetite for more.
Give us a call or drop me an email if you need help.
Matthew
Interesting couple of stories about Google recently.
First concerning the potential offered by Facebook with respect to PPC and affiliate marketing – apparently half the price of google ppc, then problems with the launch of BUZZ with privacy issues and now this one with the EU.
Google under investigation for alleged breach of EU competition rules.
Remember Windows and the EU, Apple and the EU …. and having crossed swords with the EU in past roles, I know that they don’t have much a sense of humour when it comes to anti-trust.
Should Google be worried. and given the strength of the Google offering as a marketing channel – should us marketeers be worried? My sense is probably not – there is always a channel to fill a vacuum – we just have to find it and use it.
Matthew
Snap – Marketing at Bracknell Expo 3rd March 2010
Date: 3rd March 2010
Venue: Blue Mountain Golf & Conference Centre, Wood Lane, Binfield, Bracknell, RG42 4EX
Visit us on #70 at the Bracknell & Berkshire Business Expo.
Talk to us about what you want to achieve in 2010 and we’ll give you lots of free advice on the day, as well as some great offers.
You’ll also meet a range of business specialists, see and learn about new products and services, network with hundreds of like-minded local business people and hear the latest tips on such subjects as social media, sales, low cost marketing, PR, business confidence and business growth.
With eight FREE seminars running throughout the day, all designed to inform and inspire you, some 60 exhibitors with products and services that can help you run your business more effectively and hundreds of other local business people to network with, this is an event not to be missed.
Details below.
Bracknell & Berkshire Business Expo
Wednesday 3rd March 2010 – 9:30am-5:00pm
Blue Mountain Golf & Conference Centre
Wood Lane, Binfield, Bracknell
Berkshire, RG42 4EX
We look forwards to seeing you there!
Debbi and Matthew
Click here to check out our exclusive offer for Bracknell Business Expo Visitors
We all have views on what constitutes great design.
But your collateral is the foundation of your marketing armoury, and it must reflect you, your brand and products in the best possible light.
So, naturally, we would obviously recommend you have a professional design agency do it for you! But its interesting to understand some of the wrinkles that the professionals use day-in day-out.
But whatever route you choose, here’s some ideas about how to use images.
Worth a thousand words?
They say a picture is worth a thousand words – but in the ultra competitive world of marketing, where you have an instant to create an impression, your images need to be spot on in terms of resolution.
Good images cost money – whether you buy them in from a library or if you get them shot yourself. So you will need to use them as much as you can to maximise your investment.
Always keep the the original, and its layers (if any), as a .PSD file before flattening, because if you need to edit it again, this will not be possible if you do not. As we used to with transparencies – work from a copy of it – always keep the original un-edited –its so easy to click the wrong button and over-write the original.
Work in the highest resolution you can initially. You will need at least 300 dpi (dots per inch) for print and only 72 dpi for the web – its not worth trying to go higher on the web – higher resolutions are slow to load and won’t give a significantly better image on-screen.
When presented with an image that is too large for the area it needs to populate, then this should be reduced in photoshop to the correct TIFF size as a CMYK (if working in 4 colour). Remember you must never increase the resolution size of the image more than 10% than the original as this will deteriorate the image and can cause pixelation.
JPEG is a commonly used method of compression for photographic images. The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image quality. JPEG typically achieves 10:1 compression with little perceptible loss in image quality. JPEG compression is the most is the most common format for storing and transmitting photographic images on the web.
This is not always necessary for PDF documents, as the size has no impact on the postscript, except the end size when you use them for print.
Give us a call or drop us an email if you need help.
I cannot claim to have thought these up (I wish!) – they came from the Jeremy Burkhart – CEO of Speakercraft a US based Home Automation brand and I stumbled his thoughts in an industry magazine today.
He calls them his 7 Capitalist ZEN Rules
1. Tackle one thing at a time. Trying to do more is setting yourself up for failure.
2. Slow down and be deliberate in thought. Everything changes, and you are better off being deliberate and initiating change, as opposed to waiting for it.
3. Do everything you choose to do with 100% effort.
4. Do less with more. Get input from advisers, make a decision, be flexible and move forwards. You don’t need everyone on your social networking site to tell you what to do!
5. Create repeatable rituals that work for your success. Success doesn’t always happen by accident. It happens by being deliberate on a regular basis.
6. Only think about what is necessary now. We harm our minds and bodies by thinking too much about the unknown. Think about what you can do that will create forward progress.
7. Live and think simply. We have a tendency to complicate life by making things more difficult than they should be. Do your work, serve others the best you can, then step back and live in this moment.
I can’t add anything else – thoughts anyone?
Matthew
Welcome to Snap’s Blog.