Snap are exhibiting on stands 3 and 4 at the Keeping Business Local Expo on Tuesday 7th September 9am – 4.30pm at Madejski Stadium Royal Berkshire Conference Centre RG2 OFL Reading
I have had more than 3 client meetings in the last 2 weeks that have not thought or even applied this strategy
Translated into marketing strategy, and especially web design, you must get the thinking straight (the measuring) first before you start spending money (the cut). as Matthew says Simples!
It seems from these meetings potential new clients are all thinking about a new website. The site they had done is over 3 years old (sometimes older) and some don’t have a site at all! now they are looking at the options, most seem more interested in what the site is developed in, will it be trendy, can they have a gallery and will they be on page 1 of google!!! I don’t think they read Matthews article on the difference between the various web sites on offer – and where to start?
This is sooooo important really think about what you want before going to design, or before you brief your web design or creative agency. Have a plan, written down on one sheet of A4 on what you want the web site to do for your company and your business. Think about objectives – what do you want to achieve with the website – and this principle applies to any marketing really. Think about what you are trying to achieve – are you looking for more sales in which case your focus should be on lead generation. Or are you looking to create better awareness of your brand, to disseminate information about you services or products – to seek information, are you looking for feedback? Or perhaps you are looking to develop a website that sells on-line in which case there are many other issues to consider such as the shopping cart technology but most importantly SEO – to be successful, you will need a constant stream of prospects visiting your site –and they need to be converted. Write it all down as a draft design brief and discuss and agree it with your web developer or creative agency. – in advance. The discuss this with the design agency or marketing agency, as sometimes ideas or thoughts you may feel are on target are in fact quite off the mark.
You will get a better result and spend less time and money, and it may transpire that you don’t really need that really expensive all singing all dancing CMS website (yesterday), that no one can find! it was really a re-brand or your brand awareness needed to be investigated and applied to your business! or may be it was just a simple marketing plan to help you see outside the box!
debbi
creative director
snap marketing
Its so easy to keep doing what you have always done in terms of your marketing. But here are some thought provoking ideas about why it pays to look further than online advertising or hard copy directories. The new more fashionable stuff like email marketing and pay per click has put the older techniques into the shadows – but those old less trendy marketing methods still do the trick.
When trying to raise awareness of your brand, or even create a brand or drive more people to your site localised or nationally there are other forms of advertising and promotion that can be explored.
A small advert in a local newspaper can set you back £400 a time – why not think about other forms of localised advertising such as posters at local Railway Network, Adshell (posters at bus stops). You can get your brand displayed on 6 sheet billboards costing as little as £240 for 2 weeks advertising campaign.
Compare this to the cost of a days advertising in your local newspaper you could be adverting for a month on a billboard in your area! Or outside, dependent on the geographic area you require. Another brilliant benefit of poster advertising is that if the media sales agency has not sold the space after your campaign finishes – your poster stays up there! This can be as little as an extra, but we have had experience of our posters staying up for 6 months – FREE!
Your local Radio is another interesting source of advertising for certain businesses. Used correctly with creative thinking, it is said to raise over 50% more business if localised to an area.
Consider other forms of branding and advertising – some of these long term such Banners and exterior advertising – signage and livery, flag poles and so on – they all have a longer shelf life – delivering your message. Think about every Eddie Stobart lorry you drive past on the motorway. Have you seen the Rabbit vans (another client of Snap Marketing!) driving around Reading? That investment has been paid over and again.
Think outside the box – what about bus exteriors and interiors – what about Hotel, or Leisure Club lobbies, sports exteriors – race courses – football and Rugby grounds. Think about pooling resources with complimentary business to make your investment go further over time or to have greater impact.
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
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
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
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