NuOrder - Marketing

Marketing

Article: Marketing - An Essential Investment (December 2012)

First of all, let me ask a question; what is marketing?

The best definition I have come across is that it is ‘the action or process of promoting and selling products or services’. To many, this translates to those activities which are used to promote or advertise our business, the products we are selling or both.

My personal view is that marketing is the activity we undertake to communicate with the market place to turn unknown entities (prospects) into business, where we have identified they have a need for our products and also that they may be interested in talking to us (leads). The extent to which they are prepared to talk to us determines how “warm” they are.

Once we have a prospect that has become a lead, we are then in a position to follow a sales process to move them from being a lead into, hopefully, a buying customer.

So at base levels, marketing is simply the process which takes prospects and turns them into leads. Therefore the effectiveness of any marketing we undertake is both measurable and quantifiable as we are able to measure where leads come from, how many are produced and what the cost of the marketing activities to produce these leads is. Yet how many businesses actually do this? Does yours?

Within our local business communities there are a great number of different marketing businesses selling all manner of marketing support and services with many of them working on the following tried and trusted approaches:

A well designed logo will deliver a brand that works for your business and helps your business grow

A properly designed web site is effective in increasing your business

You cannot be a serious business without what we sell

Our circulation is X so you will be exposed to X potential clients

Branded items will lead to prospects wanting to buy from you

Networking events are the best value for money marketing available

I am sure you will have heard many variations on these themes along with many others of a similar vein. There is often an element of truth to these claims, but experience suggests there are many examples where considerable expense is incurred for limited results indicating that these marketing activities may not be as effective as is often claimed.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am not against spending on marketing, in fact I believe every business needs to market in order to be successful. Indeed, my personal view is that every business needs between 6 and 12 different marketing strategies working for it at any moment in time. The key is, of course, to measure their effectiveness when investing our hard earned money.

The good news is that marketing effectiveness is easily measurable. Yet, as mentioned earlier many businesses don’t measure, so don’t know whether they get a return on their investment or which marketing activities give the best returns. Do you?

So let’s ask ourselves some questions:

What marketing do we undertake?

How many leads did each marketing activity generate?

What was the cost of each marketing activity (in money and time terms)?

What did each lead cost from each marketing strategy?

Provided you can measure and report on these and then use them to fine tune your marketing then the chances are you are maximising your marketing investment.

However, if you aren’t asking these simple questions, let me ask you another- how do you know if your marketing works?

If you are asking these questions, but can’t answer them, then it’s the same question - how do you know if your marketing works?

Finally, if you do have the answers, do you monitor and review the results? Do you use them to review your marketing activities and constantly evolve them to lower the cost per lead generated?

Clearly, marketing is a key driver of business growth, but are you measuring its effectiveness?

Get in touch and ask us to conduct a FREE Business Evaluation Meeting and find out about our unique way of designing and implementing strategies to generate sustainable business improvement.

Article: What Are You Saying To Your Customers (April 2012)

Developing a brand and image for your business is so important for attracting new business and can often be the turning point between a customer using you rather than your competitor.

So, what is your business name and logo telling your customers?

Your Name:

Your business name can be an asset which establishes a strong identity. For your business name to be effective it should describe the business that you are in.

Often when starting a business you can go off on tangents and become involved in a creative whirlwind. Unique, exotic or non-descriptive names can at times be a liability if it can not be associated with what you do. This is not to say that you cannot think outside the square, however are your potential customers going to know what you do if they are given your business name and nothing else.

Allow your customers to know a little more about your business. This may mean that you have a creative name and a slogan that tells your customers what you do or it may mean that you add a descriptive word such as Marketing, Travel, Plumbing, etc at the end of it. Never leave your customers guessing and hoping that they have made the right choice.

Naming a business after yourself can often be a positive move for both you and your products or services. Again, as long as your name can be associated with a product or service that you provide, you can build stronger personal credit rating, greater prestige within the community and be given instant name recognition. A good example of this is Giorgio Armani or Max Factor.

Your business name can tell people so much about who you are, what you do and how you do it that it is a valuable asset to any business.

Your Logo:

Your logo is a visual representation of the image you are wanting to portray to your potential customers. There are plenty of famous logos around the world which people can associate the picture to the name and get an immediate perceived image.

Visual communication requires a few rules to ensure that you are telling your customers what they need to know about your business.

Originality. You should have an original logo that doesn't imitate someone else in the industry as you could give the impression that you are a follower and not a leader.

Distinction. Make your logo memorable through clear and functional design. Do not be outlandish or distasteful as you may send the wrong image.

Taste. Your logo should be tasteful, memorable and pleasing to your customers eye.

Marketable. Your logo needs to be readily available to use on all of your marketing promotions and activities. This will symbolise your business as a whole and get your message across.

Your logo has only a few seconds to attract a potential customer and if it fails to perceive the right message then you could possibly be missing out on profitable work.

So, what does your logo say? Well, it might tell your customer that you are creative, energetic, conservative, cutting-edge, technical or something else.

Using a specific typeface, colour or shape will portray different emotions, attractions and impressions to people. For instance dark colours are used in more conservative businesses, bright colours for fun or creative products or services and neutrals for warmth and affection.

If you are unsure about what you are telling your customers generate a short survey to existing customers and the general public asking them how they perceive your image. This will give you great feedback in what you need to do to win more business and how you can make your business more attractive.

Your Image:

Image is everything, however it will build slowly over time and it is up to you as to how you go about getting it out there.

To capture your customers attention there are several ways to get your business image into the market place.

Printed Materials:

These could be your business card, letterhead, advertisements, with compliments slips, envelopes, etc.

Spoken Word:

Word of mouth is a very powerful source for business lead generation and conversion.

Speaking at seminars, local events, meetings, networking functions and other social or business affairs allows you to talk directly to the public about your business. Often taking your message direct to your potential customers is a much stronger form of branding than any promotion or printed material.

Visual Presentations

A visual image is very important to letting your customers interact and see your business in action. Becoming involved with trade shows, graphic displays and special events will allow you to do this. You can also have PowerPoint presentations, visual aids and promotional films that are played at these events or even in your business customer area.

Through careful planning you can build your business image to be an ultimate customer generator.

Every time you participate in a visual presentation of your business you are helping to project and maintain the business image you desire.

Get in touch and ask us to conduct a FREE Business Evaluation Meeting and find out about our unique way of designing and implementing strategies to generate sustainable business improvement.

Article: How To Market Your Business (February 2012)

John Wannamaker, founder of Wannamaker departments stores in the USA and considered the father of modern advertising is credited with saying "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half".

This is the dilemma for many business owners; how do I promote my business and get the biggest "bang" for my marketing spend? Most business owners use a couple of trusted methods to promote their business: the Yellow Pages, advertising in the local paper or through business front signage for example. How you market your business to set yourself apart from your competitors is the topic of this article.

If you do a Google search for a definition of marketing you will get approximately 5 million results trying to explain this concept. Some definitions talk about products, others about supply and demand, advertising and even needs, but one thing is obvious, not even the experts can agree on a single definition. Marketing to us is simple - it is about raising awareness of how your business can satisfy potential clients' needs, so when they are ready to buy, they know who to see. There is nothing complex about that. It means two things:

Telling potential clients about how you can help them and
Tell potential clients about how to contact and do business with you when they are ready

What makes marketing your business complex is actually getting to these points! That requires planning and consideration of the following points:

Identifying what makes you different from competitors in your market
Identifying the characteristics of clients you want to attract
Determining how best to tell these potential clients about your business
Deciding on what specific service or group of services will attract them to your business
Agreeing on how you will manage and follow up your activities

In other words: Who do we want to attract to our business? What are their needs and issues? What services/products will satisfy these needs and issues? How do we tell them about us so that they understand how we can help them with these needs and issues? The mistake that many businesses make is in telling potential clients about absolutely every service/product they offer. This can overwhelm a potential client and leave them wondering "How can this business help me with my needs?" Marketing your business is a great time to practice the K.I.S.S. principle - Keep It Simple Silly!

Obviously, the alternative is just as bad. Not telling anyone about your business is unlikely to see you flooded with a constant stream of new business. One area of marketing that is surprisingly overlooked is identifying the competition. We are still amazed at the number of business owners who do not think they have any competitors! Competitors don't need to offer identical services/products to yours; they may offer a slightly different service/product. What makes these services/products your competitor is that they are competing for the same clients. This is why it is so important to be able to differentiate your business from the business down the street.

Go back to basics: rather than telling every potential client how many great services/products you offer, tell them how your business will help them with their needs and deliver value. Once you address this, the medium you use to get your message out will become obvious - direct mail, word of mouth, telemarketing calls, advertising in the local paper etc. So if you go back to our definition you will see that you have begun the process of marketing your business. By shifting the emphasis from marketing services to marketing value, you immediately set your business apart.

Get in touch and ask us to conduct a FREE Business Evaluation Meeting and find out about our unique way of designing and implementing strategies to generate sustainable business improvement.

Article: Ten Top Tips for SEO Success by Steve Bower from Seven Communications (November 2011)

This is the first in a series of website guides, and the topic that everyone is interested in currently is: “How to I get to the top of Google?”. So this is a valiant but vain effort to condense my entire SEO expertise into series of short articles. Some of these tips you can manage in a non-techie way, or you *may* have to ask your webmaster to make the necessary edits. Don’t, though, expect that they will have done this automatically. So here are your 10 Top Tips for SEO Success.

Make good use of “Title” tags - A title tag tells users and search engines what the topic of a particular page is. Ideally, you should create a unique title for each page on your site, as the contents of the title tag will usually appear in the first line of the results. It should contain the keywords or phrases that you are looking to be found for, but keep it brief.

Make use of the "Description" tag - Description meta tags are important because Google might use them as snippets for your pages. This gives the user clues about whether the content on the page matches what he or she is looking for, and gives the opportunity for you to include some sort of attention-grabbing message.
Use heading tags appropriately - Use heading tags to emphasise important text. Heading tags are used to present structure on the page to users. It will also help skim-reading a page so that users can focus on relevant content.
Make your site easier to navigate - The navigation of a website is important in helping visitors to quickly find the content they want. It can also help search engines understand what content the webmaster thinks is important.
Use mostly text for navigation - Controlling most of the navigation from page to page on your site through text links makes it easier for search engines to index and understand your site. This can often be more reliable than Flash or JavaScript on mobile devices.
Offer quality content and services - Interesting sites will increase their recognition on their own. Creating compelling and useful content will likely influence your website more than any of the other factors, and help conversions on the site.
Create content primarily for your users, not search engines. Avoid:

inserting numerous unnecessary keywords aimed at search engines but are annoying to users
having blocks of text like remorseless lists of Counties etc.
deceptively hiding text from users, but displaying it to search engines

Prepare two sitemaps: one for users, one for search engines - A site map is a simple page on your site that displays the structure of your website. An XML Sitemap file (which you can submit through Google's Webmaster Tools), makes it easier for Google to discover the pages on your site
Notify Google of mobile sites - Configure mobile sites so that they can be indexed accurately. Mobile sites not only use a different format from normal desktop sites, but many sites were designed with mobile viewing in mind but not to be search friendly.
Know about social media sites - Sites built around user interaction and sharing have made it easier to match interested groups of people up with relevant content. This will help inbound or ‘back’ links. Hot topics in your niche or community could spark additional ideas for content or building a good community resource.

This article is a MUCH condensed version of a useful Google report, the full original can be downloaded from my website at www.7comms.co.uk. Or, contact me direct at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Get in touch and ask us to conduct a FREE Business Evaluation Meeting and find out about our unique way of designing and implementing strategies to generate sustainable business improvement.

Article: 5 Tips to Keep You One Step Ahead of Your Competitors (October 2011)

TIP 1: Communicate Professionally

Clients today have access to more information than ever before. Clients can make product comparisons very easily. And most clients know what they are after even if hey don’t know how to articulate it. Clients don’t expect to be coerced, bullied, tricked or intimidated into buying either. They don’t expect to be treated like an ‘idiot’ or a ‘sucker’ by sales people who just talk at them and flash brochures or product sheets, looking for someone to boost their commissions. Nor, on the other hand, do they necessarily want to make ‘friends’ with sales people.

Clients expect to communicate and deal with a real professional who knows their own usiness and how they can best serve their clients’ needs with creative solutions and fresh ideas.

TIP 2: Put The Customer First - Even If It Costs You

We’re so driven to hitting our numbers that the person that gets overlooked all too often is the customer. And so a sales person’s job is to do a lot less selling and a lot more helping people to buy. And in fact, one of the things that we see from the very best sales people and the very best entrepreneurs is when they discover the needs of these customers; sometimes they’re not the best resource or they’re not the best answer for those needs.

Then the best sales people in that bunch of entrepreneurs will find the match, even if it isn’t in their company, and send that referral over to someone and then when it’s their time and those customers come back to you and they don’t even shop, they don’t even look at anyone else.

TIP 3: Never Be Frightended Of Feedback

Never be frightened of feedback, no matter how negative it might be. There will always be a grain of truth that merits attention. In the end, it is the customer who decides whether your product or service is any good and not the owner or manager of the business. It is always better to find out what the customer thinks rather than to pretend that you know what he or she thinks.

So, go for it; tell your customers that you can only fix the things you know about and get them to tell you about the things they want fixed.

TIP 4: Measure, Measure, Measure

Researching your customers may seem boring, but it is the only way you’ll start making progress in the downturn.

You’ve just run an ad and an additional 100 people have come through the door on day one of the ad. Your marketing has worked - irrespective as to whether or not they have bought your product/service. You could easily have 100 people through the door and sell to one of them.

You don’t have a marketing problem, you have a selling problem. Before you run the ad again, you’d better get up to speed with sales techniques, otherwise you’re going to get the same results again and again. The marketing worked, you and/or staff didn’t.

The flip side of this is when you have 10 people come through the door and you sell to eight of them. There’s nothing wrong with your sales and service skills - but the marketing wasn’t the most successful. Measure, measure, measure - so you know where to put your future marketing spend.

TIP 5: Count Your Chickens

Make sure that you are looking after your existing customers better than usual (if that is possible) because there’ll be plenty of hungry competitors out there to do anything to steal them from you.

If you step up first, and raise service levels when everyone is talking doom and gloom, you’re going to be a beacon in the dark, and attract both old and new customers alike. You’ll also raise the bar so high your competitors will waste a lot of valuable resources trying to jump over it.

Get in touch and ask us to conduct a FREE Business Evaluation Meeting and find out about our unique way of designing and implementing strategies to generate sustainable business improvement.

Article: No Better Time For Market Research (October 2009)

The economic downturn is no time to guess what your clients are thinking. Before investing in gut feelings or past remedies, find out what your customers - and ex-customers - want. Just ask. It's existing clients who offer the most potential for growth, and at the lowest cost. Talking to them is a good way to further develop or to start a customer relationship management program.

Market research will enhance the informal feedback you gather every day and could prevent you from making costly planning mistakes. No longer just for the big corporations, small and medium businesses usually know their customers well enough to do their own primary research - information direct from the source - on a scale that can still reap effective results.

Here are some tips on structuring do-it-yourself market research:

Many ways to get in touch

A direct mail campaign is the ideal method to survey customers, if your budget permits. Or, email or internet surveys are good options. If you have time, but no budget, consider including questionnaires with invoices or statements, or with direct mail campaigns already budgeted in the marketing pipeline. For the personal touch, sales consultants could distribute printed surveys on client visits or do them by phone.

Prune any questions that don't directly contribute to collecting and analysing information for making business decisions. If possible, design questionnaires with a single purpose, such as feedback on customer satisfaction or to test interest in a proposed new service. If seeking opinions on a few different topics, divide the survey into clear sections.
Plan for easy analysis

A plan for measuring results with uniformity is the first priority. Multiple-choice is popular because it's easy to both answer and analyse, but you must accommodate all responses, including "don't know" or "other". A ranked answer system should include no more than five items for assessment because it becomes difficult to order preferences the more items are listed, making the answers less reliable.
Style for accuracy

Questions should follow each other with smooth transition. Watch the tone doesn't pre-suppose a position or assume the respondent has particular information at hand, such as budget percentages, financial details or past purchasing statistics. Avoid vague terms like "most" and "least", as everyone's perspective is different.
Ask single focused questions

Each reply should be about one topic. Seeking a "yes" or "no" to "do you like our colour and size range?" won't work if you need to know whether your size range in particular is on target with buyers. Short questions save people's reading time and also prevent you inadvertently biasing answers or creating confusion through over-explanation.
Seek truthful answers

Anonymous versus identified participation will affect the honesty of replies. Some loyal clients might simply not want to hurt your feelings by expressing their legitimate complaints; others may hesitate to answer about spending intentions and prefer to under-estimate in fear of sales pressure. In general, make sure your questions are non-threatening and make privacy policies clear if seeking special details.
Keep it brief

One page is the best length for a written questionnaire, and a 10 minute commitment is ideal. Any longer and respondents might set the task aside or give less thought to their answers.
Consider incentives

Even token rewards are welcomed by survey respondents. Corporate gear featuring your logo is likely to be as effective as items with a high monetary value. For even better response rates, promise the gift on completion. Tailor your ‘gift' to the respondent. An MD might require more than a free pen or movie tickets to be tempted to complete your questionnaire.
Cover letter essentials

Your personal introductory letter should be friendly, brief and persuasive. If there's no tangible incentive to participate, appeal to their business integrity with your willingness to listen, particularly if you are looking for suggestions on how to keep your business growing in slow times. Include how long the questionnaire will take to complete to increase response rates, particularly if it's genuinely in the five- to 10-minute range.
Edit for variety

Change the question style throughout the survey to keep it lively. If 20 questions start with "do you think ..." the respondent might develop a rut of responses to match. Be creative in the writing style to keep the reader's attention.
Ask why

It's the most powerful question of all. Many respondents will be keen to elaborate on their opinions and their qualitative responses could prove to be highly valuable. Even complaints are important opportunities for business improvement, so make it clear that further comments are welcome. Provide a place to include it on the survey or an email address for sending additional feedback.

Get in touch and ask us to conduct a FREE Business Evaluation Meeting and find out about our unique way of designing and implementing strategies to generate sustainable business improvement.

Article: Making Your Business Different - MARKET! (June 2008)

Repeatedly we are advised that most small to medium sized businesses don’t understand marketing and what it can do for them. You are in the position to set your business up differently and really reap the rewards of this simple function.

Remember, marketing is a function of your business and you need to take full advantage of that function.

15% of your clients will purchase your product and/or service based on price alone. 68% will purchase, or more importantly will stop or not purchase based on a perception of indifference.

Do you want your business to focus on the 15% or the 68% of purchasers in the marketplace? The 15% will drive you broke and the 68% will make you rich if you treat them well.

Get in touch and ask us to conduct a FREE Business Evaluation Meeting and find out about our unique way of designing and implementing strategies to generate sustainable business improvement.

Article: Customer Focus (May 2008)

In rough trading conditions maximising customer profitabiliy is vital. We discuss how to do it.

Given activity-based costing is at the heart of measuring profitability, are most companies already monitoring it?

The pioneering companies who did this and adopted activity-based costing to identify individual customer profitability and customer segment profitability certainly got themselves some useful information.

What continues to amaze us is how many medium and large enterprises don't really have a rigorous approach - businesses need to make better informed decisions.

How do you price things?
How do you manage discount strategy?
How do you manager channel strategy?
How do you guide marketers in terms of customer acquisition, if you don't know which ones are profitable and which ones are not?

The evidence is there is a huge gap to be filled.

Do companies that measure, do so reliably?

A number of people think they have customer profitability information, but companies don't necessarily get to the right answer. When you actually work with them and try to understand the detail, however, you find that their data isn't that good. You need to know how much it costs to service a customer aquisition.

Any activity based costing implmentation needs to be treated as a business wide implementation.

What should you do with the information once you have it?

At the strategic level, businesses need to understand, by segment at least, who your profitable customers are. You may be making 120% of your profitability out of the top 20% of customers. One idea is to have a balanced scorecard which looks at customer satisfaction.

We all see the McDonalds upsale "will it be large fries". They have a fundamental understanding that once the customer is there, you're incurring the cost to serve. That is the key understanding of where we can make extra sales.

Recent Statistics

33% don't know who their most profitable customers are.
86% beleive they would run a more profitable business if they had the information.
25% lack the tools they need to measure customer profitability.

Article adapted from Accountancy Age (May 2008).

Get in touch and ask us to conduct a FREE Business Evaluation Meeting and find out about our unique way of designing and implementing strategies to generate sustainable business improvement.

Article: How can I make Cold Calling easier? (April 2008)

Lately we have been working with a number of sales teams to help them increase the success of their cold calling and I thought I would share with you some of my tips for success:

Don’t try and sell on the phone; you can’t. You can, however, get a meeting or permission to send information
Talk about how you can help that business or how you have helped other business. Don’t try and sell to them
Name other clients that you are working with who are in a similar industry or who are a similar size to the company you are calling
Set a goal for each phone call. Would you like contact information, a meeting or permission to send information
Write down all the possible objections that you are likely to encounter and have an answer ready for them
Target a particular Industry at a time so the script can be adapted and modified to their current situation, challenges or problems they may be experiencing
Always treat Assistants, Personal Assistants and Executive Assistants with respect; they have the power to get you in or keep you out
If you get through to the right contact and they sound busy or harassed ask them “is now a good time to talk?” should I call you at a later time?
Make your calls from 9.30am to about 11.30am and then start again around 2pm and go through till 4pm
Set yourself a call target rather than a time target, it makes it easier to achieve
Don’t leave messages; it is rare that anyone would call you back
Ask or appeal for help rather than just going straight into a spiel
Don’t be fooled into thinking that a person asking you to send information means they are interested….. they are simply trying to get you off the phone!
If you send information by email make sure you follow it up the next day to confirm the person received it. This gives you the chance to ask them if they have any questions and gauge their interest in meeting
Try and do your calls in a block of time, one after the other, after the other. After you have finished 10 calls, for example, then send out information or do follow up. This saves you reliving the ‘fear’ or the ‘pain’ of picking up the phone. After about 3 or 4 calls you will have established a habit and you will be much more confident.

Get in touch and ask us to conduct a FREE Business Evaluation Meeting and find out about our unique way of designing and implementing strategies to generate sustainable business improvement.

Article: Your Checklist and Analysis to Quality Service (March 2008)

Without quality service you could be turning potential customers away and loosing your existing ones. Here is a basic checklist you can implement into your business to analyse your customer service quality.

The Customer Service Analysis Checklist

Are your staff adequately reaching objectives, carrying out necessary functions and working toward your mission when communicating and assisting a customer?
Do your staff identify both internal and external customers?
Are your customers expectations appropriately recognized by your staff to ensure customer satisfaction and quality?
Is market research carried out on your customers to ensure you are providing them with what they want and need?
Do your staff accurately recognize/document your customer needs and wants?
Do you know what is that your customers are actually wanting to buy?
Is there a customer complaint log?
Do you and your staff understand what your customer complaints suggest and use methods to improve the level of customer satisfaction?
Have you identified weak or failed points in the customer service cycle?
Has your total service strategy been defined?
Do all of your staff adequately understand the service strategy?
Is your customer service system easy to use by your customers?
Is your customer service easy to use by your frontline staff?
Is there a strong commitment to customer service by all staff?
Is there a commitment to providing the highest quality of customer service in the business?
Is there adequate delivery of commitment to customer service to your customers at the time of sale and after sales service?
Have your staff been adequately trained in providing the highest level of customer service?
Do you regularly monitor and assess customer service levels provided by staff.
Are there rewards and recognitions that embrace the quality of customer service provided by your staff?
Are there systems in place to regularly monitor and improve the level of quality customer service in your business?
Are there monitoring and review systems to improve efficiency, effectiveness and productivity associated with the delivery of your customer service?

This checklist should help you to analyse your current customer service abilities and focus on those areas that need improvement or implementation. You can edit this checklist to better suit your business or include other areas required for assessment.

Once you have completed this you will better understand how to retain your customers and hence increase your ability to successfully market to them.

Article: How to market your business (February 2008)

This is the dilemma for many business owners how do I promote my business and get the biggest "bang" for my marketing spend? Most business owners use a couple of trusted methods to promote their business: the Yellow Pages, advertising in the local paper or through business front signage for example.

How you market your business to set yourself apart from your competitors is the topic of this article…

If you do a Google search for a definition of marketing you will get approximately 32 million hits trying to explain this concept. Some definitions talk about products, others about supply and demand, advertising and even needs, but one thing is obvious, not even the experts can agree on a single definition.

Marketing to us is simple - it is about raising awareness of how your business can satisfy potential clients' needs, so when they are ready to buy, they know who to see. There is nothing complex about that. It means two things:

Telling potential clients about how you can help them and
Tell potential clients about how to contact and do business with you when they are ready

What makes marketing your business complex is actually getting to these points! That requires planning and consideration of the following points:

Identifying what makes you different from competitors in your market
Identifying the characteristics of clients you want to attract
Determining how best to tell these potential clients about your business
Deciding on what specific service or group of services will attract them to your business
Agreeing on how you will manage and follow up your activities

The mistake that many businesses make is in telling potential clients about absolutely every service/product they offer. This can overwhelm a potential client and leave them wondering "How can this business help me with my needs?" Marketing your business is a great time to practice the K.I.S.S. principle - Keep It Simple Stupid! Obviously, the alternative is just as bad. Not telling anyone about your business is unlikely to see you flooded with a constant stream of new business.

One area of marketing that is surprisingly overlooked is identifying the competition. We are still amazed at the number of business owners who do not think they have any competitors. Competitors don't need to offer identical services/products to yours; they may offer a slightly different service/product. What makes these services/products your competitor is that they are competing for the same clients.

This is why it is so important to be able to differentiate your business from the business down the street. Go back to basics: rather than telling every potential client how many great services/products you offer, tell them how your business will help them with their needs and deliver value.

Once you address this, the medium you use to get your message out will become obvious - direct mail, word of mouth, telemarketing calls, advertising in the local paper etc. So if you go back to our definition you will see that you have begun the process of marketing your business.

By shifting the emphasis from marketing services to marketing value, you immediately set your business apart.

Article: 2008 Is the year to increase your response rates? (January 2008)

Marketing your business will require you to seriously think about all of the marketing campaigns and marketing funds that you have spent money on in the past year, only to improve the year ahead.

2008 should be a year where you set strict boundaries and only use those marketing activities that you know will guarantee you the response rate.

Unlike other areas of your business, marketing is the one which is seen as a money spender and not a money maker. 2008 is the year to change that and whilst you will still be spending money you will be spending it with the intention of making money.

Some marketing goals for you to think about in 2008 include:

Increase response rate by 5% from your webpage
Make a 20% return on all marketing investments
Always breakeven on marketing projects
Reduce marketing costs by 10%
Have 5 strong marketing campaigns that guarantee results
Increase the average £ sale per purchase
Stop discounting on sales
Develop a customer rewards program

Any of the above goals mentioned will work toward helping your business to grow and succeed. Ensure that any goals that you set follow the rules for goal setting. These include, always having it in writing. It carries the elements of Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timely (SMART) rule, where you break larger goals down into smaller ones and you are continuously optimistic about achieving your goal.

Before you set your goals for 2008 you should:

Review all of those marketing campaigns and activities that didn't work and design a strategy for each. Consider why they went wrong and accordingly list the pros and cons or negatives and positives. Determine why they went wrong, for example, were they lacking in something, did it fail in getting your message across, did you give enough detail, is it portraying the right image, etc.
Choose 5 top marketing campaigns that gave you a reasonable response and determine how these could be improved.
Set provisions for all marketing campaigns to be measured and reviewed by the end of each campaign or at the end of the year.
Have a budget for each campaign and track your expenditure.

Article: Find Your Highest Potential Customers (December 2008)

The 80/20 rule – that 80 percent of your sales come from the top 20 percent of your customers – applies to most small businesses. Nurturing that precious 20 percent means focusing your marketing programs on the customers who drive your company’s profitability. A laser-like focus on these high-profit buyers also prevents you from expending too much effort on lower profit customers.

Remember that profitability does not necessarily correlate with the amount of money a customer gives to your business. In many businesses, smaller sales can be highly profitable, while larger sales can cost the company a lot to administer or deliver, and therefore have a smaller profit margin.

Use the tips here to unearth your most profitable customers.

Calculate acquisition costs

To assess customer profitability, you need to determine how much it costs your business to attract each customer. Many small businesses will be able to get away with a cost of sales analysis that is much simpler than what larger companies use. Keep in mind that the cost of sales numbers produced through these calculations are averages, to be used for rough evaluations of your customer base.

To conduct a simple analysis, first review the effort involved in closing a typical sale. Be sure to include expenses like a salesperson, direct mail, Web site development or other advertising costs. Estimate the total cost of your outreach and divide it by the number of sales you close annually to do a “quick and dirty” analysis.

Calculate cost of customer service

It is important to track your customer service expenses to measure how profitable your current customers are. The equation is similar to the cost of sales analysis. Apply costs for service-related items such as order taking personnel, project manager salaries and delivery of your product or service to each customer. Estimate the average cost of servicing each customer by dividing by the number of customers you serviced during the year. If you need help determining key service expenses in your industry, ask your accountant for industry standards. Keep in mind that the cost of service numbers produced through these calculations are averages, to be used for very rough evaluations of your customer base.

Create a high-potential profile

With the two figures above and the revenue that each of your customer provides, you can determine a rough sense of individual customer profitability. You can use this information to develop a profile of your high-potential customer. Look for common characteristics and behaviors. Do they fit into specific demographic or geographic categories? Do they have certain shared attitudes or values? Do they make their buying decisions in a similar way? This profile will help you develop the most effective marketing programs to reach these targets, extend their value to your company, and attract more high-profit customers. For more on segmenting your customer base, click here.

Some businesses might want to go a step further and develop a customer potential pyramid – a three-segment hierarchy that breaks out the company’s high-potential, medium-potential, and low-potential customers. The purpose of this profile is to look for marketing tactics to migrate customers into the high-profit categories.

Reallocate efforts around least profitable customers

In support of your focus on the top 20 percent of your customer pool, you should make an effort to not attract unprofitable customers. Review your records for those customers who cost you valuable time and money and create a profile of them in the same way you built a high potential profile. To the degree that you can, be sure that your marketing programs exclude these customers, to keep you efficient and profitable.

Since every relationship is an important link to other customers, try to avoid alienating anyone by telling them you don’t want their business. Instead, just avoid focusing resources on reaching them.