SME Academy, London | Advice, Tips and training for business owners » marketing

Module 4: Marketing

admin — Sat, 08 May 2010 09:55:55 +0000

The business world is changing! Today customer’s are better informed and much more demanding. The internet has made information readily available to customers and for the first time ever small companies are able to compete with the big boys on very small marketing budgets.

It is therefore imperative that your business is ready to respond and has an up to date and robust marketing strategy. In this week’s tip of the week, Serial Entrepreneur Patrick White introduces you to Module 4 of the Business Growth Course, which addresses these very issues and offers helpful insight.

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Session 4: Marketing

A good Marketing strategy is at the heart of a solid growth strategy. In order to increase your revenue and profitability, you first need to understand your customers’ needs, provide a product or service to meets those needs and let your customers know that the solution they are looking for exists!

What you’ll be covering in this session:

The concepts behind a Marketing-led approach to business and the POISE model of Marketing
Contents and Structure of a Marketing Plan and how each section is relevant to your business
Marketing Research—working within the process, different types of Marketing research
Using Marketing Research tools and techniques
Applying analytical tools to your Marketing Plan
Understanding Buyer Behaviour and what makes people decide to buy from you—you’ll be shown how this applies to both B2B and B2C customers
Classification and segmentation of customers according to type and buyer behaviour
Setting strategies according to the current stage of the Product Life Cycle and planning for New Product Development and Launch
Applying the Boston Matrix and Ansoff’s Matrix to your business to identify which products you should be offering to which markets
Pricing Strategies—you’ll be shown 13 different short-term and long-term strategies for using your price to position your products and services in the marketplace; as well as in the minds of your customers, and to generate sales
Channel and Distribution Tactics—selling via agents, wholesalers, retailers and other intermediaries
Communicating your message and promoting your products and services through appropriate media
Relationship Marketing and Business Development strategies for forging strong business contacts
Creating your own Marketing Flowchart which illustrates how you will execute your plan

Find Out More About The Business Growth Course

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Bribery & Corruption

admin — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 11:50:43 +0000

Having a mailing list for your business is incredibly important as it allows you to keep in contact with your potential customers and let them know about your business. Newsletters are so effective however that now everyone is offering them – so how do you get people to sign up to your offering? With a little bit of modern day bribery and corruption.

In this Video Tip I discuss how you cost effective and attractive things you can offer to entice people to sign up to your mailing list.

www.GetMoreClientsMakeMoreMoney.co.uk

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How to avoid the Feast-Famine scenario

admin — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 07:30:26 +0000

Most professional service businesses suffer from the feast-famine syndrome where you’re either busy delivering on the contract or rushing around looking for new business. In this video Hannah McNamara talks about ways that you can automate your marketing and scale-up your marketing activities so that you are using techniques like teleseminars and webinars to maximise the effectiveness of your business development and sales conversations.

www.GetMoreClientsMakeMoreMoney.co.uk

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How to convert website traffic into business

admin — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 16:44:26 +0000

How to get more business from your small business website.

Hannah McNamara, SME Academy Director, talks about how to convert hits and website traffic into paying clients and customers. She explains why offering special reports, ebooks, white papers and mp3 downloads can help with data capture and building an email marketing mailing list. She also discusses how to put a landing page together and get more people to opt in to your database so you can send them your newsletter, ezine or articles.

www.GetMoreClientsMakeMoreMoney.co.uk

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Could tele-seminars boost your business?

Hannah McNamara — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 08:03:44 +0000

Small business coach Hannah McNamara from SME Academy (http://www.smeacademy.co.uk) in London talks about an innovative way to reach more customers than you ever could through one-to-one sales meetings or telephone meetings.

For decades professional services firms have known about the power of running seminars and events to showcase their services. It can help to boost their profile, demonstrate their expert knowledge of their subject area and build relationships with both existing and prospective clients. You could also tap into this as a way of growing your business and boosting sales.

You could be forgiven for thinking, “That wouldn’t work for my business.” After all, it can seem like a big investment to organise the event, pay for the room and make sure you get the chance to mingle with everyone.

If your customers are dispersed around the country or even internationally, you might wonder whether they would be willing to travel to hear someone from your company speak at a seminar.

Running a tele-seminar or a webinar delivered via the internet could be the solution for you.

A tele-seminar is simply a seminar delivered by conference call. The speaker hosts the event and delegates dial in and enter a PIN code to access the call. Delegates can phone in from their office, home or wherever they are, so it can be much more convenient for them. The downside is that you lose the face to face contact and the ability to show people what you’re talking about. One way around this is to host the seminar as a webinar where the seminar is hosted on the internet and you can show presentations to your delegates. Another is to prepare seminar handouts which are emailed to delegates before the seminar so that they can work through it making the event quite interactive.

Tele-seminars and webinars offer you the chance to educate your customers and prospects about what you do, establish yourself as the expert in your field and promote your goods and services to a much wider audience than if you were to book individual sales meetings with them.

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When and how to ask for a Testimonial

Hannah McNamara — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 07:58:04 +0000

Small business coach Hannah McNamara from SME Academy (http://www.smeacademy.co.uk) explains how to go about gathering testimonials and references about your business.

Ask most successful small businesses how they get clients and customers, and the chances are they will tell you it’s through word of mouth and recommendation.

It’s said that ‘word of mouth marketing’ is the most powerful form of marketing if used correctly. The trouble is that it seems like a very passive activity. But it doesn’t have to be that way and I’ll show you how to take back control.

But first, what is it that makes word of mouth so effective? It’s because a third party is telling your prospective clients how good your company is. When you say it, they take it with a pinch of salt, but it’s a whole different ball game when someone else is singing your praises.

In reality a happy client or customer is going to be even more complimentary about what you do than you would be – unless you’ve got a horrendously large ego. The other advantage is that they can talk in your customers’ terms because well they ARE your customer.

You may already be convinced that having positive testimonials about what your company does is a good thing – but how do you get people to give them to you.

A simple solution is to ask for them.

If you’ve done a good job, your customers will be more than willing to give you a testimonial. In most cases they’re happy to do this because they know what it’s like when you’re searching for a supplier and don’t know who’s good and who’s not. They want to help other people to find someone good.

Here’s what you should do.

Firstly, start sending out feedback forms or customer surveys when you deal with customers. Ask them to rate your company and ask if they would be willing to write down some comments which you could use in your future marketing. Give them the option to do it as a named testimonial or anonymously.

Then if you’re on LinkedIn, ask clients to endorse you. If you don’t feel comfortable about this, endorse them first and they’ll probably reciprocate.

Email your best customers and say you’re putting together some new content for your website and you’d love to use them as a case study. Would they mind writing a few lines to say how your product or service has helped them? Remember to tell them you’ll include a link back to their website with the testimonial and this will increase the response rate.

Finally, there are two main reasons that people won’t give you a testimonial. 1. They weren’t impressed. If that’s the case better to find out now and have a chance to put things right. 2. They don’t know what to say. In this situation they imagine you’ll want a clever, eloquent letter and this seems like a lot of work so they put it off. Why not send them examples of what other people have written or even offer to have a quick chat and write down what they say so they don’t need to write it.

In my experience the only reason that businesses don’t have more customer testimonials is that they never asked for them, so don’t be coy.

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Up-selling: The key to increased profits

Hannah McNamara — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 08:51:08 +0000

Small business coach Hannah McNamara from SME Academy (http://www.smeacademy.co.uk) in London talks about ways that you can increase sales amongst your existing customers and clients.

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Transcript

They say that it costs something like 10 times as much to sell to a new customer than to sell more to an existing customer. So why are so many people only focusing on new leads? Shouldn’t we be turning our attention to the best prospects of all – our customers?

When it comes to customers, when do you think is the right time to sell to them? When they’ve already got their wallets out! I’m serious. When they’re already in the frame of mind where they’re happy to buy from you, that’s the point at which you ask them to buy something else.

In the same way that when you buy a book from Amazon they’ll suggest some other books you might be interested in, you can suggest extra products and services to your customers.

In negotiations, this technique is referred to as ‘nibbling’. As soon as you’ve got their agreement on one thing, get their agreement on something else and then see how far you can go.

Of course this assumes that you’ve got something else to sell to your customers and when you do make them an offer, it does need to be relevant to what they’ve bought.

It happens in retail all the time, for example you buy a pair of shoes and the assistant will ask if you will need some polish or in-soles. You buy a new washing machine and you’re asked if you’d like to buy an extended warranty. There are some products and services which are clearly back-end products, in order words you’d only sell them once someone has bought something else from you, such as an extended warranty or a support contract or an advanced version of what you sell. This said, I do see some businesses trying to sell back-end products at the front end and it doesn’t always make sense.

So, think about the products and services you sell. Which are the front end products and which are the back-end products? Which items are usually bought together? Is there a pattern to how people buy from you?

Once you understand this, it becomes much easier to up-sell to your customers. Not just in person, but when you’re planning your marketing activities. Your website can suggest extra products when someone is in your shopping cart or say to them, I noticed you bought X – product Y goes very well with it, shall we add it to your order?

Ultimately, up-selling is the most profitable way to do business because the costs involved in marketing to existing customers decreases at the same time as their responsiveness goes up.

For more video tips and articles go to: www.smeacademy.co.uk

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[Video Tip] Outsourcing to freelancers

Hannah McNamara — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 07:40:39 +0000

Small business coach Hannah McNamara from SME Academy (http://www.smeacademy.co.uk) in London talks about ways that you can use freelancers to do specialist work for you or take on some of the burden of your every day work.

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Transcript

Time or more accurately lack of it comes up all the time (excuse the pun) when I’m working with clients one on one.

They have great ambitions for their business but don’t have the time to do what it takes to make it happen. They’re too caught up in the day-to-day running of the business to think ahead and plan for the future. It’s often seen as quicker, easier and cheaper to do everything yourself rather than have to take on staff or get external help.

If this sounds familiar, rest assured you’re certainly not alone and I’ve been through it too.

I know what it’s like to want to feel in control of everything. To think that no one can do things the same way you can. And it’s true. No one can do it exactly the same as you. They might mess up. They might even do it better than you.

The point is, if you’re stressing out about the amount of day-to-day work you have to do, you’re not able to work on the important job of building your business. And it’s only going to get worse.

A flexible and affordable solution is to use the services of freelancers. You might have thought about using a freelance graphic designer for example, but what about a freelance personal assistant or webmaster? They can take on the administrative and technical roles in your business when you need them, and then when you don’t, well they are doing work for their other clients and they’re not on your payroll.

One place where you can find an international network of freelancers is Elance – you can find it at www.elance.com. It works a bit like eBay because freelancers bid to do work for you. I’ve used elance to find virtual assistants and freelance PAs, researchers, transcription services, data entry, audio editing, graphic design, webmaster services and many other services. Because on the whole I use people around the world, we use US dollars. This works out well on the exchange rate and there’s no tax to pay. Many of the people are home workers with low overheads so they can provide great value.

You do need to use a bit of common sense when looking for help on a site like this and check people out thoroughly before handing over work to them, but I’ve found that the benefits you gain from starting to delegate certainly outweigh the feeling of complete overwhelm and stress when you try to do everything yourself.

For more video tips and articles go to: www.smeacademy.co.uk

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[Video Tip] Networking Corporate Style

Hannah McNamara — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 06:43:44 +0000

Hannah McNamara from SME Academy (http://www.smeacademy.co.uk) talks about ways that you can network your way into corporate contracts.

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Transcript

If you have attended a few networking events you might have noticed that they are mainly populated by independent coaches, consultants and small business owners. This is perfect if that’s the market you are hoping to promote your services to, but what if you want to build your network of contacts in the corporate world?

Let’s face it – most of the people you want to connect with are employees of a larger organisation. This is the case whether you are looking for senior executives, training managers or any other member of staff.

Employees think differently from self-employed people and business owners when it comes to networking. They have a job to do and probably don’t have enough time to do it, so networking is not high on their priority list unless they are thinking about making a career move.

These people have a corporate marketing department working hard to build the profile of the organisation, so unless they are working in the Sales or Business Development functions, they won’t be networking for leads in the same way that you might be.

They spend most days fielding incoming calls and sorting through sales letter and promotional emails from people and organisations trying to promote their businesses, so they’re not likely to think, “I could do with meeting some prospective suppliers – I’ll go to this networking event.”

So if they’re not approaching networking in the same way as you, how do you get in front of these people?

Most people working in large organisations don’t go to ‘networking events’ unless they are looking for a job. Networking happens at industry conferences, seminars and training courses. People are introduced to one another at awards dinners, press launches and social events.

If you are looking to network your way into larger organisations adjust your strategy. Start to think like them. Position yourself so that you are invited to the same events that they attend.

Work your existing contacts and ask for specific introductions to a particular person in an organisation – websites like LinkedIn are useful for finding out who knows who. Be clear about what you want them to say when they make the introduction. Seek out the people you know who work with larger organisations and get to know them. Find out more about what they do and see if you can help them first, before asking whether they might be willing to consider you when they are looking for what your company does.

Above all, understand that it can take time even when you’ve been introduced to the right person. You do need to network in a slightly different way and have a longer-term strategy in mind, but if you start with the end in mind and are clear about what you are setting out to achieve you’ll have a much greater level of success.

For more video tips and articles go to: www.smeacademy.co.uk

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[Video Tip] Automating your Marketing activities

Hannah McNamara — Wed, 20 May 2009 08:45:49 +0000

Hannah McNamara from SME Academy (http://www.smeacademy.co.uk) explains how to take the time and effort out of small business marketing by automating and systemising marketing activities. This includes the use of autoresponders, YouTube and other techniques.

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Transcript

Most people I speak to admit that they can have a fairly inconsistent approach to marketing. It gets done when they have time or when sales are down and this creates a feast or famine situation – you’re either doing well or you’re scratching around for business.

So what can you do if you’re a small business without a dedicated Marketing team?

Well, the answer is to systemise your marketing and even your sales process. This isn’t as complicated as you might think. I’m guessing that you have certain sales and marketing activities which aren’t really unique. For example someone visits your website and is interested in getting more information so they send an email to the address on your ‘contact us’ page. Either you or one of your staff has to reply to the email attaching a brochure and then remember to follow up with them to find out whether they are likely to buy from you. If they do decide to buy then you’ll have to process the sale and if they don’t decide to buy on this occasion someone has to remember to contact them again at a later date.

This could all be automated.

The bottom line is that if you do any marketing activity more than once you can probably automate or part-automate it.

Many marketing software packages enable you to do any of the following:

Capture people’s contact details and add them to your opt-in database
Automatically send an email to them with the information that they have requested
Follow up with them to see whether they have any questions
Email them with your latest offers
Send out a sequence of emails at set intervals telling them more about what you offer
Suggest and up-sell additional items when customers are using your shopping cart
Automatically unsubscribe and subscribe people
Schedule seasonal Marketing messages weeks or months in advance
And many, many more

We use a package called 1shoppingcart to automate our own marketing activities and it’s so much more cost effective than trying to do all of these activities manually. It gives us more time to spend with our clients.

If yours is a people-focused business and your customers and clients like to see who they’re dealing with, you could record a video to share your sales presentations or to share tips with them. YouTube is filled with informercials and demonstrations from lots and lots of businesses.

Automating your marketing can take some time planning, but it really is worth it if you can put in the time to do it now.

For more video tips and articles go to: www.smeacademy.co.uk

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