See below our FREE top marketing hints, tips and guidelines from Joseph Creative Business. We regularly update this area with new information, keep an eye out for our future updates.
One of the most important things about getting your marketing strategy to work is databases, if you are working with the wrong data you will get poor results, the better and fresher the data then the more successful your campaigns will be.
Your USP as the name suggest should be the thing about your business that is unique to your business and will inspire your customers to want to do business with you.
Frequently overlooked, what are your competitors doing, how does your pricing and service offering compare?
Try sending some flyers out to local businesses, these methods still work but are not being used by as many companies now as most are now using digital media.
Assuming you have done a great job, ask your customer to refer you to their other business contacts. The referral is the best recommendation you can receive. Don't be scared to ask!
Stop Machine Gun Marketing......it works at a low level but turns off customers who see marketing that is irrelevant to them. Target specific segments of industry with relevant marketing and watch the difference in the response.
Keep your news up to date. There is nothing worse than looking at your news and it's 5 years old. This could be a potential new customer looking at what you are doing. Solution......Integrate Facebook into your news or blog, you update Facebook and your website is updated automatically. Magic!
SMART - Only spend money on marketing that you can be sure that you will be able to measure the results. Specific Measurable Achievable Realistic Time
Keep your eye on the competition, what new things are they doing, how do your prices compare and more importantly try and stay ahead of them with your own innovation.
Have a plan to drive more traffic to you website, the more ways you do this, the more traffic will go to your website and this will create more opportunities for you. Try email marketing, Facebook marketing, Linkedin marketing and Google Adwords for starters.
Use contact buttons on your website, in fact use them on all pages of your website, this makes it easier for customers to get hold of you without having to look around for the contact us page. Remember, always ensure the button is in the top area of your web page and visible without scrolling down.
Avoid using too much text on your website, huge slabs of text put off your customers. Use bullet points and short and concise text.
Use your brand regularly but it's important that is is used in a consistent manner. A brand guidelines document for your business will apply rules to the brand to ensure all staff follow the rules.
The use of telemarketing will triple the amount of leads generated by your business. No cold calling, all calls must be targeted to people that have shown an interest in your business.
An essential tool for measuring the traffic flow to your website, this will tell you the total traffic, how much is mobile and the metrics can be used to ensure you are constantly growing your traffic base. It's a free tool so use it.
Keep your subject matter interesting, the purpose is to get your email opened then they can read your content.
Another big tip, you would be surprised at how many websites where you can't find the telephone number or link to social media easily. Make the telephone number prominent on the right hand top corner of your website.
An often forgotten part of marketing but always use white space to show off your services and products properly, clean and minimal is much better than too much and cluttered, remember the white space.
Re-marketing is effectively following your website visitors around and showing your web adverts whenever they visit a Google partner site.
This may not directly get you business but it will show the visitors to your website that you respect their privacy.
Use Linkedin to create a wider audience for you and your company, a great business tool where you can advertise to both local, national and international companies.
When creating your new website be sure not to try and do both lead generation and e-commerce on the same website, it doesn't work. Choose two websites.
Focus your marketing message on your core speciality, people don't like generalists, they prefer specialists.
Promote your most profitable products and services, this is where the money is, keep pushing the profit related products and services.
What can you offer that your competition can't...This is important as this could give you the edge and help differentiate you from your competitors.
By adding a P.S. your reader will nearly always see this message, so use it wisely to promote the important messages.
By offering more payment options you can make it easier for your prospects to work with you rather than your competitors.
It's important to always understand your competitors pricing. If they are cheaper, you need to be able to sleuth advantages of your service or product over theirs, if not you need to be cheaper!
Finding it difficult getting by the Gatekeeper, call a colleague of the person you want to speak to, ask for accounts payable and then ask to be transferred to your contact.
Use LinkedIn to identify the people that you would like to contact in your target companies.
Make sure all your website pages have been SEO tagged for the title of each page and also the description.
Give away some FREE content to your prospects and they will appreciate that you are giving them valuable information and may come to use your services in the future.
Encourage your customers and prospects to like your pages, this will give you a wider audience for your posts and will create more opportunities and brand awareness.
Did you know you can advertise to specific demographics with Facebook, Male or female, local business owners within 50 miles of your location ?
Never drop a potential customer from a Google Advert onto your homepage, it is not specific enough for the person searching and they will nearly always navigate away after just costing you the price of a click.
When was the last time you wrote a letter to your customers or prospects and sent it in the post? A personal letter written in this way, marked private and confidential will be opened by over 90% of the intended recipients, now that is unmatched in any area of marketing.
When creating your Google Advert make sure that the advert has content that is relevant to the landing page, the landing page needs to be specified in the advert settings, never use your homepage.
Essentially the key question is, what does your ideal customer look like? Once you understand this you can then advertise and use all the marketing tools to reach out to them.
List all the key attributes that your ideal customers should have, ability to pay, needs to buy your products or services, local to you etc...This will help you keep focus on how to attract them to your business.
Is there a gap in your market? Can you fill this gap and stand out from your competition? Review your competition and see if you can do something different and better.
You would think this was obvious but you would be surprised how many companies just don't keep in regular contact. There are lots of ways to do this but the important thing is to keep it personal and to do it regularly.
Digital Marketing is what everyone is doing and talking about but the world of offline is still there and if you send a postcard to your prospects or a well designed flyer it can still work wonders.
Whether it's writing an email or adding content onto your website, the use of bullet points is essential. When your prospect customers are viewing your message they immediately scan the bullets points first to see if they have any interest in reading on, use them wisely.
Generic keywords are very expensive on Google Adwords and tend to deliver a lot of clicks, the problem is that this can mean excessive cost that delivers very poor quality traffic. Be more specific with your keywords.
If possible try and meet your potential new customers face to face, whether that is you as the business owner or designated business manager. You cannot beat face to face appointments.
Avoid using too many images with your email broadcasting, don't over brand your emails, my usual rule applies, keep it personal.
On average it takes 7 customer contacts to actually start doing business with a new customer, that's you contacting a prospect 7 times before you sell anything. Most people stop at 2 or 3 contacts...Be persistent it pays off.
Everyone likes a deal, create special offers regularly and keep your customer informed through as many different media types as possible, email, social media etc....Keep your offers fresh and relevant.
Always ensure that any offers have a time limit, a deadline that must be adhered to otherwise the offer has ended. A new offer should then be in place but the old offer has gone. This approach will encourage your customers to react faster to your offers.
Look at everything you are doing and try to see it from your customers perspective, this will allow you to improve every area of your business not just your marketing.
It’s important when promoting your business, service and products to show the value and the added value of using your company. If the customer is only seeing the price then they are not seeing the value. Push the value and the price negotiations will be much easier.
It’s possible to deliver your message in many different formats, this means writing about the same topic but re-shaping the message, with a bit of work this can be done about 15 times, remember persistence beats resistance.
There are many different organisations offering network opportunities, use them to improve your profile and get known in wider circles. Always research the companies that you are looking to make contact with and always turn up early, this will potentially improve your chances of meeting a new customer.
Good is not good enough, in order to be talked about and referred on by your customers you need to be producing excellent service, go the extra mile and give your customers reason to refer you.
All businesses should have an accurate list of all business that they are currently quoting, this should be the total value plus the predicted value based upon a specific conversion rate for each proposal. Most CRM’s can do this, a good CRM system is Capsulecrm…Google it, it starts off free of charge and then is only a small investment every month but this system will allow you to keep complete control of your pipeline.
If you are looking to grow your business you will need to focus on the market sectors of the economy that are growing, this will enable you to piggy back the natural growth of the sector, this is important as choosing the wrong sector could lead to dropping sales.
Identifying a niche market could be critical for your business, whilst this may be a small market you may be able to take the lion share of the value, being a specialist in this field will make you stand out as the expert and this will drive more and more sales to you.
It sounds obvious but focus on the products and services that you are achieving the most profit, this strategy will deliver more cash into your business in the long term and will make your business much more sustainable.
Creating your URL is one of the most important things you can do when starting out on your new business. Don't rush this, research it carefully and use a unique URL, be careful to stay with .co.uk and .com, unless you are an non for profit organisation or club stick to the .co.uk and .com
Invest time either every week or month to review your keywords, how are they performing?...Find new Keywords and add them to your list, remove poor performing keywords.
Always send a test email to yourself and a colleague, this will ensure you have seen how the email will look when it arrives at your potential customer. Seems obvious but never forget to do this.
Always preview your email and test the personalisation is working correctly. Ensure this element is in your testing process.
This is probably the number 1 reason why your customers may come and use your services or products, if they are dissatisfied with their current service provider...use this to your advantage, focus on your competitors weaknesses and your strengths.
Segment your customers and prospects; you need to write to these groups in different ways so keep them separate.
Try to avoid over using images when sending email broadcasts, no one will reply to an email with images.
Ensure that all your email broadcasts can be tracked, this will ensure you know how many of your emails are being opened and who is clicking through to your website.
Ensure your subject title is intriguing, don’t give the game away as your open rate will be shot to pieces.
Did you know that with effect from September 2016 Google Adwords are now 50% bigger. You will need to write new adverts to ensure you are staying ahead of your competition.
Only create a maximum of 6 keywords per advert that you create on Google Adwords, this will keep your campaign extremely targeted and will substantially improve your CTR.
Google offers a few ways to attract people searching for your services, be very careful here, I would suggest using exact matching initially as this will only provide people exactly searching for your specific keywords and nothing else. Huge savings on your Google Adwords costs.
Google Adwords will allow you to target customers within a specific radius of your business, i.e. 50 miles from your business postcode. This reduces the cost of advertising and increases the opportunity of doing business with your local customers.
Look out for mobile bidding coming to Google very soon, this will allow you to bid at different rates for mobile traffic.
Always write at least two adverts on each product or service and regularly review them to see which is working best and replace the poorest performer with a new fresh advert, repeat, repeat.......
Google will soon allow you to bid on demographics, this means you will be able to bid on the gender, age and area. Coming soon.
By sending regular weekly emails you will be surprised at how many extra customers you will pick up. It's very important to be consistent with your emails.
All your email activities should be personal to whoever you are sending it to, not Mr Smith and not to The Purchasing Manager but ensure you know the first name of the contact, Dear Fred, Hi Fred, Good Morning Fred.......Be Personal it works!
If you are email marketing try split testing your subject matter. You can send to 4000 contacts, by split testing, the first 1000 will be sent the same email but with two different subject matters, the email with the most opens within the first 1000 will then be sent to the remaining 3000 thus improving the overall open rate.
Create case studies so that potential customers can easily see how they can work with you, it will show in more detail how and what you do for your existing customers and how you find solutions to your customers problems.
Typically avoid Mondays and Fridays, also avoid before 9am and afternoons on all days. Always test and review when you send, don't be scared to do something different...You never really know unless you test it.
Use a top quality contact database, it’s impossible to get great results if you are using poor quality contact data.
Email segmentation will create a revolution in your marketing, sending personalised messages to different segments of your database, the opportunities are almost endless, this is more work but it will give you such an increase in the response you will be amazed.
Ensure you are able to track all the emails that you are sending out, who is opening, when and who is clicking on your links ? This is very useful information.
Create a process sign off document for your campaigns, this will need to have a dual sign off, covering spelling, pricing, links, subject matter, timelines and all key information. Keep your errors in the kitchen!
When sending emails to your customers and prospects try and avoid using too much graphic content, this will encourage more direct responses.
It's really important that your emails come from a human being and not info@ or [email protected] will encourage responses to your messages.
This is where most companies fall down, it's essential you create a strategy around your email campaigns, plan and execute. What are you going to do over the next month and what are you looking to achieve.
Be personal with your email broadcasts, write directly to a named contact and ensure your email is from a real person.
Send your emails at least weekly, regular contact is essential to ensure you are gaining trust and also creating on-line relationships with your prospects.
Integrating your social media as part of your website is critical in ensuring your potential customers can see that you are still a business that is active and forward thinking. It is possible to create a new page on your website that is actually a live feed to your Facebook, this is creating a link between your website and your social media and the reverse can be done from your Facebook account, this is optimising the way both these channels work together, check out www.onecallrecruitment.co.uk/blog/
Virtually all your new customers will look at your website before they engage directly with you, Why? because they want to check you out and understand what your business is all about and most importantly to see if your business is a good fit with their business. It is therefore the most important thing you can do in your business is to give a good first impression of your business. Your website needs to be modern, clean and show your business to its upmost potential. We all know first impressions matter, your website is your first impression.
By asking your visitors to call you or fill out the contact form will help your conversion rates. Make sure these contact points are visible immediately when your prospect has landed on your website.
Is your telephone number visible at the top of your website? How does it look on a mobile device? It's an extremely common error and one that is very costly as your potential customers will lose patience searching for your telephone number.
Integrate Facebook directly into your website, this can form part of your blog and will take away the need to update your news section.
Don't dabble with your marketing, it needs to be done on a very regular basis, whether that's emails weekly, Google Adverts daily, Facebook marketing, all these things need to be done on a planned strategic method. Plan it and deliver it...Don't dabble, it doesn't work!
Most businesses are looking for more and more new customers, but the real pot of gold sits within their existing customer database. They already know you, they have an account with you and no doubt they trust you. Ask yourself, are all your customers using all your services?...Split them into sections and start to market the services they are not taking. Start today showing them everything you do and your sales will accelerate so fast you will wonder why you didn't do it earlier.
A must for any business, keep growing your prospects database, this will improve your chances of generating leads. Put time aside to do this or you will just be making excuses why you are not doing it. We have an enormous amount of local data that we use with our clients to promote their business. If you are not using a CRM system then please use one if you are starting to prospect, this will keep all your communications organised and avoid embarrassing duplicate contacts.
It's much easier to do business with customers that are local to you, are you marketing to them?...There are many ways to do this but be personal and local when doing this. We have extensive local databases but these can also be purchased from reputable data houses, avoid cheap data at all costs, they don't work and will cause you longer term headaches.
When delivering your marketing material, ensure it is targeted to your audience, for example there is no point trying to sell safety boots to a solicitor, use segmentation and demographics to improve your conversion rates. The more you can profile your target audience the more successful your engagement will be with them.
Smart marketing should be the only thing you do in the marketing arena. S = Specific, M = Measurable, A = Actionable, R = Results Oriented, T = Time Specific. Basically that you can measure what you do within a specific time frame. It's a results based measure of your marketing activities.
It is essential that you record how every new customer found your business, you can analyse this data and see where most of your customers are coming from.
This is a well used tool in the corporate arena but not used so much by small to medium enterprises. Basically it involves creating a process and then automating it either on your website or via your emails. Make all automations personal.
Having a blog is pretty essential in advising your customers and prospects of your services or products and then all the new activities that you are doing in the business. It's easy to integrate Facebook into your website and then your website is being updated automatically. Just create a Company Facebook page, this is separate to your personal account.
In order to ensure you are in the buyers cycle for buying your services or products you need to regularly maintain contact with them, this ensures that when they are ready to buy they come to you first. Find different ways to keep in touch with your target audience, stay inventive and stay in contact.
Always follow up any verbal proposals with professionally written proposals, these should detail all the terms of your services, including costs, timeline etc…, all proposals should then be entered into your CRM system and should form your sales pipeline.
Having a mobile and tablet responsive website is now essential, if you're dealing directly with consumers your traffic levels from mobile will now be as high as 80% of your total traffic. Having an old fashioned website will be costing you significantly.
I can 100% tell you that all new potential customers will check your website to see what you and your company is all about. If your website has out of date news and content and looks like it was built 10 years ago then this will be there impression of you. Not good, change it as soon possible.
This is now a huge part of how we get our services and products noticed online, having social media icons or an integrated social media page is vital in ensuring your website and social media pages work seamlessly together. You might not like social media but you need to engage with it as your customers are loving it and expect to see you there.
Video is being used more and more on todays modern websites, it is much easier for visitors to understand your message if it's delivered in video, these videos can the be used with social media to drive traffic and turnover.
This is an area where you can see if your website has been designed without thinking about basic commercials. Is your telephone number at the top of your web page, are there contact buttons immediately visible without scrolling, is the contact us in the top right hand corner. These are basics but so many websites get this wrong and with huge consequences to there turnover.
One of the most common mistakes made on most websites."The Call to Action" By asking your potential customer to do something will improve the response rates to your marketing by triple. Call Now, Don't delay click now etc....
Ask for testimonials from your customers and share them on your website and social media, ask for Facebook review. Your potential new customers will like to see client testimonials and reviews it will give them confidence in your services.
Show clear examples of your work, either with use of a gallery of perhaps using Facebook directly integrated into your website, then post your work onto your Facebook pages.
Avoid using white text on a black background, whilst it may appear to stand out it actually becomes very difficult to read and your visitor may become frustrated and leave your website.
Your website is like a shop window, you need to treat it in this way, update the content, products and services regularly and obviously keep your news recent. There is nothing worse that really old news! Google will improve your ranking if you are regularly posting content to your website. Keep it interesting!
It sounds obvious but most companies don't do it. Test all your contact forms on your website, at least weekly. There is nothing worse than losing a customer because your contact form is no longer working or going to an employee who no longer works for you.
A critical component to ensuring your prospective customers don't leave before they have even arrived. Your website pages must load within 1 second otherwise you will lose customers, Google will also significantly lower your quality score if the page takes longer than 2 seconds. Visit https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights to check your landing pages.
Take your website seriously, if you don't give it any attention it will not reward you, invest in it, both in time and money and watch it repay you time after time. Your website is the face of your business. Your website is like a salesman in your business, you need to invest time, effort and sometimes money to ensure that it is operating at its optimal performance. You only get out what you put in. If your thinking my website is doing nothing, ask yourself what are you putting into it?
You have managed to get a potential customer to your site, don't let them leave without doing something. Call you or contact you via a form. You need to make this clear to your visitors. Make them take an action!
It's important when you are getting visitors to your website that you try and retain their information so you can continue to market your products and services, by using a data capture form you can do this and database the information. You will need to give free content or other incentives to ensure visitors take up your offer.
Be very careful when working with background colours on your website, for example using white text on a black background, this becomes very hard to read very quickly and your prospects will just move on. Keep your content simple, clear fonts with an easy to read background.
Be very aware of the fold on your website, this is basically the area where you can see everything on your screen without scrolling down, all important information must be above the fold....Very Very Important. Your Telephone number, Contact buttons etc.
The 7 second rule applies to virtually all marketing and most things in life, people form impressions of whatever they are looking at within 7 seconds. Walk into an interview scruffy and you will have lost the job before you even get to sit down, your website, emails and offers must have a positive effect on the viewer with 7 seconds.
Google Adwords works on a pay per click cost structure, this means your adverts are shown for FREE and you only incur costs when someone clicks on your advert. It is estimated 97% of all searches on the internet are performed using Google, this therefore means that it is one of the most important tools to have. Visitors coming from Google are looking for your services and we call this attraction marketing, they are looking and you are showing. This type of marketing is simply unbeatable.
Whether you are in B2B or dealing directly with consumers then Social Media Marketing should be part of your marketing tools. Facebook in the UK has an estimated 30 Million users and on average they are spending 30 minutes looking at their account. It is possible to specify the age group, gender and location for your adverts and you can even target your services to people who have an interest in your services. You may not want to get involved personally but your business must get involved. This is an extremely low cost activity that can create some amazing results. Take the plunge and get involved.
If you are selling B2B then email marketing is still one of the most effective methods of delivering leads into your business. using a high quality database and delivering useful messages about your services can result in a regular flow of new customers on a weekly basis. All your emails should be directed at the decision maker and most importantly they must be personally addressed and signed off by a real person in your business too. Your emails should be sent regularly and at a time of day that you potential customers will have time to read and absorb. Avoid using too many graphics. Get started today.
You are probably sitting with hundreds of contacts in Linkedin but you are not really posting very much. These contacts are invaluable and the next work of contacts could be as large as 2 or 3 million contacts. Make time to create interesting posts about your company, your services and think about what might engage new customers to contact you. This is a very powerful too, use it.
When you are performing different types of methods to drive traffic to your website, you will start collecting data. This would include data from your email marketing activities. You will actually know who is visiting your website and what they are looking at and for how long they are looking. These potential customers are following what we call "Patterns Of Behaviour". Simply put they are following a path that your previous customers have trodden. These potential customers have received marketing emails and other activities from your company and have also visited your website, they have shown an interest in your company and services, they are therefore primed to receive a call from you. Don't delay start calling them today!
This is your existing group of customers, you may have many types of services or products that your customers are interested in but they may only see you as a one product or service solution. This is an extremely common issue and it will take an extensive amount of advertising to your existing customers to show them what your company has to offer. This can typically be done by databasing your customers and emailing them, sending them literature etc. Remember they are already your customer and that makes it much easier to sell your products and services. Thats why we call them your "Pot Of Gold". Be careful and personal when contacting your existing customers, ensure your database is segmented in order that they so not receive information about services or products they already buy from you.
If you want your business to keep growing it is essential you have a system that allows for your company to continually adding new prospects into your taggert wish list of new customers. 90% of businesses do not do this regularly and as a result their business is like a rollercoaster. Regular prospecting will bring regular leads into your company and this will ensure that your business is on a upward growth trajectory. Use the internet, your local papers and online search directories for companies that you would like to do business with. Start today and watch the leads increase.
There are plenty of CRM systems out on the market place today and if you are having regular contact with prospects and customers it is essential you keep a track of these activities. A good CRM system will keep track of all your customer contact activity including monitoring all your quotes, typically a CRM system will create a pipeline of quotes and show your success in converting quotes into new business. Customer task and activities can be scheduled to ensure that nothing is missed and the systems will even email you to advise you what needs to be done, so you can't forget. A good free system is: www.capsulecrm.co.uk
Did you know you can capture at least 30% of customers that are visiting your website? Simply place some tracking code onto your website and this will alert you to all visitors as they arrive. This is for B2B use only and operates with companies that have a fixed IP address.
Social Media is playing an ever more important role in our business communication, it is also used to convey trust in our services and plays a major part in the buying decision process. Your Social Media can be integrated as a landing page onto your website or even integrated directly onto several pages. Most important is to keep your social media current.
Treat your website like your best salesperson, invest in it and set specific and measurable targets that you would like it to achieve. You wouldn't start a salesperson and then just leave them to their own devices, your website needs to be managed too.
This is one of my big beefs, it's just a simple commercial thing to do, make your business telephone number big and bold, preferably to the right hand of the screen and on all web pages.
Is your website mobile responsive? The figures for mobile traffic have grown substantially over the past couple of years and these numbers will continue to grow as smart phone and tablet use increases. The number of people visiting your website via mobile could be as high as 80% of your traffic, if your website is not mobile ready you will be losing a lot of customers. If your not sure check out your Google Analytics and look at mobile device traffic.
Add live chat onto your website and watch the number of enquiries soar, people prefer to chat electronically and this offers a fast and effective way to communicate. Live chat will monitor all your visitors to your website and will give you live analytics of your websites performance. A good chat software company to use is www.smartsupp.com.
The contact us tab should always be in the right hand top corner position and you should avoid placing it anywhere else as this will confuse your potential customers and they may end up leaving your website without contacting you. Add a Contact Us button onto every page and ensure it is visible on the landing page without having to scroll to it.
Use the latest software to identify who is coming to your website and what they are looking at, this is for B2B only but can be very effective. We have our own bespoke version that captures companies visiting your website and which pages on your website they are interested in, the software also sends you live email alerts when you have a visitor.
When was the last time you measured how quickly your landed page loaded? If its more than 3 seconds you need to speed it up or continue to lose customers. Google has a tool you can use to measure your speeds, it will also give you a score out of 100 for both mobile and desktop. https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
It's important to use as many ways as possible to attract new customers to your business, these should certainly include Google Adwords, Facebook, Email Marketing, Linkedin and having a strategy to make these work with your website is vital.
Our modern websites are all enhanced with SEO tags and content to ensure that Google totally understands exactly what products and services you have to offer. Remember, Google does not view web pages in the same way as a human being, so the content needs to be friendly to humans and Google.
Google apply a default score of 6/10 for each keyword that you create, the lower this score the more the advertising will cost you, if you drop to 4 or below Google will stop showing your adverts. It's a complicated area but ensure your landing page is relevant and the quality of your content is first class.
A common problem is businesses writing lots of keywords against just one advert.....wrong. Write one advert to a maximum of 10 tightly associated keywords. This will keep your keywords and adverts extremely relevant.
Create at least two adverts for each group of your keywords, test these and then replace the poorest performing advert with a new one, repeat this process throughout your whole campaign and the results will keep on improving.
Use Google's keyword planning tool to assess the potential level of traffic that you might receive, it will also help you with keyword ideas.
If you are advertising with either Broad or Phrase matching, then it is essential that you use negative keywords. A negative keyword will stop unwanted clicks and therefore save you money.
You must ensure you are getting into the Top 3 positions on Google, these adverts receive over 80% of all the traffic.
In 2018 it is going to be vitally important to understand the overall direction of your marketing. In essence, this breaks down into a few key areas: - Overview Of Your Marketing Strategy-Your Objectives / Swot Analysis / Target Market / Marketing Budget / The Marketing Plan
Create an overview document with your objectives for your marketing for the year, this would include where you feel you need to increase your marketing activity and which areas of your market that you want to target. It's also important to understand how your business can best reach your target market and this will involve looking at all the current digital methods that suit and fit with your business.
The SWOT analysis is designed to identify your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. This is an important starting point as if done correctly it will identify the marketing actions required. For example your website may be poor and need upgrading, you may have a new competitor in your market or a competitor may have closed and you can take advantage. Be honest and make a list under each of the category.
It is essential to identify the markets that you would like to target, this is more effective in both response rates and in terms of cost. Machine Gun marketing is very expensive and will not yield the best results. Typical you would review your own customer base and identify the sectors that you believe you could have the best success for your business.
My advice is actually prepare your Marketing Plan first and then prepare how much this will cost you to implement. Cash is king so we can't just throw money at marketing but if done correctly you should get a good return on your investment and that should allow you to spend more than planned if you are getting the results. Consider the lifetime value of your investments when reviewing how much it costs to get a new customer.
This should be a working document, typically a spreadsheet that shows the monthly activity by month over the different methods of how you intend to market. This should include, Google Adwords, Social Media, Networking events, Events, Radio. A timeline for each activity should be established and the document should be costed and reviewed for the performance in each area.
The big questions that I would want to identify are:- Is my website ready for 2018? 80% of your customers / prospects will visit your website before they make a buying decision. The next big one is am I using enough ways to get to market? The more ways you promote the business the more business you will win. And Finally are you good enough at capturing your enquiries and converting them into business? A good CRM system is essential, you need to have a list of enquires that the business is receiving , where they're coming from and if you have quoted, what the value is in real time of these quotes and what your conversion rate is.
Trinity Court, Trinity Street
Peterborough, PE1 1DA
Call: 01733 822 227
©Copyright 2025 Joseph Creative Business Ltd. All Rights Reserved.