MarketingPlanWiz Blog

Using recommendations and referrals to win more business

2011-01-20T08:02:00.000-08:00

The best free marketing you can ask for is when somebody recommends or refers you to somebody else. It’s usually free (which is great) but most importantly you’re getting a qualified lead that already trusts you because their contact has endorsed what you do.

We spend a lot of time getting our marketing message right, anxious to make sure that people believe what we’re telling them because we know how good our products and services are. But you know that advertising is never as powerful as somebody recommending a business to do business with.

Five reasons why referrals are good:

1. They’re usually free

2. Referred customers often spend more than those who come to you by other means (you’ve got the “trust” established from the off, so no time wasted)

3. You can ask for them confidently and easily if you know you’ve done a good job/sold an excellent product

4. Referrals give your business credibility

5. You can turn them into testimonials (always ask first) which you can add to your website, other marketing literature and newsletters.

The growth of social media has seen user-generated content become more important than the copy that marketers publish. Now when people have an opinion they can publish it online instantly and we believe reviews because there’s usually no hidden agenda (unlike the marketing copy written to make you buy their product). This means that we have to be prepared to be more open and share and likewise, accept that others will say what they think.

Many e-commerce websites now include reviews and comments on products they sell and there are lots of websites specifically devoted to reviews like TripAdviser or TopTable. This is especially relevant if you target consumers (the general public) and The Yellow Pages is even now inviting and publishing reviews for location-based businesses.

Then there’s LinkedIn – you can invite recommendations and usually people who have worked with you or used your services are happy to provide them.

How do you make sure you get people to recommend you?

Some businesses literally grow on referral marketing alone. Think of solicitors and accountants, alternative therapists and hairdressers. Without recommendations they would have to market much harder because these are all areas that are sensitive to the individual and require some element of trust for us to spend our money. These are our top tips on how to get referrals:

Ask for them! You’d be surprised how many satisfied customers really don’t mind recommending you to somebody else. We’re all looking for excellent service and a positive buying experience so just a bit of encouragement to pass it on is all that’s needed. On LinkedIn for example this is quite easy to do as you can ask for a recommendation.
Offer an incentive. For example a 20% discount on their next purchase or cash back (have you noticed the banks doing this if you recommend a friend?)
Follow up your clients after a purchase for feedback and then ask if you can use either a testimonial or if they will refer you to somebody else (whichever you feel is more appropriate)
Use your marketing literature. When you pass out a business card, give them several so they can pass them on, or if you send out an email newsletter make sure you’ve got a “forward to a friend” button.
Consider adding review functionality to your website or using a third party system like “Revoo”. Alternatively be brave with social media and allow people to leave comments and interact with your brand on platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

Whilst getting good reviews is a real positive, it’s important not to forget to monitor mentions of your products and your business (quite easy online with Google Alerts and saved searches). Reviews can of course be bad too and you need to be aware when this happens so that you can respond.

Think now about how many of your customers would recommend you – we bet there are a few. Time to put a plan into action!

Ten Email Marketing Dos and Don’ts

2010-12-22T05:47:00.000-08:00

As a marketing method, email marketing is excellent and it’s easy to see why so many of us have adopted it as part of our marketing mix. But because it’s so easy and low cost to set up and run, it’s also easy to make mistakes so we’ve chosen our top five dos and don’ts to share.

If you haven’t tried it yet, have a look at some of the popular online email services that you may have already heard of, such as Constant Contact, Mail Chimp and AWeber. Most of these ask for a monthly subscription to store your email lists (contacts) and send your emails usually dependent on the size of your contact list.

Email Marketing Dos

1. Do tailor your emails to different target audiences. Most email marketing software will let you manage more than one list so you can send one email to potential customers for example and a different message to existing customers. Or different messages based on what they’ve bought before. Either way, segmenting is really important and the more bespoke a message is, the more likely your customer is likely to take action.
2. Do read the stats. Once you’ve sent a promotional email to your list you should see reporting on who opened it and more importantly who clicked through onto any website links that you put in the email. If they clicked they are a potential lead and should be followed up.
3. Do use email marketing to sell. Email newsletters and bulletins are ideal to promote special offers, price incentives, new products and services. This is acceptable as your target list has opted in (see tip number 5) and email is a quick way for them to hear about your products and services.
4. Do test your email format every time. Email message layouts are just like web pages and should be tested to see what gets a better conversion rate. An example would be, if you have a total list of 1000 contacts, prepare two versions of your email newsletter. Before you send to the whole list, email one version to a sample of 50 from your whole list and the second version to another 50. Measure the results and the one that wins, usually based on a good conversion rate (to sale or maybe to click through to view a product or service on your website) is the one that goes to the rest of the list.
5. Do make sure your target lists have all opted in. If they’ve purchased from you previously there’s an automatic opt-in unless they tell you otherwise. If somebody makes an enquiry there is an implied interest but it’s always best to ask them if they would like to receive your emails as data protection is quite strict, particularly if your target audience is members of the general public. Otherwise you can also add a “sign up” box to your website available with most email marketing programmes so interested parties can choose to be added to your list.

Email Marketing Don’ts

1. Don’t send promotional emails out to your contacts using standard email office software like Outlook. If you send anything in bulk from office programmes they are likely to be treated as spam by the recipient servers. This is because the server you will use to send from will not be a recognised authenticated system for email marketing. Email services like the ones we mentioned at the beginning use “white-listed” servers so they can send large quantities of emails without being blocked as spam. If you are blocked you may find that all of your emails form then are blocked from some systems which can cause a real headache. It also doesn’t look very professional!
2. Don’t use a service that doesn’t allow you to have an “unsubscribe” link on the bottom of your emails. Nothing upsets people more than receiving emails they don’t want that they can’t stop.
3. Don’t just use images, as most email clients will not display them automatically. You should also have text only version available if this is likely to cause your recipients problems or the option to view the email online if it won’t display correctly in their email browser. Here's a good example of what can happen:

How the email should look:

This is how the email arrived in my Inbox:

4. Don’t forget to personalise but get it right! Email marketing gives you the opportunity to use the name of your recipients very easily so if you have them, it makes the message much more likely to be opened. Have a look at this how not to do email marketing example from Tesco.
5. Don’t think that email marketing is the marketing answer to everything! We receive lots of these in our Inboxes so yours should always be professional and useful. Sometimes the personal telephone call or face-to-face meeting is exactly what’s required.

Should you advertise?

2010-11-19T08:40:00.000-08:00

Advertising is an interesting topic and it's still one of the main things that people think marketers do, probably because it's an easy area of marketing to understand. That's not all we do of course, but it's still an important element of the marketing mix. There are some other facts we think we know about advertising:

It's expensive
Big companies do it
You mostly see advertising on posters, TV, radio, newspapers and magazines, and on the Internet.

All of the above are correct as far as they go, but it's surprising to learn that traditional advertising, like we see on the TV and in magazines has become more accessible as these media fight to compete with more cost effective advertising options on the internet. The other reason the costs have come down is that many of them are losing readership as consumers move online so have to compete harder for your advertising business.

As part of a marketing campaign or long term awareness raising, traditional advertising can still work. What doesn't usually work are one-off advertisements, especially in newspapers but this also applies online with banner advertising as once or twice is not enough time to establish your message with the reader or visitor.

Today, our customers are likely to consume information online as well as via traditional media so like most other marketing a mix is a good idea. Here are our favourite tips to prepare for advertising:

Ask yourself how can you measure it? Traditional advertising may mean you need a code on the advert to track its success, or a use a unique phone number so you know the advert generated that enquiry, not another medium. If you use online advertising you can also measure conversion rates using visitor statisticss and tracking an "action" like completing a sale or signing up for a newsletter.
Before you decide whether to advertise or not, find out where your customers are. If they're Daily Mail readers at least you know your advert will be seen by the right people if you advertise with the Daily Mail.
Off-line, negotiate. Most printed media, radio and TV are desperate to bring in more advertising revenue. Online, look at low cost bids and long-tailed search terms to get more clicks for your budget, although bear in mind that longer search terms tend to get less volume, which is why you pay more for the short, popular ones.
Whichever medium you choose, have more than one advertisement over a period of time and make sure your adverts are seen/shown regularly.
Never say yes to a one-off advert in anything, no matter how cheap it sounds! If you're tempted, spend that money on another form of marketing where you get longer exposure.
Have a clear call to action. What do you want the person who sees or hears your advert to do next? Telephone you, visit your website or do something else? This also helps you to tack the success of your advert.
Seriously consider trying online advertising methods such as pay per click on search engines like Google or in social networks like Facebook. If your customers are looking in these media. It's a way of getting straight to them when they login or search. The biggest advantage of nearly all online advertising is control. You can control budgets instantly and have constant access to performance stats and conversion rates.

The Internet has made it easier for small businesses to dip their toes in the water with advertising as it's not only affordable but highly measurable. As always, it still has to meet your criteria for spending marketing budget and guarantee you a return that you're happy with.

Karen McNulty
www.MarketingPlanWiz.co.uk and www.BusinessPlanwiz.com

How to write a social media plan

2010-11-02T05:56:00.000-07:00

Yes, there's a plan for everything! If you create a marketing plan it's likely that you'll include a section on Internet marketing anyway, but social media as an area of internet marketing is big enough to warrant its own strategy.

We're defining "social media" here as online social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, social bookmarking websites such as Delicious and Technorati, YouTube and other video sharing networks, picture sharing sites such as Flickr, also blogs and podcasts.

One of the reasons for writing a social media plan is that it's so easy to start using these media, because they're quick to set up and before you know it you've lost momentum or direction. Social media is like any other marketing, a set of marketing tools to help you achieve your objectives but there's a lot of choice so a strategy is advisable. This becomes critical when more than one of your team is using social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn to promote your brand.

A social media plan will also enable you to establish how you will measure the effectiveness of your social marketing activity. Measuring social networking is quite possible but using different sets of criteria to traditional marketing, such as "engagement".

Here are our tips on how to put together a social media plan (our version, so please feel free to add your thoughts and experiences by commenting):

Where you are now, a brief analysis of what you're already doing (if anything) with social media, and successes/failures using stats if you have them. This not only helps to set the scene for anyone using the plan but makes it clearer in your mind where to start from.
Social media objectives. This is valuable and helps to define why you're using social media as a marketing tool. Typical objectives can include: Engaging with your customers, reaching potential customers (raising awareness), positioning your business as expert in an area, enabling customers to talk to each other, a platform for enabling or encouraging reviews, building brand awareness and credibility.
The approach. How will you adopt social media, what will the tone of voice be, core messages and policies?
Positioning. Define how your online social marketing activity will sit compared to competitors. The key here is to differentiate yourself if you can. For example, the business arm of Dell chose to set up a social media forum on Facebook for small businesses to help each other rather than use it as a direct selling platform. And the Compare the Market "Meerkat" social media campaign engaged a phenomenal number of followers. Sometimes a bit of lateral thinking will provide a much richer method of engaging with your customers.
Specify the social media that you will use. By this point you'll have a fair idea of what's available that will fit with your objectives, approach and positioning. Here is where you can define the list of media such as a blog, Facebook page, YouTube channel and so on. Under each medium, outline how you will use it such as the theme, topics, direction.
Listening. I make a point of including this because engaging with social media properly means you have to listen as well as post. How will you monitor what others are saying about your brand in the social networks? Also listen to find out what's trending as this could provide good foundations for your next blog, and think about commenting on other blogs and social networks - engagement should always be a two-way process.
Dealing with comments and feedback. Outline a procedure for doing this, especially important if there are several people in the business involved with social media. Drafting a policy is useful if this is the case so that you can be consistent and avoid PR disasters. Above all, do plan to respond to comments and questions on your own social pages as they should never be left unanswered as that sends out the wrong customer service message.
Timing and regularity. Now that you know which media you will adopt, it's time to decide how often and who. Using Twitter for example should be at least daily, preferably several times a day whereas blogging might be once a week.
Measurement and evaluation. Include the methods you will use to track the success of your social media activity. There are a variety of ways to do this such as engagement - how many followers/fans/comments; traffic statistics using Google Analytics on the blog so you can see where traffic is coming from (referrals); tracking mentions using feedback from Google Alerts can also provide a picture of the reach of your activity.
To Do List. I find this useful at the end of any marketing plan. After you have decided on the strategy, what are the priorities, who is doing them and when by? You can add costs here too if appropriate.

You can find more tips on putting together internet marketing plans on one of our previous blogs, "10 reasons to put together an Internet marketing plan".

Happy planning!

Karen McNulty
MarketingPlanWiz and BusinessPlanWiz

Ten Marketing Tips for Attending Exhibitions and Events

2010-10-04T04:17:00.000-07:00

Despite the explosion of online marketing tools now available to us, there are times when face-to-face is simply the best way to reach your target audience. In the UK, there are around 1000 national business exhibitions up and down the country each year and many more local and regional events that are on your door-step. You can find them on websites like exhibitions.co.uk - a real eye opener as there is an event for everything!

Marketing at an event is often outside of our usual marketing plan, probably because it tends to be a once a year or less type of occurrence, especially if you're a small business. For that reason it benefits from its own mini marketing plan, and these Event and Exhibition marketing tips might help.

Plan well ahead if you're exhibiting especially if you need a display stand. Event organisers will provide dimensions for your exhibition space to help. It's very hard to exhibit without a professional display unless you want to stand out for the wrong reasons, so it's worth spending the money on something you can use again.
What can you giveaway? Anything that's free, including gadgets, samples and even value added content like reports and white papers (good if you're a service-based B2B) - in exchange for email addresses, business cards and any contact details. Then you've got a database of interested parties for your next e-newsletter or communication.
Take plenty of your own business cards. One of the best things about business events is the opportunity to network with other businesses in your sector, even potential suppliers and of course any potential customers.
Organise in advance for producing special offers or specific information for the event. This could be a flyer, coupon or discount for a limited period around the event date.
Create a plan of action for the event. If there's more than one of you, who does what on the stand e.g. one to greet, the other to talk through product information. Always make sure there's little or no barrier to people coming into your stand. If it's unavoidable, one of you can stand in front of the table or barrier to engage with passers-by.
Before the event use your website and social networks to let customers know you're going to be there. Tell them where you'll be and consider offering an incentive for them to visit your stand. And think about taking a video camera for when you're there so you can post it onto your networks when you get back.
Find out beforehand if your event has already been allocated a Twitter Hashtag. This is a word or label on Twitter with a # in front of it so that Twitter users can follow a common thread. Find out more about Hashtags at Twitter. If there is, tweet while you're there so your Twitter followers can learn more and follow other delegates to get first hand reviews and thoughts as they happen.
If your space allows, target specific existing customers for some corporate hospitality before the exhibition to visit your stand for a glass of champagne/cup of coffee/whatever is appropriate and use the time as an opportunity to catch up with them.
Event "goody bags" and programmes - if the organisers provide visitors with a pack or goody bag, can you provide something to go in it (voucher/or incentive to visit your stand) or is there an opportunity to sponsor a part of the event so your name is on the programme? This is often less expensive than you might think but great for exposure.
Stand location. The earlier you can choose your space the better as it can make or break a successful event. It's often a higher cost to have a more prominent stand (near the entrance for example, or by the refreshments so you're the first stand visitors see when they come in) but worth considering if the footfall is likely to be worthwhile.

When you get back, don't forget to follow up leads and do some quick analysis on the return on your investment. Measurement this time will help you to make the right decision next time an exhibition opportunity comes up and help to plan ahead for future marketing activity.

Karen McNulty
www.MarketingPlanWiz.co.uk and www.BusinessPlanWiz.com

Business Networking Tips for Success

2010-09-10T09:22:00.000-07:00

Hands up - who hates networking?

The very thought of meeting strangers and making small talk with people we don't know can send even "marketing people" running for the hills. But of all the marketing tools that I use, networking is still the one that often surprises me as the results can be quite amazing.

When I say "networking" I mean off-line for the moment. Online social networking is great, but it doesn't beat face-to-face relationship building, at least in the first instance. By all means continue business relationships online and meet lots of potential customers and suppliers, but it's invariably the people that you know that you build long term bonds with.

Traditional business networking involves either joining regular business networking groups, or attending events, launches, AGMs, training, exhibitions, trade fairs, even golf days. The networks that suit you will depend on who your target audiences are.

For example if you're selling to the general public, events, sponsorships, trade fairs or launches all offer the opportunity to network with potential customers. Sometimes, even business events will generate consumer opportunities as we're all consumers outside of our business lives.

I was at a business networking event recently with a fellow networker who was launching a perfume business and she was questioning whether a "business" network was appropriate as her customers were not other businesses. But when it boiled down to it, there were quite enough of the right target audience in the room who may need to buy gifts for wives and girlfriends and plenty of females who wanted to buy for themselves. People really do buy from people and this is another reason why business networking works even for B2C - and I did buy some perfume that day.

Often networking isn't just to find customers, but to find other businesses to collaborate with, contacts who may lead you to customers or simply to share the experience of being in business and find solutions together. I've met plenty of other marketers through meetings like this, many of who I've done business with at some point, even if only to refer other customers to them because they have a particular area of expertise.

There are some golden rules which are worth noting, but my best advice is to be yourself as far as possible. It doesn't work otherwise as you can't build long term relationships being somebody else.

Good networking tips are:

Always take business cards. This is strangely easy to forget, probably as we're dashing out of the door we forget to check (spoken from experience I'm embarrassed to admit), but without them people can't get in touch or follow up.
Prepare an elevator pitch, less than 1 minute if you can about what you do, and what's different about your business so that you differentiate yourself from everyone else. For example, if you're an Accountant, what can you add? I'm an Accountant who specialises in taxation, or who provides a small business package for a fixed sum. And what are the benefits to the product or service that you offer? So you don't have to worry about getting your self assessment in on time... This might take a bit of practice and it might change over time, but it's well worth doing.
Have objectives before you enter the room. Are you there because you want business leads, somebody to work alongside, a new supplier? Or maybe you just need to meet some like-minded people. The clearer you are the easier the process is.
After the event make sure you follow up if you promised to do something. This is often the best start to a long-term business relationship as if you deliver it builds trust.
Don't forget that you can network anywhere. You meet people at the shops, in restaurants and at events - they're all great opportunities to talk to people. Just remember that elevator pitch when somebody asks "what do you do?".

To continue networking after you've met somebody face to face, make sure your business card also has your twitter identity, LinkedIn address or other social networking contact details, as well as the usual email address, website address and telephone number.

For further inspiration, there are also some excellent articles about business networking on the Business Link website, worth a read.

Karen McNulty

MarketingPlanWiz and BusinessPlanWiz
www.twitter.com/karenmcnulty

Tips for Putting Together a Successful Marketing Campaign

2010-08-26T02:26:00.000-07:00

It's not so different from putting together a marketing plan, but if you have a product launch, event or any big promotion and you've never prepared a marketing campaign before, it can seem a bit daunting. The principles are the same whether you're a small or large business and if you follow these guidelines you won't go far wrong.

The phrase "marketing campaign" implies big budgets but that's not necessarily the case. Before you start, decide what you can afford and what you're trying to achieve. Internet marketing opens up many more cost effective marketing channels so with a bit of planning you can control costs very easily, whilst still reaching a large audience. It helps to break campaign planning down into chunks, and this is how I recommend doing it:

1. Set objectives
Just as you would with any marketing plan, set your marketing objectives first. Campaigns usually require their own plans because you need to achieve a specific set of outcomes for identified products, services or events. An example would be a product launch. Customers may already recognise your brand but you need to bring this new product to the market. In this instance, objectives might include sales targets, PR coverage and some sort of call to action results such as coupons returned, telephone calls received or "sign-ups" for more information for example. Add a deadline so you know when the results need to be achieved by.

2. Define your marketing budget
It will help to decide which communication channels to use, from TV advertising or developing a viral marketing campaign through to email marketing and literature. Put a ceiling on what you can spend now to keep your campaign planning realistic.

3. Target audience
For this campaign, who are you targeting? Can you pin down a profile of the customer in terms of age, gender, social behaviour and/or location? Once you commit to this your marketing mix will become more obvious again. If you're not sure at this stage, some market research may be required.

4. The marketing mix
Which tools will you use to reach your target audience? Think as broadly as possible to start with, and have a look at this list for guidance:

Outdoor media such as banners, posters, billboards and signs
TV and radio
Direct mail (printed) and distribution
Flyers, leaflets, coupons
Branded giveaways
Exhibitions, shows and trade fairs
Websites - yours and other peoples'. What needs to be updated, or may a new website for the campaign.
PR - public relations activity such as press releases, sponsorship, talks, tours, announcements
Blogs, podcasts and social media channels
Advertising in print (newspapers, magazines) or online advertising (pay per click, banner advertising, affiliate advertising)
Online viral campaigns (viral videos for YouTube, develop a game, an App or email campaign)
Mobile marketing (Apps, games, mobile optimised websites)
Stationery - does any need to to be updated to include the campaign, adding a tagline for example or flash message?
Email signatures - adding a call to action or website link
Campaign literature and online tools for distributors if you have them
Email marketing
Telemarketing
Search engine optimisation for keyphrases associated with the campaign in all web based promotion
Events and launches

That's by no means exhaustive but I find it really helps when you've got some ideas to look at. You'll probably know quickly in most cases which of these channels you would pick for your campaign and then you're on to the next stage:

5. Calls to action and creative
The heart of your campaign and hopefully what will make it a memorable one. Whether you're outsourcing to a creative agency or doing this yourself, settling on the core message to engage target audience that you've picked is critical. After all that hard work deciding what you're going to do, the content has to be right. The good news is that if you've pinned down the objectives and defined the target audience this becomes much easier. What would they respond to?

And finally...

6. Timetable and action plan.
You can create the best marketing campaign ever, but without some actions and deadlines you won't get the best results. Commit the campaign to a simple spreadsheet or table with headings for "what" needs doing "who" is going to do it (responsible individual or team) "budget" and "deadline". It's amazingly effective!

For some creative inspiration, there are some excellent case studies on the UTalkMarketing website illustrating successful marketing campaigns.

Karen McNulty
www.MarketingPlanWiz.co.uk and www.BusinessPlanWiz.com

Branding tips for your business on and off-line

2010-07-23T04:55:00.000-07:00

Much of our marketing is online now and we're getting the hang of managing our brand across the Internet, or at least I'm sure we'd like to think so. The challenge is managing your brand on and offline, consistently.

Back to basics for a minute, what is a brand? It's not just a logo as we might commonly think but an identity such as a logo is certainly what links our brand to the outside world. What's more interesting is what happens when people see your logo as all of the associations they make with it really define your brand. These are things such as emotional response - what do you feel when you see the logo of a well known brand, such as Coca Cola for example? Chances are, when you think of and see this "brand" a succession of thoughts occur, based on what you believe their products and services to be, how you feel about them, quality and what you think they promise you as a customer. This is most likely based on past experience, and the general perception you have of the Coca Cola business ethos and service.

So the logo is the link or reminder to all of those things which makes it important, but perhaps not as important as the way you interact and associate with your customers and the outside world.

Assuming you have some sort of visual identity such as a logo and a corporate style, they still represent your brand and there are some golden rules on and offline for making sure that these are consistent.

Off-line. In many ways this is easier because you tend to have a lot of control:

Make sure all stationery has your logo displayed in the correct way, using the right colours and fonts. Depending on how many of you there are, you may need written guidelines to keep this correct.
Every touch-point with your organisation should be consistent, particularly your customer service
Do you know where your brand is displayed? It pays to check that others are not using your identity as an endorsement or affiliation where you have not agreed such an arrangement. And where you do have an agreement, a responsible team member should check it's used properly.
If you have social media pages such as on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, make sure their addresses (the urls) appear on your contact details, for example on your business card email signature.

Online, this can be more of a challenge as brand "mentions" are faster and potentially global. Using social media for business, such as Facebook and Twitter is great and means we can reach our target audience in more ways than before.

If you're not already, search these media to find out if anybody is talking about you or your business. You can usually search within the network, like Twitter Search or else set up a Google Alert. These are all free but well worth doing to make sure you're the first to know.

Communication is also now more often 2 way (also good) but there are a few golden rules:

Your website is quite straightforward as you should have control over the copy and design, which will match your other offline marketing material
Make sure you get there first! Create your own business pages so you have an official channel to respond to conversations about you as well as promote what you're doing. this is far easier to control and highlights that you're up-to-date and open as an organisation - all traits of marketing effectively on the Internet
Social media, particularly if there is more than one person in your business benefits from a strategy and agreed style. As you expand or if you leave social networking to other members of the team, a social media policy may be appropriate. In fact, Mashable produced a great blog on just this topic last year, highlighting how Kodak, Intel and IBM manage their social media.
What you do online will hang around far longer than anything offline. For this reason, it pays to communicate professionally at all times and remember that your working life is more likely to cross over with your personal social networking, as everything is searchable online. Well, not quite everything as we know there are privacy polices and security measures (particularly on social networking sites) - but how often is that in the news?!

Finally, we've put together some of our own golden rules for social media which you might also find useful.

Karen McNulty
MarketingPlanWiz and BusinessPlanWiz

Why your website is still your most important marketing tool

2010-07-14T07:55:00.000-07:00

I train businesses on how to adopt internet marketing techniques (one of my other day jobs) and even I am surprised at just how much there is to cover. One of the sessions I regularly do is a 3 hour "introduction" to the topic and we only just have time to touch on all of the areas in those 3 hours. Both delegates and I finish that one looking slightly dazed!

But it doesn't matter how many of these new media you choose to get involved in, the truth is that unless you have a half decent website, there's not a lot of point. It's often missed that social networking is excellent for SEO for example - because it always links back to your website.

So, having delivered one of these training sessions recently it seemed like a good opportunity to reflect on what makes a good website. Whether you're starting out with a new site or know that you need to update what you already have, these tips might be useful for reference:

Navigation - both for search engines and visitors, it needs to be easy to find the right information on the site. Think of something huge like the BBC website and you really appreciate how important this is. The best way to get this right is start with creating a plan or site map of pages, taking case to think about a natural hierarchy and preferably no more than 3 clicks for visitors to find the page they want. Easier said than done, believe me!
Clear, easy to read text. Content is good for the visitor so they can find out as much about your products and services as possible, but also critical for search engines. Google for example, will check the title of the page (Page Title, I'll come to this in a minute) and then look at the content on the page to make sure it matches. It does this by identifying key words mentioned in your text. From a marketing viewpoint we all want clear text to read anyway so you should find someone to write for you if you're not sure where to start.
Look and feel. Despite everything being geared to the search engine "spider" these days, for most human visitors the design of the site is important. Colours should be friendly on the eye (and good for disability guidelines, good article on this here from webcredibility), and calls to action should be obvious. You can split test different web page designs even to see which one gets best results (try Google's website optimiser tool).
Basic Search engine optimisation. This is mostly looking at on page optimisation and checking that you have a relevant (but different for each page) Page Title, Description and Headings. Your website developer should know what these are if you're not familiar with them. If you have content management, so you can update your own pages (and you really should if you can), ask for access to these areas as you will need to do these for every new page you create or else have to ask your developer to do it each time.
Your website address. This is important, and if it's possible to use a url (the "www" address) with the relevant thing that you do in it, that's best. E.g MarketingPlanWiz.co.uk has "marketing plan" in the address. This all counts as "relevant" to Google who will check the address alongside the other things on the page we talked about.

There are lots of others things you can add (another blog probably), but these really are the essential components of a good website. Once you've done this, you're ready to dive into the world of social media, online PR and the rest... well your website is ready anyway!

Karen McNulty
www.MarketingPlanWiz.co.uk

Marketing lessons as BusinessPlanWiz launches in the UK

2010-06-09T01:43:00.000-07:00

It's taken far longer than we expected - 2 and half years longer to be precise, but we're relieved to say that BusinessPlanWiz.com is now live. When we began with the concept of being able to create business plans and marketing plans online, it seemed quite straightforward. It still is really, certainly for the user, but developing software to do what's in your head is not for the faint hearted!

I shan't dwell on that one, because our website team (Edward Robertson) did work hard and the end result demonstrates their commitment to the project.

Anyway, as a marketer, and co-owner of a small business, it's been a fascinating journey and the new website has included all of the things we learned from launching MarketingPlanWiz 3 years ago. Internet marketing has steamed ahead during this time and this dictated the look and feel of the front end of the website, also our insistence that we could content manage as much as possible. These are a few of the more significant marketing approaches that we adopted:

BusinessPlanWiz Video - you'll see it on our home page. We know now that Google loves video and the benefit of doing something on YouTube and embedding it means that it's found in 2 places - YouTube and on your website. I have to say that it was one of the hardest things we've done - have you tried talking to a camera about your business?! We could do this ourselves, making it a very cost effective medium. We used Camtasia to edit the video with screen shots and slides. Here are some good tips from UTalkMarketing about using video to optimise your website.
Blogging is an integral part of the website. This time we had a business blog built into the site so that we could update blog type content quickly and easily, with links to articles on the home page making it nice and easy to find. Blog content is still excellent content for SEO as search engines like the fact that they're updated regularly.
Making it easier to buy. We spent a lot of time with MarketingPlanWiz providing all of the reasons that buying was a good idea. With BusinessPlanWiz we let the product speak for itself. By making it free to try, it naturally makes the decision easier for users, so we removed extra pages that prevented people from getting to the buying page. From an e-commerce perspective, we learnt that this works more effectively.
Google Analytics - we now set up goals so that we can quickly and easily measure specific activities on the website (such as buying) without having to work it out, as it reports automatically. Google's help for setting up goals in analytics is quite good.
PR - definitely practicing what we preach here. We're working with a PR and marketing agency (Media Matters in Peterborough) which specialises in online PR and search engine content. Apart from saving us enormous amounts of time, their experience and media connections are excellent.

So we begin now with persuading people to link to us, another good thing for search engine optimisation, and because it really is a useful website!

Karen McNulty
www.MarketingPlanWiz.co.uk

Keeping Up-to-Date with Internet Marketing Trends

2010-05-19T06:25:00.000-07:00

Marketing in many ways has been a pretty traditional subject for a long time. You learn about flyers, brochures, direct mail and PR quite early on in business and for a long time this type of activity was the mainstay of our marketing toolbox. Then "the web" arrived... and for a while websites were ok too as they were included in our list of marketing options - we just had to grapple with remembering to add our website address onto brochures, flyers, mail-shots and into our PR.

When it became clear that the Internet wasn't just about websites but using the technology to get traffic to them, we began a steep learning curve that has probably changed the way we think about marketing permanently.

Enter SEO (search engine optimisation), email marketing, social media and online advertising. There are days when I wonder if it can possibly change any more, as a seemingly unstoppable number of changes occur by the hour never mind the month or year as they used to. I'm not as old as I probably sound at this point (really) but it certainly keeps you on your toes. Thankfully I find Internet marketing absolutely fascinating, and along with others, get ridiculously excited about what the technology enables us to achieve as marketers. Just the ability to measure everything so accurately alone reinforces my belief that marketing works - the difference being now that I can prove it beyond doubt. Brilliant.

But - beware the perils of thinking you know it all. I attended the Internet Conference in Nottingham on Friday (#TIC10) to make sure I was up-to-date with Internet marketing developments. Of course I wasn't! I listened to Charles Arthur, Technology Editor at The Guardian, reminding us that the stats aren't all they're cracked up to be. He's right of course, the huge rise in smartphone traffic to access social networks like Twitter and Facebook has a big impact on the figures we think we're seeing. Susan Hallam continued with some really useful insights into the recent changes to Google Search, more than you think.... And then it was a good job I then went into a session with Dr Dave Chaffey, digging deep into Google Analytics and how to track traffic sources with much better segmentation than I had been.

It was a really useful day and although it was time out of my business, it will pay back by keeping me ahead of the latest marketing trends for my clients and our own websites at MarketingPlanWiz and soon BusinessPlanWiz.

It's worth taking a look at the presentation slides from the Internet Marketing Conference as they're full of useful points. I'm off next to the online marketing show in London in June where I'd quite like to discover that the Internet will soon be able to make dinner for me when I get home.

Karen McNulty
www.MarketingPlanWiz.co.uk

Marketing Your Event

2010-04-13T09:07:00.000-07:00

This is the time of year when there events start to be on all over the place (a lot outdoors if the British weather doesn't let us down) so we thought it was time we pulled together a few tips for marketing an event, as by their nature events are often one-off activities away from your mainstream marketing.

1. Business to Business events – where your delegates are other businesses. These often take the form of training, informing or networking and occasionally awards ceremonies or conferences. If this is your target audience here are our top tips:

Dig out existing customers' details so that you tell them first
Make sure you give people plenty of notice to get it in their diaries, we recommend at least one month in advance, preferably two.
Think of an innovative way to let your target audience know about the event – a quirky hand delivered invite or special voucher incentives for people to bring along with them work well. And email marketing makes it easy to send out invites while being able to track who opened the email and whether or not they clicked through to your website.
Don't miss all of the obvious opportunities to market your business event: On your website (do you have a news section?), on the bottom of your invoices; posters near or in your premises (if you have them) or at the venue where the event will be held (if you don't) and at any business networking that you do
Give them an irresistible reason to attend! Can you get a high profile guest speaker perhaps or offer expertise that's topical and cutting edge?
Make sure you've got a good reason to follow up afterwards, perhaps post your slides on Slideshare and sent out the url by email, or invite them to fill in a feedback form where they can indicate interest for your products or services.
If you video the event, post a snapshot on YouTube the next day. That way your event will still be found after it's all over - with a link back to your website.
Set up a "hashtag" on Twitter so people can track all mentions of your event and tweet using it as a reference. (More on hashtags at Twitter).

2. Consumer Events – marketing to the general public. These are often more fun as you can be more creative if you've got a budget. The reasons for events might be different but the principles are the same, so whether you're planning a festival in a local farmers field or an open evening in a shop, here are our top tips for success:

More “in your face” tends to be more effective – if you've got the budget for a celebrity that can work a treat to attract visitors, if you don't can you call in a favour or book an unusual act?
Promotion needs to be as public as you can make it but doesn't always have to be expensive– get in touch with the local newspapers, local radio stations, tourist offices, schools and libraries to see if you can post the details on their websites, in their outlets or even outside their premises.
Get some banners (as big as you can) made to publicise the date and time anywhere people will let you put one up. Try your local council for permission to use bridges and roundabouts, otherwise approach owners of buildings direct. Try a local printer for good prices for a batch of banners.
Create some instant PR with a good press release to local papers with headline information and top reasons to come to your event.
If you've got the budget, look at AA or RAC road signs up to a week before the event and while it's on. If you don't, get your own lamp-post signs made (you may need to check with the local council before you put them up)
Mention the event in all of your social networks, both personal and business, with a link back to your website.
Investigate local community websites that will let you post your event details on for free and take advantage of their website traffic.
Book a photographer and get some video footage if you can. This will be great for adding to your website afterwards and posting into your social networks.

Events are often fun to promote because you can use a few more techniques from your marketing toolbox than you might normally. The most important thing is usually to get bums on seats, so spreading the word as far as you can is the best thing you can do. The Internet makes that easier than ever, and if your event can go viral you might be surprised by the response!

Karen McNulty
www.MarketingPlanWiz.co.uk

Are "learning styles" relevant to the marketing mix?

2010-03-14T10:50:00.000-07:00

Bear with me here, as I have a theory that helps us to understand why there should always be a "mix" of marketing activity rather than focusing on just one method. That "one" method might work of course, but what could you be missing if you don't think about how different members of your target audience react to marketing media?

Children are now taught in school to recognise their 'learning style', usually based on a model proposed by Fleming. Here's a Wikipedia definition of learning styles but you do have to stick with it to get to the bit I'm talking about (you wouldn't believe how many learning styles there are out there). Anyway, Fleming's is based on three main ways in which we respond to stimuli:

Visual (seeing, using pictures in your head)
Auditory (listening, discussing)
Kinaesthetic (doing, touching/feeling, practising)

That's a very simplistic description, but helps to make my point. If we learn that way, then we probably approach the rest of the world in a similar way. In actual fact, most of us use a mixture of learning styles but you usually mainly relate to one of them (I also learnt).

So, back to marketing, before I wander dangerously into an area I know little else about. If we're putting together a marketing plan then we want to reach as many of our identified target audience as possible. Online we have a number of brilliant ways now of doing this with internet marketing. We can use websites, advertising, blogging, social networking and video (visual) and podcast (auditory) as marketing tools, all of which help us to fulfill different preferences. And branding experts will tell you (read James Hammond, he talks an awful lot of sense on this subject) that engaging with the five different senses is key to developing a connection with your audience.

But we get a bit stuck online with the whole smell, taste, touch thing - so far anyway. Which means that in my view, there's often still a case for offline marketing so your customer can engage with you using a sense other than visual. When you think of how many visual messages we're bombarded with every day, it's no wonder some of us prefer something different. So back to flyers, "try before you buy", giveways and other tangible marketing activity to mop up those who didn't see us online. Ever wondered why so many "e-commerce" retailers who sell mainly online, still send out paper catalogues?

I know I'm a stickler for a tactile object or shiny piece of literature every time. I always thought I was a bit strange, but I'm happily reassured now that I just approach some things kinaesthetically. See - perfectly normal!

Karen McNulty
www.MarketingPlanWiz.co.uk

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Internet Marketing for B2B starting to pay back

2010-03-02T06:54:00.000-08:00

One of the objections I'm met with when I talk to businesses about internet marketing is that it doesn't work for B2B (business to business). I think this is more perception than fact. The full range of social media doesn't get such good results for B2B as B2C (business to consumer), because they have been slower to adopt digital marketing.

If you target other businesses using just a couple of components of the internet marketing mix (notably email marketing and website development) you will get a return on investment, as your customers are now undoubtedly online.

Below is a survey taken in the United States just a couple of months ago, reproduced by emarketer.com:
And look how many of the businesses surveyed were planning on increasing their spend in 2010:

There are some brilliant examples of bold B2B online marketing, some of which I use regularly when training, such as Dell who have created their own Dell social network aimed at supporting business customers and have used Dell on Facebook to provide social media support to businesses:

"Based on our experience at Dell and conversations with customers, we created a series of “Social Media Guides” to help small and medium businesses effectively use these tools to grow and better serve customers." Says the Facebook Page.

This demonstrates some good lateral thinking, and how effective! They've now got nearly 38,000 fans to their Facebook page.

It might be tougher than marketing to consumers, but as with traditional marketing methods, digital marketing can be adapted for B2B marketing quite successfully.

Karen McNulty
www.MarketingPlanWiz.co.uk

Ten Reasons to Put Together an Internet Marketing Plan

2010-01-15T02:30:00.000-08:00

If you're one of the enlightened and know that a marketing plan is a good idea, it will come as no surprise that an Internet Marketing Plan is also worth doing, or at least a section on Internet Marketing in your overall plan. Taking this a step further, you can include a social media strategy as part of this.

Back to basics first. The main components of an Internet Marketing Plan are:

How you will use your website as a marketing tool
Distributing news and press releases online
Social networking (blogs, social networks such as Facebook, MySpace), YouTube, forums and wikis (such as Wikipedia).
Online advertising (pay per click, banners)
Email marketing
Viral marketing
Search engine optimisation

Even if you can't address all of these in one go, they should be on your radar for relevance. But knowing that these exist isn't enough - here are my top ten reasons to draft an Internet Marketing Plan:

The UK market for email marketing platforms and services was worth £254million in 2008 and was predicted to grow by an estimate 15% to £292 million by the end of 2009, a trend which is continuing - they do this because it works.
It's very low cost compared to traditional marketing in almost every case
All content that you put out onto the internet will still be there next year and the year after and that means it will continued to be found by search engines. Not like a printed advert, here today and gone tomorrow.
All Internet marketing is measurable and the stats don't lie. Use Google Analytics to see how much traffic came from your Facebook page or Twitter.
Our customers buying behaviour has changed - they use the internet now to research, learn, review and make buying decisions.
Google received 299 million search requests globally in just May 2009. In 2009 $58.1 billion was spent on online advertising across the world - that accounts for 13.2% of advertising spend worldwide. If you're going to use paid advertising doing it online is budget controlled, can be stopped at any moment - and very targeted.
Your website is your shop window. Even if your customers don't buy from it they will check you out here first. If you do nothing else, this must be up-to-date otherwise your competitors may get the business - can you afford to take that risk?
It's not just young people who use the Internet. Facebook's fastest growing demographic is people over 30.
The more places you publish information and interact online, the more links there will be back to your website - part of your search engine optimisation!
Your customers are there already: Of the 36.9 million UK Internet users in May 2009, 29.4 million visited at least one social networking website.

We know a good marketing plan tool if you're looking for a starting point...

Karen McNulty
www.MarketingPlanWiz.co.uk

Internet Tips from Doug Richards and More

2009-12-03T08:30:00.000-08:00

I know it's nearly two weeks ago, but this is still fresh in my mind. Fay and I went to the Enterprise Nation Home Business Conference on 20th November and apart from meeting lots of like minded small businesses (with big plans to grow and good luck to us all), picked up some good marketing tips.

First of all, keynote speaker on sales and marketing Doug Richards, now running School for StartUps, couldn't emphasise enough:

Low cost and value for money marketing is good whether you're a small or large business
That means that using social media is a good idea for most of us. I would add to that, you still need to make time for it but most social networks are free to join and use and if you don't participate you miss out being seen if nothing else
Video, video and more video! It's so low cost and easy to use even a basic video camera and set up a free YouTube account. I'll add to that Google likes video (it owns YouTube), it adds interest to your website and being on YouTube gets you links to your website.
The other thing about video on social networks is that quality isn't as important as content. So if you've got something to say, why not try video - far more interesting than text? You can add video to Facebook, link to video on Twitter and embed it in your website.

You can find out more about Enterprise Nation on their website, and we're regular contributers to their blog posts we're pleased to say. Well, going on and on about marketing is something we're always happy to do...

Karen McNulty
www.MarketingPlanWiz.co.uk

Isn't Social Networking for Young People?

2009-11-16T09:16:00.000-08:00

This is the question I get asked most often when talking to businesses about Internet Marketing and in particular using social networks to communicate with their target audience.

The thing is, it's easy to forget that the people you are targeting probably use these media to communicate. Many of us struggle with the concept of marketing via social networks because we don't use them ourselves. It's true - many adults with busy home lives, businesses or other work commitments, simply don't have time to log on to Facebook when they get home. For many very successful marketers even, checking out what's happening on Twitter when we get up in the morning is not the first thing on the list. I've certainly noticed that a lot of 35 - 50 year old professionals are struggling with this one.

But that's not a strong enough argument not to add them to your marketing toolkit or even your media list. If you're trying to reach consumers (B2C or the general public), then these days individuals are even using their social network of choice as their search engine too. They're here to stay and we must consider them when we're marketing.

But just look at the stats for UK usage of social networks, it seriously isn't just young people...

Even for business to business (B2B, or marketing your services to other businesses), they are increasingly relevant because the Search Engines are starting to introduce social networking results into their search results - Google and Bing have now both signed a deal with Twitter to inlcude real time Tweets in results related to search terms. This shouldn't come as a surprise, given that search engines want as much current, relevant content as they can to match search queries and satisfy searchers.

So how do you use social networks for your marketing? Well you can start by looking at a Facebook Business Page. Do you write a blog, have pictures about your products or services, even video? You can post all of these onto your page - take a look at how some of the well known players use them, such as Coca -Cola.

If you do have video (if not, can you make one?), then set up an account on YouTube - it's free! Once you get your head around the "openness" of using these media, it becomes an opportunity to engage with your customers as never before. But that's another blog I think.

Karen McNulty
www.MarketingPlanWiz.co.uk

Measurable Marketing is Easier Than You think

2009-10-23T04:43:00.001-07:00

"Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, the trouble is I don't know which half"

So said Jon Wanamaker, US department store merchant in the late 1800s. But you'll have heard many others quote this since, because advertising has been notoriously difficult to track, vexing even the best marketers for years. The reason for this is that data has been unreliable - even if you ask somebody where they heard about you, you're relying on them:

(a) Remembering
(b) Remembering it correctly

I recently put some thought to how much of our marketing can be measured now, so that you know what works and what doesn't. Having put together a good marketing plan, you need to know what got you the best results, ready for your next plan. If you do this with all of your marketing you should get better targeted marketing year on year and hopefully a better return on investment.

I came up with ten tips for measurable marketing activity in 2009:

Pay per click advertising, either on search engines such as Google, or social networking websites - as you have access to instant statistics for every advert that you run, including number of "clicks" and even "conversions" to sales or other activities that your visitor undertook.
Run a promotion or advertisement with a different telephone number then you know that all calls that come in on that number are related to that advertising campaign.
Start a blog...you can track the number of visitors to your website from the blog
Send a direct mail-shot and track it with a unique reference number or promotional code.
Tweet (Twitter) or join another public social network such as setting up a Facebook business page or LinkedIn public page. You can track referrals to your website and "mentions" of your business name or product.
Email marketing - find out how many people opened your email and what they did next.
Telemarketing - track every phone call, gather market intelligence and feedback
YouTube - are you an expert? Post a video on YouTube and track page views
Free online giveaway - collect email addresses to receive your free download/gift and count them!
Editorial - getting some press coverage either on or offline can be tracked with cuttings (offline) and equated to the equivalent advertising cost, or tracked online with Google Alerts.

I could go on... You can find some more good tips from Goris.com and some interesting info from Business Link about online marketing including the fact that it is so measurable. Meanwhile I'm pleased that as a marketer I can finally produce evidence and be more accountable for my clients. That's how it should be.

Karen McNulty
www.MarketingPlanWiz.co.uk

Pay per Click Targeting Makes Advertising More Attractive

2009-10-12T05:48:00.000-07:00

I've been researching pay per click advertising models in more depth recently as I help some of my clients to understand how it works and when to use it. Up until a few months ago, Google Adwords was becoming widely adopted by marketers for pay per click advertising (the sponsored results you see on the right hand page of Google's search results). Many of us thought this was enough as in The UK Google has around 80% share of the search market.

Other search engines have always offered it but suddenly their targeting has improved and with the advent of pay per click advertising in social networks such as Facebook we're getting more switched onto a more strategic "mix" of online advertising spend rather than giving it all to Google.

Yahoo not so long ago added improved targeting options for advertisers which meant that instead of just search terms we could narrow by location and other demographic criteria. You can read more in this practical e-commerce blogpost about Yahoo advertising.
Facebook pay per click uses incredibly powerful profiling (using information provided by Facebook members when they sign up) which means that your advert will appear to members grouped by not only location but age and other preferences.
LinkedIn pay per click advertising also uses demographic profiles and now a range of options for LinkedIn advertising payment methods

It's only a matter of time before the likes of Twitter do the same, we're sure. The point is, I used to spend a lot of time talking clients out of spending - no sorry - wasting money on advertising. Today for many businesses it is a highly effective marketing medium and with statistical tracking as standard the results speak for themselves. I'm now in favour of more targeted online advertising, it certainly makes us more accountable as we can't argue with the stats.

Karen McNulty
www.MarketingPlanWiz.co.uk

Seasonal Marketing for Inspiration

2009-10-04T11:26:00.000-07:00

If you're not particularly creative but responsible for marketing your organisation, it can be difficult to constantly come up with new ideas to engage with your target audience.

Time to find out what day it is, or rather what interesting day is coming up. Cue seasonal marketing...

So it's January and you've done Christmas, but then in February we've got Valentine's day, March and April - Easter, Mother's day, May has two bank holidays and so on. Hooking up to one of our celebration events is an excellent way to kick start some creative thinking.

Can you tie in vouchers for any of these occasions? Or theme a discount or promotion around the event? Marks and Spencers came up with a gem in 2008 starting with Valentines day - dine in for £10.00. Brilliant! We're in the throes of credit crunch, we want a solution and with a bit of clever marketing "Your M & S" comes up with the right answer. It must have been good because others followed.

At the moment we really do have to work hard at making any offer attractive, so try this as a starting point.

Karen McNulty
www.MarketingPlanWiz.co.uk

Customer Service? Not at the Bank.

2009-09-25T09:27:00.000-07:00

It's easy to forget that customer service is a really critical part of the marketing mix and this is a problem because it's so often the first thing that goes wrong. How many times have you found just what you want (to buy) only to be disappointed when the seller is disinterested in the final outcome and quite frankly doesn't care whether you make the purchase or not?

In my case, too many times to mention, and this week I've experienced a real corker so it's driven me to this. The starting point of this story was a distressing fraudulent transaction on one of my business bank accounts. One brownie point to the bank here (the only one in the end) as they spotted it before I did and contacted me. So far so good.

Unfortunately we didn't manage to stop the money leaving my account to a suspicious sounding individual, who is now considerably better off than I am. From here the bank loses brownie points - I get a letter from them 2 days later (following several further frantic phone calls as I try and get my money refunded) confirming that my money has been refunded, and that my account was blocked from certain types of transaction, but I could still undertake other types. Good thinks me, I know where I am. Except they hadn't refunded my money, and the information about what they had blocked and what they hadn't, was completely incorrect.

I've spent a further 2 days this week trying to sort out the mess, including cheques to suppliers that will now bounce. Bearing in mind that I am the customer and this is no fault of my own - what happened to the customer service? I got passed from pillar to post, told different things by different people, finally getting cut off when they put me through to the complaints department!

Huge marketing mistake. Not only will I tell lots of people how bad this bank have been, I will move my account to a competitor (as soon as I can get back into the blasted thing). How to lose a customer and a reputation.

Unfortunately something tells me I shouldn't have expected anything else - didn't they get us into this mess in the first place?

End of marketing rant.

Karen McNulty
www.marketingplanwiz.co.uk

Recommendations and Referrals

2009-08-18T05:24:00.001-07:00

The best marketing you can ask for is when somebody recommends or refers you to somebody else. Why is this the best? Well for a start it’s usually free but more importantly you’re getting a qualified lead that already trusts you because their contact has endorsed what you do.

We spend a lot of time getting our marketing message right, anxious to make sure that people believe what we’re telling them because we know how good our products and services are. But you know that advertising is never as powerful as somebody recommending a business to do business with.

Five reasons why referrals are good:

They’re usually free
Referred customers often spend more than those who come to you by other means (you’ve got the “trust” established from the off, so no time wasted)
You can ask for them confidently and easily if you know you’ve done a good job/sold an excellent product
Referrals give your business credibility
You can turn them into testimonials (always ask first) which you can add to your website, other marketing literature and newsletters.

How do you make sure you get people to recommend you?

Some businesses literally grow on referral marketing alone. Think of solicitors and accountants, alternative therapists and hairdressers. Without recommendations they would have to market much harder because these are all areas that are sensitive to the individual and require some element of trust for us to spend our money. These are our top tips on how to get referrals:

Ask for them! You’d be surprised how many satisfied customers really don’t mind recommending you to somebody else. We’re all looking for excellent service and a positive buying experience so just a bit of encouragement to pass it on is all that’s needed.
Offer an incentive. For example a 20% discount on their next purchase or cash back (have you noticed the banks doing this if you recommend a friend?)
Follow up your clients after a purchase for feedback and then ask if you can use either a testimonial or if they will refer you to somebody else (whichever you feel is more appropriate)
Use your marketing literature. When you pass out a business card, give them several so they can pass them on, or if you send out an email newsletter make sure you’ve got a “forward to a friend” button.

Think now about how many of your customers would recommend you – we bet there are a few. Time to put a plan into action!

Karen McNulty
MarketingPlanWiz

Has the SWOT moved on?

2009-06-12T06:55:00.000-07:00

A very traditional part of a marketing plan and usually a business plan too, the SWOT analysis give us an excellent view of our business strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. I don't think for one minute we could replace it for strategic planning, but I have come across other models which help to define (in some ways much better) the direction we should follow for business.

I saw a presentation which really struck a chord, a few months ago delivered by Mike Kingston. He talked about defining the "right" customers for your business plan first, then checking that you are not breaking the main "law of business" which was essentially that you either specialise in a particular product or service or else you specialise by targeting a range of products or services to a very specific target market.

So you're either market driven or product/service driven. He pointed out that if you don't specialise in one of these, you end up in the middle of a line with "market specialist" at one end and "product/service" specialist at the other. And being in the middle means of course that you're probably trying to be all things to all people, which if nothing else is usually very hard work!

Now I now that sounds like a very long winded way of explaining something but my point is that now, when I work with my customers and we're strategic planning we look at these things first:

Who are their best customers? And we define them by writing a profile of a typical customer then.
What is it that those customers consistently come back to them for? (Often this is a particular service or specialism which is very easily missed until you go back and look).
Looking at what we discovered, what do they really specialise in? (product or service, or market).

Then we're ready to launch into our full stratgeic marketing plan. I have found this amazingly useful and in many ways more effective than starting with SWOT as it forces you to focus on the positive.

Karen McNulty
www.MarketingPlanWiz.co.uk

MarketingPlanWiz Available Now at the CIM

2009-05-14T11:54:00.000-07:00

We're absolutely delighted that the CIM (Chartered Institute of Marketing) is now offering MarketingPlanWiz in their Marketing Shop. You can see us here.

I took us a while to get it placed with them but now we think that their visitors have an excellent choice and a clear offer for small businesses who need an easy-to-use plan for day to day reference. We were talking about targeted marketing in our Marketing Tips this month and this is another case in point.

There's often enough room in your marketplace for more than one of you if you have a clear customer profile. In the case of MarketingPlanWiz it was developed with small businesses in mind and that is still the case. If we tried to sell this as a corporate marketing management product it wouldn't be right.

On the subject of niche marketing, it's interesting to read other views on customer behaviour during a recession. This article from the marketing magazine website on marketing myths in a recession explains how trying to predict what our customers will do is not always what you might expect...

Karen McNulty
www.MarketingPlanWiz.co.uk

Are you tweeting for business yet?

2009-04-17T06:39:00.000-07:00

It's very simple to do and at first seems a bit pointless! But the Twitter phenomenon has finally caught up with businesses. As social networks go, this one really is easy and as you've only got 140 characters to play with every time you post "what are you doing now?" - even we can manage it.

Interesting article in the Telegraph recently highlighting how we're using it as a cost effective communication tool and the amazing growth of Twitter in the UK.

Even if you don't use it to broadcast what you're up to, try following other people for a while to get a feel for what they're doing. A great way to see what the competition is up to or follow your favourite people. Stephen Fry is very popular...

Karen McNulty
MarketingPlanWiz

Technology for Marketing Show

2009-03-06T08:45:00.000-08:00

Last week I managed to attend the Technology for Marketing show at Earl's Court in London. There were some challenging moments queuing for some of the seminars which were over-subscribed but the keynote speakers were excellent. Tim Faircliff from Reuters struck a chord when he described how one of their managers out in the field recently used Twitter to send the latest news report instead of their own newswire service! It just shows how the way we send and receive news is really changing. From a PR viewpoint it's great that we can do everything at speed but also frightening the number of media now available to use/follow and recommend to customers.

The other things that I took away with me were to watch out for more mobile applications, particularly using gps, like Google's Latitude and keep on eye on the new music social network spotify.

There's certainly no danger of anything standing still in marketing.

Karen McNulty
www.marketingplanwiz.co.uk

Discount for the New Year!

2009-01-07T11:09:00.000-08:00

We couldn't start 2009 without our own January sale so we're offering a 10% discount on our marketing plans at MarketingPlanWiz, until the end of February. To use it, when you register or sign in, opt to buy your plan and enter the code in the discount box presented when you enter your payment details.

Here's the Code: MPLAN09

We think that's extreme value for money but as we're (sadly) passionate about planning, what else could we do?!

Happy Marketing Planning!

Karen McNulty
www.marketingplanwiz.co.uk

Direct Mail

2008-12-04T09:46:00.000-08:00

I've been out at a business networking event today, and along with a colleague of mine, gave a presentation on cost effective marketing, using your database. Because at the moment results are important and we want to get the best return from any marketing we do.

The interesting thing about database marketing is that if you have a list of contacts (past customers, current customers, prospects) you've got a few choices on what you can do with it. Direct Mail, Email marketing or telesales are the 3 most likely ways that you can use your contact list to good effect. Direct Mail for a long time has been frowned upon because of the whole "junk mail" image. But now here do you see most "junk mail"? Yes, in your Email Inbox.

So while good Email marketing works very well (and it really does), a good direct mail shot will also now get you better results than ever because there's less out there so it's easier to stand out!

Karen McNulty
www.marketingplanwiz.co.uk

A Really Quick Marketing Plan

2008-11-04T11:15:00.000-08:00

I'm fortunate to know and work with other people in marketing but it always takes me by surprise when I'm reminded of something simple that I had either forgotten or perhaps not thought of before.

A case in point, when a marketing associate of mine, who these days is also a well known marketing speaker (www.geofframm.com) came to my area recently to present at a local business network. I always enjoy listening to Geoff and every time I see him I'm reminded of one of those gems. This time he had a great tip for marketing planning.

Marketing Plans are what we do best of course, so I'm always interested! But this tip is a such an easy way to get started...

Buy yourself a wall planner, a pack of felt tip pens and some gold stars. On the planner, choose different coloured pens for different areas of your marketing. Red for PR, green for events etc. and put the relevant marketing activity against specific dates. Use the gold stars every time you win some business and add them to the date that you won it. An excellent way to motivate the team and an easy way to follow a plan.

Karen McNulty
www.marketingplanwiz.co.uk

Poor Marketing Amex!

2008-10-01T11:28:00.000-07:00

I know that times are hard and we've got to be ever more creative to stay in business and more to the point, continue to make money. But, there's the right way to increase your marketing and the wrong way.

I don't usually point fingers but this one really got to me: American Express.

I've got an Amex card which I diligently pay off each month and so for me, it works very well. I can earn cash back at the end of each year for the money I spend, so I think I've got a good deal. Then a couple of weeks ago I got a survey from American Express, asking what I was interested in, what I used the card for etc. Now, being a marketer I thought well, why not, I know how valuable customer feedback is. So I filled it in and posted it back.

Then I got a promotion through the post from them, offering me the chance to be awarded two lots of £15.00 John Lewis vouchers over two months.... provided I spent a certain amount of money on the card, both of those months. This would have "delighted" me if it had been what I normally spent, or lower, but no. They wanted me to spend around £3-£400 MORE than I would normally spend in any month. If I didn't, I wasn't entitled to to the vouchers.

How to get it so wrong!! I had told them that I liked to shop in John Lewis so that was relevant. But considering the uncertain economy at the moment, did they really think I'd willingly "up" my credit card spending to win a measly £30 of vouchers? No way. So now I'm annoyed with them and what a lost oportunity for them to win me over and stay loyal!!

Hrrmph.

Anyobody know of a good cashback credit card that will take me seriously? Have you got a worse story? Let us know if you have and we'll tell everyone!

Karen McNulty
www.MarketingPlanWiz.co.uk

Reviews are King

2008-09-11T11:46:00.000-07:00

There's yet another growing trend on the internet which is definitely making websites more popular and sort of makes more sense of "Web 2.0" for me. I knew that Web 2.0 was all about interacting and that websites these days had to do more of that, but short of being tolerant of social networking sites (as I get them now, but still find it easier to pick up the phone) I couldn't work out what all the fuss was about.

Then I discovered that more and more shopping sites are inviting comments or reviews on what people buy from them. You've probably seen it on Amazon but now you'll find customer reviews on all sorts of websites from clothes (Boden, M & S) through to electrical retailers such as Comet. Dodgy stuff you would think, given that presumably customers can slate your product just as soon as rave about it. But, in fact it works. Most people just give a fair assessment of what they thought and guess what? New customers trust this more than anything they read by the retailer and feel more inclined to buy as a result.

There's another new thing to add to my list of marketing things to think about...

Karen McNulty
www.marketingplanwiz.co.uk

Are our E-communications working?

2008-07-29T11:32:00.000-07:00

Having written last time on how great e-communications are, you know e-newsletters and pretty emails that land in your inbox? Then I thought that not all of them are good. It's easy for me to say as a marketing bod that this stuff is great because it saves us so much time and it's just so clever (for easily excited people like me anyway) but I get REALLY wound up with people sending me repeated emails that are (a) too full of text to inspire me to do anything but lie down and (b) they won't let me unsubscribe.

So is that really right - upset your customers (or random people whose email you happen to have) so much that they're driven to ranting on the phone - or worse in a blog? My thought today was that for every one customer that you upset they'll tell 20 other people.... imagine how the internet expands that millions of times!

I suppose in that case it's what goes around comes around. It doesn't put me off and it shouldn't put you off if you're a marketer as long as you do it right. The law (data protection) currently says that means that if they're a recent customer that's fair enough and if they've signed up (subscribed) that's fine, which if you think about covers quite a lot of people really.

Karen McNulty
MarketingPlanWiz

E-newsletters

2008-07-01T03:30:00.000-07:00

I wasn't sure about email newsletters at first as heaven knows there's enough stuff landing in our inboxes every day. But as with all marketing, if it's done well it works. I've noticed that the ones I do read aren't too long, are very clear with enough small (we don't want it to take an hour to appear) graphics to break up the text and MOST importantly I can get what I want from it in no more than five minutes, preferably two.

So I suppose it's back to design basics and good copy (see previous blog).

Then you need to send it properly - don't send it from your Outlook or usual email software - use a purpose built e-newsletter system such as constant contact (www.constantcontact.com) which has several major advantages over the DIY method:

1. Good providers use an obvious "unsubscribe" option so that your recipients can unsubscribe quickly and easily
2. They also send the emails on your behalf so that you avoid spam filters knocking you back (they manage this for you) and they look professional
3. You can track how many people opened it, what they looked at, how many times they read it and you'll know if they "bounce" or don't get delivered.

You can't do any of that effectively from your usual email software, so although there is a cost (usually around £10-£20 per month, depending on the number of people you mail to, it's not expensive in my opinion) the results are far better.

We use Constant Contact but perhaps you know of other good ones? Let us know if you do, more choice is always good.

Karen McNulty
MarketingPlanWiz

Good Copywriting

2008-06-13T04:03:00.000-07:00

I felt compelled to talk about this today as I saw a really interesting talk by a copywriting expert last night (Richard Groom from the Peterborough Copywriting Bureau). I think I'm fortunate in that as a Marketer, I like meeting other people in Marketing and always think I'll learn something new - we never know everything do we?

So listening to some excellent tips on getting your copy right, whether it's for brochures, websites, press articles or even your blog (no comments please) did refresh my view on the subject and remind me of the basics, which are....

Keep it simple - don't use 42 words in one sentence and keep it in plain English!
Think about your target audience before you even think about writing - this has a bearing on the whole style of your copy, logical really but easily forgotten
Write from your customer's view point. What is is that they need, what are their issues that you might solve with your product or service? Addressing these first means that your reader will engage with what you're saying immediately.

I could go on, and frequently do, but I think that's a nice number of things to remember and pretty much covers it. So, keeping it simple I'm off to write some stuff for my own website now with a nice clear head.

Happy Marketing!

Karen McNulty
www.MarketingPlanWiz.co.uk

Selling isn't so Bad

2008-05-23T07:23:00.000-07:00

I get all flustered when think about "selling". Why? It conjures up pictures of slimy door to door salesmen (or women but the slimy ones tend to be male for some reason) or exasperating telesales people which make me instantly switch off. My brain knows that selling is an important part of the marketing mix but the rest of me hasn't caught up yet.

Then I went to a business networking event last week where I go to "meet an expert" in sales. It was one of those moments where I thought "run now" and was about to go on the hunt for the marketing expert instead (well there's always something you can learn) when the door was closed and we were "speed experting". That meant we had 15 minutes with each expert and then got moved onto the next one.

Well I definitely learned something (with each of them as it happens, including the health and safety chap) - and forced to come up with a sales question I put my mind to what I needed to know. "Face to face selling" I asked - "how do I do it as a service business?". Oddly this is something that terrifies me despite the fact that I love meeting people and networking. And this ultimately was the point - he said that I shouldn't think of it as selling and that it's all about relationships at the end of the day. Also to only go with one objective in mind the first time you want to make contact - if that's just getting the right name, leave it at that and go back next time to set up the meeting or make the telephone call.

Very obvious I know but so much less scary. So fired up (as I run my own marketing business too) I made myself a small list of the people I really wanted to make contact with and one step at a time I think I'm going to do it...

Karen McNulty
www.MarketingPlanWiz.co.uk

Back to Marketing Basics

2008-05-16T08:37:00.000-07:00

Do you find that you get so caught up in the new stuff sometimes that you forget the basics? I've spent a lot of time in the past year focusing on "internet marketing" and get very animated about it when given the opportunity (so much so that people are getting wary of letting me get onto the subject these days). I still think it's amazing and love that fact that I can measure practically everything online in a way that you just can't with traditional marketing. I reckon I'll soon be able to find out what my customers had for breakfast as well as how many times they visited our website, although I'm not sure that's terribly useful.

I'll get back to the point - see it happens every time... In spite of all of the above, we recently got the chance to sponsor a local business event in the East Midlands. This was excellent - a fab networking opportunity too and you know how much we go on about that. As the event got closer I thought I ought to get organised and prepared a short set of slides with some big screen-shots of MarketingPlanWiz - well it is an online service so that made sense. Then I had to think about what I could leave on people's tables (it was a sit-down dinner).

I know this should be obvious to somebody who's supposed to know about marketing but I had to think. I'd been so used to promoting us with pay per click advertising, SEO, linking and the like that we didn't have any "stuff" to leave on a table! So back to what I (used to) know best and on with producing a leaflet - a memorable one of course that stood out from all of the other leaflets. Do you know it was really nice to go back to good old design and print? It's still good to have something you can get hold of, wave about and feel (is it only me that does that with literature?) and read it without peering at a computer screen. And heaven knows we spend enough time staring at people's websites and googling.

I'm happy now!

Karen McNulty
www.MarketingPlanWiz.co.uk

The Silver Lining

2008-05-09T05:56:00.000-07:00

Following on from my comments about thinking laterally last week, I've had one of those weeks where it doesn't matter how good you think your planning is - it just doesn't work out. That's really annoying but we've discovered that those are the best moments because there's often another opportunity that you were meant to go for instead. There's always a reason and that's the law according to Karen and Fay. Well otherwise it would be depressing.

So from a business point of view how do you deal with a complete change of direction? If you've put together your business or marketing plan for the year you're hopefully using it - this is the moment to re-visit it and think backwards. Sometimes we get so single minded about following a particular track we forget what we were aiming for and that there's usually more than one way to get there. Fay and I do this regularly with food if possible (I'd like to add "and a glass of wine" at this point but unfortunately it tends to be coffee) or over Skype (not usually with food). We remind each other what it is we're trying to achieve and once we've got past holidays/new car/MORE SHOPPING (sorry Fay but it is really important), we invariably come up with a new idea for promoting our products. It's easy to add this back into our plan with a quick tweak and it's good to look again in any case as we always think of something else.

Anyway, this week we had to change our plan and now we feel better, hence the silver lining.

Karen McNulty
MarketingPlanWiz

Creative Marketing?

2008-05-02T05:38:00.000-07:00

Speaking to some friends recently I was advised that blogging with a glass of wine might not be a bad idea. I'm not sure if this means my blogging is really bad when I'm sober or whether it might just need to be more relaxed generally. I'm sure I've said before that blogging doesn't come naturally to most marketers - we're far too used to writing perfect copy, proof-reading it and getting everything "signed off". Doing it in this easy way just feels dangerous!

Simon, our website developer, finds my blogging frustration particularly amusing - "don't worry" he says, "you'll find your mojo". I'm still not sure what a mojo is or where I'll find it, but clearly he wants me to chill out too.

So I started thinking (in a very long winded way, sorry) that taking a different approach is also good for our marketing. I've just written an article for our monthly newsletter on money saving tips for marketing and the message is the same - start being a bit more creative and you'll be amazed at what you can do. We particularly like the simple ones such as changing the shape of your sales literature or sticking your website address on a big poster in the back window of your car - very simple but quite effective.

So my next blog will be with wine (I promise Simon) and the next time Fay and I meet to discuss our business - we're doing it in the pub!

You can get a copy of our newsletter (Wiz e-articles) by signing up on our home page.

Cheers...

Karen McNulty

Ignore Social Networking at your Peril!

2008-04-22T11:43:00.000-07:00

It's no good. I've discovered that no matter how much it goes against the grain, social networking is here to stay, and what's more it's good for business. Having spent the past year resisting these networks, reluctant to tell all about anything out there on the world wide web (well it's so public!) I've none the less felt obliged to learn more about them as a marketer. Well I can't miss any opportunities and besides it's fascinating to see how marketing online is changing.

So armed with lists of sites to look at, I've been trawling through them and learned that some are seriously scary until you master privacy settings and they're definitely aimed at different audiences. Facebook for example is increasingly used by businesses to raise awareness whilst Bebo is considered a "younger" network. I'm a fan of Linked In too, which is very much a business network.

Then there's social bookmarking, where you you can bookmark a website for other people to see. These also often allow "comments" like blogs do and the whole shared bookmarking thing is essentially about voting for your favourite websites. Then if enough users vote for a particular site it will appear in a "hot" list of the social bookmarking sites for its category.

All very clever and you can see how word starts to spread and of course more links are made to the original website that was bookmarked. There is, I discovered, a handy "add" tool which you can code into your website pages if you want to make it easy for people to bookmark your content. Have a look at www.addthis.com which provides an all-in-one button, very useful. Now we're looking at our online Marketing Plan Builder to add more of these options - internet marketing has become a much bigger part of the marketing mix and social networking justifiably counts as an important part of online marketing strategy.

Happy socialising!

Karen McNulty
www.MarketingPlanWiz.co.uk

PR Goes Online Too

2008-04-11T05:50:00.000-07:00

PR (public relations) has moved on aswell. Having spent years drafting press releases and making friends with news and features editors at various local newspapers, it's mind-blowing to think that at the push of a button you can now get your releases on the web. Of course this means potentially very large numbers of people can see your news and if you're luck they'll pass it on too.

Bloggers like to trawl for good news items and if you write your release with the web in mind it could really have legs! I'm happy to report that the basic rules of writing new releases stays the same. You need a good headline, relevant first paragraph that sums up the story (in case your item gets cut short) and written well in clear language, with no spelling errors. Most journalists (on the web or in the more traditional media) are happier if they can cut and paste your text so bear this in mind.

The only other things to remember for the web are:

Remember your keywords and make sure they're used in your text for optimisation purposes
Add in your website address if you haven't already so that they can link back to your business website and any other links that make your article more interesting
Don't use html, you must write in plain text to avoid potential formatting problems.

Where can you send your press releases online?

Many of these services aren't free but there are free elements to most of them. Here are a few to look at:

www.prweb.com
www.pr.com
www.pressbox.co.uk
www.prleap.com

Happy Marketing!

Karen McNulty
www.MarketingPlanWiz.co.uk

Affiliate Marketing

2008-04-04T02:20:00.000-07:00

We've just sent out our monthly newsletter (wiz e-articles, you can sign up here www.marketingplanwiz.co.uk ) where we've been talking about producing an Internet marketing plan for your business. When we were looking at promotion we listed the (now) usual internet marketing techniques such as blogs, podcasts, linking and so on, adding "affiliate marketing" as another item. Affiliate marketing is where somebody sells your product for you via their website and they receive an agreed commission to do so. The other way around as an affiliate you can work with a third party to add a link on your website and receive that commission. Popular affiliate schemes are run by Amazon and Ebay for example.

This got me thinking that it's so easy to name lots of different ways to reach your customers using the Internet today as we're so much more used to it, but what I forget is how powerful some of these methods can be.

Affiliate marketing I recently discovered (thanks to a really switched on chap called John Kirk whilst on a training course to top up my internet marketing skills) can be one of those powerful tools. I had previously thought of it in the context of an affiliate, wondering if it works and could you ever really get a good return? I realised that I should have been looking at from the other point of view, which is that ultimately it does two really important things...1. Drives traffic to your website and 2. As you only pay commission when you've made a sale you're not spending money up front, just a percentage of your sale proceeds. It actually is an incredibly low risk method of increasing visitors and sales!

Why not think about developing your own internet marketing plan, can affiliate marketing work for your business?

Karen McNulty
www.marketingplanwiz.co.uk

Linking Basics

2008-03-30T11:59:00.000-07:00

I've been a bit more tuned into "linking" recently (when somebody else's website links to yours) and how it can help our business - from a marketing point of view of course.

Some things are so obvious you wonder how you miss them but in case you're like me and walk round with your eyes shut sometimes, here are some of the main ones. Who links to you now? That's a useful starting point and although obvious saves you time trying to target people who have already found you. Then who links to your competitors? This is brilliant! There's your ready made list of people to target for your website, (so long as they're relevant). That saves some legwork and if your competitor has been around for a while you'll have a really good quality list.

Another way to do this if your competitors aren't lurking at the front of your mind, is to type your search terms into Google and see who comes up. Then check to see who's linking to them.

There are a couple of really good sites you can use to check links: www.linkpopularity.com, or Yahoo by typing in: Linkdomain:url.com into the search box on Yahoo's home page, this shows you all of the pages that link to your website. This is quite good fun (well it is if you're easily pleased) as you're often surprised at new links that have appeared.

When you're putting together a marketing plan, linking should now be a key part of your strategy if you have a website. It's critical if you trade online as it ultimately drives more traffic to you.

So, happy link hunting!

Karen McNulty
www.marketingplanwiz.co.uk

Planning a website

2008-03-10T10:42:00.000-07:00

I know I've got to produce a marketing plan if I want my marketing to work and that I'll be asked for a business plan by the Bank Manager when I need a loan. We threw together a list of bullet points and general guidelines when we started the marketingplanwiz website but they were brief (we didn't think so at the time I have to say) because we'd written all the rest of our plans in the "business plan" that we'd laboured over and were justly proud of.

I was reminded today that producing a proper plan for a website is important. Not just what we ask the web designer to put together (as we tend to think of our websites as a just another promotional tool) but the real purpose of building the site in the first place. Of course we know it should look the same as our other marketing materials and show our products and services, "contact us" and the rest. Then we end up spending a lot of time building the site with ideas for navigation, functionality and "look and feel" (feeling very pleased with ourselves for remembering all of this), completely forgetting in the process that we haven't worked out the objectives of the site (is it for information or do you want people to buy?), how it will display our branding values? Who is the target audience?

I always think I know these things of course (I'm a marketer so I'm supposed to let's face it) so off I go and ask somebody to make a website somehow imagining that they'll be on my wavelength and just do it right. Obviously they don't so it's back to square one - planning.

Karen McNulty

MarketingPlanWiz

2008-03-05T07:30:00.000-08:00

Welcome back to our marketing blog!

This week I've been thinking about SEO - having just been learning more about it. It's absolutely fascinating because there are so many basics that you have to get right before your website can get even a chance of being picked up by search engines such as Google. Did you know for example that your "Title Tag" (the heading that appears at the top of your browser once your website has loaded) is absolutely critical, but so many of us forget about it! This is where you get the chance in a sentence to say exactly what your website does... so if you sell flower pots and your company is called Smith and Co., don't have "Smith and Co. as your Title tag - say something like "Flower pots, all sizes and made to order" then search engines can immediately see what you do. Of course if you're like me and haven't a clue how to make your website do that, you need to ask your lovely website designer to add it for you. It's apparently not difficult - but that's easy for me to say...

The other thing I discovered is a website (www.ranks.nl) that tells you if you've got your "keyword density" right (sounds uncomfortable). This is getting just the right number of keyword phrases on any page of your website. Too few and the search engines won't be able to match you to relevant searches, too many and you've "over-egged" it. The golden rule is 3 - 5% of your text should contain keyword phrases. So if you had 100 words on a page, there should be no more than 5 mentions.

See, simple really!

Karen McNulty

MarketingPlanWiz