Internet Tips from Doug Richards and More

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

Customer Service? Not at the Bank.

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

Are you tweeting for business yet?

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

Reviews are King

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

Good Copywriting

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

Back to Marketing Basics

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