Marketing lessons as BusinessPlanWiz launches in the UK

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

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

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:

1. Dig out existing customers' details so that you tell them first
2. Make sure you give people plenty of notice to get it in their diaries, we recommend at least one month in advance, preferably two.
3. 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.
   
4. 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
5. 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?
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. 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:

1. 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?
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. Create some instant PR with a good press release to local papers with headline information and top reasons to come to your event.
5. 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)
6. Mention the event in all of your social networks, both personal and business, with a link back to your website.
7. Investigate local community websites that will let you post your event details on for free and take advantage of their website traffic.
   
8. 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?

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:

1. Visual (seeing, using pictures in your head)
   
2. Auditory (listening, discussing)
   
3. 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

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

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:

1. 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.
   
2. It's very low cost compared to traditional marketing in almost every case
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. Our customers buying behaviour has changed - they use the internet now to research, learn, review and make buying decisions.
6. 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.
7. 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?
8. It's not just young people who use the Internet. Facebook's fastest growing demographic is people over 30.
9. 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!
   
10. 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

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