ACUITY MARKETING SERVICES

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Getting started...

Please do contact us if you would like to discuss any areas of your marketing further -
we are always happy to help!

Marketing is often quite instinctive, and most of us will be doing some without even thinking about it. However, small businesses are all afflicted with the ‘no time' demon, so marketing can very easily slip back down the pecking order!

Our 10 point plan is a starting point to get you back on track if you're finding that your marketing has become something less than a priority...

1. Get the Marketing Mindset

Sometimes it is hard to define marketing and sales separately - e.g. impulse purchase products - do customers buy because the packaging caught their eye (marketing) or because there was a special offer (sales promotion)?.

On the other hand e.g. services - the marketing is 95% of the process, and is very obvious to see.

The important thing is to accept that whilst with sales, you can often see instant measurable results, you often don't with marketing, but you must still attach a value to your marketing activity, as it is this, rather than sales, that will direct your long-term growth.

Some people just get lucky with their marketing - the founders of Bebo recently sold the business to AOL for a tidy $850m - not bad for a business only 3 years old! They themselves claim to be rubbish at marketing - they just hit on an idea they quite liked, and it took off virally - bob's your millionaire uncle!

Most of us, however, have to make our own luck, but as the saying goes - ‘Luck is where hard work meets opportunity'. If we put the ground work in, we will see the rewards medium to long-term.

‘Fail to plan, plan to fail'

We all know we need one, but I bet most of us haven't done it - am I right? Even if you scribble it out by hand on the back of an envelope it's a start, and is a very useful tool for focussing yourself on your goals and how and when you are going to achieve them. If you don't write a plan, then the likelihood is that a year down the line you will still have little idea what is working for you, and even less idea of the best way to spend your budget and valuable time.

If you plan to seek finance from a third party, then you won't stand a chance without one!

The Business Link website is a good source of information on this issue, and has templates that you can download to get you started.

Action: Resolve to value your marketing moreManage your time to make time for marketinAllocate a budget - your time is a cost, so plan this in if you're not outsourcing the work.Write a marketing plan

2. Network, Network, Network

For most businesses, this is the single most effective marketing activity you can undertake - nothing is as convincing to us as customers than a recommendation from someone we know!

You don't have to be a politician; just don't be reluctant to talk about your business, however briefly, and always carry business cards. Don't just give out one at a time - hand out two (one to keep, one to pass on). Plant the seed in the recipient's mind by actually saying ‘I'll give you two, then you pass one on if you think of someone it would be useful to' (or words to that effect.)

You can take this a stage further by forming affiliations and joint promotions with similar businesses, and doubling your network in the process.

Action:Visit your handbag collection and put some cards in each - you'll be amazed at how this increases your opportunity to hand them out!

3. Research Constantly

It's very obvious, but you can never know too much about your market and customers!

There are all sorts of ways of keep up to date with the latest news in your area, from reading the business pages of the news paper, to trade press, and local magazines.

Subscribing to an online news feed is a very effective way to quickly keep yourself informed - as long as you don't get sidetracked by all the interesting snippets. And it's free (yay!)

Check out your competitors regularly and make a mental note of where they are advertising, how frequently etc.. They may not have got their formula right but it's somewhere to start.

Know your customers intimately - ask their opinions, find out what they read, how they heard about you, what search terms they typed in to Google. They are your most valuable source of information!

Action: Resolve to ask every new customer how they heard about youMake a point to ask regularly how they would go about finding your service.Find out what they read - this may vary considerably according to segment e.g. younger customers may prefer blogs and shopping sites; grandparents may prefer magazines (but be aware that the fastest growing online user sector is the silver surfer!)

4. Write a Press Release

At the very least, it will make you think about how you'd like your business perceived.

There are some tricks to writing a press release, as journalists receive so many, they have set standards and expectations that you must conform to just to have your release read, let alone published. Once you've got into the formula, it will become much easier. See the example press release to get you started.

The most important things to remember are your contact details (!) and the ‘5 Ws' - what, when, why, who, where.

By their very nature, journalists and PRs are friendly, people oriented types, so if in doubt, call the publication you're interested in, plead your ignorance and ask them what they'd like to see and how to submit it. It's a great way to start what could be a very fruitful relationship - if you get it right first time, they're more likely to take notice of any subsequent releases you send them! Most prefer email + 300dpi images these days - but a note of interest - they SAY they want 300dpi, because that was the old printing standard. However, a digital photo taken at 6mg might be 72dpi but will still be perfectly acceptable for most uses - few publications will need to print the image at the size the camera will have taken it.

If they insist on 300dpi, then re-size the image using the very helpful tips from this digital photography website.

If you have a website, then don't forget to submit to online media as well - back links from an article published online can do great things for your web rankings!

Finally, remember that, contrary to popular belief, unless you hit lucky by being in the right place at the right time, PR is NOT free - to see results takes investment - in your time in writing and distributing the releases, or in outsourcing the work to a PR agency. So plan it in to your schedule and budget!

Action:

  Research some target publications
  Have ago at writing a release
  Go on - submit it!

5. Advertise

How and if you decide to advertise will depend on the service/product and market you are operating in. You may find that your website and networking activity gives you all the advertising you need, and may suit your business better if you're planning to grow slowly. Do make sure that you are listed in relevant directories though, so that your customers can find you easily if they lose your contact details (you can now add your own basic listing to the Business Zone on About My Area, for instance).

If you do want to take the plunge, the first task will be to decide whether you want to advertise locally/nationally and to get rate cards and compare prices.

If you can be really organised and have a clear idea of which publications you are interested in, you can make considerable savings by having artwork ready to go at the drop of a hat - another good reason to get that marketing plan done! Let the salesmen know in advance that you can do this, and you can get last-minute bargains that will slash your advertising budget, if you can plan ahead.

Most publications will accept a pdf these days, so you can use publisher or similar yourself, if need be and you're a bit creative.
Adwords

A quick word about online advertising - this can either be a quick way to lose a lot of money, or a highly effective way to spend very little on very targeted advertising! If you are going down this route, then schedule in some time to take the Google tutorial, or get some advice before you start. There is also a very good tool called Wordtracker that will help you get the most out of both your organic and paid-for keywords..
Direct mail

Direct mail can be very cost-effective if you target carefully and shop around - door drops cost £25-35 per 1000. Get recommendations for reliable agents before you do this - tales of leaflets being ‘dropped' in bins abound!

NB Lunch Club members will get a 10% discount on advertising on the AMA website

Action:Make some phone calls or send some emails and get the media packs from some relevant publications.Ask your next customer what they read

6. Write an article

This is absolutely great for link-building - if you can write a useful article in your area of knowledge/expertise, and then submit to a relevant online publication or blog, it can have an enormous effect on your web traffic. Blatantly commercial articles will get you no-where, but most people can, with a little thought, delve deeper into their business and come up with an interesting angle, through which they can then refer to their business. For instance, do you offer an alternative therapy that there's been some interesting new research on? Do you offer a service related to ‘re-cycled' or ‘vintage' products? Do you have an interesting way of sourcing suppliers?

Even if you don't feel you can write a full article in enough depth, this exercise should at least give you an idea for a press release - and then the journalist can put the flesh on the bones...

Action:Have a look at some articles in the paper, magazines or online from a new perspective. What makes them interesting? How overtly does the article promote the business? What would you Google, having read the feature?Brainstorm some ideas on a piece of paper for your own article...

7. Get a web presence

99.9% of businesses these days need a web presence, even in it's most basic form. Online media is growing hugely, whilst traditional print is in decline. Ask yourself how many of your customers would still pick up a directory to find your details? Now obviously, if you have done your research very thoroughly and know that all your customers are octogenarians who never go online, then you're probably in the 0.1%. But even this segment has carers who might research their products for them...

At the very least, buy a domain name - it's a great marketing tool, and you'll get your company name as your email address, and different addresses that you can assign to different areas of your business - all for £5-20 per year!

Most of the hosting companies offer a basic webhosting (123-reg is reliable) and design package that you can run yourself, if you have the time and inclination, and you shouldn't need to pay more than about £60 for this.

If you'd like someone else to develop a more complicated site for you, you can still get a good, basic site for £300-£500.

Pick a web designer who comes recommended, and then check their clients' sites for how well they are optimised. Sites can look and operate wonderfully, but if the developer doesn't know much about web marketing, they might not rank well in the search engines.

There are some very quick checks you can make if you look at the source code (right click in the white space of a page and ‘view source' - you'll then see all the code).

Check the page rank
This can be relative to the catchment of the site, but the higher the ranking, the better, especially for a national site - e.g. the BBC website is a page rank 9. (There is a Google toolbar in IE that will give you this information).

Check the Metatags at the top of the source code - the page title is probably the most important.

Check for keywords in the content
A good formula for readable content that still gets noticed by the search engines is a keyword or phrase mentioned 4 X per 100 words per page (and different pages should be optimised for different keywords)
Links

Marketleap do a great free tool that allows you to analyse the links coming into a website - the more relevant links the better! But a note of caution - don't be tempted to use a ‘link farm' or link-building software unless you're planning to make a quick buck and then quit - you'll have a big impact on your listing to start with, and then you'll disappear, as the search engines work out what you're up to...

Alt tags 
Every image should have one, both from a compliance with the Disabilities Act point of view, and optimisation. Alt tags are the description that pops up when you hover over an image, and will count towards you 4 X per 100 - so make them good ones!

Webstats
Make sure your website has a statistics counter of some kind - Statcounter is a good one, and is free to start with. If you don't monitor your traffic, you'll have no idea of what's working and what's not worth spending your time on. The secret to good web marketing is continual tweaking...

As this is such a big topic, we will be covering the finer points of web marketing at a future lunch....

Action:Go to a hosting website such as 1and1.co.uk and find out what names are available.Look at next website you visit and see if you can gauge how well they are optimised.

8. Use the Internet

Oh what a useful tool it is - for research, for marketing, for free software and advice.

Wikipedia has become the internet bible of encyclopaedias , so it's worth trying to get an entry, or editing another entry to lead a trail to your door. Be aware, though, that overt commercial content will get you barred, so unless you're a charity, don't be tempted just to put a link to your website...

Upload your sitemap to Google - there's a free tool to do this, and it's incredibly useful in quickly making you noticeable.

Optimise for Google - the toughest and most complex, so if you get noticed by Google, you'll be OK with everything else...

The open source directory for Google is called dmoz -it's free to register, and you really need to do it NOW, because it can take months to appear, as it's edited by real, live human beings...

Action:Look for yours or a competitor's service on Wikipedia and get a feel for how you could use itUpload your sitemap to GoogleGo on to dmoz.com and register your business.

9. Make it Measurable

Don't spend a penny until you know how you're going to decide if it worked! There are lots of ways of doing this - you can:Use a response code, a specific strapline or product in the adUse a different response addresses by emailAsk each and every customer where they heard about you.

And then keep a record, so that you can look back and refine your plan as it evolves

Action:Make it a rule - resolve to ask customers where they heard about you from this point on.

10. Just do it!!!

Yes I know, pretty obvious this one - but isn't it funny how you can be buzzing with motivation one minute, and then life sort of gets in the way and a month has gone past before you've done anything?

So let's be realistic. Yes, we all know we need to do everything on this list. And yes, we can all admit that actually, time would be a fine thing... so tackle it in tiny chunks. Pick just one thing from the action points mentioned, however small, and do it today!