If you’re looking for more business, here are some of the ways we would select the best marketing methods for your business:

1. First is a decision about time or money
2. Second is about what you want to achieve – for some companies, it’s about building awareness, but for most it’s about generating enquiries.  For the purposes of this article, I’m going to assume you want more leads (and sales), so we’re looking at direct-response marketing (marketing that generates a response).

If you have time and little money, pick from the following:

• Targeted networking
• Up-selling to existing customers
• Incentivising referrals
• Exhibitions / Events
• Social Media
• E-newsletters (targeted)
• Posters and Flyers
• Increase your prices (where the market allows)
• Incentivise repeat purchases

If you have money and no time, these methods might suit you better:

• Training staff in up-selling to existing customers
• Incentivising referrals from existing customers
• Highly targeted telemarketing
• Appointment setting services
• Search Engine Optimisation and Adwords
• Postal mailings

Fundamentally, every marketing method works…to a greater or lesser extent.  But you must action that method consistently. Try any method for at least 90 days and monitor the results before you swap and change things – you have to give them a chance to work.

We always suggest that customers have at least four or five marketing methods working for them at any one time.  This can even out the peaks and troughs in a business and ensure a stable forward-order book.  So choose a few and monitor them all.

They will all work for you (to a greater or lesser extent).  But if you want to know which will really work for your specific business, that’s when you need to take advice.  And that’s the value added by consultants.  They can save you time and work and make you more money more quickly, but you have to pay for that expertise; as in any industry.  The choice, as always is yours, but hopefully the post gives you a starting point.

As usual, your comments and feedback are welcome.  I’m sure there are methods I’ve missed, so please send in your own experiences and give others the benefit of your knowledge.

According to ‘The Marketer’ Compare the Market’s Aleksandr Orlov has increased traffic to the insurance website from 50,000 visitors per month to over 2 million.  Wow!

Orlov himself has more that 768, 000 ‘likes’ on Facebook and over 200,000 followers on Twitter.  You only have to visit the meerkats at your local zoo to hear people saying ‘Simples’.  He’s even been interviewed on ITV’s ‘Daybreak’ show.

To see how much fun they’ve had with this brand, visit www.comparethemeerkat.com and have a peek into Aleksandr’s life.  It’s a fantastic piece of marketing and shows that you can make money whilst also entertaining your clients and having some fun yourself.

For more details of the super-star himself, check out his monthly comedy podcasts on iTunes or read his autobiography ‘A Simples Life’ which (unsurprisingly) registered more pre-order sales than Tony Blair’s ‘A Journey’.

Congratulations BGL Group and thank you for reminding us how much fun marketing should be.  In a world where there are so many marketing messages pushed at people, we should all strive to be more entertaining and engaging.

The internet, email marketing and now mobile marketing provide you with some of the cheapest forms of marketing available.  And many companies it seems want to jump on the bandwagon and take advantage of the cost savings.  But, please beware of making decisions based on cost, rather than customers.

These marketing methods may be cheaper, but you need an eye on return on investment too.  It costs very little to send an email newsletter, but the vast majority of your customers receive probably 4-5 email newsletters a day – and they probably don’t read them all.  When you have something really important to communicate to your customers, chances are they’ve already ‘switched off’ if you aren’t keeping the content relevant to them.

With new media, it’s very easy to send messages without thinking strategically, or without considering the impact on your customer.  But, without some half-decent advice, you could lose contacts quicker than you gained them…and your reputation is shot.  Case in point…

• I received a text message on Monday night at 7 minutes past 9pm
• It’s a message I hadn’t requested, from someone I haven’t seen for approx. a year
• It was from somone I met at a networking event, but I’ve never done business with
• It read…

Please visit

my website.co.uk

Dave’s best buys

(The names have been changed to protect the ignorant)

This was a prospecting email for a financial product from someone I don’t have a relationship with.  It at least includes a call to action, but it’s mixed marketing methods – why send a text and ask me to visit a website, instead of texting back?  I’ve also never bought financial products online – I want a relationship with the person I’m dealing with when it’s something so important, and I suspect I’m not alone.

Please, please, please think carefully before you press ‘Send’.  Your reputation is too precious to throw it away on what seems a very ‘cheap’ marketing method.

I don’t know about you, but I receive so many email offers for Viagra that the whole world seems to be talking about it – I’m almost tempted to buy some, beacuse I feel I must be missing out!

In all seriousness though, these emails must work…otherwise they wouldn’t use them.  On average, you can expect a return of between 0.5% and 10% on a cold email list, so the more people you spam, the more people buy.  But that doesn’t help the average, ethically-conscious company who has an important message for their customers.

So what are our top tips if you’re using email to reach your customers?

1. Don’t just use email because you think it’s a cheap way to contact people.  It must fit into your marketing strategy and bring you a return on investment.
2. Send to people who ask to be included on your mailing list, rather than collecting business cards and sending your email to as many people as possible – you’ll just upset people doing the latter.
3. Keep the content in the email – it’s proven that most people don’t open attachments.
4. Use a great title – that can make the difference between people opening the email…or not.
5. Beware the use of photos.  They look great, but many people have their email clients set to leave photographs hidden for security reasons.
6. Keep the content simple – allow people to scan the content and pick out what they need.
7. Personalise the content as much as possible – I want to know your email is to me.  Not to 3000 other people.
8. Ensure the content is interesting… with the best will in the world, I don’t really care if you have a new building, or if Jenny from Accounts is having a baby.  All your customers care about is what’s in it for them.
9. Keep it relevant.  By segmenting your customer data, you can send relevant information and promotions to the right people.
10. Monitor your results.  Test and measure and find out what works and, more importantly, what doesn’t.

And… if all else fails, consider reverting to post.  This good, old-fashioned marketing method is staging a comeback amidst all the email traffic.  And a great envelope and mailer can still stand out from the crowd.

In 2009, eleven of the top twenty spenders on television advertising cut their spend from 2008.  That includes giants such as Proctor and Gamble – still top with £118m spent on TV advertising, Unilever and Kelloggs.  Interestingly, P&G and Unilever cut their TV advertising spending by over 20% last year.

It’s been well-publicised that the advertising industry has been badly affected by the recession as well as the advent of the internet and digital TV, but the number of adverts I have to tolerate in between my favourite TV programmes doesn’t seem to have decreased.  So who’s spending?

The 9 companies who increased their spend on TV advertising in 2009 are the following:

1. HM Government
2. L’Oreal UK
3. Tesco
4. News Corporation
5. Co-operative Group
6. Wal-Mart Stores
7. Aviva
8. Full Circle Future
9. Danone Group

Doesn’t that make for interesting reading?  3 of the 9 operate supermarkets in the UK ( in contrast, Sainsbury’s reduced their TV advertising spend this year).  But one advertiser stands out from all the others – HM Government were the second-largest spender on TV advertising in 2009, with a whopping £99million; up 13% on the year before, in spite of the public deficit.  And how many of those adverts can you remember I wonder?

In your business, if you’re overdrawn, would you spend thousands of pounds on an advertising campaign?  Or would you find more cost-effective ways of marketing your organisation? I would question such lazy, high-cost, high-risk maketing methods at a time when we need to cut debts.  Advertising is a luxury.  It’s also an ‘easy’ option which falls into my ‘ego-marketing’ category – people wanting to see their projects on TV sometimes regardless of  cost or return on investment.  It’s not something I would advise my customers to do if they were overdrawn at the bank – and I think, as a country, we can be a lot more creative than that and get a better return for our cash?

Direct mail typically generates between 0 and 5% return on investment – so it really is a numbers game.  You need to get your mailing absolutely spot on to maximise your results and ensure it pays for itself.

We received a mailing on Saturday that pretty much broke all of the rules.  So what top tips can we share from it:

1. Get permission to send the mailing in the first place. Just having a business card from someone does not give you permission to send them your marketing materials – and can do you more harm than good.  It also contravenes the Data Protection Act and you should be a member of the Data Protection Registrar if you’re sending any direct mail.

2. Check your list against the mailing preference service. It is against the law to send mail to people – including businesses – listed on here (which we are).

3. Put the right postage on. In this instance, the mailing had been sent with a second-class stamp instead of the large letter stamp.  So it cost us £1.19 to pick up our ‘junk mail’ and we had to go to the Sorting Office to collect it; leaving us less than impressed.

4. Personalise the mailing. Inside this particular mailing was simply a flyer, with no personalised letter or details of how the service could help our business.

5. Follow-up, as this will increase your conversion rates. I’ve yet to find out whether a follow-up call will be made, but if everyone’s paid for their postage, this business could have some interesting follow-up calls!

Direct mail can be quite an expensive method of marketing your business, so it’s crucial you give yourself the best chance at success.  If you don’t know what to do, get some help!  The company I’ve mentioned is a brand new start-up and could have permanently damaged their reputation from a few simple errors – and they say consultancy is expensive!

There is no doubt that the advertising industry is undergoing a revolution.  Audience figures are down, sales of newspapers have fallen by up to 25% in some cases.  Revenue at just one North West media group dropped from £14.3million in 2008 to just £500,000 in 2009 (resulting in the group being sold yesterday).

This decline in revenue has been blamed on falling classified advertising revenues – that particular group saw a decrease of 30%.  Can you imagine your business revenues dropping by that percentage?  There’s no question it’s been a tough year.

And, it’s been coming for a while… the internet has changed the way many of us choose to receive our news.  And, the market is being increasingly fragmented with the growing number of digital TV channels available, increasing numbers of magazines and e-newsletters and online news channels, not to mention Twitter which gives us real-time news often before even the journalists know about it.

But what does that mean for you and your business?

• If you use advertising as one of your marketing methods, by extra careful about the audience numbers you are reaching.  We would always advise asking for an ABC audited circulation.
• Speak to other advertisers targeting a similar audience and ask if they would share their return on investment figures or response rates, so you can calculate potential returns.
• With audience numbers being increasingly fragmented, you may reach smaller numbers – but you may also be able to really narrow down your target market
• Always test the advertising method, before signing up for a long-term contract.  Three months is plenty enough time to judge whether something is working and if you monitor your results, you will be able to justify any future expenditure
• Don’t always blame the advertising medium – if your advert is rubbish, or you aren’t aiming at the right audience, I’m afraid the advertising company can’t be blamed

I have no doubt our newspaper industry will survive this latest onslaught – after all, they survived the invention of radio and television.  But, just as before, they will have to adapt to survive.

Networking can be a really useful and cost-effective marketing technique, providing you stick to the golden marketing rule of ‘consistency’.  You need to spend time building relationships and attend events with realistic expectations.

We’ve been networking for over six years and run our own networking event.  Our top tips for making sure you get the most from your networking activities are:

1. Attend plenty of groups to start with and see which ones you like and which ones contain people you may be able to work with
2. Look beyond the members – you are trying to find out who they work with, not just what they do.  Could they open doors for you?
3. Decide on maybe two or three groups to join – maybe one social group and one focused business network such as BNI (Business Network International)
4. Attend regular meetings – if you aren’t there, you can’t get to know people – and they can’t get to know you
5. Offer to help people.  The more help you can be to others, the more likely they will want to help you in return
6. Learn an elevator pitch, so you can present your business well
7. Be specific about the kind of companies you’re looking for, to help people help you
8. Set yourself some goals, so you can measure your return on investment
9. Be realistic about what you can expect from the group – people aren’t likely to pass you business until they know you.  (Networking isn’t a get-rich quick scheme.)
10. Under no circumstances sell to the people in the room – that will destroy any credibility you may have and only serves to upset seasoned networkers

Networking is one of the most cost-effective forms of marketing there is, but it takes time.  Over the years, we’ve seen many companies try networking and bemoan the fact it doesn’t work.  But, like everything else, it’s something you have to stick at and it’s a skill you have to learn.  Just because you run a business, or work in sales / marketing, doesn’t mean you’re any good at networking, so get yourself on a course and put your learning into practice.

The Chartered Institute of Marketing runs regular ‘Marketing Trends’ surveys and, in their latest, they reviewed CRM – Customer Relationship Management and it’s return on investment.  Their findings were really interesting and give an insight into customer behaviour in a recession:

They found that CRM is delivering the best returns on marketing investment.  Because we live in uncertain times at the moment, customers seem not to be switching suppliers.  In fact, they’re staying where they are unless they operate in a market which is very price-orientated.

Although people have been deferring replacement, particularly of large items such as cars, there is no indication of a change in loyalty – so CRM remains important.

They say that people buy from people they like.  And CRM is all about building closer relationships with your customers.  So, this strategy should work, regardless of the economic climate.

Your competitors can provide a wealth of knowledge about your industry and your customer base – they may have spotted opportunities you haven’t, or have found new ways to produce or market their products that save costs or increase profits.  Understanding them can therefore be very beneficial and, at Showing Off, we include a competitor review as part of our consultancy system.

One of the key things we look for is strengths and weaknesses – often your competitors have different strengths to you and, by understanding that, you can focus on the things you do well and create some meaningful unqiue selling points for your business.

When you’re researching your competitors, there are a few common mistakes to avoid:

1. Hiding Your Identity.

Whilst this was a well-used (and fun) way to capture competitor information, there are now certain laws that protect companies from this.  It’s much better to ask a customer to call, or contact the owners yourself and agree to meet and share information that could benefit you both.

2. Copying Your Competitors.

This is a common trap business owners fall into, because they see a competitor doing something they aren’t – and they don’t want to be left behind.  But, beware – unless you know their marketing is better than yours, and producing a great return on investment, why assume they know something you don’t?

3. Dissing The Competition.

If you only research your competitors in order to tell customers how bad they really are, then please don’t waste your time.  You will only serve to destroy your credibility, as noone likes the kid that tells tales on their friends.  This is a very basic rule of marketing, but I never cease to be amazed by the amount of companies who ignore it.

James Dyson put it into perspective in his autobiography when he commented that comparing yourself to your competitors in a public arena only serves to promote them – using your own money.  And why would you want to do that?

4. Treating Competitors Any Differently to Prospects

Your closest competitors can often be your very best allies, and can also be a potential source of business, so we recommend building a relationship with them if you can.  You often find you both have expertise in different areas and can work together to provide more value to customers than you could on your own.

For example, if you run a hotel, would you rather turn a guest away when you’re full and let them look for a competitor on their own.  Or could you suggest somewhere they could try, that you know will offer a similar level of service to you?

In some industries, I appreciate this is very difficult.  They may be very traditional and extremely competitive, but working together at some level may be worth a try – it’s definitely the best way to do business.