Author: Paul Tagent

Getting the best out of advertising

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If you make your advertising professional to look at and I would bet that your ad will stand out from the crowd especially when a great deal of media houses seem to offer “free design” if you book an ad – how does free design ensure that your ad is on brand and is delivered with the due care and attention it needs?

Anyway, at the risk of me repeating myself from previous posts, DON’T forget the response mechanism – one of your aims when running an ad campaign is to generate some sort of response, so make sure that your ad contains your organisation name, the address, a phone number and possibly a website URL. (You would be amazed at the amount of times I have seen ads that miss out this sort of vital information…..including a competitor of a client of Bath Marketing Consultancy‘s client in the legal sector who saw fit to run an ad promoting a particular person within their firm, but omitted the persons details in the ad as well as the address of the business!!)

I digress. When purchasing advertising space there is one key word to keep in mind……negotiate! I have yet to meet any company that has paid “rate card” for its advertising space so nor should you. If need be, just make an enquiry and sit back as the sales person will call you time and time again to clinch the deal often making the deal more attractive each time! Sometimes you can wait until the very last minute before agreeing by which time the sales person is desperate! (don’t forget sales roles are commissioned based so every sale is vital for a sales person).

In addition, you have other “deals” which you could try in order to get the best value for your spend. Such as, you should be able to negotiate on colour and positioning as well or maybe even a full page for the price of a half page or a premium position for no extra cost!

One platform to be aware of is the enhanced directory listing such as Yellow Pages or maybe an online directory. Sales people will be looking to “up sell” a free listing and will usually quote all manner of increased visibility possibilities. However, it is very likely that they are approaching your competitors with exactly the same pitch so the pitch might live up to what actually occurs. In addition, if you approve a number of these enhanced listing sales, your total spend might become way beyond your budget.

Following on from media advertising there is advertising on the internet……..but that is another story!

What are your marketing resolutions?

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Well, 2013 has started and could this be the year to really plan your marketing activity and take it to the next level?! The start of a new year often comes with personal resolutions like losing weight, getting fit or stopping smoking, but what about the business side of things? Are you making a business resolution for 2013 and if you are, what is it?!

The reason I ask is that Bath Marketing Consultancy has already received 4 enquiries in 2013 from companies looking to “get their marketing into shape for 2013.” Each company had identified that they have sat on their laurels too long with regards to their marketing activity and each one had decided that it was time to put a cohesive plan in place and bring in a company to work with them.

Despite every time you turn on the news you hear that the economy is stalling and that the government is looking to take disposable income away by taxing people all over the place and taking away benefits etc, we are finding it very refreshing that small to medium companies seem to be starting to look ahead and then planning for their futures when it comes to how they market themselves. We have always maintained that an effective marketing plan can make a huge difference to the success of an organisation!

Many moons ago, I wrote a post based on my suggestions on the “20 golden rules for running a successful business” which might be something in this article to look at to spur you on!?

Don’t panic, it is impossible for a single person within an organisation to be solely responsible for all marketing initiatives and be an expert at them all so there is nothing wrong with consulting…..a marketing consultant!

How to brief an agency

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A good briefing of a marketing company in which you can make them fully aware of the marketing background to your situation is crucial to the outcome.

With this in mind, here is a sort of check list of the information Bath Marketing Consultancy suggests you to have to hand for the briefing meeting:

Company background
Your objectives
Your preferred method of communication
Your target market
Their location
What materials
Timing
Budget

This information will go a long way towards giving your marketing company a “full creative brief;” something that will allow your company to really get their teeth into!

Once your marketing company has had time to wave its magical wand, how do you want them to present their ideas back to you? i.e sometimes you may want the information to be presented back in a face to face follow up meeting or you might simply want ideas sent back by email. To be honest, I would always go for the former out of respect for the marketing company as much as anything. Simply getting people to email you their ideas is a little cheeky. In addition, it shows very little commitment from you and your organisation and I am always a little suspicious that such proposal documents could end up being used for others to pitch against.

If your brief was delivered to a number of companies, you might require a formal “glamour parade” presentation of the findings as well as some sort of leave behind document. However, please keep in mind that formal “pitches” delivered by marketing companies can require huge amounts of time and resources allocated by the company and not every marketing company can do this or would want to as it basically falls into the speculate to accumulate category and statistically only 1 in 5 pitches are successful.

On that note, Bath Marketing Consultancy does not do work on spec or pitch work preferring to invest a similar amount of allocated time in getting to know the prospect better, but, when you receive the company’s response, you should evaluate it on the following criteria:

Why
How
Who
How many
Where
What
When
How much

I hope all this helps you the client get the best from a marketing company. Like any “relationship” I feel transparency is key. There is no point in withholding information to your marketing company as without everything, things which could be vital and influence the outcome can be missed.

Also, as a final plea, please respect your marketing company as the ideas they come up with and what they produce really can make the difference to your business!

Plan your marketing and stand out from the crowd

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In business one of the key aims must be to turn a “suspect” into a “prospect” and then into a paying “client.” Competition is increasing in every sector and the emphasis on providing a great package to clients has never been stronger. You can pretty much take it as read that clients simply do not want to part with their hard earned cash unless they really have to and the days of them flicking through the Yellow Pages to find someone to help them are long gone. Reaching and retaining new clients are not only the key to business success, but these clients also play a huge part in on organisations’ on-going marketing.

I read recently that the general feeling among clients is that differentiation is lacking between the offers made to them and you will find that your competitors are not as active as they should be when marketing themselves so Bath Marketing Consultancy feels that organisations who make a concerted effort to stand out will have a major advantage when it comes to attracting new business.

In my opinion there are probably 3 ways in which you can “lose” business –
You can lose an existing client
You can have your proposal rejected in favour of another organisation
You can fail to be invited to pitch/tender
…and it is this final reason which is the worst because you haven’t even got to stage 1. As I have written in a previous article (Leaky Bucket), your objective is to keep the bucket full of water; to overflowing if possible, but the bucket has a hole in it and this means water will leak out. In this case the client is the water and it is almost impossible to plug the hole.

However, do not despair! With the right planning, you can make the diameter of the hole very small indeed.
Contractual agreements, proper client maintenance and servicing all go some way to facilitating this. On the flip side, there is also the danger of opening the tap above the bucket and letting new business flow in continuously neglecting existing clients as a result.

If you truly believe in new business the only way to look at things is to consider every existing client as vulnerable and new business as a constant need. In addition, no matter how busy you are at the present moment, you must sell for tomorrow. If you wait until a time when your business is less busy, it will be too late!

Make sure you put real effort into making yourself (and your business offer) remarkable. You must stand out vs all the competition and you must put a real marketing strategy in place which will keep the tap turned on at the right speed!

Make hay while the sun shines

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If you are one of these people in business who worries about being too busy or where the next piece of work will come from then you are not alone! Many businesses (especially the smaller ones) will go through huge peaks and troughs when it comes to workloads and these are likely to bring with them emotional swings too so partners (domestic and/or professional!) beware.

These peaks and troughs can be as a result of seasonal fluctuations, industry trends or even as a result of the state of the economy in general. In my experience, workloads are not always steady, linear processes so the key thing is to prepare for inconsistencies. In busy times stress levels are likely to increase, but slow times also can result in stress levels increasing. As I saw in a recent article on a recruitment job board, “Examine what important tasks will be coming along in the future and ask yourself is there anything you can prepare for now.”

One area I do think will work when experiencing downtime is to use this time productively and this is where planning and evaluating your marketing activity can help. By this I mean, what about using this time to visit existing clients? For too long email can actually over take a relationship so why not organise a face to face with your clients? These types of meetings can strengthen a relationship and may even result in additional business especially if you use these meetings to update a client on changes in their market and/or changes you have made to your products and services.

Similarly, what about using the time to go on training courses? There are lots of courses run locally on anything from Social Media to IT so maybe enhance your skills in certain areas or learn how to adapt your business to other marketing platforms. Maybe use this time to evaluate your marketing strategy; what havent you tried? What is working….maybe even schedule in an appointment with a top level marketing consultant for them to review what you’ve been doing?!

In some creative industries, studio downtime is often a chance to ‘pitch’ for new business or generate new ideas. However, in any organisation, it can be a chance to explore and investigate new opportunities or a new way of doing things.

What does Bath Marketing Consultancy do if I]there is a quiet day or so? Well, I try and write blog articles, update my website, do market research and generally keep myself busy and be productive. I do see existing relationships and being strategic in how you market your business as key areas to concentrate on in a quiet time…..my problem is that I dont get a huge amount of quiet time to do this!!

In sum, dont panic if your workload changes! We all know it is all hands to the pump when it is busy, but make the best use of your time, and other people’s time if you get any quiet time…..and try not to stress too much!

When is it right to say no to new business?

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I think it is fairly true to say that times are not exactly easy at the moment and that the process of attracting and subsequently winning new clients has probably never been tougher than it is in the current economic climate, but, I feel that there are times when a business should be strong enough to say no.

But….when it that time? When is it right (….or is it right) to say no to new business?

Well, I dont think there is a formula for taking this type of action, but I have just found myself in a position where I was approached by a great piece of potential business. The company in question wanted to launch a new business and required a logo and a website all done within a fairly short timescale so that he could attend a function where he had these marketing platforms in place.

All was going very well in the meeting as I was able to show the prospect examples of similar work already delivered for similar clients. However, when the conversation turned to money, the figure specified by the prospect was probably a third of what Bath Marketing Consultancy would normally charge…….and we are a very “cost effective” company compared to some marketing companies!

Having slept on things, I decided to politely decline the business. The reaction from the prospect was a little frosty and the words “well, I will go and talk to someone else” were used, but a month or so on, I know I made the right decision.

In a nutshell, there are plenty of organisations who “buy” business. These organisations seem to put very little value on their levels of experience, their service levels, their staff or even the end products or services they deliver relying heavily on their costing structure to acquire new business. I see this approach to marketing as one that can only totally devalue a brand. After all, what happens when someone else adopts that marketing strategy and simply undercuts you? I know that customers who are happy to pay a premium for service and the all round package another organisation offers are in decline, but if you do want to use costs as a motive for others to work with you, market this as a one off “sale” and put a time limit on it.

I saw a company on Twitter recently offering a similar package to Bath Marketing Consultancy’s “Marketing Tool Kit” (offer on until end of October 2012) at just over £500. I dont actually know how that is even possible not only sustainable!!

To me, cheap very often turns out to be very expensive and when it comes to your brand or your marketing message, you need to make sure prospects see the whole picture and really see the value in what you offer. In addition, I dont know anyone who would ask a service provider like a dentist to do a cheap job or a Solicitor to “bang out a will” would you??!!!!

What’s a page title or meta description…

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To help with all he jargon, the below 5 points defines the five
key parts of a Web site that should help in the search results process.

Page Title – The page title text is located between the open and close tags
within the tags. If the title does not exist or is less than eight characters,
the URL is used in place of the title. The page title is the first line of text
that people see when viewing the search results paragraph and is formatted with
a link to the Web site. Each Web page should have a different page title.100 characters is the suggested length.

Meta Description – The meta description tag describes the content of the Web
page. The meta description tag is located within within the tags and formatted
as follows:

Each Web page should have a different meta description tag. – Maximum length is
150 characters.

Body Text – The body text contains the first 300 characters found on the website.
Active Search Results stores the first 1,000 characters of the website and uses
the first 1,000 characters in its indices to provide search results.

Meta Keywords – The meta keywords tag provides to the search engine words to
index the site. Web searchers will type in words to search on and the closer
those words are to the meta keywords on the Web page, the higher the ranking
will be for that Web page. – Maximum length is 100 characters.

Page URL – The Web site’s URL is displayed as the last line of the search
results paragraph to make it clear where the title link points to.

Hope this helps….

tags within the

tags. If the title does not exist or is less than eight characters, the URL is used in place of the title. The page title is the first line of text that people see when viewing the search results paragraph and is formatted with a link to the Web site. Each Web page should have a different page title. – Maximum length is 100 characters.

Meta Description – The meta description tag describes the content of the Web page. The meta description tag is located within within the

tags and formatted as follows:

Each Web page should have a different meta description tag. – Maximum length is 150 characters.

Body Text – The body text contains the first 300 characters found on the website. Active Search Results stores the first 1,000 characters of the website and uses the first 1,000 characters in its indices to provide search results.

Meta Keywords – The meta keywords tag provides to the search engine words to index the site. Web searchers will type in words to search on and the closer those words are to the meta keywords on the Web page, the higher the ranking will be for that Web page. – Maximum length is 100 characters.

Page URL – The Web site’s URL is displayed as the last line of the search results paragraph to make it clear where the title link points to.

Some people shouldn’t be in business

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This post is not a moan or a whinge and, as I am posting information that is in the public domain and has been sanctioned in a Court of Law, the post is not libelous. What it is is a post dedicated to those people in business who may well have experienced something similar to me and to question how some people can sleep at night knowing that they have broken the law and actually impacted negatively on the lives of other businesses.

As some of my followers and clients know, this time last year I was approached by what appeared to be a great prospect relocating his removal business to Yeovil from Bournemouth. Run and owned by Mark Rylands, this business was at the time called A2B Rylands Removals (following the legal dispute, the company now trades as Mark Rylands Ltd although this name has never been registered as a Ltd company with Companies House and my logo design is still being used in ongoing marketing). What unfolded was an awkward client who went through numerous signs offs in writing and then vanished once the work my company had done had been delivered and was live. 

Mark Rylands (avoid dealings with this man)

 


Despite numerous attempts to get payment, Mark Rylands was never around and even his wife hung up on me. The company then changed its phone number and then what followed was a disgusting and libelous campaign by Mark Rylands on Facebook about me and my business – he actually posted using false accounts on my business page; one was in the name of his dog, and got his mates involved.

Anyway, Bath Marketing Consultancy took Mark Rylands to the Small Claims Court court on 31st May 2011 and won the case vs Mark Rylands Ltd. Mr Rylands now has a County Court Judgement against him and owes my business over £1,500
– the judgement is live on my Facebook page.

Has the money ever materialised? In a word no. What have I done since? I have instructed professional debt collectors who have informed me that the defendant knows the system and has even released his dogs on their agents. Mark Rylands is continuing to trade; even marketing himself as “busy” and can some how sleep at night.

This was never about money and there is plenty more I can do with regards dealing with Mark Rylands, but, if you have ever been in this situation, you are not alone. What I have learnt is that there are people out there in business who simply do not care about the way they behave or what affect their actions have on others. I am now much more careful about who I work with and have structured payment terms etc.

What i will say is that, the Courts are pretty powerless at enforcing judgments so, if you find yourself with a dispute vs a non paying client, always have a plan b in place.

Website and SEO still in demand, but dont forget the other stuff

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The title of this post pretty much sums up a lot of what we at Bath Marketing Consultancy are being approached to do by prospective clients in 2012 and, as a result, we have designed, built and launched 5 sites in the last 3/4 months –

http://impronta.co.uk/

http://mastercocompacttractors.co.uk/

http://www.mastertradesbath.co.uk/

http://helpchildrentoread.com/

http://www.steineracademyfrome.co.uk/

However, what we are also finding is that organisations still very much need help and guidance with regards to their ongoing marketing activity. Yes, “online” is still proving to fill the bulk of the marketing work we do; especially search engine optimisation and social media marketing, but we are also seeing a shift towards businesses needing tangible marketing collateral to use as hand outs at events like mini brochures or having direct mail pieces as well as strategic sales literature.

Relying on a singular marketing initiative is something we would not advocate and therefore, suggest that each organisation “test” a number of initiatives to see what works and what markets are most receptive. Bath Marketing Consultancy has even written a post about suggestions to try!

Keep in touch and cross sell

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Following a recent discussion on Live Radio Bath Marketing Consultancy participated in, one worrying statistic that came out was that, at any one time 40% of your client base are being targeted by your competitors. This statistic is not only worrying, but it emphasises the need to KIT with them (Keep In Touch).

However, having regular contact with the people who have bought from you not only will help keep them loyal to you, but it also opens up opportunities! So….what type of contact with clients would be of value to them and what initiatives would open up these “opportunities?”

A report on some original research –  What client can resist this type of thing?! Free information is hard to turn down, but what you present MUST be new and relevant. The client undoubtedly knows a great deal about his/her market so make sure that the information you present is of interest and is original.

An in depth analysis of their market – Again, hard to turn down for a client! However, the information you discuss must be insightful and reveal your “intellectual capacity” and understanding of their market!

An invitation to participate in research – The subject matter is critical here, but if it is relevant to the client and if the fellow participants are peers in their sector, the likelihood of them participating is quite high. People like to be flattered so making them feel that their input is valuable is possibly the way to do this!

A critique of current activities – Be careful here, but you are the professional so, in the case of marketing, offering to review certain initiatives might be a good way of drumming up business for yourself as well as demonstrating your knowledge. A good time to offer this might be after a change of personnel at the client’s organisation. Be constructive rather than critical.

You are the expert – If you can substantiate this claim then your client should be listening to you. It is not necessarily about being the biggest in your sector, but maybe offer your services and the offer of a meeting can be hard to resist!

These are just a few pointers to help you keep in contact with your clients close and them away from prying competitors and, by doing some of these initiatives, you might just add to your revenue!