Author: Paul Tagent

"Marketing, marketing, marketing……

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..when does it ever end?\” Was a question I was asked recently. The person I was with ran a niche, online retail business dealing with a specific type of beach clothing and he was exhausted at the amount of marketing initiatives he had to learn and then juggle to get his business where he wanted.

The initiatives he was running were SEO, Social Media, Events, PR, Sponsorship and product trials and he was exhausted!

My advice was to try and put in place certain disciplines where he did certain things at certain times and to try and make these disciplines part of his routine. \”Easier said than done,\” was his reply! I cannot stress enough how important marketing is to a business and how, if done correctly, it can make the difference to a business succeeding or failing so that extra effort to make time for it can really pay off!

\”What do you do then?\”
\”All of what you do and probably more\” I said as even more colour drained from his face!

In all seriousness, marketing has always been something that shouldn\’t have an \”end.\” It is a process not a singular event and, if you are in business and want to establish yourself as a creditable brand, the hours must be put in. You are the one person who knows the intricacies; what your company stands for, why you are different etc.

In addition, you are very often a large part of the brand so do go to networking meetings, invest in a decent online brochure that you can amend as your business changes and be proactive. Once thing a business can sometimes find it has in abundance is time and using it as a positive rather than a time to panic can make a huge difference not only to your chances of success, but to your levels of enthusiasm.

It still amazes me when clients of Bath Marketing Consultancy tell me how great they feel to see their new website climbing the rankings, or see a magazine with their ad in it!

What is a marketing plan?

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Put simply, a marketing plan provides direction for your marketing activities and I feel that having one can make the difference between business success and failure. Marketing plans need not be long or cost a lot to put together and should detail what you want to accomplish with your marketing strategy and will therefore help you and your colleagues meet your objectives. They give focus to your business and help you stay on track.

Some have likened a marketing plan to placing a required destination on a road map and the journey to get there is the plan and this plan has detailed directions on how to get there in one piece, quickly and effectively.
But be realistic, within this “journey” as there may be a few bumps in the road, perhaps even a route diversion or two, or a stop for petrol, but if the marketing plan is carefully researched, thoughtfully considered and evaluated, it will help your organization reach its destination.

Anyway, I digress.

The SWOT analysis is probably the first step in putting together a marketing plan for your product/business. Within this SWOT you will be able to decipher where you stand currently, what your strengths and weaknesses are, what opportunities you see in terms of the size of the market etc as well as what threat your competitors pose.

Next, what is your brand? You should be able to answer this in 3 words. Your brand identity is a promise to your customers and this promise should stand for your professionalism, your USP and your reputation.
Once you have decided what your overall company destination is and gone through the process of defining your marketing objectives, what marketing tools would be the most suitable for achieving your goals – click here to see some of them you could use. Also, what have you tried to date? Have you tested using social media for example?

At this stage you are now able to move into the decision-making process for defining the actual tactics you will utilise……

What I will say is that, a marketing plan is not something to just pay lip service to or a box to tick in business. Without a coherent and well thought plan that you communicate internally, you really are missing a trick.
I have come across organisations who have said that they were too busy to do one or were doing well enough so didn’t want to commit time and resources to putting together a marketing plan only to regret it!

There is always the option of bringing in a marketing consultant to help you!

How much marketing consultancy do I need?

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This is another question I have been asked recently – “how much of your time do you think I need?”
The answer is, of course, a little like the question “how long is a piece of string??” as, from simply talking to someone over the phone (or via a DM from Twitter!), it is pretty much impossible to determine how much marketing consultancy “time” a company would need.

But……………what if you could bring in someone to go through your business from a marketing perspective to get your company back on the right track or to check that what you have done is correct? What if this person was totally impartial, independent and had nearly 2 decades of marketing experience? What if you could hire Bath Marketing Consultancy for a week’s worth of marketing consultancy for a heavily reduced set fee that included travel, expenses etc?

No need to clock watch!

Well, what I am seriously looking at is exactly this – a week’s worth of marketing consultancy where Paul Tagent would spend up to a week at a time with a single organisation at their offices doing a full marketing and brand audit and basically going through everything marketing related so that an actual, strategic, marketing plan could be constructed at the end of the week.

But that is not just it!

As Bath Marketing Consultancy is a full service marketing consultancy, we could also implement the plan for you (or parts of it if if you wish) for a reduced rate using your initial weeks consultancy payment to off set some of the actual marketing initiatives costs.
For example, if, as part of the weeks marketing consultancy, how the business markets itself online needs re considering to include social media etc, BMC could configure the social media accounts and then train you how to use them.

What do you think? Is this something you would consider? If so, please email me for prices or use the “share” button below.

The hardest marketing?

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I have been asked this recently, “what is the hardest marketing to use.” When I questioned as to what this particular prospect meant, he elaborated by saying that he meant that he had real trouble in using Social Media and “was it easy?”

I have written a similar post as a result of being asked about the “best marketing platform to use” but, when looking at Social Media, I think using it as part of your marketing strategy is essential. Not necessarily because it is a sure fast track to early retirement. No. It is because, when used properly, it really can allow you to network incredibly effectively without incurring the costs usually associated with networking. Don’t get me wrong, interacting with human beings around a fry up is a great way to meet new people, but platforms like Twitter allow even the shyest person to network.

If there are any problems with Social Media, they are usually down to small businesses jumping straight in with both feet without any real strategy as to their objectives. For example, apart from the networking side of Social Media, what else does it do? Well, for me, it has allowed me to demonstrate my knowledge of the sector I work in, find new associates to work with, make friends and……….really build my brand to a global audience. Not bad for a platform which is pretty much “free” to use!

Another platform which can be hard to justify using is advertising. Again, I have written a post dedicated to what I feel are the best ways to get the best from advertising which will help you, but the key thing is to decided what type of advertising you want to run – brand awareness or direct response. For either campaign type, provide enough information to the customer so that he/she can make a decision rather than trying to be clever with words and pretty pictures.

In sum. When it comes to marketing and what platforms/initiatives work best, it is all about doing what works for your business. Test everything and speak to people rather than just diving in! If need be, give me a shout and we can have a talk.

2012 – what marketing are you planning?

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Well, 2012 is now here and for most of us in business, it is back to work; back to the daily routine, back to the grindstone; back to the corporate treadmill.

However, don’t feel down or gloomy about being back at work or the year that lies ahead as a new year is actually a perfect opportunity to really go for it and make strides into building (or growing) a great business platform.

I am not a great one for making resolutions, but I stand by my suggestion that putting together an effective and cohesive marketing plan could make the difference to what you and your business achieves in 2012. So……..if you havent started thinking about this, do it now!

To get you thinking, I put together 30 questions to test your business and, although these were done a while ago, they are still very much worth looking at as they may well prompt you into thinking about things in a different way.

Already in 2012 the internet is awash with Blog sites making marketing predictions about which initiatives to employ. One of the best I have read places great emphasis on how to get the best from your website in terms of how to use title tags effectively. For those already baffled by the term title tags, title tags are the primary text that defines a web page. They are required for all HTML documents. Search engine bots use them to help identify the content of a page so begin the tag with the most valuable and relevant keyword phrase.

Continuing on from the trends from 2010/11, social media and the importance of unique, quality and relevant copy for your website have been highlighted as areas that will be key for successful online marketing and I am very much in agreement with this. I came across a website recently called Hub Spot Blog that gave a string of facts to do with social media and its power for marketing. See here.

But what about more traditional marketing avenues? Well, there will always be a place for traditional advertising, but bunging in ads willy nilly as a result of a sales call selling “last minute space” is not the way forward. Plan what you want to advertise i.e are you looking to make direct sales as a result of the ad or simply generate website traffic.

Email marketing is also an area where I see continued growth in 2012. Why? because email marketing is incredibly cost effective and can provide excellent stats as to actions made as a result.

One area I do think may well become important for the medium sized business is exhibitions and trade shows. They can be expensive, but done correctly and marketed for 2-3 months in advance using Twitter etc, prospects can turn up to meet you on the day who are very “warm.”

Watch this space I say and if you need to talk to someone about what you should do in 2012, get in touch with Bath Marketing Consultancy.

What a year – thanks to all

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Well, that is pretty much it for this year for Bath Marketing Consultancy. Work is far from over for us, but I hope that the posts I have written in 2011 have helped you with the way you not only look at marketing, but the tactics and initiatives you employed this year.

With regards to my business, 2011 has been a phenomenal year and below is a list of the new clients we have had the privilege to work with.

  1. A2B Rylands Removals (Dorset)
  2. Bath Teeth Whitening (Bath)
  3. PRPi Training (London, Hong Kong, New York)
  4. Perudo (Mells)
  5. Counter Tops (Bath)
  6. Minerva Report (Bath)
  7. Northgate Training (Bath)
  8. Crallans Solicitors (Bath/Bristol)
  9. Moore Scarrott (Taunton)
  10. 1st Recruitment (Jersey, Guernsey, Sydney)
  11. Restore Bath (Bath)
  12. Amesbury Physiotherapy (Wiltshire)
  13. 3D Media (Wiltshire)
  14. Mango Ink (Bristol)
  15. Heads Up (Bristol)
  16. Arks and Sparks (Bath)
  17. BMH Solicitors (Bristol)
  18. Ilton Estates(Taunton)
  19. Nynehead Developments (Somerset)
  20. Impronta Coaching (London)
  21. Castlemead Insurance (Bristol)
  22. Scott Bates & Coles (Devon)
  23. Stephen Graver Kitchens (Wiltshire)
  24. Red Back Design (Bath)
  25. OnTarget Writing (Somerset)
  26. Harmony Audio (Somerset)
  27. Grass Root Gifts (Bristol)
  28. Masterco Compact Tractors (Bridgwater)
  29. ICC Salcombe (Salcombe)
  30. Egremont Trust (Devon)
Growth

What we find encouraging is not only the number of new clients we have worked with, but the variety of industries and variety of marketing initiatives we have employed. The other element worth noting is that 90% of the businesses listed above are “local” to Bath Marketing Consultancy meaning we have not deviated from our initial offering when we opened in 2009 of providing a full service, pay as you go marketing service primarily to the local business community.

For 2012 we already have a number of projects scheduled to go live in January + we will know the decisions of 2 tender proposals so I don’t see Bath Marketing’s foot coming off the pedal anytime soon!
Anyway, here is wishing you a great Christmas and New Year………….. and let me know if you would like a professional company to take a look at the marketing for your business!

Get your marketing ready for 2012

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The countdown to the end of 2011 has picked up speed and Bath Marketing Consultancy feels that there has never been a better time to put together your marketing plan for 2012 than now.
So……what did you learn from 2011? Where did your new business come from? What was the most successful marketing initiative you ran? All of these are very valid questions that will need answering before the marketing planning can take place.

In 2011 I have written over 40 marketing related articles designed to help the small to medium business with areas of marketing they might not be 100% comfortable with, but there have been a number of key messages from my Blog posts that I believe will make the difference to your business. One of the key messages that I hope you will have “got” is that marketing is not a quick fix solution or a singular event implemented in quiet times. Marketing is a process and one that every business must employ in order to grow. I have always maintained that testing initiatives should play an important part in your marketing strategy and that running 5 or 6 separate initiatives continually is the sure fast way to achieve your objectives.

What I have found that works for me? What marketing tools of the trade have helped me grow my business in 2011? Well, not to just jump on the bandwagon, but effective SEO and appearing in Google for the core services I offer has been invaluable in generating enquiries. These enquiries that have come via my website have been “warm” in that they have found me as a result of actively searching for what I do i.e. marketing consultancy, looked at my website in detail and then got in touch with me. More often than not I have ended up working with these people or, at the very least been able to help them as part of a free initial meeting. I have also found that being active in social media has helped me grow my network and open doors. Not only that, but I would like to think that the Bath Marketing Consultancy brand is stronger and more established as a result. Advertising in the “Life” magazines has also generated a response as has meeting people socially and referrals from existing clients.

What I hope you can see is that there is no one sure way to successful marketing. More that a continual, dedicated approach using a number of initiatives is what works for me.

If you are a local company in Somerset and want to come to my offices in Frome for a free initial chat, please get in touch with me.

Leaky bucket?!

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Sometimes a business can be represented by a leaky bucket where there is water going in (new business) as well as water going out through the hole (clients leaving). Your objective is to keep the bucket full of water and to make it overflow if possible. However, every business has a hole in their bucket and it virtually impossible to plug the hole. (The hole doesnt represent unhappy clients by the way!).

There is a multitude of reasons why today’s live client can become tomorrow’s lapsed client – the economy, budget cuts, personnel changes, relocation etc etc but do your best to ensure that the leak is as small as possible, maybe by using contracts or client maintenance programmes.

Anyway, I digress. The danger is to see this whole bucket, water and leak scenario as a short term situation. If you truly believe in winning new business then sometimes the best way to proceed is to assume that every client is vulnerable and that new business is a constant need.

Also, no matter how busy you are at the moment, you must sell for tomorrow and this is where I feel marketing plays a vital role. I have experienced a great deal of prospects coming to me as a knee-jerk reaction to hitting quiet times in their businesses looking for a quick fix with a tiny budget. (this is not meant to offend anyone, but merely point out that distressed purchases come with unrealistic expectations and that planning in advance can make all the difference). If you wait until you are less busy with time available for marketing, there is a good chance you will be too late.

In business, it is not unrealistic to assume that you will lose up to 20% of your billings per year and therefore have to bring in a minimum of 20% per year to stay still. In addition, year on year 10% of your clients will vanish from your list and 40% will spend less.

I have written a number of articles over the last 2 years about winning new business which will help you achieve your goals, but ultimately my suggestion is to plan ahead, be realistic, be proactive and, if need be, to engage the help of a marketing professional.

2011- how has it been for you?

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With only a few working weeks left in 2011, Bath Marketing Consultancy does not know what sort of year you have had, but we are very much looking forward to the Christmas break. In all honesty, it is the “break” part of Christmas we are looking forward to as much as Christmas itself as 2011 has been a long (and phenomenal) year for the business.

Yes, we have worked with over 20 new clients from a huge variety of sectors, but not everything has been plain sailing. Without going into too much detail, I would like to think that I have learnt a great deal this year especially from some of the not so good things that have happened to Bath Marketing Consultancy in 2011.
I saw a quote sometime ago that went along the lines of “an unhappy client can be your best source of information” which has actually been quite apt. I am not saying that we have reams of unhappy clients; far from it. It is more that we have had to adapt with new situations which have tested the structure of how we work, our (low!) pricing, the way we schedule our work and the way we manage certain clients. We have come through all of these tests pretty much unscathed and all the better for doing so.

We have also seen a shift in the marketing requirements from our clients and an increase in the number of potential marketing suppliers prospects see before making their decisions. In terms of what people want from their marketing, the one off projects that played a part in our some of our success in 2010 have been replaced by ongoing marketing needs meaning that we play a much more important and ever present role in the organisations we work with. This has been incredibly rewarding.

What we are also seeing is that companies are becoming far more structured in the way they market their businesses and the thought processes they use. Clients and prospects are tending to look further ahead and see marketing as more of an investment for the future than a knee jerk reaction when times are quiet.

What about your marketing for 2012 and have you had a good year where you have learnt new skills?