Posts Tagged ‘marketing’

Every other Tuesday my son, Jasper, and I attend a playgroup in the village where I live. We usually stop mid-morning for coffee and homemade cakes, and recently the mums have been taking it in turns to bake cakes (Rachel Allen’s Mocha and the Hummingbird’s Carrot Cake were my offering a few months back, but I digress…). This week was a little bit different; two ladies who had just set up a cupcake baking company supplied us with the most delicious cupcakes, free of charge, in return for a one minute “pitch”.

Simple, but so effective. When you start your business it’s so tempting to think that the solution is to blast your local area with some leaflets; or to put an ad in your local paper. But where does that get you? Usually disheartened and several hundred pounds down, because you haven’t been selective about who you’re targeting.

What I thought was so clever about what these ladies had done, was the fact that they’d cherry picked their target audience. The playgroup is in a pretty affluent area, and many of the mums attending are just the types that might buy in a batch of cupcakes for their next party. The cakes were also utterly delicious, and by giving us a taster they had gone a long way to warm us up to their business! I wonder whether you’re that generous with your own product or service?

Today I’m going to be running a seminar at Grow Your Business on some of the things that you need to think about if you want to market your business effectively. And yes, advertising and leaflets might well form a part of that; but only if you’ve got the rest of your ducks in a row. Powerful marketing is all about having a cohesive plan that’s going to bring you in the business you need over time. And that doesn’t mean feast one month and famine the next, it means slowly but surely building a sustainable business.

Tagged as , advertising, leaflets, marketing, targeting clients in Marketing

I had a great marketing consultation with a client last week who really got me thinking. Just how ‘accessible’ is AIDCA? To me, it’s second nature. Attention, Interest, Desire, Conviction, Action. And yet to Julian, it was only when I explained the concept in plain English that the lightbulb really came on. And so I now share my ‘Plain English’ AIDCA formula with you.

(Just in case you’re wondering what on earth AIDCA is, in brief it’s a fantastic tool to help you make your marketing more effective – a process, a structure, which mirrors the way that people buy. For the full story read my detailed AIDCA breakdown.)

Although I always encourage my clients to write from the point of view of their customer, it often helps to just draft something from your perspective to start with, just in note form, to get your head around it. So the process I’m about to share with you won’t be the finished article. You’ll need to do a LOT more tweaking, refining and most importantly, writing from the perspective of your customer rather than your own business. But just to enable you to get your head around AIDCA, here’s my plain English version of what it actually means to you as a business:

Attention: We sell widgets that will help your business
Interest: Here are the benefits of this widget to your business
Desire: This is why I know you can’t live without this widget
Conviction: If you’re worried you’d be making a mistake, don’t be – here’s some reassurance (in the form of testimonials or a guarantee)
Action: Here’s what I want you to do

How about for your business? Can you see this working? Does this ‘plain English’ version make AIDCA any easier to understand or to apply?

If you’d like to understand how to put this, and other marketing techniques into practice then you will definitely find the Marvellous Monthly Marketing Workshops useful – you can find out more on our website at www.marvellousworkshops.co.uk

Tagged as , AIDA, AIDCA, copy, Copywriting, literature, marketing, writing in AIDCA, Copywriting, Workshops

When you’re starting a business or revisiting your marketing, where do you start? With your website or with your logo design? When budgets are tight I can understand the logic behind starting with your website – websites can start generating you visible income immediately, they’re an essential part of your marketing mix and if you can get the website right you can use the income generated to refine other areas of your marketing.

However, if you take a step back and look at the bigger picture, I think you’ll see why this logic is flawed.

Great marketing always starts with strong branding. If you don’t have a strong brand identity you’ll simply be making life harder for yourself. You’ll have to fight harder to engage your target audience, you’ll have to spend more money (in the long term) getting your marketing collateral looking like it’s come from the same company and quite simply, you’re missing a trick.

Think of branding like losing weight
Imagine you decided that now was the time to go on a drastic image makeover – you’d lose 3 stone and get a new haircut and new wardrobe. When would be the best time to invest in that new wardrobe? Before you’d lost the weight? Or after? Sure, you’d feel better instantly if you went out and bought a new wardrobe immediately, but ultimately you’d end up throwing all your old clothes away when you reached your target weight. Your body shape would be different, you’d have more confidence and your tastes might even be different. You’d probably feel like you’d reached your full potential and feel as though now was the time to be showing off your new body shape. Do you think that the clothes you bought when you were 3 stone heavier would still work on your new, trimmer frame? Unlikely isn’t it?

So why then, does it make sense to design your website before you finalise your branding? Getting the branding right at the outset can actually save you money in the long run. To start with, you’ll have a clear set of brand values and brand identity to give to your web designer. This means that you’ll incur less creative bills (and probably get a better outcome since most web designers aren’t branding experts). You’ll also get to where you need to be much faster because your web designer will know what you expect of them. And finally, you’ll have a website that truly represents your brand. That really says the right things about your business.

So before you rush out and order your new website, just think – am I happy with my branding? Is it saying the right things about me? And if you’re not, talking to a friendly design agency who specialises in branding!

Tagged as , agency, branding, design, guildford, marketing, planning, strategic, strategy, web in Branding, Graphic Design, Web Design, Workshops

I had a one to one marketing consultation with a Personal Trainer yesterday who was frustrated that her leaflets weren’t bringing her in any business. She recognised that the paper quality and design were having an impact on this, and realised that she needed to invest in some professional design and print. But what surprised [...]

Tagged as , AIDCA, Copywriting, direct, leaflets, mail, marketing, text in AIDCA, Workshops

When do you start planning how you’re going to follow up on an exhibition? For many businesses it’s not till you have the shoebox of leads in front of you that you think “What on earth am I going to say to these people?”. However, I’m going to suggest that you actually start planning your [...]

Tagged as , direct, exhibitor, follow, letters, marketing, sales, secrets, up in Exhibitions

Can I share one of the most effective free marketing tools that every business has at their disposal? Testimonials. Happy clients are your best asset. Happy clients will sell for you harder than your best salesperson. They’re genuine, impartial, and most importantly, they’ll sell the benefits of your product or service from a client’s perspective. [...]

Tagged as , agency, copy, Copywriting, design, farnham, godalming, guildford, marketing, strategy, surrey, testimonials, web, Websites, woking in Blogging, Copywriting, Web Design, Websites, Workshops

We’re all pretty familiar with the power of the testimonial aren’t we? Testimonials give your marketing another, more powerful, more genuine voice and can really help sell your products or service. I think one area of the testimonial we overlook is the ability of testimonials to generate interest in your business from people who weren’t [...]

Tagged as , cost, ideas, low, marketing, testimonials in Blogging, Copywriting, Workshops

Low Cost Marketing Means different things to different people. When I asked a group of ladies recently about their views on Low Cost Marketing we had lots of very different (and interesting responses), here are a few of them: “Spending as little money as possible” “Building up my own personal reputation” “Marketing through customer testimonials [...]

Tagged as , cost, free, ideas, low, marketing, workshops in Uncategorized

What’s the key to successful marketing? Well there certainly isn’t one, magic catch all technique that’s guaranteed to work (if only!). However, there are some basics that every small business should adopt which will significantly improve the success of your marketing investment. Here are some of the most common mistakes that small businesses make when [...]

Tagged as , business, easy, marketing, mistakes, plan, small in Business Strategy, Workshops