Alice Elliott's blog

What marketing success factors do you have?

Alice — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 09:30:59 +0000

One factor facing marketing today that is not accommodated adequately by businesses is that it needs to take time to succeed. So many companies confuse it with sales and expect immediate results, whereas marketing is a long-term strategy, slowly building up relationships, spreading expertise and gaining credibility – for both products and services. The discrepancy between sales and marketing is often confused, fuzzy and misunderstood.

There are so many facets to marketing, whether off or online. All are valid, and yet the question arises: which one should you focus on, or should you try and do all of them at once? Obviously spreading yourself thinly isn’t a good thing, but it would be wise to make yourself aware of your customer or target market, undergoing relevant research into their habits, environment and mind-set, as this will enable you to focus on the correct marketing format needed for your project or campaign.

Capital expenditure certainly determines the limits of your marketing activities. Large budgets enable huge branding and awareness campaigns, smaller budgets rely on social marketing, off and online, carefully and strategically focused on a niche or subject area. It’s important to remember who your customer is, how they think, how they see your product or service, how it will make their lives better, what they feel about it, can they do without it…? Then consider how you will present your product or service to them so that they will take notice and react, such as what special feature do you have that will make them take action in the way that you want?

As today’s customers are saturated with marketing everywhere, what makes yours different? How can you stop them ignoring your hard-worked efforts with a shrug of their shoulders or a turn of their heel? Adverts are glossed over, good marketing is swamped with inappropriate alternatives, bad design and copy make marketing laughable, and hard sell tactics turn people off. To survive you need to study successful marketers to learn how it is done, and then go away and create your own version of it.

Develop a style, become instantly recognisable, measure your results and act upon your findings. Form a long-term goal, focus on the methods of getting there, regularly review your strategies as you go, mark each achievement along the time-line, and never give up, even when things don’t go well. You will always go more steps forward than backwards, because of all the information and data you gain on the way. And each time you perform them, the techniques become slicker, more efficient, easier to accomplish.

So what marketing issues affect you and your business? Is it specific methods, various techniques, understanding motives and interpreting the results? Is it lack of resources, short on expertise, failure to focus or scant ideas? Let us know by leaving a comment in the box below.

How to dampen a summer holiday

Alice — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 11:30:06 +0000

The Americans and the Scots seem to have got their summer holidays right. The former break up in June for two months, the latter break up at the beginning of July to return in the middle of August. Even the Australians follow the same pattern (end of December until beginning of February – work it out.) This means time off from school is concentrated at the best time of the year: more sunshine, longer days, less rainfall…

And what do the Brits do? Children suffer at school when the days are long, the weather is good and the temperature is high. And as soon as term’s ended these poor kids are turfed out to holiday in an environment of continuous cloud, heavy rain, shorter days, cool mornings and evenings, nights too cold to go camping in – just at a time when the year is turning back into autumn. Why is this?

I know it’s a throwback from during WWII when everyone, children included, were needed to help bring in the harvest. This busy time of year was usually a race against time and the weather to bring in the results of the growing season, especially when the harvest machinery was pretty basic, inefficient and required as much hands-on as could be found.

But today it is different. There are huge combine harvesters that do the job much more efficiently. Also, fields are sown earlier to spread the harvest more evenly throughout the growing season.

And the weather is changing. This is the third August we have had with lousy weather. Gone are the sultry days of the 1970s when August ‘scorched’ in the high 70s, or even the 1980s in the low 80s. Say hello to our highest temperatures closer to the solstice, lowering as the sun dips towards the equinox. The world is changing, but not the school holidays.

Isn’t it time that the educational powers that be woke up to the 21^st century and changed the school year to reflect the weather patterns of our new millennium?

New-style online advertising will still annoy?

Alice — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 12:28:58 +0000

It’s a very common occurrence to come across advertising on blogs. Usually it’s the way these publications can keep the information they post free from charge, as the revenue generated helps pay for the expenses incurred.

But do you actually notice them? I certainly don’t. I’ve learned to gloss over them to find the information I want, a bit like the way I scan tweets in Twitter to find the ones that interest me the most.

To overcome this, advertisers have had to think of a way to get people to notice their adverts. Being extra clever with the headlines, putting animation in to disengage your attention, including hard to resist call to actions designed to pull even the hardened punter, all these are failing to get results.

So now the newest idea that’s come up is 30 second long TV-style adverts. These will be much harder to ignore, even pop-up ads. How would you respond to a short film popping up within the blog you were trying to read? Would you really stop, down tools, and watch these phenomena?

Another concept put forward by internet marketers is that even though these adverts will cost more, they will have a higher profile with a huger impact, thus becoming more effective and cost-worthy. The idea is that in the long run these ads will supercede the smaller static versions, who will gradually diminish in their intensity and numbers.

Is this a good idea? After the trial of 5 weeks on 15 carefully chosen websites, will this catch on? Will we welcome this style of advertising with open arms, or will we rue the development of technology and yearn for the old style advertising methods?

What’s the difference between marketing and selling?

Alice — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 09:00:12 +0000

I’ve been tweeting about the difference between marketing and sales, and that they’re not the same: the former is about gaining relationships, spreading expertise and maintaining credibility; the latter is about making money.

But what does marketing mean to you? What and why is it important? How can it be used to transform your business’s visibility?

Of course we will say every business should regularly perform marketing, and that it should be maintained as a drip-feed process over a period of time. It slowly creates relationships, increases your expertise in your chosen field to build up your credibility, and carefully considers your customers and the benefits you can provide for them and the solutions to their problems, by making your business so attractive they cannot fail to notice, pay attention and succumb to your marketing charms.

So what’s the most important? Why, the customer, of course. Without them you have no business. Your whole corporate existence should be concentrated on their very being, how they tick, what they think, what they need or desire, how you can make their lives better.

Then you’ve got to be aware of your product, to turn it into something your customers will want to buy. By truly understanding both parties (customer and product), only then can you successfully market it by triggering the response required to stimulate a purchase.

Create case studies, tell a story, entertain and interact to show you’re understanding them, to win the hearts of those you pursue. Gather them under your wing, let them into a secret, make them feel special or the only one, play with your business philosophy and psychology to convert their way of thinking to become like your own. Present your product as if it would save their lives, that they cannot live without it, that it would be the best thing since sliced bread. Make your price so attractive it immediately becomes affordable, coupled with necessary incentives for more immediate responses.

But hey, isn’t this also selling? Well, yes, but it has been done over a long period of time, not just within a few minutes. It has taken the softly-softly approach, carefully analysing the customers’ response, working with their feelings and reactions, carefully promoting this product to make it look better, become more attractive, appear to be affordable, cannot be without. There is no hard sell tactics, which can upset, anger, annoy and irritate, impede on the customers’ time, take over their personal space, brain-wash their senses, or demand an immediate response. Customers are given the opportunity to make up their own minds about what action they will take next.

Marketing is a long-term activity towards gaining the same purpose selling strives to achieve immediately. Both have their place, and each have records of their successes, but each method should be carefully scrutinised to be the best form of action before an approach is undertaken.

10 elements for successful online marketing

Alice — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 09:30:45 +0000

There are many examples of online marketing throughout the internet for all of us to see, and plenty of posts and articles from gurus and experts all saying how wonderful their versions are. So I have added my tuppence-worth to the fray to let you know what I think of this subject!

1. Understand exactly what marketing is. This may sound pretentious, but marketing should not be confused with selling. It’s important to know that marketing is all about nurturing relationships with your customers and also having the chance to spread your expertise to gain trust and credibility. Once your potential customer has really got to know you and your company, only then will they make the move to do business with you.

2. Understand how important customers are. It really is worth doing some marketing analysis on your customers’ profiles, activities, buying habits, lifestyles – not to mention their needs and wants. This means you’ll be able to provide effective solutions to their problems, as well as placing your marketing exactly where your customers hang out, saving time, energy and money. And when you write copy, always present it within the customers’ point of view, to make them think you really care about them and want to help them.

3. Do you have a proper focus? It’s not worth setting up a marketing campaign without a suitable end in sight. Lots of people happily spend time marketing their business and then wonder why nothing comes of it. If you aim your marketing towards a goal, not only will it be more focused in its approach, but it will help towards measuring your results and analysing whether you are going down the correct route, being cost-worthy and productive, as well as achieving what you set out to do.

4. The importance of keywords. Search engines thrive on both keywords and links. Concentrating on the former, performing adequate research into which keywords are effective, relevant and up-to-date, plus knowing how and where to use them correctly, could make or break your online marketing. Successful search engine optimisation may be considered a ‘black art’, but even small amounts performed appropriately is better than messy misunderstandings in large scale operations.

5. Content is king/queen. A well known phrase which can be interpreted in many ways. What you write about should always be relevant to both you and your customers. It should be focused on your customers’ desires, or aimed at filling a niche gap in the market, or promote your service/product within your customers’ point of view. It should be entertaining, educational and enterprising. It should pander to the needs of both humans and search engine spiders, to both be read and interact with the internet. It should not mention your company to say how wonderful it is!

6. Be aware of social media use. Rapidly rising in online marketing use, this phenomenon should not be ignored. Blogs are, of course, the hub of social networking, as well as all your online marketing activities, as everything can be directed back to them and thence outwards! But social media is not necessarily somewhere to dump material hoping it will be read and acted upon, it depends on social interaction and sharing with like-minded and relevant contacts. Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook are facilities to collect a following and post notifications of what you are doing, whereas other social media such as StumbleUpon, Delicious, Mixx, Digg, Reddit and the like, rely on a voting system to promote your blog posts virally around the web. If you aren’t interested in what others are doing, how can they therefore be interested in you?

7. Gathering leads into lists. For some online marketers this is key. If you are able to collect a relevant and focused list of likely leads for you to market to, people who have willingly given their permission to receive information from you each month so that they can keep in touch with what you are saying, thinking or doing, being the first to know of any events or promotions you are creating, this is an extremely important source of marketing value. Email newsletters are big news because of their cost-worthiness in communication, and flexibility of use and transmission, and as long as they are used appropriately with the required focus, they are a very effective online marketing tool.

8. Using calls to action. Oh, how many times do I see online marketing with inappropriate or neglected call to actions! If you don’t tell your customers what to do, they won’t do it! And where you place these call to actions is also important: multiple mentions, within landing or squeeze pages within your website, with incentives and time-dependency, in postscripts at the end of communications – this little, much forgotten element of marketing could make all the difference towards success or failure. And the squeeze pages I mentioned before – another excellent marketing tool that when used appropriately can contribute much towards the benefits of online marketing.

9. How well are you performing? It’s no good undertaking a marketing campaign without knowing how well you are doing. Google Analytics for both your website and blog are vital to measure performance and analyse the correct procedure for future projects. Understand who is responding, why you got the responses you did, how to get more online visibility, what can you do to increase your conversions – all this is related to many of the points I mentioned above, plus a coherent understanding and focused appreciation to enhance your online marketing.

10. Nothing will happen overnight. Ignore all those marketing gurus who promise untold immediate wealth as soon as you sign up to their programmes. Online marketing is hard work, and you need to be in it for the long term. Many customers will read your newsletter and blog for years before they decide to take action, during which time they have been convinced of your expertise, have learned what you can do for them, and have formed a favourable opinion of you and your business to make the initial approach. If you show genuine interest in them (mainly through social networking) and gain a sizeable following of relevant, like-minded prospective customers, regularly communicating with them through your newsletter and providing them with valuable information that truly helps them, only then will your online marketing activities start to bear fruit.

How much added value do you give?

Alice — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 09:00:37 +0000

It’s fascinating noting the different styles of American waitresses and how they treat you. Of course they are always excessively nice because they depend on your tips to boost their meagre wages, but they still have varied methods of attentiveness, depending on the kind of restaurant they are serving in, the response of customers seated there and the ambience of the surroundings.

We experienced many waitresses during our holiday in the States. The one I liked best was in a Fish Restaurant in Maine. First of all she wasn’t over-enthusiastic, in spite of having to say the spiel “Hello, my name is Katie and I’ll be your server for today”, and she naturally seemed interested in helping us. But it was the fact that when she spilt our fish chowder as the springdoors flapped back and hit her, she smiled apologetically and scuttled off immediately to rectify our order, she refilled our glasses with soda and forgot to include that on our bill, and that she was unaware of a large splodge of tomato ketchup on her skirt, we felt inclined to give her the full 20% tip.

There were many more kinds of waitresses, like the over-zealous one who served us our Lobster Dinner in Bar Harbor, to the one who wielded a huge tray on one hand that seemed too big for her in Boston Harbor. Each knew that constant attentiveness without being over-powering was important if they were to achieve the maximum tip allowance.

So how much attentiveness do you give your customers to make them feel special? Your business may not depend on extra tips to boost your income, but I’m sure if you acted like these waitresses and concentrated all your efforts on providing the best possible experience for your customers, just think what they might be inclined to react favourably even if it isn’t in the form of tips?

A century of lightening change

Alice — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 09:00:29 +0000

I heard on the radio a headline from an Edwardian newspaper, and it made me laugh. It was so complicated, academic and theoretical. That was a time when things were slow, ponderous and laborious, people had time to stop, think, read, measure up an argument, consider a concept and cope with long-winded titles designed to explore an idea, present a scenario, put forward a point, all carefully constructed within a by-gone language and mind-set.

And today’s world is poles apart; we are forever rushing about, ideas are caught, processed and discarded, information slips through our fingers in lightening speed, responses are immediate, poignant and focused, trends and news come and go in a twinkling of an eye, the media where these concepts are placed, produced, published and processed changes rapidly, archives fill up fast with old stuff maturing at an alarming pace, the internet and social media grows incredibly fast at such a rate that would be inconceivable to the Edwardians.

It’s amazing that in just 100 years mankind can evolve into something so totally different.

Caped wonders at Body Shop

Alice — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 09:00:35 +0000

I popped into my local Body Shop to stock up on a few essentials and by mistake picked up the test bottles instead. This was rectified at the counter, and the staff complained this was a regular occurrence because the ‘Test’ stickers were too small for people to realise.

What they really needed was something that was bigger and noticeable. Something that was interchangeable and replaceable once the test bottle was empty. Something that could be wiped clean if necessary. Something that could be used on more than one product.

So I suggested a collar or cape that sits on the bottle’s shoulders, brightly coloured, with the words ‘Try Me’ or such like in large letters. There was also a chance of including the Body Shop logo as well, or even a different message like ‘Special Offer’. I’ve shown is a crude example to show you what I mean.

As Body Shop is a franchise, all the owner of this particular store could do is to recommend this idea to her franchisers. But –– if this idea is accepted, and you start seeing it in Body Shop stores, just remember where you saw it first…

How to write good newsletter content

Alice — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 09:00:30 +0000

In my last post I wrote about how to increase the opening rates of your newsletter, and for this post I am concentrating on newsletter content and how that can increase the likelihood of it being read.

Newsletters should be conversational pieces to educate, entertain and inform your readership. They shouldn’t consist of long technical articles stuffed full of jargon which really should be published in professional periodicals or on suitable article directories on the internet. They should consist of short, sharp, snappy sentences in everyday English; the same concept applying to sections or paragraphs, preferably three rather than five or more, accompanied with apt subheadlines to aid scanning and quick reading.

I mentioned earlier how important headlines were. Some people write their headlines after the content has been created, others think of a headline first and then the content materialises afterwards. Whatever you do, most of your attention should be directed to your headline, and the time taken to revise, rethink and rewrite your headline could pay off dividends. Successful newspapers employ special copywriters just for the headlines alone – they realise the importance of a good headline, and so should you.

Be aware that newsletters are not a medium for sales (the same with social networking), they are there to create and maintain a relationship with your readers. Like networking, you provide information about your business and what you are doing to enable your audience to understand various elements in fuller detail that what is available from your website. This is also the same with a blog, albeit in smaller contributions, more frequently and consistently delivered in a bite-sized, digestible format (and even smaller and frequenter still in Twitter).

Another way to boost interest in your content is to work around a prop like a picture or cartoon. Select a single product, idea, concept or service (too many can be confusing) to attract attention and aid concentration, as well as something to hang your subject matter from. One specific idea or concept, simply expressed, will go a long way towards comprehension and relationship building than long-winded missives full of complicated technical stuff that only results in confusion, turn-off, deletion and ultimately unsubscription.

How to get more people to open your newsletters

Alice — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 09:00:33 +0000

One of the features of Appletree’s newsletter system JAC shows how many of your newsletter’s recipients have opened it (and there is also a new feature that shows you who has opened it too and how many times). One statistic is that newsletters with large mailing lists seem to show a low open rate. So how can this be improved?

Large mailing lists that show a high opening rate often have worked well if the sender knows each recipient personally or has been in recent contact with them. This is particularly true if the members have given their permission for their details to be included on the mailing list. If you have boosted your mailing list from purchased lists or have added on this information from business cards collected at a networking meeting, then without their permission readers won’t know who you are, won’t recognise your business, won’t be ready to receive your newsletter and will most likely delete it or unsubscribe. How personal are you with each member on your mailing list?

JAC also shows which emails have bounced. This is because these details are incorrect, the recipeint has moved on or left the company, they are spelt wrong, or whatever. JAC allows you a chance to go through the monthly list and check for corrections and updating, as after three strikes of continuous bouncing, JAC will delete these email addresses from you account. So when did you last clean up your mailing list? Getting rid of unnecessary emails will tighten your list and increase the opening rate.

When a newsletter has been sent into someone’s inbox, the first thing they usually see is the title. This vital portion of your newsletter should be given a lot of thought when writing your newsletter, as it is a major factor towards increasing your opening rate. If they are too long, contain too much jargon, and are not ‘grabbing’ enough, your reader will not be enticed to click on it.

These headlines (which also are repeated in the newsletter itself and contribute hugely towards the main content) could work better if they contained an open ended question (What? How? Why?) – not one that could be answered by a Yes or a No. The idea is to arouse curiosity in the reader so that they want to open it to find out more about what’s inside. It should also match a need or gap in the reader’s knowledge that is relevant or poignant for that present time – response is always higher if it triggers a ‘Yes, I really need to know this now’ reaction.

So, what other methods do you have to increase the opening rates of your newsletters that you can share with us?