Digital marketing glossary

• SEO.  Search engine optimisation.  Things you can do to help your website appear in Google’s organic search results (the unpaid-for bit).

• SERPS.  Search engine results pages.  The pages which show what Google finds for a search query.  Usually about 10 items per page.  Includes maps, images, answer boxes, shopping results and reviews, as well as adverts.

• SEM.  Search engine marketing.  Planned marketing using the power of search.  This includes organic search (unpaid-for) and paid search (PPC).

• PPC.  Pay-per-click advertising.  The little adverts that appear at the top of the search results page.  The advertiser chooses which keyword searches should trigger their advert to appear, and they only pay when someone clicks on their advert.  Most popular is Google Ads, though other search engines have adverts too.

• CTR.  Click-through rate.  The percentage of people who, having seen your PPC advert, clicked on it.

• CPC.  Cost per click.  How much each click to your website cost you from a paid advert.

• Remarketing.  An extension of PPC which follows a previous site visitor around the web and triggers a small box or banner advert to appear on other pages when they are browsing.

• Algorithm. Google’s code for deciding which websites should appear where in the search results.  Generally considered some kind of black magic (and the details of it are of course not precisely known), Google is actually quite transparent about what it values.  Its main objective is to increasingly search like a human, and look for valuable, helpful, up-to-date content which people will find interesting.  Major algorithm changes can have a huge impact on SEO success, which is why it’s so important, for robust SEO, to take the long view with SEO, do the right thing by visitors, and embrace what Google is trying to achieve, not just ‘game the system’ for short-term results.

• Content.  The stuff that fills up the pages of websites – typically words (on web pages, news articles or blog posts), images, and videos.

• Content marketing.  Creating useful content that will move visitors closer to your business goals. This might be to differentiate you from the competition, remind people of your key benefits and values, inform and educate people about your products/services and their options, persuade people to talk to you and buy from you!  It can help develop trust and understanding, making the sales process easier.  Content marketing needs to be planned, and consistently executed.  Relevant, up to date content is something Google definitely looks for in websites.

• Long-tail.  The name for a type of search when people use a specific, multi-word query – eg, “price for 1750mm wide light teak garden bench.”  Although the volumes for these kinds of searches are usually lower, the intent is clear which gives a good opportunity to capture and convert small volume traffic.  Understanding these kinds of searches can provide great topic ideas for blog posts, to help get to the top of Google in niche areas.

• Mobile responsive.  When a website recognises that someone is visiting from a smartphone or tablet, and changes its appearance accordingly, usually through reordering and stacking the elements of the page so they fit on the screen in the best way.

• Mobile optimised.  When a website recognises that someone is visiting from a smartphone or tablet and presents them with an alternative version of the site based on what mobile users are most likely to want.

• Link juice.  The SEO value of getting a link to your website from another site.  Link juice value varies, depending on the authority of the site you’re getting a link from.  Internal links within a website help to share link juice throughout the entire site, which helps all the pages to be catalogued more easily by Google.

• Authority.  How reputable a website is, in terms of its relevance, longevity and site safety.  Getting a link to your site from a site with good authority is beneficial for SEO.

• Black hat.  Dubious SEO practices, which Google are increasingly stamping down on.  Eg, bought links, keyword stuffing, hiding overly optimised text (white text on white background).  Antonym: white hat – honest, reputable SEO practice.

• Crawl.  When Google’s robots, or spiders, work their way across the site to check for updates and reindex the site.

• Title.  The main title for your website page.  This shows up as a blue link in the Google search results, and also appears in your browser tab.  Using relevant keywords and phrases in your page title is important for SEO and for encouraging visitors to click to your site.

• Meta description.  This is the block of text which appears underneath the title in the search results.  You can usually write your own meta description for the page to tell Google what you would like to be shown.  If not, Google will create a meta description based on what the person is searching for.  It’s important territory for search engine optimisation.

• Keywords.  The words and phrases people use to search online.  The days of stuffing your website full of keywords has long gone – search engines are smarter than that now!  But, you still need to be aware of what words and phrases people are using, relevant to your product, service and industry, and use them across your site in a focused way.

• CRO.  Conversion rate optimisation.  This is not about driving more traffic to your website – it’s about improving the amount of enquiries and purchases that visitors make once they are there.

We can help demystify digital marketing! Find out more about our digital marketing services >>

Consultancy

Find the opportunities. Sharpen your ideas and plans. Focus your team.

If you’re feeling your marketing is losing its way, or you’re not sure which customers to reach or how, this is for you. Marketing troubleshooting ‘health checks’ and workshops will get you thinking and put you on the right track.

Find out more >>

Coaching & Mentoring

Get better at marketing, with expert guidance and support.

If you’re a director in need of marketing coaching and training… or a marketing exec or PA who needs a mentor and guide… this is for you. Grow your skills, and develop your thinking and confidence.

Find out more >>

Communications

Get the right message to the right people, in the right way, at the right time.

If you want to promote your business, launch a new product, or communicate better with your staff and customers, this is for you. Website writing, SEO, Google Ads, emailers, newsletters, PR, social media… it’s all here.

Find out more >>

The post Digital marketing glossary appeared first on SharpEdge Marketing.

Marketing can sometimes be viewed as the money-spending department, rather than the revenue-generating department. Marketers often don’t help themselves by talking vaguely about “brands” and “positioning” (and letting themselves be seen as ‘creative types’) rather than using the kind of words the FD loves to hear – cashflow, return on investment, margin, and of course profit.

So here are some important ways that Marketing and Finance are linked – and why a great marketer should be the FD’s best friend, and vice versa.

Consultancy

Find the opportunities. Sharpen your ideas and plans. Focus your team.

If you’re feeling your marketing is losing its way, or you’re not sure which customers to reach or how, this is for you. Marketing troubleshooting ‘health checks’ and workshops will get you thinking and put you on the right track.

Find out more >>

Coaching & Mentoring

Get better at marketing, with expert guidance and support.

If you’re a director in need of marketing coaching and training… or a marketing exec or PA who needs a mentor and guide… this is for you. Grow your skills, and develop your thinking and confidence.

Find out more >>

Communications

Get the right message to the right people, in the right way, at the right time.

If you want to promote your business, launch a new product, or communicate better with your staff and customers, this is for you. Website writing, SEO, Google Ads, emailers, newsletters, PR, social media… it’s all here.

Find out more >>

The post What every Finance Director needs to know about Marketing appeared first on SharpEdge Marketing.

Many of our clients are manufacturers, and so embrace the concept of ‘continuous improvement’.  We believe marketing should do the same – which is why putting objectives and measurements in place is always part of our marketing planning process.

But just recently I was asked: “What exactly should be measured?”

The answer is that ‘what gets measured gets done’ – therefore you ‘measure what matters’.  In marketing this has to happen at different tiers with each supporting the one above.  Here’s what I mean:

Activity metrics are there to check that planned marketing tasks happen on time, on budget and in the right way.  For example, if you’ve decided you will post daily on social media – did you actually do it?  If the emailer was supposed to be sent on the 15^th – was it?  This is marketing operations management, the day-to-day stuff, down at the bottom of the triangle – but don’t underestimate its importance, either in terms of how you plan or how closely you adhere to that plan.  If you don’t see the successes you’re looking for higher up the triangle, explore lapses in this tier and you might find an answer.  Make sure that the activities you put in this level are worthwhile.  And be honest: measure what actually happens, rather than what you wish had happened.

Communication metrics measure the effectiveness of the individual communication tools you use – e.g. emailers, website, AdWords, content marketing etc.  You should try and find a separate set of measurements for each of these tools.  With digital marketing tools, that’s not hard.  You can measure open rates, click-through rates, cost per click, website visitors, website goals achieved, increase in search engine rankings etc.  Sometimes it can be trickier to measure offline marketing, particularly as online and offline marketing both become part of the customer journey – but it’s certainly not impossible.  Measuring at this level can help you assess the effectiveness of different marketing tools for your particular product and customers (which won’t be the same as someone else’s).  But don’t forget to look at the bigger picture too – which is where the level above helps.

Campaign metrics.  If you want to promote a particular theme, product, limited edition offer etc. – you need to measure the campaign success as a whole.  At this level you are less worried about the performance of individual communications and more concerned with their cumulative effect.  Overall, how many enquiries did the campaign generate?  How many take-ups did you get for the offer?  Were people commenting or asking questions about the campaign?  Did the campaign work better in some geographic areas than others, or with certain types of customer?  Looking back down the triangle, did you find that one particular communications tool stood out as successful for the campaign?  What can you learn to help you improve your next campaign?

Commercial metrics relate to the successes of the business as a whole.  Overall, are sales going up or down?  Are you winning new customers?  What’s the value of those customers?  Are they the right kinds of customers?  Are your prices being pushed down in the face of commercial pressure or holding their own?  Where does your brand sit in the market – do customers perceive your worth?

To get the right outcomes at the higher levels, you need to ensure you’re doing the right things at the lower levels, and measuring them well.

This structure reinforces how important it is to plan carefully and measure intelligently at every level and at all levels.  Because together, these measurements all contribute to your overall success.

Consultancy

Find the opportunities. Sharpen your ideas and plans. Focus your team.

If you’re feeling your marketing is losing its way, or you’re not sure which customers to reach or how, this is for you. Marketing troubleshooting ‘health checks’ and workshops will get you thinking and put you on the right track.

Find out more >>

Coaching & Mentoring

Get better at marketing, with expert guidance and support.

If you’re a director in need of marketing coaching and training… or a marketing exec or PA who needs a mentor and guide… this is for you. Grow your skills, and develop your thinking and confidence.

Find out more >>

Communications

Get the right message to the right people, in the right way, at the right time.

If you want to promote your business, launch a new product, or communicate better with your staff and customers, this is for you. Website writing, SEO, Google Ads, emailers, newsletters, PR, social media… it’s all here.

Find out more >>

The post Tiered marketing metrics appeared first on SharpEdge Marketing.

An SME (small-to-medium enterprise) is a business with less than 250 employees, turns over up to about £40m, and where a non-SME organisation doesn’t own more than a quarter of it.

The problem with targeting SMEs is this: according to government statistics, 99.9% of businesses are SMEs.  In real numbers, that’s 5.9 million businesses.

Are you going to target them all?

The importance of segmentation

Optimists would say that this means there’s plenty to go at, so therefore there must be huge potential for the growth of your product or service!

But in reality, those SME businesses are hugely diverse in many ways; and it’s highly unlikely that what you are offering is going to be a great fit for all of them.

Which brings us to one of marketing’s favourite words… segmentation.

Segmentation means breaking down a large and diverse market into smaller, manageable groups of customers with similar characteristics or needs.  It’s about finding your ideal customers.

So, if you want to reach SMEs, you need to ask yourself which ones.  You might consider:

Consultancy

Find the opportunities. Sharpen your ideas and plans. Focus your team.

If you’re feeling your marketing is losing its way, or you’re not sure which customers to reach or how, this is for you. Marketing troubleshooting ‘health checks’ and workshops will get you thinking and put you on the right track.

Find out more >>

Coaching & Mentoring

Get better at marketing, with expert guidance and support.

If you’re a director in need of marketing coaching and training… or a marketing exec or PA who needs a mentor and guide… this is for you. Grow your skills, and develop your thinking and confidence.

Find out more >>

Communications

Get the right message to the right people, in the right way, at the right time.

If you want to promote your business, launch a new product, or communicate better with your staff and customers, this is for you. Website writing, SEO, Google Ads, emailers, newsletters, PR, social media… it’s all here.

Find out more >>

The post Marketing to SMEs? Know your customer appeared first on SharpEdge Marketing.

Just some of the things you’ll be considering in your marketing are branding; unique selling points, or differentiators; your strengths and weaknesses as a business; customer service; setting the right prices; competitors; choosing, finding and keeping the right kind of customers; choosing the right routes to market; finding strategic partnerships… and more.

Then there are the communications choices – like your website, social media, emails, advertising.  The list can seem endless.

So where should you start?

• Step 1: Start with understanding where you are.  If you are already up and running in business, it’s likely you will already have made some key marketing decisions, whether you realise it or not. These may be strategic decisions about your target markets and what your product or service will look like. A marketing review (audit, health check) will help you properly understand those decisions, and examine whether they are right in the current market environment. It will also help you understand what’s working… and what isn’t.

• Step 2: Decide where you want to be.  Do you have a clear vision for your business? This is what you want to see your business becoming; and it’s important because it’s your definition of success. All the decisions you make should be leading you closer towards it, including your marketing decisions. If you don’t define success, you’ll never know if you’ve achieved it.

• Step 3: Get specific and strategic.  What does success tangibly look and feel like? It’s one thing to talk about 10% growth – quite another to say, for example, “we need three new customers a month who each spend £1000”. Getting specific suddenly makes everything real, and helps bring focus to your strategy (the big plan of how you’re going to do it).

• Step 4: Marketing communications.  So we’re at step 4, and we haven’t yet talked about the things most people think of as ‘marketing’! That’s because communicating is the last thing you should do… after you’ve done the thinking work to make sure it’s informed and purposeful, and appropriate for your objectives. Why? Because getting the thinking work done first helps eliminate the ‘fat’ which can creep into marketing programmes; and ensures you only do the things that will bring you closer to your business goals.

• Step 5: Measure & manage.  Is it working? Before starting, ensure you know how you’re going to measure results. There are online methods for measuring digital marketing success, of course. But for some companies it can be as simple as asking new enquirers how they heard about you – simple, yes, but you’d be surprised how many don’t do it! When you have measurements in place you can make decisions.

It’s this long-proven strategic marketing process of ‘Analysis, Planning, Implementation and Control’ which I follow with clients. It’s clear, it’s structured, and it gives a framework so you can understand exactly where you are with your marketing, and what you need to do next.

Get in touch, and together we’ll put the right kind of structured, purposeful marketing plan in place for you.

Consultancy

Find the opportunities. Sharpen your ideas and plans. Focus your team.

If you’re feeling your marketing is losing its way, or you’re not sure which customers to reach or how, this is for you. Marketing troubleshooting ‘health checks’ and workshops will get you thinking and put you on the right track.

Find out more >>

Coaching & Mentoring

Get better at marketing, with expert guidance and support.

If you’re a director in need of marketing coaching and training… or a marketing exec or PA who needs a mentor and guide… this is for you. Grow your skills, and develop your thinking and confidence.

Find out more >>

Communications

Get the right message to the right people, in the right way, at the right time.

If you want to promote your business, launch a new product, or communicate better with your staff and customers, this is for you. Website writing, SEO, Google Ads, emailers, newsletters, PR, social media… it’s all here.

Find out more >>

The post Five steps to get to grips with your marketing appeared first on SharpEdge Marketing.

To begin answering the question of whether your marketing is “right” we need to step back and tackle three key questions:

1. What do you expect your marketing to achieve?

Many people respond automatically with the answer “more sales!” – and there’s a certain gung-ho intuitiveness about that. But it’s not the only possible answer to the question. Some companies want to build their brand, to decrease price sensitivity to their product. Others want to use marketing to motivate their staff. Some want to retain their existing customers and increase loyalty. These things can lead to “more sales” – but they also do other things; and there are important differences in the marketing tools you use for these different jobs.
You can’t answer the question about whether you’re doing the “right marketing” until you know what outcomes you’re expecting. You may want to achieve more than one outcome – and one thing might lead to another. Where you start depends on your most pressing business problem.

2. How does marketing relate to your sales process?

It’s amazing how many complex marketing programmes don’t bolt into the core issue of how a business serves its customers and makes sales. When you start to unpick the real process of how you and your customers interact (the customer journey), the “right marketing” which leads and supports that process becomes more apparent.

3. How do your customers want you to engage with them?

At the heart of the “right marketing” is forming a relationship with customers – so your marketing needs to be led by a deep understanding of their needs and expectations. Consider not only your current customers, but also your ideal customers (if not the same)… their attitudes and behaviours, needs, pain points and media habits.

So the answer is, the “right marketing” has a clearly articulated purpose, and a defined role in winning, satisfying and keeping customers.

It also needs to be sustainable, in the right scale for your growth objectives, and affordable.

A marketing review

From the point of view of assessing your current marketing activities, it’s worth considering a marketing review or health check. This examines how effectively and consistently you’re marketing your business.

I offer a full strategic marketing review and plan, or a specific digital marketing health check. These will give you clear, independent answers on how successful your marketing is, along with ideas for how you can improve. Get in touch to find out more. Together we can work through the process of assessing if you’re doing the “right marketing” and find the best way forward.

Consultancy

Find the opportunities. Sharpen your ideas and plans. Focus your team.

If you’re feeling your marketing is losing its way, or you’re not sure which customers to reach or how, this is for you. Marketing troubleshooting ‘health checks’ and workshops will get you thinking and put you on the right track.

Find out more >>

Coaching & Mentoring

Get better at marketing, with expert guidance and support.

If you’re a director in need of marketing coaching and training… or a marketing exec or PA who needs a mentor and guide… this is for you. Grow your skills, and develop your thinking and confidence.

Find out more >>

Communications

Get the right message to the right people, in the right way, at the right time.

If you want to promote your business, launch a new product, or communicate better with your staff and customers, this is for you. Website writing, SEO, Google Ads, emailers, newsletters, PR, social media… it’s all here.

Find out more >>

The post What is the “right marketing”? appeared first on SharpEdge Marketing.

…all too often, businesses start a blog without a firm idea of how this activity fits into their wider organisational strategy. Without a plan to create content that matters you will struggle to ensure posts are relevant and underpin business objectives.

Once you are clear about the role blogging plays in your business’s content marketing strategy, you can start to develop an editorial plan. Coming up with ideas for what to write about in your blog, or film for your vlog, is not always easy. So, if you’re looking for blog/vlog inspiration, here are 52 ideas – enough for one every week (as long as they fit in with your blog’s purpose!).

News

1. News about your business: write about your new office premises, your new logo, any new personnel, awards you’ve won etc.
2. News digest – a round-up of the key news in your industry sector along with a couple of sentences about why you chose to include it and what it means to you. This would work well as a regular blog post.
3. Showcase new machinery or technology your business has invested in and explain how it is benefitting your business and your customers.
4. How do current affairs affect your business? Discuss a newsworthy topic and describe what impact it has on what you do? Try not to be too obvious – Brexit is getting a bit tired now so avoid that topic unless you have something new to add to the discussion.

Your Business

5. Talk about why your business was started; mention key milestones and learning points along the way. You could also mention long-standing customers and suppliers.
6. Describe how you develop new product or service ideas. Outline any processes you use and explain why they work and what, if anything, you would improve.
7. How did your company get its name? What was the thought process? If you had the choice would you keep the name or change it? What other business names do you like and why?
8. What is the biggest challenge your business has faced and how did you overcome it?
9. What are the biggest threats to your business and how are you planning to deal with them?
10. What are your company values? How did you come up with them and why are they important?
11. What makes your business different? What is your unique selling point (USP)? And why is this important?
12. Why are your costs higher/lower than your competitors? What are the considerations when you make pricing decisions?
13. Supplier focus – interview one of your suppliers. What do they provide you with? How long have you worked with them? What makes them special?
14. What is best practice in your industry and how does your company demonstrate this?

Industry sector

15. Myth-busting –what are the biggest misconceptions people have about your business or industry? How can these be overcome?
16. What legislation has the biggest impact on your business? Are there any imminent legislation changes that might affect your business or your customers? What are the key things your customers should be aware of?
17. What are your biggest bugbears about your industry? Why? Ask readers of your blog or your social media followers for theirs and include them in a follow up post.
18. Useful resources list: write a list of useful resources about your industry. Why are they useful?
19. What changes would you like to see in your business sector and why?
20. What are the safety concerns in your sector and how do you reassure customers?
21. Explain acronyms and jargon that are specific to your business or sector. You could run a jargon amnesty with your staff or through your social media platforms to crowdsource ideas and then explain what the terms mean, when and where they are used and how they originated.

People

22. Profile key personnel in your business: what is their role? How long have they worked with you? What is their background? What inspires them? What do they do outside work?
23. Talk about what you and/or the business achieved last week/month. How does this differ to a typical week/month and what made it special?
24. A day in the life: describe what you do during a typical day. What time do you arrive at work? How do you prepare for your day? Who do you meet? How do you measure your success? What do you do at lunchtime? What time do you leave for home? What’s the last thing you do before you leave work?
25. Talk about how aspects of your home life positively impact on your business life, and vice-versa.
26. Describe why you decided to do what you do. Did you fall into your profession or was it something you always dreamed of? What training did you do? Was yours a typical career path? What advice would you give to someone wanting to join your profession or business? If you had to start again, what would you do differently?
27. What questions do children/your mother/your grandma ask about your work? And how do you answer them?
28. What character defects did you have to overcome to become good at what you do? Is there a stereotype for someone who does your job or works in your industry? How well do you match or differ from this?
29. What’s the toughest part of your work and what’s the easiest thing about your work? Why?
30. What would you send to Room 101 and why?
31. Continued Professional Development: what training courses have you been on recently? What have you learnt that your customers or peers might find useful? How do you plan on ensuring you continue to develop professionally?

Customers

32. Client spotlight – do a Q&A with one of your clients. What do they do? Where are they based? How big are they? Who are their customers? How long have you worked with them? What do you provide? What problem does your product or service solve? This could be a regular blog feature.
33. How do you turn an unhappy customer into a happy one? How do you deal with complaints? Can you include an example? What advice would you give to other businesses in dealing with dissatisfied customers?
34. Ask your customers what keeps them awake at night and write up the answers.
35. When and why would you refer a customer or potential customer to someone else?
36. What’s the best suggestion you’ve ever had from a customer and how did you act on it?

Seasonal

37. New year resolutions: talk about your plans for the year or three things you want improve
38. Link to an awareness day/week/month that links to your business. You can find a list of days at: https://www.awarenessdays.co.uk/ For example, World Photo Day is on August 19^th so you could use this to showcase some of the best photographs of your business or products. Or you could use Promotional Products Week in September to talk about what and how you use promotional products in your business.
39. Review of the year: are you where you thought you’d be at the beginning of the year? What went well and why? What didn’t go well and how did you overcome problems? What were the highlights for you? You could also ask staff, customers or suppliers to suggest highlights for this post.
40. Write a list of the year’s most popular blog posts. Include comments and feedback, if appropriate. Mention if anything has changed since the blog post was written.

Networking and Events

41. What industry organisations are you a member of? How does membership benefit the business? How does it benefit customers? How long have you been a member and why did you decide to take up membership?
42. List the top people/organisations you follow on Twitter and explain why you like them.
43. What LinkedIn groups are you a member of? Write a post rounding up your favourite groups and summarising some of the hot topics.
44. Write a list of key exhibitions/shows/seminars or events in your sector. Why are they important? Do you exhibit or attend as a delegate?
45. Talk about events are you going to? What are your expectations? Write a review of your experience and summarise how you or your business benefitted from attending.

CSR

46. What charitable work is your business involved in? Why do you support these charities and how does being charitable benefit your business?
47. Talk about your involvement in the local community: if you sponsor a local sports team, write about them and explain why you sponsor them; if you have a stand at a local show, talk about how you benefit the local community and why it’s important to play an active role in your town/city/village.
48. How is your business working to be more environmentally friendly? What are your top tips for other businesses to be greener?

Inspiration

49. Who inspires you in business and why?
50. What are your favourite quotes or words to live by? Why are they so important to you?
51. Reading list: what are the best business books you’ve read this year? Include a short review of each book along with a few sentences about how the book has impacted you personally.
52. What are the must-read blogs or publications for your industry? Why do you find them useful? Ask readers of the blog to suggest any you’ve missed.

Of course, it’s all very well to have lots of content ideas, but if you struggle to write engaging copy or don’t have the time to commit to writing regular blog posts, then why not outsource? We offer a blog writing service where we turn clients’ ideas into posts and articles. If you’re keen to find out more and to develop your business blog, or any aspect of your digital marketing, get in touch.

We also provide a range of digital marketing services, including a digital marketing health check, outsourced marketing support, help with planning and implementing digital marketing and bespoke training sessions.

Consultancy

Find the opportunities. Sharpen your ideas and plans. Focus your team.

If you’re feeling your marketing is losing its way, or you’re not sure which customers to reach or how, this is for you. Marketing troubleshooting ‘health checks’ and workshops will get you thinking and put you on the right track.

Find out more >>

Coaching & Mentoring

Get better at marketing, with expert guidance and support.

If you’re a director in need of marketing coaching and training… or a marketing exec or PA who needs a mentor and guide… this is for you. Grow your skills, and develop your thinking and confidence.

Find out more >>

Communications

Get the right message to the right people, in the right way, at the right time.

If you want to promote your business, launch a new product, or communicate better with your staff and customers, this is for you. Website writing, SEO, Google Ads, emailers, newsletters, PR, social media… it’s all here.

Find out more >>

The post 52 content ideas for your business blog appeared first on SharpEdge Marketing.

Personally, I love them. I cut my marketing teeth on exhibitions, back in the mid-90s. But even after years of exhibiting and walking the floor at shows around the world, I still get ‘the tingle’ every time I walk into an exhibition hall – from build-up, right until the last minute of the last day. It’s the sense of the unexpected; of all that preparation work coming to a head; of all the opportunities only exhibitions provide. So here’s why I love exhibitions, and my thoughts on how to make the most of them.

Consultancy

Find the opportunities. Sharpen your ideas and plans. Focus your team.

If you’re feeling your marketing is losing its way, or you’re not sure which customers to reach or how, this is for you. Marketing troubleshooting ‘health checks’ and workshops will get you thinking and put you on the right track.

Find out more >>

Coaching & Mentoring

Get better at marketing, with expert guidance and support.

If you’re a director in need of marketing coaching and training… or a marketing exec or PA who needs a mentor and guide… this is for you. Grow your skills, and develop your thinking and confidence.

Find out more >>

Communications

Get the right message to the right people, in the right way, at the right time.

If you want to promote your business, launch a new product, or communicate better with your staff and customers, this is for you. Website writing, SEO, Google Ads, emailers, newsletters, PR, social media… it’s all here.

Find out more >>

The post Exhibitions – seven reasons to love them appeared first on SharpEdge Marketing.

Here are nine ways to help you make the most of the opportunity.

1. Clarify your objectives. Decide what you want to achieve from your e-newsletter and develop a plan to achieve these. Consider whether you want your e-newsletter to raise brand awareness, promote specific products or services, improve customer loyalty, build credibility or increase engagement. Design content and include calls to action that help you achieve these aims.
2. Personalise content. People like being addressed as an individual rather than as part of a mass mail-out. Include the names of your recipients in your data so you are sending a more personal message. Emails sent with personalised subject lines, including either a first name, surname, or another unique identifier such as account number, were 7% more likely to be opened than emails sent with blanket subject lines in 2015, according to Experian.
3. Segment. E-newsletters also enable you to send specific information to particular groups of people. For example, you could send information about a particular branch to subscribers in a specific location or you could highlight a particular offer, event or product to people with a certain job title. So choose content that will resonate with your particular audience.
4. Drive traffic to your website by including hyperlinks to further information on the relevant part of your website. Unlike hard copy leaflets, flyers or newsletters, an e-newsletter enables you to include hyperlinks so readers can connect directly to the relevant part of your website. Rather than include the copy from an entire blog post or product page, summarise the information and invite readers to click through for further detail.
5. Include a call to action. Each article in your e-newsletter should include a clear call to action. What do you want subscribers to do when they have read (or watched, if you include video) your content? Even if you have included a hyperlink to your website in the text, add a button to the bottom of the article to make it clear what you expect them to do. Depending on the objectives of the e-newsletter and the audience, you can either repeat the same call to action, for example, if you are promoting an event and you want people to book, or vary the calls to action, if the newsletter is an update on a variety of activities. In this case, you may invite readers to call you, visit your website, book a place at an event, share something on social media or participate in an online poll.
6. Analyse the data and act on it. If you’re not getting as many opens as you had hoped, look at the subject line of your email and try a different style. And if a particular type of content tends to be more popular than others, act on it and include more of what works in future e-newsletters.
7. Be useful. While an e-newsletter is a great way to get your latest product or service in front of potential customers, your subscribers may be turned off if you arrive in their inbox and appear to be purely about selling them something. Add value to their lives and they’ll be less likely to unsubscribe. So share useful content. Tell stories about how your product has helped others, include testimonials, answer their questions and help solve their problems. Don’t be afraid to curate content from elsewhere that would be helpful to your subscribers.
8. Reinforce your brand. Ensure your brand values, colours, logos and tone of voice are integral to your e-newsletter. Use a template to ensure a consistent look and feel to your e-newsletter. This will help raise brand awareness and ensure customers (current or potential) can easily recognise you and recommend you. Make the most of the opportunity to tell your story and expand on what makes you special, but don’t forget to focus on how this benefits your readers.
9. Post consistently. Let subscribers know when and how often you will be sending your e-newsletter. Set a regular schedule and stick to it. You want to be sending an e-newsletter regularly enough that it’s not a surprise, but not too often that it becomes an annoyance. Put your content in a similar order for each e-newsletter so your readers know where they can expect to find particular information.

If you’d like some help in creating your e-newsletters or if you need more marketing support, why not take a look at our marketing communications services, or outsourced marketing support.

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For smaller or newer companies, it can be difficult to build credibility, while for more established and larger players, reputation management can sometimes be a challenge.

Credibility is about trust. And to build trust, you need to be clear about who you are and what you stand for so you can represent your organisation consistently.

So, before you dive into the list of credibility boosting tips below, take some time to define your vision, mission and values. Then, make sure that everything you and your business do is aligned with them. If you’re not certain who or what you are, you can guarantee your customers (or potential customers) will view you with scepticism and suspicion.

Some of the values you might like to think about embedding across your business, like being honest, sincere, professional, reliable and easy to reach, are also the basics for developing your credibility.

You may also find it useful to look at the trust matrix developed by Peter Scholtes, author of The Leader’s Handbook. His trust matrix is based on two factors: aptitude (how capable you are at delivering what you promised when you promised it) and benevolence (demonstrating that you have your customers’ best interests at heart by perhaps going above and beyond and showing that you care).

Consultancy

Find the opportunities. Sharpen your ideas and plans. Focus your team.

If you’re feeling your marketing is losing its way, or you’re not sure which customers to reach or how, this is for you. Marketing troubleshooting ‘health checks’ and workshops will get you thinking and put you on the right track.

Find out more >>

Coaching & Mentoring

Get better at marketing, with expert guidance and support.

If you’re a director in need of marketing coaching and training… or a marketing exec or PA who needs a mentor and guide… this is for you. Grow your skills, and develop your thinking and confidence.

Find out more >>

Communications

Get the right message to the right people, in the right way, at the right time.

If you want to promote your business, launch a new product, or communicate better with your staff and customers, this is for you. Website writing, SEO, Google Ads, emailers, newsletters, PR, social media… it’s all here.

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