Marketing Consultancy

Brexit: The fall and rise of effective communications

2016-06-28T16:21:00.000+01:00

Brexit: A lesson in marketing communications

There's probably not a corner of the world where the word 'Brexit' is now unfamiliar. As Europe and the UK now come to terms with the vote to leave the European Union one thing is abundently clear - the effective (and ineffective) use of communications to the voters is a fundamental reason we are now where we are.

Arguably the 'leave' voters won because of a lack of clear messages coming from the 'remain' camp. Also the 'leave' campaign took a far more agressive approach in regards to media exposure and hence recieved more air time and hence reached more of the voting public. Couple with this the empty words from the 'remain' camp in terms of any committment and the outcome was inevitable.

From a marketing perspective what are the lessons we can learn from this as we continue to develop marketing for our clients or our company...

1. Know your target audience and understand their needs.
2. Make sure you comminicate clearly and in a tone they are receptive too.
3. Continue to communicate to your audience with tangible important and specific information.
4. Encourage engagement with your audience that your audience will value.
5. Be clear why you are communicating with them.

The most valuable item in your marketing arsenal is knowing your target audience almost as well as they know themselves. Once you understand them the maximising of your messages to reach them - and be successful follows very easily.

For more information on marketing visit www.neiltomlinsonmarketing.com

Don't believe in just numbers!

2015-10-22T17:19:00.000+01:00

Statistics, reports and numerical analysis are not always the answer to "Is my Marketing working for me?"

As mentioned before and if you view my website www.neiltomlinsonmarketing.com you'll see there are many different methods and channels to market through. A large number of these will be able to offer you information on how your channel activity performs whether it be 'unique visitors' to your website, 'views' to your YouTube video(s), 'Likes' on your Facebook page etc etc, you get the point I'm making, right?

However it can become easy, and quite natural to have your nose in the stats and loose sight of your real measures of success.

Two recent real life examples spring to mind...

I met a prospective new client recently and they gushed at me about how they had spent months refining their website to make it as SEO friendly as possible - this person went on to demonstrate this by putting in a (quite niche) search term that they had that, hey wouldn't you know it got them top of Google!

Another personal friend of mine who is a property developer was thrilled to bits to have taken the initiative to take up some Facebook advertising and was very proud to show my how many more people had now looked at this particular property he was trying to let.

In both instances I asked the fairly obvious question, "but has this activity you've done increased enquiries to your business from your website / have you now Let your property?"

At this point there was an awkward silence and then a rather quiet answer of "No".

The point I am trying to make here is that you really shouldn't get hung up entirely on reports on performance from your activity without keeping a grip on what you're actually trying to achieve. After all who's to say the stats you are getting are even real and accurate?

Getting anti social with your marketing

2014-10-07T14:09:00.000+01:00

Understanding your audience is the key to good marketing.

I was recently asked by a major retail chain to review their marketing activity. The reason they asked for help was that they weren't being successful with in particular their social media strategy.

Its easy to assume that to be effective with your marketing you should embrace all that is new out there in regards to marketing tactics - never has this been more apparent than with the development of Social Media. Companies can be led to believe that they may be considered odd or out of date if they aren't performing (actively) on Facebook, Twitter, Google +, YouTube, Instagram, etc etc etc. This is a dangerous road to pursue if you're unsure if its really going to make a difference to your business as there are many many new social media avenues coming on line all the time and this can end up a full time activity - which is fine if this is what your audience want.

However in the instance of this major retail chain their audience were in particular retirees aged over 60. When you understand the audience and what they are receptive too you can then fine tune your marketing accordingly. Needless to say that Facebook promotions and Twitter exclusives were under performing to this customer base.

Seems obvious right? And it is, if you stay in touch with who your audience are.

The resultant recommendation was to tone down the activity on Social Media and boost local promotions in local papers etc - the outcome was a significant increase in this retail chains marketing tactics. Social Media is not quite dead and buried, but its priority is now less until the audience become more Social Media responsive.

For more information on making your marketing work right for you contact neiltomlinsonmarketing.com

Marketing your business. First impressions count!

2014-04-02T12:14:00.001+01:00

Would you present to an audience naked?

It still amazes me that companies are prepared to spend good money ensuring their website looks great, their business stationary is professional, their staff are suitably trained and then they let themselves down with what is arguably THE MOST IMPORTANT aspect of meeting future clients for the first time; their presentation.

For years anyone who can operate a mouse has been able to knock together an in-house presentation, whether it be PowerPoint or Keynote. Arguably anyone can also equally get access and 'have a go' at 'knocking together' a website or a brochure too but companies don't accept this is good professional protocol - so why tolerate this with presentations?

Audiences are now sick of being shot to death with bullet points and going for rides on every animation and transition you can load into the presentation. After all audiences are exposed to many other dynamic forms of media such as video, websites, and even well produced literature so why would they expect to tolerate a poorly produced presentation. With a poor presentation your audience aren't going to take you seriously - you might as well present to your audience naked.

Fear not worried professionals. There has now been for a number of years a growing trend with savvy companies to out source the design of their presentations to specialists in producing professional presentations. This can still result in PowerPoint, Keynote or even new forms of presentation styles such as Prezi - but the execution in which ever of these mediums best suits you is now at an accepted industry standard to equal the standards currently expected of websites.

Add to this the experience these presentation designers have, i.e. producing hundreds of presentations for all manner of organisations around the world - consider that experience and then consider what they can bring to your presentation which you may not currently see.

Perhaps now is the time to re-examine your current presentations and decide whether you should have it designed professionally - because if you don't, maybe your competition will!

For more advice and information on marketing and presentations visit www.neiltomlinsonmarketing.com

Marketing Strategy. When is it WRONG to target your CUSTOMERS?

2013-10-16T12:04:00.000+01:00

Are you pointing your marketing in the right direction?

It may seem natural to think that when developing your marketing strategy you should automatically focus on targeting your immediate customers. However in some instances your rewards and efforts for marketing may be better spent directing it elsewhere which, in the end will generate more success.

Here's a recent example of how redirecting your marketing can deliver more results.

I was asked by a not-for-profit organisation to review their marketing strategy and its effectiveness. Previously this organisation had been marketing directly to its kindred companies and its peer groups - this would seem a natural presumption as the organisation worked in a very specialized area and therefore their messages were very relevant to this particular sector.

However the take up from their marketing was not proving effective, hence their call for help.

In reviewing their marketing and spending time understanding who their customers were and what were their motivations I proposed that the marketing strategy be realigned to a new target - that of the customers customer. By targeting this sector and not marketing directly the messages from this organisation were pitched in a relevant manner and most importantly the benefits of taking action to support.

The outcome. Pressure was brought on the immediate customer (from their customer) to change and hence the marketing is now much more effective.

Sounds obvious right? Sometimes an organisation is just too close to their business to see the 'wood from the trees' and you need a professional set of (marketing) eyes to take a fresh look.

For more information on using a professional qualified marketing consultant who has won 8 awards for marketing, (with 3 further awards pending) please visit www.neiltomlinsonmarketing.com

What makes a good logo?

2013-08-01T09:05:00.000+01:00

Creating a business or new brand will generally require a logo, I will avoid mixing the references between what is a logo and what is a brand (i'll discuss that in a future post). Here I am simply referring to the graphical device which will be representing said business, product or service that will appear on any external or internal communications you may execute.

When considering a logo you will need to consider all the variations that it is going to be used for, the various sizes it will appear in (and still remain legible), how it will appear in black and white (if for example someone photocopies a document with it on), how it will appear in CMYK, RGB, what is its equivalent RAL colour if you are going to have a product produced in the same colour(s). Should you opt for it always being printed as a special colour (this will ensure colour consistency - but is more expensive), is the product going to be used outside - if so some colours are more prone to bleaching or dis-colouration in the sun.

All this before you even get on to what colours are most welcoming to your audience, and all the other non-quantifiable (but still important) considerations.

Add in the extra thought of do you want to have a text strap line under your logo and if so should this be translated for other world regions etc and before long you will be thinking "Why is this so complicated?" - the answer is "It doesn't have to be - you can employ a professional marketing consultant who will manage and execute this whole process for you or you can try yourself to consider all the various scenarios - but risk getting it wrong!".

www.neiltomlinsonmarketing.com