Does print still have a place in a world of digital and mobile marketing?

There is no doubt that we all struggle to find the best way to market our businesses with many small companies moving away from traditional print marketing as a way to cut costs and lessen their impact on the carbon footprint.

During these tough economic times companies are tightening their financial belts and turning their attention solely to digital and content marketing to create awareness and promote sales.

That said, printed collateral still has its place in certain businesses serving a specific demographic that appreciate and need a tangible representation of their product or service.

Certain sectors, such as retail, still rely on this tangible form of marketing to promote their products but manage to balance this with advertising across the relevant digital channels.

Whether you’re a superbrand or a one man band, getting the right marketing mix is critical and whilst content marketing is a hot topic at the moment, traditional print marketing can still be used effectively to drive customers online.  Here’s three tried and tested ways marketers use to reach specific target audiences:

Effective business networking – cards and flyers

Making a lasting impression when marketing face-to-face by handing someone a card or flyer is more likely to make your message stick. And, there’s some really clever designs and techniques out there which will give you an edge

The tangible, physical nature of print will help you network within your chosen circles allowing you to target local businesses, meet new prospects and exchange ideas much more effectively.

Smart targeting – direct mail

We all still love to receive a physical card with a special message in the post, so a personalized well-crafted campaign communicating special offers, discounts or events will show that you value your customer and appreciate their business.

If you schedule these messages carefully and sparingly, personally engaging your target audience, you’ll avoid being regarded as junk mail; if the message is relevant to the recipient, they are much more likely to respond.

Testing alternative media – press advertising

The most effective marketing plan is likely to cover different types of media to communicate business propositions and messages.

Whilst blogs and social networking is one effective way of driving traffic to your website, different customer types respond to very different types of media.  An older, more mature demographic may not surf the web as much as maybe reading a magazine or a newspaper.

A well designed advertisement in a relevant publication appealing to your specific target audience could be an effective alternative way to communicate with your customers.

So whilst traditional marketing methods seem to no longer curry favour, and with marketing budgets constantly being slashed, it’s all too easy to pass up on print.

I think there’s certainly still room for print marketing alongside newer digital marketing techniques, it’s all about making sure you don’t lose sight of your P’s!

Christine Davey
@DaveyMarketing

If you’d like some help on creating effective printed communications, Tweet me or call me on 01273 772033 today.

Why should you outsource your Marketing?

How many times this week have you said ‘I haven’t got time to do any marketing!’  As a freelancer, I’m just as guilty and I know only too well that when you’re pushed for time – seeing to clients, building relationships and managing your staff – your marketing inevitably gets pushed to the back burner, especially when times are hard and budgets are stretched.

It is already common practice  to outsource your accounting team, customer service, and many other facets of business which you do to save overheads, commitment, recruiting time, training time, and the expense of employing full-time staff.

So why do you continue to leave your marketing to chance in the belief that a couple of tweets a day and a few likes on Facebook will be sufficient to create brand awareness and generate leads?

The reality is that investing in your marketing at times like this can in fact generate a huge return on sales and, when time is tight, outsourced help from a marketing professional can provide additional support from planning what to do, to making it happen; freeing up your time so you are able to concentrate on other areas of your business.

With the current climate pushing many small businesses to keep costs down and re-prioritise workloads, outsourcing can be a cost effective and efficient way to make sure your marketing is working.

Get the right marketing skills you need, when you need them

As a small business you often find yourself being a jack-of-all-trades, juggling different projects or delegating marketing projects to other members of your team who don’t have any marketing expertise.  Employing an experienced marketer full time to implement each aspect of your marketing plan can be costly to maintain in-house and by outsourcing specific tasks, gives you the opportunity to focus on other aspects of your business without the cost of employing a full time marketing professional.

Taking on the promotion for your own business can be daunting if you have little or no marketing expertise.  Sourcing an expert can help develop and implement your marketing plan and bring fresh creativity, new ideas and a completely different perspective.  They won’t be afraid to push the boundaries and show you what will work for your product.

It’s cost effective and time efficient

Whether you’re a one man band or a big brand, saving time and money is key to running a successful business.  By having top level marketing experts on hand whenever you need them, you’ll be avoiding the hidden costs of employing staff such as sick pay, office overheads and holidays.

For instance, if you have a marketing campaign planned to run over a specific period, you won’t be paying an in-house marketer during the times you don’t have marketing planned, thus saving both time and money.

You get personal, professional expert help

The right outsourced marketer will have a wealth of experience in a diverse range of markets.  They will be able to advise you on the best marketing techniques to suit your business and help to get the right messages to the right people at the right time.

By creating timelines, and delivering weekly or monthly reports on the project effectiveness you will be fully in control of your investment, so you know exactly where you are every step of the way.

Christine Davey
Christine Davey Marketing, Brighton

If you’d like to outsource any aspect of your own marketing,  Tweet me, contact me here or call me for an initial chat on 01273 772033 today.

The power of colour in marketing

Every year around this time, I relish the fact that the colours in nature are becoming more pronounced as the season progresses into Summer.  Seeing these signs of new growth emerging each day, brings to mind the importance of colour when thinking about marketing.

Whether we’re seeking to stimulate people’s appetites or create a sense of trust, colour sends a specific message, not only when designing our promotional materials, but also the brand itself.

Our minds are programmed to respond to colour, offering an instantaneous method for conveying meaning and message without words.

Research shows that 60% of the time, people decide if they are attracted or not to a message based on colour alone.   Many of the most recognizable brands rely on colour as a key factor in their instant recognition, increasing brand recognition by up to 80 percent.

What does your brand colour say about your business?

Image Credit: The Logo Company

Christine Davey
@DaveyMarketing

If you’d like some help and advice on your branding and marketing, Tweet me or call me on 01273 772033 today.

7 elements to creating an effective Marketing Plan

What is marketing? Why is it important to you as a small business?

In its most basic definition, marketing is everything you do to place your products or services in the hands of potential customers. Every time you speak about your business, you are involved in marketing.
Planning is key to help you identify your ideal target market and a marketing strategy will help you focus on the different ways you can communicate with your customers and target the ones that will create most sales.

You’ll need to look at each of the following areas in order to create a comprehensive framework to develop an effective marketing plan:

Product
Simply, what your business offers: this covers the combination of goods and services that your business offers.
Place
This refers to how your customer accesses your product or service; it should be convenient for the client at all times. This could be your business premises, shop or online presence.
Price
What approach will you take to pricing your product? Price communicates a lot about a brand. It is a key factor in the marketing mix – too low may put off the target market, too high will carry a high client service expectation which may be tough to fulfil.
Promotion
Refers to how you communicate with your customers. The objective of the promotional mix is to communicate what the company does and what it offers, to the right people at the right time, in order to acquire and retain customers.
People
All people who come into contact with a potential customer are part of your marketing; they can have a profound effect on customer satisfaction. Your staff or collaborative partners are ambassadors for your business.
Process
The processes you use in the day-to-day operation of your business ensuring that enquiries and orders are effectively managed.
Physical Evidence
This is the evidence you can provide to show you can do what you claim you can do. Asking for feedback from satisfied customers to underpin your expertise and publishing it for potential customers to refer to.

Christine Davey
@DaveyMarketing

If you’d like some help with planning your own marketing Tweet me or call me on 01273 772033 for an initial chat over a coffee!

Photoshoot: a day in a professional photography studio. . .

As a marketing professional, images play an important part in creating an impact; whether it’s making sure you have consistent, good quality representation of your products or you need to project a warm and welcoming impression, good creative imagery plays a key part in your marketing activities.

My own bio images were starting to look a little tired and whilst representative of my personality, I felt it was time to create a better impression by investing some time and money in a professional photoshoot.

Having met Ted Davis on several occasions over the years and collaborating with him on several marketing projects I had never actually experienced an actual photoshoot with Ted, who is a fabulous professional photographer based in Hove.

Studio 323 is located in historic Palmeira Square, overlooking the beautiful gardens and the sea and occupies a space that was once the first floor drawing room of a large Victorian house.

The studio provides 500 square feet of space, 14 foot ceilings, and is equipped with full blackout facilities for studio photography or generous daylight for naturally lit work.  The view from the windows of this magnificent space provides the perfect backdrop and setting for many types of photoshoot.

Here are some of the resulting images Ted created for me. . . .

Christine Davey
@DaveyMarketing

If you’d like some help implementing your marketing activities Tweet me or call me on 01273 772033 for an initial chat over a coffee!

Will Social Media replace Email?

I participated recently in a very interesting debate on a LinkedIn forum, which asked this very question. Predictably it generated a lot of debate, specifically from those specialising in Email Marketing who were fiercely defending their products!

At the moment, Social Media is nowhere near replacing Email, but continues to be complementary – an important tool in your marketing kit bag, so to speak.  Rather than being completely replaced, I think it will evolve to work even harder to integrate with Social Media.

Email has been around since the 1980’s and whilst it isn’t as permanent as a postal address – another form of communication which hasn’t died out altogether – consumers don’t tend to change email addresses; once you have a customer’s email address, you have a fairly assured way of getting a message in front of that customer.

Consumers do, however, migrate social media.  Remember when MySpace was the most popular social media site?  Then, when Facebook arrived and became more popular it seemed unthinkable that anything would take over FB’s position. Then up popped Google Plus, which has taken a big slice of the pie and still seems to be gaining momentum and I’m sure there will continue to be more contenders in years to come!

So, whilst social media evolves as a place to communicate with your customers in real time, keep up with news and enhance knowledge, Email continues to provide a more personal connection with more opportunities to repeatedly communicate with direct targeted messages.

But who knows?  Twenty years ago, who could have predicted the demise of the fax machine?  Maybe in another twenty years, we’ll be reminiscing the demise of email. . . .

Christine Davey
@DaveyMarketing

If you’d like some help on putting together some email marketing campaigns Tweet me or call me on 01273 772033 to set up an initial chat over a coffee!

How hard does your logo work?

I was reading a really interesting article recently, which was entitled ‘Our logo looks like underpants’ which illustrated the difficulties facing global brands when different cultures interpret particular visual stimuli in very different ways.

It got me thinking about logos and how we need to think about how hard our logo works – like anything in your business, your logo has a job to do; it not only needs to be distinctive but it needs to be memorable too.

Try to look different from your competitors – don’t blend in, stand out!  And, you want people to recognise it.  In order to build customer loyalty, recognition is the first step to establishing you as the ‘go to’ company.

Have you ever wondered what messages some of the famous brands are sending with their logos.  Although they’re mostly American, this video demonstrates brand messaging through the eyes of a five year-old.  Shown by her designer-dad, these were her immediate responses.

Christine Davey
@DaveyMarketing

If you’d like some help on reviewing your brand or developing a new logo Tweet me or call me on 01273 772033 to set up an initial chat over a coffee!

Is Direct Marketing ‘old fashioned’ or just under-used?

I read an article today which cited some traditional marketing methods as ‘old fashioned’, specifically print marketing such as newsletters and branded promotional products.

I tweeted the article in agreement that, whilst fewer businesses are using the more traditional direct marketing methods, they could still achieve excellent results if they included them as part of their marketing mix.  If the message is relevant and targeted, a well designed piece of direct marketing can also translate perfectly online.

The most effective marketing plan is likely to cover different types of media to communicate specific business propositions and messages and Direct Marketing still has its’ place as a tangible representation of your product or service.

Still considered as one of the cheapest, yet most effective ways to create customers, Direct Mail generates a response rate of around 4%, whilst the cost per lead is generally the same or comparable to the cost of email marketing.  Customers created through direct mail are also more likely to perform repeat business.

Direct Mail is a great medium to drive your customers online to purchase your product or service, with the added benefit of tracking sales and collecting data through simple coding methods such as a promo code or a QR (quick response) code.

Promotional products are also still a very popular medium for businesses to gain brand recognition.  Physical items such as pens, calendars and sticky memo pads, printed with your logo and web address, are great reminders for potential customers who might have a need for your products or services; easily able to recall your business whilst sitting at their desk!

Even better results can be achieved by including some of these traditional methods in your marketing mix, especially as fewer businesses are using them you stand a better chance of being noticed.

Old fashioned, or just under-used, direct marketing will never die!

Christine Davey
@DaveyMarketing

If you’d like some help on producing print marketing Tweet me or call me on 01273 772033 today.

5 Ways to gain Brand Recognition

It doesn’t matter what kind of business you have, whether you are a big corporate brand or a one-man band – in order to be successful your brand needs to stand out from the crowd.  Your ultimate goal is to have your target market think only of you when they are ready to buy.

Gaining brand recognition isn’t just about a fancy logo – it’s all about making sure that whenever your target market associates with a product, service or organisation they remember something distinctive about you which will jog their memory.  This could be a logo, a colour, some kind of packaging or just memorable customer service; something that triggers associations in their minds and sets you apart from your competition.
Here are 5 ways you can easily gain brand recognition

1.  Exceptional Customer Service
Develop a reason customers will trust you enough to come back time and time again and recommend you to others.  Today’s customers are much more discernible; looking for guarantees, prompt turnaround time and first-class after sales service.  In fact, customer service can often be the major factor in the final buying decision.
2. Be Personable
Create a persona to engender trust; become the go-to person/company in your field of expertise.  Your target market needs to accept you as the person behind the brand before they will buy what you are are offering.
3. Generate Awareness
Create a strategy to remind your target market that you are actively doing business; make them aware of what you offer by keeping your brand top of mind, communicating with your target market both online and offline with a consistent, objective message. Fail to do this and your target market will forget about you and go somewhere else!
4. Add Value
Exceed people’s expectations – share your expertise through a series of touchpoints; become the well-respected ‘go-to’ person in your field through blogging, white papers & webinars.
5. Be Consistent in your Branding
Be instantly recognisable to your target market by using the same imaging and logo styling in all forms of communication.  Brand consistency is the key to brand recognition and one which is strictly adhered to by top successful brands.  It seems an obvious one, but it is very often overlooked.

What other ways could you help your target market recognise and remember you and your brand?  Why not take the time to develop a marketing checklist and develop a strategy you can easily implement to ensure your brand stands out from the crowd?

Christine Davey
@DaveyMarketing

If you’d like some help on managing your marketing, Tweet me or call me on 01273 772033 today.

3 reasons to consider outsourcing your marketing

When you’re pushed for time – seeing to clients, building relationships and managing your staff – your marketing inevitably gets pushed on the back burner, especially in times of recession when budgets are stretched.

The reality is that investing in your marketing at times like this can in fact generate a huge return on sales and when time is tight, outsourced help from a marketing professional can provide additional support from planning what to do, to making it happen; freeing up your time so you are able to concentrate on other areas of your business.

With the current climate pushing many small businesses to keep costs down and re-prioritise workloads, outsourcing can be a cost effective and efficient way to make sure your marketing is working.

1. You get the right marketing skills you need, when you need them

As a small business you often find yourself being a jack-of-all-trades, juggling different projects or delegating marketing projects to other members of your team who don’t have any marketing expertise.  Employing an experienced marketer full time to implement each aspect of your marketing plan can be costly to maintain in-house and by outsourcing specific tasks, gives you the opportunity to focus on other aspects of your business without the cost of employing a full time marketing professional.

Taking on the promotion for your own business can be daunting if you have little or no marketing expertise.  Sourcing an expert can help develop and implement your marketing plan and bring fresh creativity, new ideas and a completely different perspective.  They won’t be afraid to push the boundaries and show you what will work for your product.

2. It’s cost effective and time efficient

Whether you’re a one man band or a big brand, saving time and money is key to running a successful business.  By having top level marketing experts on hand whenever you need them, you’ll be avoiding the hidden costs of employing staff such as sick pay, office overheads and holidays.

For instance, if you have a marketing campaign planned to run over a specific period, you won’t be paying an in-house marketer during the times you don’t have marketing planned, thus saving both time and money.

3. You get personal, professional expert help

The right outsourced marketer will have a wealth of experience in a diverse range of markets.  They will be able to advise you on the best marketing techniques to suit your business and help to get the right messages to the right people at the right time.

By creating timelines, and delivering weekly or monthly reports on the project effectiveness you will be fully in control of your investment, so you know exactly where you are every step of the way.

Christine Davey
Davey Marketing

If you’d like to outsource any aspect of your own marketing,  Tweet me, contact me here or call me for an initial chat on 01273 772033 today.