Ten top tips for SME marketing
The Chartered Institute of Marketing asked me to knock something up which could be a hand out or expanded into a presentation (or even a rant :-):-)!!)Hope these are of help to someone if only as a reminder there is marketing communications and there is business and marketing strategy. The two are complimentary branches of marketing but need to work together and not in isolation.
1. Each time you are thinking of undertaking a piece of marketing communications, don’t allow your self to do it until you have identified two subsequent communication activities to under take. The main reason most marketing communications issued by SMEs generate disappointing results is that they are one off tactical exercises, not part of a sustained campaign, where core messages are delivered over a period of time through a selection of different media.
2. Understand the type of business you are trying to win when you spend money on marketing communications and be clear about the profits that winning one order will generate. Directly relate this figure to your cost of communications to measure the success rate you need and the ultimate return on investment.
3. How dull is your website? When it has been visited once, what is the motivation for visitors to return? Make your website an interactive communications tool.
4. It’s easy to sit in our offices and factories staring at the four walls. Spend some time drawing up a list of people you know or people you ought to know who could and should be referrers to, and advocates for, your business. Set a target to meet up with at least two of these people a month.
5. Because you are a great butcher, baker or candlestick maker and you know your sector and your organisation inside out, does not mean that you are the best person to write about it. It’s astounding how many good looking pieces of marketing communication are ruined by inadequate copywriting! Use a professional.
6. Following on from this, particularly if you are sceptical about someone else writing your copy, review all your current literature to see how much it talks about you and your company and how little it talks to customers about themselves. Consider changing your messages to make them about customers and not about you.
7. Have a staff meeting. Sit down informally with all your employees and ask them what they would like and dislike about the business if they were a customer. What they perceive today, your customers will perceive tomorrow. Let them pretend to be the owner for an hour. What are the first three things they would do to make the business better for customers? Internal marketing is undervalued in SMEs; the feedback may just surprise you!
8. Review your customer sales for the last 12 months to see which have been your biggest customers, but evaluate their spending with you against their total spend on the type of products and services you can provide. Use the findings to target customers where it is entirely reasonable for you to challenge for a much greater share of their spending over the next 12 moths.
9. Review your business plan. A plan doesn’t have to be a forty page document full of spreadsheets and strategy; it may just be a list of key objectives with a series of simple tasks and milestones. But whatever form it takes, you should have one to drive the day to day activity of your business, which can so often be driven by whatever ‘crisis’ arises first on any particular day!.
10. Go to a trade or industry exhibition with relevance to your sector. Remind yourself what a great sector it is to work in and meet many of the other good people, just like your self, who work in it. Listen to some seminars or workshops and hear other people’s perspective on the issues that you are facing every day. It’s an uplifting and useful business exercise particularly for those of us within SMEs who can end up working in a confined bubble. If it doesn't motivate you seriously consider changing direction!
1. Each time you are thinking of undertaking a piece of marketing communications, don’t allow your self to do it until you have identified two subsequent communication activities to under take. The main reason most marketing communications issued by SMEs generate disappointing results is that they are one off tactical exercises, not part of a sustained campaign, where core messages are delivered over a period of time through a selection of different media.
2. Understand the type of business you are trying to win when you spend money on marketing communications and be clear about the profits that winning one order will generate. Directly relate this figure to your cost of communications to measure the success rate you need and the ultimate return on investment.
3. How dull is your website? When it has been visited once, what is the motivation for visitors to return? Make your website an interactive communications tool.
4. It’s easy to sit in our offices and factories staring at the four walls. Spend some time drawing up a list of people you know or people you ought to know who could and should be referrers to, and advocates for, your business. Set a target to meet up with at least two of these people a month.
5. Because you are a great butcher, baker or candlestick maker and you know your sector and your organisation inside out, does not mean that you are the best person to write about it. It’s astounding how many good looking pieces of marketing communication are ruined by inadequate copywriting! Use a professional.
6. Following on from this, particularly if you are sceptical about someone else writing your copy, review all your current literature to see how much it talks about you and your company and how little it talks to customers about themselves. Consider changing your messages to make them about customers and not about you.
7. Have a staff meeting. Sit down informally with all your employees and ask them what they would like and dislike about the business if they were a customer. What they perceive today, your customers will perceive tomorrow. Let them pretend to be the owner for an hour. What are the first three things they would do to make the business better for customers? Internal marketing is undervalued in SMEs; the feedback may just surprise you!
8. Review your customer sales for the last 12 months to see which have been your biggest customers, but evaluate their spending with you against their total spend on the type of products and services you can provide. Use the findings to target customers where it is entirely reasonable for you to challenge for a much greater share of their spending over the next 12 moths.
9. Review your business plan. A plan doesn’t have to be a forty page document full of spreadsheets and strategy; it may just be a list of key objectives with a series of simple tasks and milestones. But whatever form it takes, you should have one to drive the day to day activity of your business, which can so often be driven by whatever ‘crisis’ arises first on any particular day!.
10. Go to a trade or industry exhibition with relevance to your sector. Remind yourself what a great sector it is to work in and meet many of the other good people, just like your self, who work in it. Listen to some seminars or workshops and hear other people’s perspective on the issues that you are facing every day. It’s an uplifting and useful business exercise particularly for those of us within SMEs who can end up working in a confined bubble. If it doesn't motivate you seriously consider changing direction!
Labels: Marketing
posted by Marketer at
9/07/2006 02:17:00 PM
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