Better Marketing Results

Did you know that more often it is the things that you may not be doing that will have a much greater impact on your business growth than those that you do? These are areas that I have found as a business consultant as the most prevalent in holding back the growth of small companies:

• Understanding your Customer Market
• Adequate Planning
• Managing Cash Flow
• Operating a Marketing and Sales Development Process
• Targeted Marketing Campaigns and Programs

What do you think? In your own business situation have you faced these issues or other more significant challenges? Share with us your views and expereinces.

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Email marketing is one of the most cost effective communications mediums when used properly to add value and build relationships with your recipients. Here are the five steps to follow in building an effective email marketing program:

One: Define your business objective

You need to be absolutely clear about what you want to achieve.

Two: Build your email list

Put a plan in place to start growing your list.

Three: Prepare your message

Plan ahead and spend most ofyour effort on the message you want to get to the recipient and whataction will result from it.  Follow the AIDA guide;attract the Attention of the reader, generate their Interest, create aDesire for the reader to act and provide them with a call to Action.

Four: Test and test again

Test for open rates with different email subject lines andtest click thru rates for different call to actions.  Once you have theemail that best performs send it to your target list.

Five: Measure and track your results

Use your email marketing analysis tools to measure the resultsof your effort versus the objectives you have set for the emailmarketing campaign.

Share with us your views on how you have used email marketing to promote your business - what works and what does not work.

[Read the complete article]

Some of our readers will note that in landscape mode tablets and smart phones can accommodate websites designed for desktop computers as these devices are fully capable of the screen resolutions that match the desktop.  However, I don't think these are the same! Web content will appear so much smaller and will almost be unreadable without zooming with your two fingers to expand the view.

With desktop computers we use mouse clicks and keyboards while for tablets and smart phones we use “finger sweeps” and on-screen touch keyboards.

It is a completely different user experience for the web visitor that I am sure you will all agree.

What do you think? If your business has implemented optimised web templates for tablets and smart phones, what were the drivers that were considered to making this a priority for your online web business presence?

QR codes can be used to increase the response rate of your marketing campaigns exponentially.

They are quick and very easy quick to use.  Use your smart phone to simply point and scan.  

What are some of the benefits for using QR codes with your marketing?

• Extremely quick responses and conversions for traditional offline marketing
• You are able to track responses easily
• Leverage on social networks to reach out to new customers
• Use premium advertising and marketing space effectively
• QR codes are so easy to share

What is your own experience with QR Codes?  Have you been a recipient of a direct response piece using QR Codes for the 'Call to Action? Did you use it? What was your impression?

Or perhaps, you have used QR Codes with your own marketing campaign? How did it go? Were the results to your satisfaction?

At a recent small networking business group (SBNG) breakfast meeting, we discussed the challenges in marketing and what were their successful experiences in reach out to their target markets.  Here is the list complied from the meeting:

• Face to Face meetings (Personal Networking & Selling)
• Understanding exactly who is your target market/customer (targeting potential customers)
• Using a system to generate a prospecting funnel and manage the conversion process
• Testing marketing first before bulk roll-out of the campaign
• Having the right attitude toward communications with your prospective customers - helping instead of selling
• Target your own customer database using RFM segmentation (define)
• Market & sell your benefits not features (how) or use an Objectives-Benefits-Features (define) chart
• Use marketing mediums that your customers use not what you are comfortable with.

What did you think? What is your own experiences with successful marketing?

Many businesses neglect this very valuable asset - your own in-house database. Why? Most think it is too time-consuming to keep updated or simple fail to realize the potential goldmine from using and maintaining their database.

You may have heard of the marketing phrase “Content is King”, however, you may not have heard that the “Database is Queen”!

Your database must be viewed as a valuable resource asset. It is a potent source for marketing intelligence and a powerful tool for building relevance while nurturing relationships.

To make the most from your database you must be able to answer these five questions:

1. What is your database objective?
2. What information is available?
3. How can the information be captured?
4. How can you use the information?
5. What is the best way to segment your database?

What do you think? Have any of you taken the time to segment your database to achieve better marketing results?

View my presentation titled "Why your database should be your best friend" at the recent Email Marketing Summit Australia EMSA 2010 held at the Art Gallery of NSW in Sydney.

We can easily observe that people love and are incredibly engaged with interesting web videos.

We can harness the exceptional persuasive power of videos with videothat is benefit-oriented and with real entertainment value.

Web video that is entertaining and relevant to the audience is most likely to be shared with their own network of business colleagues and friends using social media like FaceBook and Twitter.

What is your view and your own experiences with using video to engage with your own audience?

You would have heard so many marketing experts telling everyone to use socialmedia as part of their promotional marketing mix. The Internet is flooded withinformation on using FaceBook, Twitter and other social media sites.  Numerousarticles have been written on how using social media can help promote your brandimage and how it can generate web traffic for your main businesswebsite.

Keep in mind that that social media is a marketing tool and itis only effective when used properly to promote your business. The keyquestion for a business is “How is social media harnessed to generate realrevenue and customers?”

Here are the 7 Business Development Marketing Tips for using Social Media: [Read complete article]

1. Go where your customers are and not where you are comfortable
2. Engage and interact
3. Research your competitors’ activities
4. Release offers and programs that are exclusive to your social media channels
5. Social media participation requires authenticity and transparency
6. Look for value opportunities in selling through social media
7. Always test and refine based on results generated

Social media programs as a marketing channel are not exempt from testing and refining your messages and offers. You must make the effort to test, gather results and analyse how it can be improved before launching the program to the entire channel.

Apply these 7 Marketing Tips for using Social Media to give you the foundation for success building and growing your business using these communication channels.

I am sure many others can add to this list, share with us your own successes using social media!