The other day I was talking to the business owner of a medium sized Florists – she has shops in three separate locations – and she was saying how disheartened she was by the results she was getting with her advertising…

She also said how very disappointed she was with her existing marketing agency because their current advertising was actually generating LESS response than before… despite assurances from the agency to the contrary.

She told me how she had always used advertising to generate business, and while it was sometimes a bit hit and miss, she did feel that this time she was actually taking some pretty major steps back.

She was clearly more than a little worried by it all, so I offered to take a look at her ads for her, to see if there was anything I could suggest that might help. You could almost see the weight lift from her shoulders. She thanked me and said she would post me copies of the last few ads she had been using.

Sure enough, the following day, a large A4 envelope arrived in the post, which was stuffed full of copies of the adverts she had been using (looked more like the full 8 years worth rather than just the last “few”), but I could see the problem almost straight away…

Read More »

Twitter is helping small businesses to communicate…

Whether you understand it, love it or hate it… Twitter is one of the most powerful Marketing tools EVERY business should be using.

But what exactly IS Twitter and WHY is it important to your business?

[Just in case you have been asleep for the past 3 years...]

Twitter is a free service that lets you keep in touch with people through the exchange of quick, frequent short messages – of 140 characters or less – called “Tweets”.

But it’s not just about being able to send short messages to your friends (like when texting started on mobile phones), there are many different ways it can be used – especially where a lot of information is being shared – as more and more people are finding out.

Twitter has been around for more than three years and it is only now that businesses are really adopting it as a way of communicating with members of staff, clients, prospective clients and suppliers. Read More »

If you haven’t heard about social media marketing you must have been asleep for the past couple of years or else marooned on a desert island somewhere.

But do you really understand the power of using social media channels to promote your website or business and have you truly realised how powerful this strategy can be – if used correctly – to get you links, attention and massive amounts of traffic?

While there has been an explosion of different services – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and ecademy being among the most popular – there is a BIG underlying problem…

… and it’s all centred about “follow-you-follow-me.”

Now I’ve been following the Social Media “follow-you-follow-me” debate with some interest for some time, but just in case you’re not sure what I mean by follow-you-follow-me, then this should help…

Read More »

Can you guess what the number one question I get asked with regards to web marketing?

“How do I get my website found by Google?”

Ranking by Google, Yahoo and MSN is important, you certainly shouldn’t ignore it, but it is not as straightforward as you might think.

You see, even paying shed-loads of money to an SEO specialist doesn’t guarantee you a top 10 placement – there are way too many variables. It depends on the keywords you are optimising for, the links to your website, age, popularity and “ranking” of the linking sites as well as a whole bunch of other things…

… and it’s not like Google are standing around waiting for people to “crack the code” – the search algorithm is changed regularly, so even if you get ranked in the top three one time, you continuously have to work hard if you want to stay there.

But, rather than focus on SEO for this post, there is a far more important part to your website strategy which many people miss, and which needs to be addressed first.

Let me tell you about Richard…

Read More »

During a discussion with one of my clients about different areas of marketing and how they affect a business, it was apparent that he was getting more than a little confused.

A few days ago, a friend of mine sent me the following article which I thought explained things quite clearly.

I thought I’d share it with you…

The 10 areas of Marketing Development Explained:

1. You see a gorgeous girl at a party.
You go up to her and say, ‘I am very rich. Marry me!’
That’s DIRECT MARKETING.

2. You are at a party with a bunch of friends and see a gorgeous girl.
One of your friends goes up to her and pointing at you says, ‘He’s very rich. Marry him!’
That’s ADVERTISING.

3. You see a gorgeous girl at a party.
You go up to her and get her telephone number.
The next day, you call her and say, ‘Hi, I am very rich. Marry me!’
That’s TELEMARKETING.

Read More »

I don’t know about you, but on the rare occasions I have a few spare moments to surf the net, I sometimes find myself drifting to YouTube.

Now, ok, there IS a lot of rubbish out there, but I recently came across a company who have used Social Marketing to successfully grow their business.

Let me tell you their story…

Not so long ago, Blendtec was a little-known company that manufactured blenders – their consumer grade blenders cost around $400, so not the cheapest on the market.

Things started to change for them when George Wright joined the company in 2006 as Director of Marketing. The catalyst happened one afternoon, not long after he had started working for there. On the day in question George came across Blendtec CEO Tom Dickson testing the new bearings for the blender – by blending a 2×4 inch piece of wood!

While this was going on, the rest of the company’s employees went on with their work unphased. Apparently the practice of “extreme blending” was a regular occurrence at the factory, as Tom was keen to make sure Blendtec blenders were the best.

Now George, being the smart marketer that he is, recognised the potential to turn this into a marketing story which would make Blendtec stand out from their competitors, both in market visibility and in proving the quality of the Blendtec Blenders.

Read More »

Over the last 60 years or so, billions of pieces of mail have been sent by businesses, with the sole intention of growing sales.

These mailings have included everything you could possibly think of:

Simple letters and postcards, CD’s and DVD’s, three dimensional brochures, dustbins and even boxes of cereal have all found their way into letterboxes across the Globe – including the UK!

It goes without saying that billions of pounds are dependent on the success or failure of these mailings.

But what can YOU do to make your Direct Mail Campaigns more effective?

Campaign success is measured as return-on-investment (ROI) – or how many total sales were generated compared to the cost of the marketing campaign.

It’s a proven fact you can dramatically increase the response you get with a personalised telephone call as a follow-up. This has the advantage of making it easy for customers to respond to your message and for you to be able to measure the results. The downside is that it does require extra resource (and cost if you outsource), but certainly worth considering a test on a sample of your list.

Read More »