Are you constantly looking for new business and ignoring dormant customers?

Do you have a written marketing plan, including a promotional mix schedule for the year ahead?

Do you keep all of your contacts in one place?

Do you have a system for following up every sales lead and opportunity?

It’s easy to go networking, attract a few followers on the social networks, send out the occasional newsletter and respond to random referrals.

We can all keep busy throughout the day. Frenetic activity can become reassuringly addictive.

It takes discipline to follow procedures and systems. To a large extent, this approach is dull and boring. But it works.

Time and time again I meet brilliant people who are following their own star. They are multi-talented, original thinkers. They are also as poor as a church mouse. They don’t like to be constrained by boring systems. They don’t believe in sales or marketing processes.

I also meet many people who are happy to follow a well laid out path to success. Like successful sports professionals, they know that they have to get up early in the morning and follow a regime.

They spend an hour a day writing, which feeds their blog, newsletter and social media campaigns. They take the time to add contacts to their CRM (Customer Relationship Management system). They study technicalities such as SEO, copywriting and professional selling. They fill their diary with customer meetings. They follow a system.

How about you – do you think that you might get better results if you followed a marketing system, such as Navigator membership of The Marketing Compass?

* Surveys (the media loves them!)

* New product and new service announcements

* Product / service upgrades

* Unusual product applications / uses

* Customer wins (either a big win, or a cluster of wins)

* Trends and forecasts (crystal ball gazing is a media favourite)

* Staff news (joiners, leavers, interesting things they have done)

* Events, including seminars, exhibitions etc

* Public speaking engagements

* Awards and certifications

* Anniversaries

* Tie-in with current news event

* Commenting on media coverage

* Launch of white paper / positioning statement

* Significant milestone (XXX customers etc)

* Financial results

* Marketing innovation, i.e. customer segment focused website

* Launch of customer education programme

* Restructuring a part of your business

* Joint ventures, strategic partnership, alliances etc

* Charity tie-in

* Changes in pricing (especially reductions)

* Launch of a customer group / user group

By all means ask us some questions about PR, via our webiste. (Nigel Temple, CEO of The Marketing Compass, ran a PR agency for nine years!)

Why not take a moment now and write down your ‘referral request’.

Do you have a referral marketing system? Do you offer incentives for people who refer business to you? What, exactly, do you offer them? Cash? Discount vouchers? Cinema tickets? Something else?

How do you measure your results? Where do you keep records of the referrals you have received? Is this part of your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system?

Here is a referral marketing checklist:
1. Ask for referrals at every opportunity
2. Make referral marketing part of the ‘way we do things around here’
3. Provide an incentive for referrals
4. Have a clear message (and write this down)
5. Track and measure the referrals you receive

Do share your experiences of giving and receiving referrals with us and we will provide you with some feedback / more ideas to help you in this crucial area.

By the way, do spread the word about The Marketing Compass. We offer a £10 ‘thank you payment’ for every Navigator member who joins, following your recommendation. In addition, we offer a range of incentives on our other services, including NavigatorPlus, website development and marketing consultancy. To find out more, either email joanna@marketingcompass.co.uk or call Joanna on 01628 773128.

The description tag should be relevant to the page content. It should also be easy to read and contain a call to action. These tags can be up to 170 characters in length.

We are often asked how to change these tags. If you have access to your own CMS (Content Management System), you should be able to log in and make the changes yourself.

Tip 1. Have separate description tags for each of your website pages.

Tip 2. Include your telephone number within your description tag – as this may generate some sales enquiries!

By the way, our web development arm Totosites provides a CMS as part of each new website we build. www.totosites.com Call us on 01628 773128 to find out more.

AIDCA represents the process that the buyer goes through, on their journey from being aware of a marketing proposition, until they make a buying decision.

1. Headline or opening line: Attention
2. Product description: Interest
3. The offer / proposition: Desire
4. Guarantee / reassurance: Conviction
5. Call to action: Action

Did you know that in advertising, nearly six times as many people read the headline as the body copy of an advertisement? An effective headline should telegraph your message into the reader’ mind. It will entice them to read the rest of your copy. In his book ‘Confessions of an Advertising Man’, advertising guru David Ogilvy said: “The headline is the most important element…it is the telegram which decides whether the reader goes on to read the copy. I never write fewer than sixteen headlines.” He would then show the headlines to colleagues. A select few would be shown to the client. This is a great approach – which I commend to you.

John Caples, the esteemed American copywriter and advertising guru said: “If you create a good headline, your task is more than half completed. It will be a relatively easy matter to write the copy. On the other hand, if you use a poor headline, it doesn’t matter how hard you labour over your copy because your copy will not be read.”

Direct marketing expert Ted Nicholas commented: “Based on hundreds of tests conducted, a good headline can be as much as 17 times more effective than a so-so headline. And this is with exactly the same body copy!” Are you convinced? I hope so – because this is a key copywriting lesson.

This item is taken from The Marketing Compass Manual, which is part of Navigator membership and now NavigatorPlus of The Marketing Compass.

* 1.2 billion mobile webs users worldwide – many of these only use the mobile web
* 8.49% of global website visits in 2011
* Smartphones are only a fraction of web enabled phones
* Mobile searches quadrupled in last 12 months alone
* $3.3 billion spent worldwide on mobile advertising in 2011 – Estimated to increase to $20.6 billion worldwide  a year by 2015
* 300,000 mobile apps developed in the last three years – with over 10.9 billion downloads in that period
* M-Commerce (mobile commerce) expected to reach $119 billion worldwide per year by 2015
* 71% of 16 – 24 year olds use mobiles to access the internet as their main device
* 24 – 36 years olds largest proportion of users buying directly off mobile phones

As the M Commerce market grows, there’s lots of different ways to search for what you’re looking for, including:

* Search by typing
* Voice search
* Gesture search (drawing letters, symbols or pictures)
* Image search i.e. Google Goggles

If you’re not sure if your website is mobile friendly or would like to talk to us about building a new website that is mobile friendly, email us.

Exhausting, isn’t it? Many people simply give up, because ‘my marketing isn’t working’. During my marketing seminars, I am often asked which promotional techniques are the most effective. Bearing in mind that I only work with independent professionals and small business owners (who don’t have marketing budgets), my initial response is to suggest that they start with the ‘free / cheap as chips stuff’. For example:

* Article placement, within magazines / websites
* Blogging – your own, via your own website
* Business cards – hand out 100 a week (yes, 100!)
* Dormant customers – wake them up with a time limited offer
* e-newsletter using MailChimp (free for up to 2000 subscribers)
* Google AdWords, using their £50-for-free voucher
* Google+, because it can generate startling SEO results
* Networking events, at least one a week
* Press releases, sent by email (yes, they still work)
* Public speaking. Face your fear and get up and talk.
* Referrals – if you want more, start giving more
* Telephone calls, at least an hour a day
* Twitter, because it’s so quick to use
* Videos, uploaded to YouTube and embedded within your website

Here is some homework for you: write a list of all the ways in which you are currently promoting your business. Then add at least three new promotional techniques and get started with them today.

The more promotional techniques you use, the luckier you get. Marketing is a like playing chess – you must think strategically and combine your pieces, in order to win.

The promotional mix list within this blog is taken from The Marketing Compass Manual.

I wish you all the best with your business and your marketing.

1) Ask your friends! Invite contacts on social networks and in person.

2) Include a ‘like’ / ‘follow’ link in your email signature, on your website and on your printed marketing material.

3) Offer an incentive. You could send new ‘likes’ a gift, this could be a guide that shares some of your professional knowledge…this often leads to solid sales leads!

4) Leave comments on relevant company’s Facebook / Twitter pages with your incentive. It’s amazing how many companies don’t engage with their fans, it’s an opportunity glaring you in the face!

Once you start to get more fans and followers, make sure you engage with them. Post regular updates that are inspiring, connective, educative and entertaining.

…by all means ‘share’ this via the social networks and ‘like‘ and ‘follow‘ The Marketing Compass!

Karen Kimberley

Karen has shared many helpful ideas with me. One of my favourites is The Praise Sandwich. Here is a Tweet which I have just sent out to my 11K+ Followers:

When giving feedback, use “The Praise Sandwich”: Praise – Constructive Criticism – Praise. @kkimberley karenkimberley.co.uk

All too often, we hurt each others’ feelings by being too direct. The client offends the supplier. The manager succeeds in making the staff member clam up and stop asking questions. The boss wonders why nobody comes up with creative ideas.

IMHO The Praise Sandwich should be taught in Primary schools. It should be displayed in large lettering on giant posters in offices. It should be etched into watch straps, printed on the back of business cards and chanted at football matches.

The next time you are giving feedback, remember:

The Praise Sandwich
1. PRAISE
2. CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM
3. PRAISE

No matter the quality of the ‘product’ it still has to be marketed. Joanna Borrett and her fellow musicians believe in continual marketing. They have recently launched a new website – www.fedorastrings.com – which has a series of recordings which visitors can play, directly from the homepage. These include the Flower Duet by Delibes, I Got Rhythm by Gershwin and an Irish reel (which shows product diversity!)

Joanna blogs regularly, as you can see here: http://www.fedorastrings.com/blog/

Joanna tells us that her Google search engine rankings are doing well and that she is receiving booking enquiries via the site, which was built by www.totosites.com – which specialises in small business websites.

During the website building process, a keyword list was researched. Care was taken to embed the keywords within the website’s meta data, page headlines and text. If you are interested in booking Fedora Strings for a wedding, special event or party, by all means email Joanna Borrett or call her on 07531 363 814. Live music really does add something to an occasion, doesn’t it?