Xander Marketing yearly review (part 2)
This post was last edited by Alex Cohen, on June 8, 2010 @ 9:45 am
Last week we told you some things we have learnt over the past year regarding SMEs and marketing. This week with have some more pearls of wisdom for you that we have learnt that are a bit more marketing specific:
- Sometimes you have to do things to a budget. Whilst we’d love to spend 2 days designing a logo there are some companies that want something designed in half a day. Knowing how to adapt to this and understanding the customer has been key
- Inbound marketing is much more effective than outbound marketing. In our early days no-one knew about us, we didn’t really have a presence on search engines or in social media. It took time to get meetings, we used techniques such as tele-marketing and email marketing, it took longer to write proposals (as many prospects weren’t sure what they wanted) and our conversion rate from proposal to getting the work was lower. Creating a website that works well in search engines, building a reputation, having a presence elsewhere and gaining word of mouth recommendations means people are coming to us now. When people come to you with a requirement not only is the sales process a lot easier and shorter but the conversion rates are a lot higher
- ‘Free’ works but be careful. In July 2009 we launched our treat campaign. We offered to do some free marketing to any small business. It worked, within a week 25 businesses had taken our offer up with very little of our own marketing. We built relationships and won a couple of bits of business from it. We did have lots of businesses take our treat offer up though with no intention of doing any more marketing, this was fair enough but not good for us from a business sense. That’s why in March 2010 we started a new one, only offering treats to businesses serious about marketing. Whilst we got a smaller uptake the quality was better landing us some new contracts
- Update your website. Whilst our website structure has remained the same it has evolved over the last year and will continue to evolve. So have our clients’ websites. As we spot new things, learn new things, adapt to new technology or trends our websites should do the same thing
- Sometimes the customer isn’t always right. In our early days if a client wanted us to do something we would do it. Nowadays we will challenge more, if we think the customer’s approach could be different we will tell them, even if that means us not getting the work or not being as profitable. This approach has proved to be beneficial in the long run.
So there you go, a year in review. Here’s to an even better 2010/11 for Xander Marketing, our customers and our suppliers.
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