Marketing Outsourcing – should you outsource your marketing?

This post was last edited by Alex Cohen, on the September 1, 2010 @ 2:01 pm

In today’s environment many businesses are downsizing, re-prioritising their focus or expanding whilst trying to keep costs to a minimum. Outsourcing is a cost effective way to fulfil certain business functions. Outsourcing has become an essential aspect of business strategies and this includes the marketing department.

Outsourcing allows a business to put more focus on product development, operations and sales, usually where the business is strongest in. It eliminates the delay in needing to hire full-time staff and avoids tasking overworked staff.

So, why outsource your marketing?

• Get the skill set you want. An alternative to outsourcing your marketing is hiring a dedicated marketing person. This person would look after the marketing on a day to day basis and ensure there is a constant focus. However as marketing today is so diverse finding someone that is an expert in all marketing disciplines, someone who can understand code to write a website, write copy, design your adverts, optimise your SEO and write a strategy is very rare, if not impossible to find. By outsourcing your marketing to freelancers or an agency you can get the combined minds of experts
• Reduce overheads. By outsourcing to experts you don’t need to hire an individual or team for a specific project or ongoing marketing activity. That way you don’t bear the hidden costs of recruiting, training, furnishing an office, holiday pay, sick pay and employee benefits. Salary is just a fraction of employment costs
• Only pay for what you need. If one month you require an advertising campaign, the next month an email marketing campaign and the next month nothing you only need to pay for what you use. In addition, with a mound of employer legislation, it is easier to terminate an outsourced agreement than it is fire an employee
• Get an expert view without bias. Whilst an outsourced agency should be a partner, they will come with their own perspectives and fresh ideas without the baggage of internal politics or ‘we’ve always done it this way’ mentality. They bring with them the experience of working with many businesses all of whom will have had different marketing requirements
• Improve your focus. Outsourcing helps you to focus on the core competencies of your business. You can get on with running your business; selling, product development and looking after your customers, leaving your marketing to experts in their field
• Jump-start your marketing instantly. Outsourcing gives you access to experienced marketing professionals who can quickly develop plans and campaigns on the tightest of schedules

The alternatives to outsourcing

There are of course alternatives to outsourcing your marketing:

• You could hire a dedicated marketing person. This person would look after the marketing on a day to day basis and ensure there is a constant focus, however as mentioned above one person is unlikely to have a full marketing skill-set
• You could hire a dedicated marketing team. You would have constant marketing but at a substantial price

Outsourcing options

There are three ways to outsource your marketing:

• Hire a dedicated contractor: They can bring a fresh viewpoint to your marketing and only work when you need them. However they are unlikely to have a full marketing skillset and may need additional resource or you may choose to not implement the full marketing mix
• Hire specialist freelancers: Hire specialist freelancers as and when you need them to look after separate parts of your marketing. An SEO specialist, web designer, copywriter, graphic designer etc. This way you get a full skill-set but can end up spending all your time managing these freelancers, educating them about the business and trying to get them to work together when they could all be pulling in different directions. Furthermore would you know what to look for when you’re hiring? Do you know what makes a good SEO consultant compared to the best graphic designer for your business?
• Partner with a marketing agency: (like Xander Marketing). You get a full team’s skill-set looking after you and one point of contact meaning you only get what you pay for, saving you time and money

Xander Marketing works with many businesses as their outsourced marketing department. To explore the options you have available when it comes to outsourcing your marketing contact us today.

Tags: marketing department, outsourcing

Should you promote your business on Facebook?

This post was last edited by Alex Cohen, on the August 17, 2010 @ 8:31 am

We all know about Facebook (it’s been around for a good few years now), it’s a good way to stay in touch with friends and relatives, but is it worth using for marketing your business? How many people are actually going to find you on there? And how do you go about using it anyway?

Why Facebook works

Facebook has over 500 million users worldwide of which 50% log on each day. That’s a lot of potential business! It’s well known that no matter how many reviews of products and services there are online or in magazines, consumers trust friends and family more than anyone else for opinions on just about anything, from where to take the kids for a day out to which surround sound system will make you jump out of your seat with each explosion. This doesn’t just work for B2C businesses, if someone you know recommends an accountant you’re likely to take note more than just seeing who comes top of your Google search.

On top of this, rightly or wrongly, Facebook holds an awful lot of data about each person who subscribes to the site. It uses this data to feed Pay Per Click (PPC) adverts to people; try changing your relationship status to single and you’ll be amazed at the number of dating sites that suddenly begin to stalk you around Facebook. Even something as small as mentioning liking cake will soon have local bakers offering you their wares via PPC.

Facebook as a marketing tool

There are two main ways of attracting business via Facebook; traditional PPC and the relatively new ‘fan pages’.

PPC works in a similar way to Google Adwords, you sign up and pay a fee to Facebook each time someone clicks on your ad. You can target your market within Facebook’s set parameters, for example a business selling protein shakes may specify males aged between 18 – 35 living in the south of England who say they like going to the gym.

A fan page is an advancement on the older style ‘groups’ that could be joined. By setting up a fan page you can invite people to ‘like’ your business or product and regularly update your status as you would your own profile in order to tell your fans about new products, services or just what you’ve been up to that day. These updates will then appear in their newsfeed, allowing your fans to comment on your status which then appears in their friends’ newsfeed and the word begins to spread. Viral marketing at its best.

How to use Facebook for your business

So where do you begin. Follow these 8 steps to get you started:

1. Decide what you want to achieve from Facebook – do you want to increase brand awareness, encourage more hits to your website or maybe use it for feedback on your product or service? Are you going to use fan pages, PPC or both?
2. When using a fan page, brand it – Facebook does have some limits when it comes to branding your page but make sure you have your logo uploaded and up to date company information available
3. Ask for fans and more fans –begin with people you know on Facebook. Get them to become fans by inviting them via your fan page; then encourage them to invite more people. There’s nothing wrong in posting ‘Please invite your friends to become a fan’ as your status. It’s blatant but it works
4. Update your status regularly, upload photos and videos – don’t go mad and start spamming people as you can and will be reported to Facebook and your page removed, but an update a day is acceptable, and will keep your business fresh in your fans minds
5. Interact with your fans – this is a great way of really finding out who your customers are and what they want from your business. If someone comments on your status, reply to them. Post polls asking for opinions on your products. Get debates going between your fans on relevant subjects
6. Include a call to action – there’s no point having all these fans if you don’t send them to your website every now and then. Again don’t spam them with your web address every hour but a gentle reminder of where they can buy your product or service should increase your websites hit rate
7. PPC can be used as a call to action to send people directly to your website or to your fan page; either way it should increase your number of visitors, your brand awareness and your sales
8. Promote other social media activity. If you have videos on YouTube embed those in your page,  you can also integrate your Facebook status updates with your Twitter updates using tools like Tweetdeck

For more information on using Facebook as a marketing tool, or for help setting up a marketing campaign contact us here.

Tags: facbook, social media in a box

Email marketing software – how to choose a system for you

This post was last edited by Alex Cohen, on the July 28, 2010 @ 9:02 am

If you’re reading this you’re probably already in the market for email marketing software and know there are many providers to choose from (with new providers popping up every week). So how do you go about choosing the best one for you?

Hopefully our short guide will provide you with a starting point:

Where is your data coming from?

This may seem like an odd question however when choosing an email marketing system, different email marketing software uses email addresses in different ways. How you acquire your data makes a big impact on which system would be best for you. For example:

• Are you building your own mailing list from a form on your website?
• Do you already have an existing database of customers and prospects?
• Have you bought in data lists from third party data houses? This is particularly important as some international laws specify you can’t broadcast to third party lists so you would need to use a UK based email software company.

How will you use your email marketing system?

How you use your email marketing system will vary from business to business. Popular ways include:

• Generating new business leads
• Staying in touch with customers (for example through a newsletter)
• Nurturing leads. Transforming prospects into customers
• Sending a series of autoresponders
• E-commerce – confirm orders, inform products are shipped etc

What features are important to you?

Most systems do offer similar features; the obvious being web based with the ability to load an email and broadcast it in HTML and plain text. But what else should you consider?

• Is your system easy to use? Try loading emails into the system (HTML and plain text) and see how you find it
• How do you know your email is getting through to your recipients’ inbox? It’s very frustrating if your carefully crafted email goes straight to your recipient’s spam box. Check what your potential software company does to ensure your email isn’t treated as spam
• Do you need autoresponders? These are when emails are automatically sent depending on recipient behaviour. It may be someone signs up to receive a series of emails or that a reply is automatically sent if and when someone responds to your initial email
• How do you tell who has looked at what? Different systems have different levels of reporting functionality. Identify what reporting you need and what works best for you

How will you be charged?

How email marketing software providers charge should also impact your decision. There are three key ways:

• Up front set up fee – some systems ask for a set up fee but then tend to charge less per email sent
• Monthly fees – some charge a monthly fee which will include an allowance; for example 5,000 emails a month
• Pay as you go – could be more expensive per email but better if you don’t want to commit to a certain price each month. Some providers will charge per broadcast and then per email, others just per email

Our picks

We’ve tested a few email marketing systems in our time and these stood out as far as we’re concerned:

• Best for autoresponder campaigns: AWeber or Mailchimp
• Best for permission based email marketing campaigns: Campaign Monitor
• Best for sending to third party lists: dotMailer or Pure360
• Best for eCommerce: dotMailer or Campaign Monitor
• Best for email newsletters: Campaign Monitor

Most email marketing systems offer an upfront trial; sign up, test it, see how easy it is to use and go from there. There’s nothing to stop you trialling every system if you have time until you find the one that is perfect for you.

We have supported many clients with their email marketing campaigns. If you’d like more information or would like to find out how we can support you in getting an ROI from your campaigns contact us here.

Tags: Email Marketing, Lead Generation

Vital Statistics for B2B Marketers

This post was last edited by Alex Cohen, on the July 21, 2010 @ 8:35 pm

I’m a new business – what do I need to start marketing?

This post was last edited by Alex Cohen, on the July 6, 2010 @ 8:03 am

So you’ve decided to take that giant leap and set out in business for yourself. You know what you want to do; what product or service you’re selling and hopefully who you want to sell to. You also know that to get customers you need to market yourself; but where do you go from there?

We at Xander Marketing have created a proposition that we call a ‘Marketing Platform’. We’ve called it a ‘platform’ because once it is established you have a springboard from which to launch your marketing campaigns and help you plan and adjust your marketing for the future.

A Marketing Platform will vary from business to business but typically includes:

• A brand that reflects your positioning in the market place, your values and that appeals to your target market
• Branding portrayed through logos, themes and stationery
• Marketing messages, taglines and statements which can be used throughout your website, marketing material and campaigns
• A website which reflects your brand and can be used to generate new business
• Marketing material including brochures, case studies and leaflets
• A marketing strategy to launch marketing campaigns

This might sound a lot to begin with but when broken down into sizeable chunks it’s not so daunting. However if you need any help with your Marketing Platform we’re always full of good ideas and love sharing them so please contact us.

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Blogs – What’s best for you?

This post was last edited by Alex Cohen, on the June 22, 2010 @ 8:35 am

You want to get started in social media, but don’t know where to start? Which platform is better for your business? Should you do a bit of everything?

The answer depends on what you are trying to achieve. Here we review the key social networks so you can decide where best to invest your time.

Twitter - the fastest growing social media platform; easy to update, perfect for checking out what your competitors are up to. Will it get you more business? Yes:

• If you are in a B2B market; it is seen as professional and a good place to search out new suppliers
• If you have regular offers. Check out Dell’s Twitter page, this increased their business by $6.5m in 2009
• If you update it regularly and interact with your followers

Facebook – the daddy of social media, everyone has heard of it even if they don’t use it. Great for catching up with old school chums; but is it right for gaining new customers? Yes:

• If you are in a B2C market
• If you run a community/group type organisation
• You want to be able to talk and interact with your clients on a relaxed friendly level

Blog - an easy way of sharing your knowledge with others who are interested in your field. Is it worth spending the time writing one? Yes:

• If you have a knowledgeable, professional service
• If you have an exciting product and want to keep people updated
• If you can write well, keeping your reader wanting to come back for more

LinkedIn – the Facebook of the business world. Handy for introducing associates and acquaintances who you feel might benefit from being in touch. But is online networking the way forward? Yes:

• If your line of business benefits from ‘who you know’ type scenarios
• If you’re too busy to attend face to face networking groups
• If you have lots of relationships you want to nurture and sustain

Do what you can do but do it well. Make sure you’re still running your business first. The more platforms you and your business are on the better but only if you have the time to monitor and maintain them all. You don’t have to be on everything, better to be a terrific Tweeter and nothing else; than a boring blogger or failing Facebooker. If you feel you should be on more social media sites but don’t have the time to run them why not check out our Social Media in a Box package here.

Tags: blogs, facebook, linkedin, social media, social media in a box, Twitter

Xander Marketing yearly review (part 2)

This post was last edited by Alex Cohen, on the 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.

Tags: review

Xander Marketing yearly review (part 1)

This post was last edited by Alex Cohen, on the June 2, 2010 @ 10:33 am

As we come to the end of Xander Marketing’s financial year, we’re busy reviewing the year, business planning for the next and creating budget and cash flow forecasts.

As we only work with SMEs we feel we have a pretty good knowledge of this business size in the UK and what they want when it comes to marketing. Here are some things we’ve learnt from the past 12 months:

• The start of the financial year the country was still deep in a recession. The majority of businesses had struggled in one way or another and were cautious; however the bolder businesses saw marketing as a way to pull their company out of the recession
• September and late January/early February were key times for making marketing decisions. As the summer ended and there were signs of things picking up September brought a time when people were fresh for new ideas. The new year always brings new vigour and although the snow slowed some decisions down, by the end of January/early February the year was in full swing
• What people want has changed. 2009 was very much about social media, this buzz has died down a bit now and search engine marketing is key. Businesses are keen to have a marketing strategy to get started. Websites are also moving from a ‘brochure’ to a lead conversion tool or content hub
• We’re industry neutral however we have seen certain industries want more marketing than others. SaaS and cloud based services have been strong this year. Professional services have struggled more than others in a recession which has resulted in limited or no marketing budgets. E-commerce retail has been more interested in marketing than bricks and mortar retail
• Location doesn’t matter. We’re based in Wokingham, Berkshire; a year ago we assumed all our business would come from within a 20 mile or so radius around us. Not true, in fact most of our customers are not local. Location doesn’t matter anymore…with technologies such as email, VOIP and video conferencing we can provide the same level of service to a business in Sandhurst as we can to a business in Sydney. The same goes with associates, by tapping into a pool of local (and international) freelancers we can really find the very best for our customers

Read the second part of our yearly review next week.

Tags: review

Features vs Benefits

This post was last edited by Alex Cohen, on the May 26, 2010 @ 10:20 am

Whilst your product has features, or your service business has things it’s good at, turning these into statements that would get your customer’s attention is a key marketing challenge.

So what’s the difference between a feature and a benefit?

Features

A feature is a factual statement about the product or service being promoted:

• 100% cashmere
• 24 hours service
• Fleet of over 100 vehicles
• See over 100 reports
• 50-number speed dial
• Automated expenses

Benefits

A benefit takes this statement and asks ‘So, what’s in it for me?’

• 100% cashmere means that it feels wonderfully soft against your skin
• 24 hours service means that there’s always someone there to help you
• Fleet of over 100 vehicles which means that we’ll be with you quicker
• See over 100 reports which means that you’ll have all the information you could need
• 50-number speed dial which means that you will have fewer keystrokes
• Automated expenses which means that you can process expense claims quicker

This is good but we can make these statements even better. What are the results? These could be tangible (if possible), emotional (how does it make you feel), or aspirational (what does it give you?) so:

• 100% cashmere means that it feels wonderfully soft against your skin which makes you feel great
• 24 hours service means that there’s always someone there to help you which gives you freedom
• Fleet of over 100 vehicles which means that we’ll be with you quicker which makes you feel more confident
• See over 100 reports which means that you’ll have all the information you could need which gives you control
• 50-number speed dial which means that you will have fewer keystrokes which gives you the ability to keep in touch with your best customers without effort
• Automated expenses which means that you can process expense claims quicker which gives you two extra days a month to do your job

Once devised…market your benefits, not your features.

Wordpress, Joomla (Open Source) as a CMS – why wouldn’t you?

This post was last edited by Alex Cohen, on the May 21, 2010 @ 10:43 am

In 2010 many SMEs want to be able to update their website themselves. In the earlier days of web design this wasn’t possible without knowledge of HTML programming or spending a fortune on a content management system.

Nowadays, content management systems (CMS) are king. This post provides an argument as to why you should use a CMS and helps you choose which one. It is written from experience and reflects our opinions.

A CMS gives you, the customer, the ability to update the content on your website through easy to use forms. No editing code, just simply click a few buttons and you can add new pages, change the navigation and add text and images yourself. If you want to be able to update a website and not pay a developer to do it you need a CMS. They are also great for search engines.

Choosing a CMS

The first decision to make is do you use an open source (i.e. free) CMS like Wordpress or Joomla or a proprietary one, built by a company. We’ve seen both and tested both. Despite everything a sales person will say about their proprietary CMS we haven’t seen one yet which matches the capabilities of the open source ones. What’s more you pay for the privilege to use these ‘sub-standard’ systems.

Why open source is better

• Being open source means anyone has access to the source code behind the CMS and can improve it. With the best developers all over the world doing this; thousands of users providing feedback every day and frequent new releases  the products are improving all the time
• Not only do you get the CMS for free, developers create plugins for the CMS. A plugin may be a tool to help with search engines or it could be an e-commerce module. This saves you time and money in development costs as you can download the plugins and literally plug them into your website to expand its capability
• CMS platforms are built for search engines to read them, increasing your presence on search engines

If open source is for you, it’s then time to choose a system. Wordpress and Joomla are the market leaders however there are some others. We’ve used both Wordpress and Joomla. We find Wordpress easier to use and is great for blogging. Joomla is more complex but works well for larger websites. You’ll have to do a bit of research to find out more and what’s best for your requirements but it’s well worth it.

With CMS becoming the norm through their reach and affordability, building a website on a CMS platform should be a major consideration when building a new website. For more information or to discuss the options for your new website contact us today.

Tags: cms, Online Presence, website, wordpress