- Better than nothing (is harder than you think): http://bit.ly/cFiMEs
SME
Marketing is easy for SMEs
This post was last edited by Alex Cohen, on the April 14, 2010 @ 9:02 am
Is your marketing a struggle? Do you just not know where to start? We believe SMEs have it easy…here’s why.
It’s up to you what goes on your website. You have an online brochure for customers to find you.
You couldn’t do this 20 years ago. 20 years ago you had to pay to send out brochures and letters. Now you can create a website and an unlimited number of customers can find you, not costing you money for each additional customer. You control what goes on your website, how big it is and how customers will interact with you.
If you’re on Google people will find you
If you’re number one on Google for your key search terms people will find you. You don’t need to spend days cold calling; people will come to you. If you can’t rank highly on Google, use Google AdWords and only pay a small amount of money for people to view your website.
You can interact with your customers and find new ones through Twitter
It can be impossible to get through to a director of a large company, it can be impossible to interact with all 500 of your customers. Through Twitter you can interact with those previously un-reachable prospects or communicate to all your customers in one go.
There are more networking events than you have time for
For people who like networking there are hundreds of networking events in the UK. Join some, go along, meet other business people and grow your businesses together.
Email marketing is a cost effective way to target
Before email there was direct mail. Costly, and you only knew if someone had read your direct mail and liked it if they responded. With email marketing there are no costs of paper, ink, postage etc and you also know who has opened and interacted with your email. It’s instant and lands in front of people. A well crafted, targeted email can have quick results.
Knowledge is what is important and there are tools to spread it
You’re an expert on your business, or at least you should be. In the last 10 years tools have been developed to spread this knowledge cheaply and efficiently to a mass market. Blogs, podcasts, YouTube and email newsletters have all helped make this possible. Use this knowledge to position your business as an expert.
There are more marketing companies and freelancers to support you
With shifting work patterns more people have gone freelance or set up their own companies. You have a choice of support, whether you want a one stop shop like Xander Marketing or a freelancer with a specific skill, it is easy to find people to support you with your marketing.
2010 Marketing Trends for SMEs
This post was last edited by Alex Cohen, on the March 8, 2010 @ 10:42 am
2009 was the year of Twitter, selling ‘value’ and a further shift towards digital marketing, here we look ahead to what we believe may be the marketing trends in 2010:
- Online Integration: Many people have ‘played’ with Twitter in 2009, they’ve continued to do the same style of email campaigns and websites have been refreshed. It’s time to integrate these activities taking a strategic view of social media, search engine marketing and your website.
- Direct mail to email to social media: Postal strikes, rising postal costs and being unable to measure the return from direct mail has meant many businesses have turned to email marketing. Businesses will continue to do this in 2010. They will also look at moving on from email and communicating through messaging platforms on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
- The growth of Bing: 2009 saw a big shake-up in the search engine market with the partnership of Microsoft and Yahoo. Bing is the offspring of this partnership. In the past Google has had the majority of market share so optimising your site for Google and advertising on Google was the thing to do. If Bing starts to take market share you will have to consider optimising your website for Bing and buying advertising space there.
- People talk: Social networking and exchange of information outside of the brand space will increase. Look for more websites using Facebook to share information with friends from those sites. More companies will become members of LinkedIn. Twitter users will spend more money on the internet than those who don’t tweet.
- Analytics to customer intelligence: As more marketing moves online it’s easier and easier to measure campaigns. In 2010 this will be taken to the next level. Analysing data and using trends to drive future marketing campaigns. In 2010 businesses will be gaining more intelligence on individual customers, segment and target.
- Customer experience: Customer’s are no longer buying products or services, they want an experience. You don’t go to Disney World for the rides, you go for the magic. Give people a reason to buy from you, make the experience enjoyable and this could revolutionise your business model in 2010.
- Relevance: We’re getting more emails and seeing more adverts and marketing messages than ever before. People don’t care about what You’re selling. They care about what it can do for them specifically. If You’re targeting professional services, break this down. What problem does this solve for a lawyer? An accountant? Marketing that works in 2010 will be relevant.
- Personalisation: Building on relevance, personalising marketing and making it 1-to-1 not 1-to-many. People like to see their name, talk to the individual, if your market is only a handful of customers create each customer their own personalised campaign. PURLs will continue to grow within direct marketing in 2010.
- Mobile: Mobile marketing will grow. How does your website look on an iPhone? Is there an iPhone app that can complement your offering? What about using Bluetooth to send messages of an offer in your shop to people walking past or texting customers who have given their permission special offers?
- Marketing budgets will increase: Many businesses cut their marketing budgets in 2009 because of the recession. Despite all the statistics saying businesses who market throughout the recession will come out stronger, many businesses cut back, either shifting activity online or cutting out activity all together. As we come out of the recession in 2010 and money starts flowing again budgets will rise. Your competitors will spend more and you will have to do the same.
Two graphs which explain why SMEs should do marketing
This post was last edited by Alex Cohen, on the September 11, 2009 @ 12:38 pm
The biggest challenge SMEs face, particularly SMEs that offer a service is getting the balance right between sales and delivery. At first you sell, sell, sell; then you have too much work so spend all your time delivering; as that work comes to an end it’s back to selling again. Revenue will usually follow the work you are delivering. The graph below portrays this cycle:
An SME without marketing
Doing marketing on a consistent month-on-month basis will give you a flow of new leads and sales meetings. In the graph above it’s unlikely anyone would turn down a sales meeting, it’s just getting the sales meetings; time gets focused elsewhere. With marketing constantly delivering leads it can give you a steady flow of business over the long term, ensure you’re always delivering and most importantly you can sustain and grow your revenue. The graph below demonstrates this:
An SME with marketing
All about brands and branding for SMEs
This post was last edited by Alex Cohen, on the March 8, 2010 @ 10:50 am
For one week only we’ll be focusing on brands and branding for SMEs. Is it really important? What does a brand mean to you? And what are the financial benefits of a brand. Read on…
Brands and branding
A brand is a promise. It portrays your company vision, mission, values and key messages. It needs to position and differentiate your company in the marketplace and it needs to appeal to your target market.
Branding is the graphical elements of a brand: logo, brandmarks and a colour scheme which can then run through all your marketing material: website, brochures, stationery, advertising etc.
Does this really matter for SMEs though? This page will evolve to help you make your own decision on the case for branding.
If You’re interested in exploring what a brand can do for you contact us today on 0118 321 7620 or email us.
See our latest blogs on branding:
Discuss branding on the UK Business Forums:
Who have we created brands for?
AKA: Having been established for 3 years, delivering high end business propositions, AKA required a brand that complemented these propositions. The new brand was positioned around ‘Breakthrough Performance’. Sub-brands, a logo and brandmarks were created and carried through to a new website, business stationery and marketing and proposition material.
Provanis: Wanting to portray itself as a professional services organisation knowledgeable on Oracle Applications, demonstrating its core service of contract placement within this, Provanis required a brand that demonstrated this. Determining a vision, mission and values up front was essential and helped position Provanis in the marketplace. Xander Marketing developed a logo, tagline, business stationery and a new website.
Fresh Twist Training: Fresh Twist Training required a new brand and an ‘online brochure’. A logo, brandmark, website and business stationery was created by Xander Marketing providing Fresh Twist Training with a corporate identity that portrayed its brand values and could be used throughout all its marketing material and future campaigns.
If You’re ready for a new brand contact us today for a free marketing and branding consultation on 0118 321 7620 or email us.
Write your comments about branding below:
Search Engine Optimisation – 6 simple things SMEs can do today
This post was last edited by Alex Cohen, on the March 8, 2010 @ 11:06 am
Search Engine Optimisation is the buzzword for small business websites at the moment. Having your website ranked highly on search engines for your keywords is more important than ever. Here are 6 simple things you can do to your site today to start moving it up those search engines…
- Page titles – Many people say this is the most important part of search engine optimisation at the moment. Write an accurate, keyword rich page title. don’t say ‘Xander Marketing – Home’. Say ‘Xander Marketing | Marketing Agency for SME | Berkshire’
- Meta description – This is how your site is described in search engines. If you don’t have a description search engines will just pull the first bit of content off your page it can find. Again, make it keyword rich and try and keep it to 160 characters.
- Descriptive URLS – don’t use URLs like XanderMarketing.com/1212lkl.php/12etc. Do use URLs like XanderMarketing.com/about.php.
- Meta tags – Not as important as they used to be but still easy to implement and they do have some importance for search engines. These are keywords that go in your code to inform search engines of your keywords.
- Replace images with text – If your links or headings are images search engines can’t read these. Replace as many as you can with text links.
- Create an XML sitemap for your website – This informs search engines about URLs on a website that are available for crawling. To create a free sitemap for your website visit: www.xml-sitemaps.com.
For advice on how to implement any of these techniques, leave a comment or get in touch and we’ll be able to help you out.
7 ways SMEs can use Twitter
This post was last edited by Alex Cohen, on the March 8, 2010 @ 11:07 am
So Twitter is the next big thing. How can SMEs use it for their business? Here are 7 suggestions:
- If you run a hotel, say in Berkshire, whenever somebody Tweets about going on holiday to Berkshire you can send them a message asking if they have somewhere to stay.
- If you have something interesting to say and people want to hear it, tweet about it. When somebody needs your service they’ll come to the person that’s show up on their Twitter feed every day!
- Networking – find people with similar interests – collaborate, share ideas and work with each other.
- Do you have a business that has regular special offers? Maybe a sandwich bar that has a daily special or an online store? Use Twitter to tell people about your offers.
- Stay in contact with your customers – whether it be advice, special offers, customer service, feedback or just one-to-one communication
- Monitor your competitors
- Twitter is great for Search Engines. Use your keywords frequently and soon your Twitter updates will be high in search engines.
How are you using Twitter or thinking of using Twitter?
