Prior to considering methods of advertising and marketing it is important to ensure that you understand and adhere to local country laws relating to data protection and customer rights concerning privacy and opt-out of various marketing methods. This especially relates to maintaining and using lists and people’s personal details, to the use of telemarketing, direct mail, fax-marketing, and email. Generally private consumers enjoy more protection than business-to-business customers. See the notes about laws relating to direct marketing and advertising.
Small local businesses who target their local community often overlook some very simple easy and cost effective ways of advertising. These low-cost methods are not generally so suitable for big corporations with big budgets, but these ideas can be very effective (and very inexpensive) for small businesses and self-employed people targeting the local area with small advertising budgets.
Here is a quick list of these local advertising ideas, which with a little imagination and selective effort can be developed into a very effective local advertising campaign, providing a continuous pipeline of new business:
Posters in windows and on notice boards, and in staff rooms of local businesses.
A promotional stall at a local car-boot market or county show.
A stall or leafleting presence at a local relevant gathering or event.
Using leaflets or business cards in dispensers where local people sit and wait or queue or gather, for example: doctors, dentists, vets, church rooms, tourist information office, outpatients departments, library, nurseries, mini-cab offices, forces and services sites (e.g., police, ambulance, etc), launderettes, post offices, newsagents, hairdressers, takeaways, cafes and bars, hotels, pubs and restaurants, golf clubs clinics, leisure centres, etc.
Reciprocal referral arrangements with other good local suppliers, especially those who serve your target audience with different products and services (which enables you to be more helpful to your own customers when they ask you to recommend other services).
Regularly giving news and interesting pictures about your work to your local newspaper (see PR below), or perhaps even writing a regular column relating to your specialism in the local free newspaper or parish magazine.
Offering existing customers an incentive (gift of some sort, or money off your next supply) for introducing a friend as a new customer for you.
Door-to-door leaflet distribution through the postal service or other suitable service.
Speaking at local networking/business events.
Speaking or facilitating at the local school or college – for example with business education and preparing youngsters for the world of work (which gives you publicity and builds your reputation).
Local trade directories – typically monthly publications distributed to the local community.
Targeting special offers at local big employers, through their PR and/or HR/social activities.
While most of these methods are for small companies and local campaigns, a few can certainly be adapted and used effectively by big organizations with surprisingly good and cost-effective results.
Here are more advertising methods, generally for larger corporations, campaigns and target markets, in more detail:
websites, the internet, email, cd-rom’s, dvd’s, etc
Online and electronic media are fast becoming the most flexible and dynamic advertising methods of all. As people’s use of the internet increases, so does the internet’s potency as a vehicle for advertising and marketing too.
Electronic and online advertising media can be expensive and challenging to originate and implement initially, but unit costs tend to be low thereafter, and can be extremely cost-effective if sensibly researched and implemented.
As the internet extends progressively to mobile phones and hand-held devices (PDA’s – Personal Digital Assistants), the opportunity and necessity to make use of online and web-related marketing methods becomes increasingly irresistible.
The internet and email provide unprecedented opportunity for radically new methods of promotion and advertising, such as viral marketing, and RSS (Really Simple Syndication) of educational or informative articles, newsgroups, forums, affiliation and partnering arrangements, email newsletters and campaigns, and many other new ideas which appear more quickly than most of us can absorb.
Modern and emerging digital and web-related advertising marketing methods offer audience ‘reach’, precision of targeting, level of fine-tuning and control, measurement and analysis, and cost-effectiveness that conventional advertising media simply cannot match.
Aside from the more complex functionality of modern digital marketing methods, at a basic level, websites, CD ROM’s and DVD’s share much of the same origination and set-up, so it’s now very feasible and sensible to produce all sales literature and brochures, plus lots more besides, in user-friendly, inter-active digital format.
Conventional printed sales and marketing materials of all types (from newspapers and magazines, to brochures and business cards) are becoming obsolete as customers look to the internet (via phones, pc’s, laptops, PDA’s and in the future TV too) for quick, up-to-the-minute information about products, services and suppliers of all sorts.
And as more agencies, technology companies and digital media organisations develop their offerings and technology, so the costs and time of set-up, origination, production and implementation will reduce to levels that will move customers – in time almost completely – away from traditional (printed and other non-digital) media to modern electronic media, digital information, and online ‘engagement’ with suppliers of all sorts.
Internet listings, internet directories advertising, and ‘pay-per-click’ advertising offered by the major search engines, are now viable and relevant for very small ‘local’ businesses, and are all examples of this fundamental shift in marketing.
Take time to learn about and understand which of the new digital methods will work for you and how.
Most, if not all of the information you need is freely available on the internet – take time to look for it and learn – and ensure that your business explores and implements the many very cost-effective advertising methods available to you via internet media and the modern digital revolution.
press and public relations (PR)
The press release is the most under-rated form of advertising. Why? Because it’s free, and moreover press editorial is perceived by the audience to be true, whereas advertising of all almost all other types is seen as ‘oh no another advert’ and therefore implies uncertainty or scepticism. Getting your editorial printed for free is easier than you may think, and guidelines for using PR follow in more detail below. TV and radio news publicity works in much the same way, although more difficult to secure and control. Surveys and questionnaires provide perhaps the best opportunity for achieving valuable and effective publicity. See the guidelines about surveys and questionnaires below.
seminars
Creating an informative seminar and inviting your target audience is an excellent way to educate the market and promote your company and proposition. This method works especially well in the business-to-business market, and where educating customers is appropriate, for instance if marketing a new technology or service to architects and specifiers. It is possible to have certain types of seminars accredited for CPD (Continuous Professional Development) by professional institutes, which provides an extra incentive for prospective customers to attend.
telemarketing
Using telemarketing staff or a telemarketing agency is a proven method of marketing. If well-managed, telemarketing can be an extremely good and cost-effective method for generating sales enquiries, selling products and services and making appointments for sales staff. It is important to identify a good telemarketing agency, and to that ensure your aims, outline script, and communications process for enquiry generation follow-up, are all clearly established and understood, by the agency and your own staff. A good CRM computer system to manage lists, data, follow-up and outcomes, is normally essential for telemarketing is to be successful on any reasonable scale, and good telemarketing agencies will already be using such systems which hopefully will interface with your own systems.
Considerable care needs to be taken when defining and agreeing the telemarketing ‘brief’ with the telemarketing staff, department or agency. Good experienced telemarketing staff and managers understand what works and what doesn’t for given markets, types of propositions and products and services. Listen to their advice.
Generally telemarketing ‘scripts’ are not a good idea for high quality propositions, nor for professional business-to-business campaigns. A good telemarketing agency will work best by developing their own approach to meet the broad requirements of a project ‘brief’ and an outline of what you want to achieve, and how you want to achieve it.
Rigid scripts have the effect of limiting the natural style and capabilities of telemarketing staff, moreover customers generally find scripts, which quickly become robotic and characterless, very impersonal and insulting.
Refer to the legal implications (Data Protection Act and Preference Services) in the direct mail section.
Consumers and businesses are protected by certain rights relating to direct marketing techniques such as telemarketing, and you must ensure that your activities adhere to these rules.
direct mail
Some of the principles and rules referenced here also apply to other types of direct marketing, including ‘door-to-door’ distribution and telemarketing methods.
Direct mail is the process of sending your material (by itself or in a shared mailing with other items) direct to the address of the potential customer by post. The elements which make up the direct mail process are basically:
a mailing list of names and addresses (from your own data-base or names sourced elsewhere)
the item(s) to be mailed, and envelopes or packaging, if applicable
resource or facility to ‘stuff’ and address or label the envelopes/packaging (assuming you are putting the item in an envelope or packaging, which of course is not always the case)
and postal charges, which depend (in the UK) now on the size and shape as well as the weight of the item being mailed.
The last two stages are often called ‘fulfilment’.
Direct Mail is generally used to generate a direct response from the recipient and will commonly incorporate a reply or response section within the mailed item.
Aside from the strength of your proposition, response rates vary according primarily to the quality of the list, notably:
the reliability of the list data (new clean lists obviously perform better than old out-of-date lists)
and how well ‘targeted’ the list is in terms of your offer (how relevant it is to the recipient).
Direct mail is not a precise science. See the direct mail story for example. There are many things that can go wrong, and even more things that are unknown and unimagined by the campaign manager. Like the rest of advertising, whether a direct mail campaign works well or poorly it’s often very difficult to discover what elements need to be changed and how: the proposition, the mailing list, the reliability of the fulfilment, the day and time of delivery, the response mechanism, something else? For large ongoing campaigns it is appropriate and cost-effective to conduct follow-up surveys of respondents and non-responders, but for smaller initiatives it’s rarely cost-effective to attempt detailed analysis other than to look for obvious indications of success or failure.
A direct mail campaign which produces more than a 2% response is normally considered very successful. Lower than 1% response is more usual. You then need to take into account the conversion rate (the conversion of responses into sales), assuming the campaign is designed to produce responses or enquiries and not sales directly. Aside from the quality of the responses, which is determined by the campaign, conversion rates also vary according to factors outside of and after the direct mail activities themselves, such as response handling, IT systems, sales follow-up, etc. It is therefore important to judge a direct mail campaign first on percentage and quality of response, and then separately to assess the overall results of the campaign including conversion statistics and sales values.
Inexperienced marketeers (and many experienced ones too) tend to over-estimate forecasted response rates for direct mail, so a planning tip is to be pessimistic (prudent, as accountants say), especially when calculating advertising viability and return on investment. When you first state your estimated response rate as part of the financial justification for the direct mail campaign, next reduce it by a factor of 10 (i.e., re-assess the campaign viability using on one-tenth of your initial response forecast). If the figures still show a positive return on investment then your campaign might well be successful. If not, then it’s sensible to re-think the whole thing.
Your own database of existing and past customers will typically produce a significantly higher response than that of a list sourced elsewhere. List prices vary enormously, from a few pounds up to several hundreds of pounds per 1,000 names and addresses, depending on volume, how specific the list is, and how selective your profiling criteria are. You can also choose whether to have the list on labels, or on a disk in a common spreadsheet or database format, the latter being most common now, and easy to import, if appropriate, into a CRM (customer relationship management) system.
Mailing list prices also vary according to the terms of use, notably the number of times the list can be used (list rental), or whether unlimited use is permitted, or whether the list is being actually bought outright.
These days for small businesses it’s very easy and cost-effective to do your own or outsource a mailmerge direct mail, campaign, using a word-processing program in conjunction with the list of names and addresses on a spreadsheet program. Large scale direct mail campaigns are normally best managed via a CRM (customer relationship management) system. Contact the Direct Marketing Association or country equivalent for more information about providers of lists and mailing services, etc.
display advertising
The taking of advertising space in the editorial sections of magazines or newspapers, as opposed to the classified sections, which are a less expensive, and generally lower performing method. All significant publications will be pleased to provide you with their ‘Media Pack’, which gives full details of all the types of display advertising available, for how much, together with lots of information about their readership profile and circulation. If you are trying to generate a direct response from display advertising you may need to feature a coupon of some kind. Otherwise display advertising is concerned with image-building and creating awareness. As with other advertising methods, the use of Free-phone telephone numbers and Free-post addresses all increase response rates.
directories – local directories, Yellow Pages, Thomsons, etc
These sorts of directories remain very useful for local domestic, consumer and household products and services suppliers. A business telephone line normally gives free Yellow Pages and Thomson’s entries under a single classification in your local books. Display adverts or more entries are charged at rates that vary according to each book (there are around 100 Yellow Pages directories books covering the UK). Books are published annually, at different dates throughout the country. These directories can often be very effective for generating enquiries for consumer businesses, but are not appropriate for all types of business-to-business sectors. Ask yourself – where would my potential customers look for suppliers of my products and services?
Consider and seek out local smaller directories and trades booklets also. The increasing ease of publishing means that production of good quality small-scale local directories is now very easy for publishers and most towns now have at least one local directory or booklet listing local suppliers which is distributed to all households in the area.
directories – internet
Internet directories and specialist search engines are an increasingly effective way to advertise and market your services, because so many customers now use these listings to find suppliers. Many listings are free. Some work well, others don’t. Many listings are not free. Again some work well and others don’t. Ask other similar suppliers what works for them. Test the listings yourself to see how well they work and how commonly they feature in the main search engine listings such as Google.
To discover what website listings and directories you should appear on, search for your own products and services using Google. Include the town or area or other geographical descriptions in your search phrases – in as mny different ways as you think your customers would.
You need to be featured on the internet directories and listings websites which appear at the top of the Google results for the search terms that your customers will be using.
brochures, leaflets and printed material
Brochures and leaflets can be used for a variety of purposes, and can be distributed in different ways. A good printer can provide examples and costings, and the easiest way to learn what works and what doesn’t is to look at other people’s material. The aim of a brochure is foremost to generate new business through providing information in a way that appeals to the reader. The acronym AIDA (attention interest desire action) should be the basis of its design. Some brochures and leaflets are pleasing pieces of art, but they don’t achieve anything for the business, so avoid falling into this trap. If you work with a designer be sure to control any fanciful tendencies and keep the message and style to the point. Too much spent on a brochure can give the impression that your business is extravagant.
When producing leaflets and brochures think about the way that they are to be distributed. If it needs an envelope try to avoid using a non-standard envelope size, which will add cost unnecessarily. If the material is required as an insert is it acceptable to the publication? Is it to be available from a rack? Do you want people to retain the material? If so perhaps a business card or plastic credit-card-type attachment would help?
There are thousands of different types of paper. Letterheads are usually printed on to 90-100gsm (grams per square metre) cartridge, laid or bond. A 100gsm paper is adequate for single sided mono or colour printing. 130gsm is better for double- sided. 200gsm is minimum weight for a post card format. 250-300gsm is used for business cards. Heavier boards are usually measured in microns rather than gsm because density affects weight more at these gauges. Coated matt and gloss ‘art’ papers are used for higher quality effects, but add to cost. Various lamination processes add more quality and more cost.
The print process is actually a number of separate stages:
design
reprographics (now a computerised process which produces camera-ready-artwork and the film from which the printing plates are made)
plate-making or electronic equivalent (for low quantities, digital print processes now enable high quality printing direct from a computer)
printing
finishing (stapling, folding, etc if relevant)
Generally it is not possible to undo a stage and return to the previous one without re-originating at least the previous stage, so take care when signing off each stage. If your instructions to an agency or printer are not correct you will end up paying for the time they spend re-originating and amending, so think things through before you start the process.
Re-prints are generally cheaper than the first run because the reprographic work and plates do not need to be produced again. When you ask for a print quote ask at the same time for a price per thousand ‘run-on’ – you’ll be surprised how low this cost is in proportion to the main quote. This is due to the origination and set-up charges being already absorbed by the main run.
‘Full colour’ printing uses the colours black, red, yellow and blue, and requires a plate to be made for each colour. Mono printing is black on white and requires just one black plate. Each colour can be tinted (ie applied less than 100% solid) to varying degrees across the print area, so with good design even black and white printing can give a high quality effect. Conversely, a poor design can make full colour printing look cheap and nasty. If you want something classier than black and white, two colour printing can produce amazing results, without the cost of going to full colour.
As a rule, printing costs reduce dramatically with volume. Digital printing methods are appropriate for low volumes, and fast becoming viable for higher volumes. There are various printing processes, which are appropriate for different purposes and particularly volumes. Ensure that the process is appropriate for your application. As a rule colour is more expensive than mono (black and white), although digital printing is not so sensitive to colour/price differences.
loose and bound inserts
Inserts, in the form of leaflets, brochures, or other material, are provided by the advertiser to the publication, to be sent out with the magazine or newspaper. You have to produce the materials to be used as inserts which incurs printing costs, and then pay the publication a charge for insertion. There is a big effect from economies of scale. Charges vary according to weight of insert, how many inserts per publication, volume, the narrowness of the circulation profile, and how the publication is itself distributed. Response rates from inserts are almost always lower than direct mail, but inserts are a very flexible and cheap method of distributing an advert to a target audience. Bound-in inserts cost extra, require longer lead-times, and are favoured by some advertisers because they don’t fall out and consequently are seen by more of the total readership, which can be two or three times greater than the circulation.
‘door to door’ leaflets and advertising distribution
Large quantity leaflet drops to consumer households and business addresses, without the need for envelopes or normal postal charges, can usually be arranged through the postal services (the Post Office in the UK), so that your leaflet is delivered at the same time as the normal post, or at other times of the day if required. Demographic targeting, based on postcodes and population census data, is possible to a degree, and the cost is often inclusive in the distribution charges.
Other specialised household distributors provide similar services, sometimes incorporated within local newspaper deliveries.
Details can be obtained from various door-to-door distribution services providers, and the UK Direct Marketing Association.
posters sites (hoardings, taxi-cabs, buses, roadside fields)
For advertising considered as public information a variety of poster sites are free to the advertiser, so it makes sense to use these freely, supported by some record system so you keep them up-to-date and utilised. Other sites vary according to nature and cost, from large roadside hoardings to buses, taxis and sports grounds. Anywhere that people pass or gather in large numbers is a potential poster site, and as with printed media, audience profile information is usually available. New sites are being discovered and exploited all the time, such as supermarket trolleys and floors, table napkins, public conveniences, and the media extends now into continuous video at post offices and filling stations forecourts, etc.
local radio, TV, cinema and the internet
Other forms of targeted media advertising, and now TV and radio are increasingly used by smaller local businesses, although tight geographical targeting is obviously difficult. Cost of production can be a significant factor.
Producing your own information and managing e-commerce on the internet is now viable for even very small businesses. For consumer businesses, the on-line shopping boom began several years ago: If you are supplying consumer products that can be shipped easily through the post or a carrier and you are not yet selling via the internet I would urge you to catch up with your competitors and start doing so, because many of your competitors will already be doing it.
all business-to-business organisations should now have a web presence
If you are large organisation then you will likely already have had this in place for several years. If you are a small business you might imagine that having a presence on the internet is not important. It will be, if not already.
Particular styles and origination are required for a good website, and the medium is no longer passive, so you need to think about integrating promotion and advertising to attract people to your site. If you want technical information on the really esoteric stuff like search engine optimization (SEO), then an excellent free resource is at deadlock.com.
See the tips for creating effective websites.
guide books, hand-books and newsletters
Publishing your own information material is potentially very effective, and costs can be reduced by incorporating relevant supporting advertising from other organisations wishing to be associated with your services and to target your audience. Guidelines for Newsletters follow later. (Remember now that electronic media is able to extend the use and potential of newsletters far beyond traditional printed media.)
Alternatively you can advertise in a relevant guide book produced by another organisation. However, be careful to ascertain accurate details of circulation and profile if considering small or unproven publications.
open days and exhibitions
The advantage of personal contact is that you actually get to talk to your potential customers, which dramatically increases the chances of getting your message across. But there is a limit to how many people you can target and access using these methods. Costs of preparation and organisation can be big, and are rarely transparent at the outset so beware.
Events of this nature do nevertheless offer good possibilities for follow-up PR activity, which can contribute greatly to building a customer-friendly image.
word of mouth
Personal referral is unsurpassed as an advertising tool. It costs nothing and is the most believable type of ‘advertising of them all. Encouraging word of mouth referral is therefore a good reason for sustaining excellent customer service and relations. If your customers are thrilled by the service you give they’ll tell their friends.
You can encourage word of mouth referrals through the use of discount vouchers and coupons, loyalty and ‘friends and family’ schemes, introduce a friend incentives, and any other mechanism that encourages people to spread the word on your behalf.
networking and clubs
Using business networking methods to develop contacts and introductions is an especially cost-effective marketing method for consumer services and products, and more particularly for business-to-business services. A variety of networking opportunities exist in all sectors and regions, including trades associations, chambers of commerce and trade, networking websites, societies, clubs, breakfasts, lunches, events, and anywhere that potential customers and influencers gather, and the systems within which they communicate and socialise. Use your imagination. Always be prepared to speak to others enthusiastically about your business – the world is full of potential customers.
An increasing number of networking communities and services are now to be found on the internet too. Explore these opportunities, keeping in mind the particular target audiences most relevant to your aims.
direct marketing, advertising, and the law
In the UK there are strict laws protecting consumers, and to a different extent businesses, from aspects of direct marketing and other forms of advertising. Other countries generally have their own equivalent laws.
Consumers and to some degree businesses can ‘opt out’ of being subjected to various sorts of direct marketing activities. In the UK this system of opting out is managed via the processes and organisation of the ‘Preference Services’. When you use direct marketing – whatever the method – ensure you are acting within the law, and have consulted the relevant Preference Service rules (or local country equivalent).
Details of the UK ‘Preference’ services are available from the respective Preference Services agencies in the UK (for phone, fax, post and email), from other UK government information resources such as the BERR (Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform – was DTI, Department of Trade and Industry), and the Direct Marketing Association (and equivalents of all these in other countries as applicable).
Separately, the Data Protection Act in the UK contains implications for storing list data and using certain lists, notably for private consumers, and for the marketing of particular services (for example financial services), and there are similar laws dealing with this aspect in different countries, so check the law as applicable for your own situation before buying and using lists. More details (for the UK) about Data Protection rules are at the Information Commissioner’s Office. You should adhere to your local laws or guidelines concerning unsolicited direct marketing. In the UK these are explained by the Information Commissioner’s Office in terms of direct marketing by phone, electronic or postal methods. If you are not in the UK seek equivalent advice.
And aside from this, advertising is subject to scrutiny and action by the Advertising Standards Authority (UK), and of course all advertising and marketing is ultimately accountable to the various laws which seek to protect people and organisations from illicit or fraudulent trading.
For more information about good and acceptable practices in advertising (and by implication marketing too) refer to the UK Advertising Standards Authority, and the the European European Advertising Standards Alliance (EASA), which represents European national self-regulatory and representative organisations for the advertising industry in Europe.
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‘tricks of the trade’ - guidelines advertising
Remember ‘AIDA’ – Attention Interest Desire Action (see the sales section).
The Attention part is the banner or headline that makes an impressive benefit promise. Interest builds information in an interesting way, usually meaning that this must relate closely to the way that the reader thinks about the issues concerned. If you seek a response you must move then to create Desire, which relates benefits to the reader so that they will want them. Finally you must prompt an Action, which may be to call a telephone number or to complete and send of a reply coupon. Advertising that does not prompt action is a wasted opportunity.
Your main message must be the most prominent.
Do not be tempted to devote 50% of the space to a striking picture or a quote from Shakespeare. The biggest part of the advert must be your main benefit statement. This is the part that entices the reader to read on.
Offer a single impressive benefit, quickly and simply.
Research proves that where responses are required, the best adverts are those which offer an impressive, relevant benefit to the reader. This ‘promise’ should ideally contain the business brand name, take no longer to read than is normal for the media (direct mail is about 4 – 8 seconds, or about fifteen words) and be clearly the most striking part of the advert. This point cannot be stressed enough; you must keep it quick, simple and to the point. And the trend is for ever quicker points: David Lewis, an eminent consumer psychologist, says, “Copy is getting shorter, and a major factor behind this is that people these days suffer from acute shortages of both time and attention. Younger generations are extremely visually literate. They have been brought up on computer games, so they couldn’t deal with a lot of polished copy, even if they wanted to.” Think about the vocabulary and language you use; know your target audience: a simple test is to avoid any words or grammar that would not be found in the newspaper that the target group would read.
Your message must be quick and easy to absorb.
Use a clear layout, clear fonts and clear language. Do not distract the reader from the text by overlaying images or using fancy fonts. Use simple language, avoid complicated words, and keep enough space around the text to attract attention to it. Use simple traditional typestyles: serif fonts are quicker to read than sans serif. Use ten, eleven or twelve point-size for the main text; smaller or larger are actually more difficult to read and therefore less likely to be read. Look at newspapers and library books, which are almost always serif fonts of ten to twelve point size.
Avoid cluttering the advert with fancy images, colours and backgrounds. Make it easy to read.
For the same reason avoid italics, shadows, light colours reversed out of dark, weird and wonderful colours. None of these improve readability, they all reduce it. Use simple black (or dark coloured) text on a white (or light coloured) background. for maximum readability.
Involve the reader in your writing style – use the 2nd person: you, your, and yours.
Refer to the reader as ‘you’ and use the second person (‘you’, ‘your’ and ‘yours’ etc) in the description of what your business does for the customer to get them visualising their own personal involvement. Describe the service as it affects them in a way that they will easily relate to it.
Incorporate something new.
People respond better and are more easily attracted initially to a concept that is new or original. If they’ve heard or seen it all before it will be no surprise that they take no notice at all. People must believe there’s something in it for them right from the start.
Develop a proposition that is special or unique and emphasise this.
Why should people be interested if your proposition is no different to your competition? You must try to emphasise what makes your service special. Unless your code of practice prevents you from claiming superiority over your competitors, you should put as much emphasis as you can behind your USP (unique selling point), and either imply or state directly that you are the only company to offer these things. Again refer to the selling article about developing unique selling propositions.
Your proposition or offer must be credible and believable.
The Advertising Standards Authority or equivalent would prevent you from making overly extravagant claims anyway, but you should still attempt to make your offer seem perfectly credible. This is usually best accomplished by explaining ‘why’ and ‘how’ you are able to do the things you are offering, in support of your claims; you can also increase credibility by showing references or testimonial quotes from satisfied customers.
For example, if you claim particularly good customer service, this can be reinforced with an outline of your policy on seeking customer feed-back and carrying out satisfaction surveys.
People open envelopes from the back.
Stuff envelopes so the material inside faces the back. Remember this if you send anything in an envelope, or instruct a mailing house, as reading the back first throws out the AIDA order, and wastes time before the reader sees the main benefit statement.
Use lower case type – word-shapes are lost when capitals are used.
People read by recognising word-shapes not individual letters, do don’t use upper case (capital letters) for text, and ideally not for headlines either, as it takes longer to read and reduces impact.
Headline should be three-quarters up the page or advert space.
Position your headline statement where it can be seen quickest. Do not put headlines at the very top of the space. The eye is naturally drawn to between two-thirds and three-quarters up the page or space, which is where the main benefit statement needs to be.
Advertising is often referred to as a ‘Black Art’ because it is mysterious, and is rarely a precise science. Things sometimes work which you imagine wouldn’t, and plenty of things you think should work, don’t. The Direct Mail Campaign Story is a amusing example of the unpredictable nature of advertising ideas and methods.
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PR – public relations and using press-releases for free advertising and publicity
Brief your staff – have a policy, especially for crisis situations.
If you court press attention make sure your staff are aware of your positions and policies. Make someone in charge of press contact ideally , so that other staff are not forced to comment.
All newspapers need press releases to help fill their pages.
Local papers particularly need news submitted by the local community or they have to pay more for journalists to go out and get news. Look through your local papers and magazines to spot the PR material submitted by commercial organisations. This will encourage you as to how easy it is to provide ‘news’ stories for the press.
Local TV and radio are also amenable to PR, but they’re a bit more choosy. Nevertheless bear TV, and certainly radio, in mind for anything going on in your business of local interest or ‘novelty value’.
Get the local editorial contact names and numbers.
PR ‘news’ must be submitted to the news department (editorial department if it’s a magazine) of the publication concerned. They like faxes in preference to posted material (it’s more current) and are notoriously unreliable, so don’t be put off if your success rate in getting material published is a lot less than 100%. Be aware that the journalists will alter your copy, so don’t agonize over the precise wording, but do enough to make it interesting and newsworthy. Generally journalists prefer to deal direct with organisations rather than their PR agencies, so don’t be shy.
Remember that press-release publicity is free.
Don’t miss the opportunity to take maximum advantage. It’s worth managing your PR through some kind of control system to keep up a regular and consistent activity. For a little thought you can easily achieve the equivalent of thousands of pounds worth of display advertising per year, for no advertising cost.
Press-release publicity carries more credibility than paid-for advertising.
People are largely unaware that much of what they read in the local and national newspapers is in fact carefully planned PR. They are therefore more receptive towards it and moreover believe it almost without question.
Photographs improve editorial take-up by 100′s%.
A good photograph in support of a press release will dramatically improve your chances of publication. Either provide your own, or if the story is an event ask the press to send their own photographer.
Do it now – old news is no news.
If you’ve got something newsworthy don’t wait or the opportunity will be lost. Even simple things like staff promotions, qualifications attained, hobby achievements, staff joining, babies, all make acceptable PR stories, and always be on the lookout for the quirky and unusual.
Ask for editorial coverage before paying for display advertising.
If you plan to pay for display advertising or inserts in any type of publication always ask before giving the order if you can have some editorial coverage as condition of placing the advertising business. Many publications will agree at this stage, and you’ll have some free editorial to support the advert. Some publications combine the two and sell ‘advertorial’ feature space, which purports to be news but is really a large paid-for advert.
Surveys provide excellent material for editorial, and are used by many companies for publicity purposes. Any business can organize an interesting survey. See the guidelines about surveys and questionnaires below. You’ll learn something about your market and create a significant opportunity for free publicity. Read newspapers and magazines and you will soon see examples – even in the national broadsheets.
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newsletters – guidelines for producing effective newsletters for staff or customers
Make them interesting – encourage feedback and contributions
Producing your own newsletter for the local community is an excellent way of giving information, building an image of friendliness and trust, canvassing opinions (and being seen to do so), and advertising your own services. Follow the basic rules of AIDA, concentrating on the first two issues of Attention and Interest, unless you seek a direct response. Modern computer desk-top publishing programmes make it very easy to put together a respectable news-sheet to begin with. If possible, when you are committed to the concept and wish to increase scale, get some professional design input for the general layout, graphics and banner artwork.
Invite contributions from your readers; a letters section is a good way to fill space and make the readers feel more involved. Especially invite comment about the format and content of the newsletter itself, which will help to convince you how and whether to continue publishing future issues.
Commit to a frequency and size that you can sustain
If you can only manage one every three months so be it. Don’t promise a monthly and then fail to get the next editions out on time, which would rather defeat the object of building your image. Start off with a single page, and allow it to increase in size if you see positive reasons for doing so. Start by piloting just a few copies, perhaps just a few hundred, and increase the distribution as you refine it.
Adopt a format and styling that is fit-for-purpose
Basic rules of advertising production apply. Keep it simple, easy to read, and avoid anything off-the-wall or extravagant. Use a format that is cost-effective and amenable to your method of distribution (think about rack dispensing, inserts, door-to-door, etc).
Include photographs and details of your staff
If your newsletter allows inclusion of photographs, pictures of customers and other people will help bring it to life. Publishing pictures of staff is also motivational.
Include positive and happy stories
Keep the content up-beat, optimistic and positive. You can’t distort facts of course but you do have some licence to present issues in a way that will reflect as favourably as possible on your business and your people.
Make one person responsible or appoint an agency
Often the most difficult challenge in producing a newsletter is sustaining it. It is extremely difficult to collect good ideas and news for content, and if there is not a clear point of responsibility with schedules and deadlines the whole exercise will end up being rushed, perhaps late or incomplete, with the result that it has a poor effect on staff and readers alike.
A marketing or PR agency will take on the job for you at a price, but even with expensive production support, getting the raw material is still the most difficult part of the process, and needs firm planning and monitoring.
Maintain a consistent design
Consistency of appearance is essential to build recognition, awareness and positive association with your business. Don’t compromise on corporate colours, quality of artwork and logos, and typestyles, even the type of paper you use should not be changed without proper reasons.
Relate the news to your customers and their community
Keep in mind all the time who your audience is, and assess the content to make sure it is relevant, and presented in a way that your readers will want to read it. It may be possible for you to recover some of the cost of the newsletter by selling some advertising space, but be careful about the type of suppliers you include so as to avoid detracting from the image you are presenting.
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website design and internet marketing tips
Websites and the internet can seem extremely complex, and on certain levels they are, but the fundamentals are simple. Don’t let ‘experts’ baffle you with science. Have faith in common-sense principles and your own experience when using websites. Here are some basic rules for good internet and website marketing, and particularly for creating effective business-to-business websites:
KISS – as the saying goes – “keep it simple, stupid”. people want information quickly, clearly, no-nonsense. Remember your own frustrations when using unnecessarily complex websites. Make your own website easy to use and to convey your improtant messages. Aim for simplicity and ease of use in all functionality.
The internet and the website medium are ideally suited to specialised providers, suppliers, companies, etc., so try to specialise and be the best in what you offer within that specialisation on the web.
Give as much as you can free online from your website – material that can be printed or downloaded, or information that can be read from the web page are all good worthy free things to offer.
A website should be like a shop – think about it in the same way - ease of access to what you want – make browsing easy – layout clear and clean - the experience should be warm and welcoming.
Remove obstacles like registrations and password requirements as far as possible – these are barriers to visitors – shops don’t have barriers and registration requirements do they?…
Fancy graphics visual effects please designers but not customers - fancy complicated design puts people off.
Lots of text is good – if it’s relevant search engines like lots of text too, but it must be relevant.
Keep information up-to-date – many search engines take account of update frequency, so update your website frequently (ie, weekly at least) even if it’s just small changes.
Offer what people are interested in – not what you want to push.
Good websites will be found by most search engines – don’t pay for regular submissions services unless you have a very complicated and extensive internet and website strategy.
The big three search engines are Google, Yahoo and MSN. Google remains by some considerable margin the most popular search engine, accounting for a sizeable majority of all searches. Google’s listings are based on Google’s very clever ranking algorithms, basic details of which freely available at Google’s own website. After four years of collaboration with Google, Yahoo – which is the next most popular search engine, accounting for around 15% of all searches – converted to their own search engine system (as of February 2004). As Google no longer underpins the Yahoo search engine, getting a good listing with Google no longer guarantees automatic ranking on Yahoo too. MSN is the next most popular search engine, accounting for about 10% of all searches. These three search engines – Google, Yahoo and MSN – therefore account for virtually 95% of all search engine visitors to all websites, so if you concentrate on your listings with anyone, concentrate on these. If you only focus on one, under all normal circumstances this should be Google.
Other sites linking to yours will certainly improve your search engine rankings, so reciprocal links are okay, but building a site that other sites will want to link to is far more beneficial than directing all that effort instead into a reciprocal ink campaign. Reciprocal linking is much over-reated as a website optimisation tactic. relevant high quality links matter. Having hundreds of irrelevant links on tiny unpopular websites counts for very little.
Search engines downgrade or de-list sites that cheat, so don’t cheat. If you want to know what constitutes cheating look on the web for the very many highly complicated website marketing and promotion websites. www.deadlock.com is a good one, and they also have lots of really detailed advice far beyond these basic principles when and if you’re ready for it.
Measure your traffic – there are lots of trackers and systems to use – www.extreme-dm.com is a good example of a system that is either free (their ‘public’ version) or paid-for (multiple pages ‘private’ version). Aside from these separate trackers most website hosting solutions and providers now include traffic statistics packages. Google Analytics now offers an extremely sophisticated free website tracking and analysis tool.
Read website optimisation blogs and newsletters, and learn about the tools you can use to design and measure your website’s performance in relation to the web as a whole – especially what people are searching for, how they find websites, and what yoiu can do to optimise your own website. For example, Google Trends is very useful tool for assessing the relative popularity of website search terms. Overture’s keyword search inventory tool is also very useful, when you can actually get on the site – it is inconsistently available, perhaps due to high demand.
If you engage a website designer or agency follow the principles for engaging with any creative agency – develop your specification first (ie., especially all text, spelling and grammar checked, structure and process implications) and then let them get on with it – don’t waste a designer’s time finalising and correcting these fundamental content and material issues once they’ve begun the design stage.
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surveys and questionnaires – for staff or customers
It is important to know what your staff and customers think and need in relation to your organization.
Don’t guess or assume – or worse tell them. Ask them.
A survey is the common method to discover staff and customer attitudes, needs, desires, problems, etc.
Usually a survey is based on a questionnaire. Market research companies can design and organize staff and customer surveys. So too can good telemarketing agencies. You might prefer to organize a survey internally due to control or costs reasons, in which case it’s helpful to follow a sensible process. Even if you use an agency, it’s helpful to understand the process.
Here is a quick guide for the process of creating and organizing a staff or customer survey – or some market research – based on a questionnaire. All situations are different, so seek other ideas and adapt your own plans accordingly. Seek help from colleagues and external people where possible in areas that you are not capable or confident.
To develop your questionnaire you first need to identify exactly the data you wish to discover.
Brainstoming this can be a useful start. You should also consult with all interested parties in listing your survey criteria. It’s a lot of effort to design and manage a survey, so it’s silly to miss something important because the early planning stage was rushed.
Here are the main steps to designing a survey of staff, customers or your market, using a questionnaire:
Decide and agree the purpose of the survey. Keep it as simple as you can. There is a temptation to expand surveys into additional sectors and subjects, but this normally dilutes the usefulness of the response and the resulting analysis. It helps to concentrate on the key issues for your essential target group. In this respect, surveying is rather like marketing and selling. If you spread your efforts too wide and thin your results will be wide and thin too.
Decide your target respondents or audience or market sector or staff audience. Ensure that your target respondent group is relevant to your survey subject, and satisfy yourself that you can identify and reach the target group via whatever communications and survey method you choose.
Decide the level of privacy and anonymity which is appropriate for your survey. Many surveys work better if conducted anonymously. On the other hand, a survey of business customers generally works far better if respondents are known and given the opportunity to express specific views from their own particular standpoint.
Decide the minimum response (number of completed questionnaires) that you need for a useful sample. For business customer surveys a minimum of 100 responses is an acceptable number provided respondents represent a suitable cross-section of the relevant target audience or customer base. Consumer surveys tend to require several hundred respondents for very useful results.
Organize your survey to allow for the anticipated response rate. For example anticipate a low response rate (between 2% and 10%) if the survey method is passive, such as postal or email or web-based. More proactive methods like telemarketing give a higher response rate (assuming the contact list is reliable you can work on about 20-50% response from the contact list – and be guided by the telemarketing agency if you use one). For general consumer market research surveys via street or door-to-door interviews again consider that most people decilne to take part, and therefore you should build a low response expectation into your planning of numbers and time. The highest response rates are from focus groups (basically a focus group is an arranged meeting for interviews and discussions, usually combined with a questionnaire) which by their nature enable 100% response. Interestingly the other hugely ignored opportunity for very high responding surveys is complaints and grievances from your target group. Think about it… complaints and grievances are an extremely useful source of valuable feedback and views, which ideally should be incorporated into any survey project. It’s a terrible waste not to.
Decide the survey method(s) – email, internet, telephone, written document, focus group discussions, street surveys, door-to-door, or combination of these – whatever will fit your situation and tagret group best. Consider the reply mechanism if one is required. For example include postage-paid addressed envelopes. Or for internal staff attitude surveys consider tasking someone to encourage and collect replies. Whatever – make it easy for people to respond.
Consider incentivising or offering prizes to survey respondents, or even a payment – especially to focus group members. It’s very frustrating to put the time and effort into designing and running a survey only to find that you get a response that’s too low to be useful. People are very busy and mostly are not prepared to give time in responding to questionnaires, even if it’s in their interests to do so. For passive survey methods (for example postal or internal mail) expect response rates to be less than 10%. Sometimes they can be less than 1%. Business customer surveys work well if postal questionnaires are supported by telephone introduction to explain the survey purpose, then followed-up (‘chased’) by telephone too if necessary.
Design the actual questionnaire: List the individual questions/issues. At the earliest possible stage it helps to build the survey onto a spreadsheet – this enables data and structure and scoring, etc., to be organized much easier than in a text editor. Try to create a natural flow or sequence in the questions. Use closed questions (yes/no) where useful, and offer multiple-choice answers, and avoid giving a bias to the questions influenced by your own assumptions, or the CEO’s personal views.
Then create questions – seek expert help with writing the questions – it’s important to get this right. Questions that seem clear to you might be confusing to people far removed from the project. It’s crucial to frame the questions objectively and clearly so that they can be quickly and clearly understood by the reader. Clear questions also maximise response rates. Confusion and lack of relevance in questionnaires are big reasons for people not responding. Effective questionnaires must be easily and quickly understood, so test your questions on someone who knows nothing about the situation, even some young teenagers (arguably the most difficult audience of all), to check that your intended meaning is properly and quickly understood.
Devise a scoring method and design this into the questionnaire format. Analysis of results is very difficult and time-consuming if you fail to consider this properly. Ideally you must be able to convert answers into numerical data to make analysis quick and reliable, especially if your survey is large. If in doubt seek help from a spreadsheet expert. Finance departments in organizations usually contain such people, who are often delighted to help with survey projects because they are interesting and connected with the customers and/or staff side of the organization. Spreadsheets enable all sorts of clever analysis if you know how to do it, and it helps greatly for good analytical functionality and structure to be built into the design of the spreadsheet from the beginning.
Write a suitably appealing supporting explanation of the survey’s purpose. Also take care with the questionnaire instructions, and also give some details about the follow-up process. People are more likely to respond if they can see and understand a meaningful purpose and follow-up for the survey. Getting a good response to a survey is always challenging, so the better your supporting explanation then the better your response rate will be. A survey also helps towards positive staff/customer relations exercise – it shows you are interested in their views, so make the most of the opportunity to communicate and explain.
Consider and decide about publishing the survey analysis (or a summary), and how best to convey results and follow-up actions to the respondents and other interested parties. This is especially important with surveys of employees. For certain types of market research or attitudinal surveys consider also the PR (Public Relations – publicity) value and opportunities arising from your survey. Subject to rules of privacy and agreement with your respondents, a survey commonly makes excellent press editorial and publicity.
Test the survey and method(s) with a small sample of people, preferably representative of the actual target group. Check that the scoring and analysis can be done. This is especially important if the survey is large, expensive, and/or crucial to the organization’s strategy and decision-making. The need for testing is one very good reason for planning surveys sufficiently in advance of the deadline for getting the results.
If you test the survey, obviously refine the questions and structure and survey methods appropriately.
Run the survey. Monitor its operation. Don’t wait until the end to discover a problem that you could have fixed at the start. If you use an agency check their progress soon after they start, and again at suitable intervals, depending on the size of the exercise. Again don’t wait until the end to discover there was a bloody great big spanner in the works.
Chase up the replies using telephone follow-up where necessary. This is another reason for monitoring progress: commonly response levels fail to be as high as planned, in which case the earlier you are able to add some extra impetus the better.
Analyse the results and implement follow-up actions as appropriate, which if appropriate must involve giving agreed feedback of results and outcomes to respondents. If you are struggling with the analysis because the format was badly designed, it’s still not too late to call in some help from a spreadsheet expert, rather than making a mess. If the data is there in one form or another, a good spreadsheet person can often achieve a minor miracle and save the project, or simply save you several days work.
Write up the report fairly and objectively, and circulate it as agreed, especially if it throws up a few nasty surprises, which are actually the most valuable survey results of all.
Ensure all specific complaints and matters arising from individual customers are followed up reliably and satisfactorily.
Review the survey project overall and incorporate lessons and improvements next time.
Tip – a good way to understand how to structure questionnaires and write survey questions is to see how other organizations do it. Look at the various survey materials which you receive yourself – through your letter-box, in new products that you buy, at airports and stations, in magazines – they are everywhere once you look for them.
See also the notes on designing and managing an employee motivation survey. Essentially this focuses on understanding staff motivational attitudes, but the guidelines also include useful techniques and rules for surveys and questionnaires in general.
The training needs analysis methods are also useful for understanding and designing surveys, and the TNA spreadsheet tools can easily be adapted into more general questionnaires for other purposes.
Another example of a questionnaire is the Multiple Intelligences Test materials – which provide further examples of how to design survey questionnaires.
The personal strengths indicator is another (very basic) example of a simple survey format, which is fine if the survey is small and does not require a lot of statistical analysis.
While analysis and structure are vital in big surveys, ultimately what’s most importnat is simply taking the trouble to ask for people’s views about important issues, rather than guessing or assuming, or telling people what you think they should be.
Well designed and implemented surveys always produce a positive effect for the organization. People – whether employees or customers – think better of the organization for being asked and consulted, especially if they see you’ve listened and done your best to react positively to the feedback you’ve been given.
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