Entries by Darren Stevens

Some of our favourite Marketing tools that can make your life easier

Marketing in today’s multi-channel, digital world can sometimes feel a bit a confusing with so many options and an almost endless “to do list”. To make your life just that bit easier we have listed some of our favourite tools. Listed below in no particular order we hope you find the list to be useful.

1. Google My Business.
A great “window” on the number of people that are potentially looking at your business before they make contact with you. Also a good promotional platform to utilise by ensuring your business is the most ranked and highest ranked in your area and also the free post updates functionality.

2. SmartSurvey.
Gloucestershire based we find this survey tool easier and better to use than its larger rival SurveyMonkey. If you are not already using surveys then consider using them. They are great for PR, customer insight, gauging customer satisfaction and also recruiting testimonials to use in other forms of Marketing.

3. CANVA.
We use this tool all the time for creating great images to use in social media. It is easy to use, but we would still usually save this for those most important posts that you want to look really good.

4. Website Grader.
A free tool from Hubspot that lets you effectively look under “the bonnet” of your website to find things that you may want to fix. Yes the tool is of course biased towards aspects that Hubspot can help you with, but then it looks at every website in the same way, so it can be a good tool to use to see how your website compares with competitors.

5. Bitly.
A great tool to shorten links for inclusion in social media. Only use it where you need to though as people may be less likely to click on a link where they cannot see where it leads them.

6. PicResize.
A handy free online tool that allows you to resize photos to different sizes or crop them.

7. Pexels.
A handy online source of free imagery for use on social media and elsewhere. For paid for images our favourite source is Shutterstock.

8. Cookiebot.
A great free web tool that will let you know what web links you have embedded in your website. Useful for example for ensuring your Privacy Policy is accurate or for checking whether or not you have Google Analytics on your website.

9. Google News Alerts.
A great free tool from Google that lets you keep abreast of breaking news in your industry. Also great for sourcing content to use in social media.

10. Google Analytics.
We saved the best till last. Your website is undoubtedly one of your most valuable marketing assets and it is vital that you should be using this to track how your website is performing, where your traffic is coming from and what sources of traffic are triggering marketing goals.

We could have listed many more, but we hope that this handy list of some of our favourites will come in handy.

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What can we learn from the £14 KitKat?

KitKat has been grabbing the national press headlines this week with the announcement that it will be selling bespoke hand made £14 KitKats from its website and selected John Lewis stores in the run up to Christmas. Chocolate fans will be able to choose from 1,500 flavour combinations. They will be asked to choose their base chocolate from either milk, dark, white or ruby – the pink-coloured chocolate derived from Ruby cocoa beans – and then select up to three flavours ranging from rose petals to popping candy and honeycomb.

But what can other businesses learn from such a move? First and perhaps most obvious is the fact that doing something sufficiently different from what you would ordinarily do (and a price difference of £13.45 over your standard product is a pretty big difference when your standard product is 55p) can grab the headlines. Okay it does help if you are an iconic household brand, but then others have also grabbed headlines with things such as the UK’s most expensive sandwich or cocktail. Whilst clearly KitKat hope to sell lots of these, the move is arguably justified by the publicity gained alone. Of course what is particularly clever about the bespoke and hand-made nature of this product is that they do not risk being left with lots of stock.

Next lesson is never stop innovating. Whilst the standard four figure bar is the most recognisable of all their products, KitKat has released a staggering 350 plus, different variations! In this instance they are using the build up to Christmas as a trigger, what are yours? Changes in the marketing landscape present opportunities for us – for example Chrome and Google’s move against insecure web-sites, the introduction of GDPR and the growing importance of Google My Business have all been good reasons to start conversations with current and potential clients.

Give people things to talk about, photograph and share on social media. I am sure there will be a stampede of people looking to be the first in their circle of friends to have bought a £14 KitKat. I was reminded of this only a week or so ago when my wife and I went for the Gin and Tea Tasting Menu at Mensahib Gin and Tea bar in Cheltenham. Every dish and particularly every cocktail was a work of art and cried out for sharing on social media.

Look for premium price opportunities. Any business will tell you how infuriatingly hard it is to make good profits, so any opportunity to charge a premium can be very welcome. A web and design company that we work with for example has introduced a premium, rush charge for projects that involve work outside of conventional hours and why not? Each client can then determine whether or not they really need it by then, whereas were the premium charge not in place then there is no deterrent to setting very strict deadlines.

All in all I would say fair play to Nestle and Kitkat – a job well done. Should they wish to send us a KitKat hamper for helping to publicise their move, then it would, of course be welcome.

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And they are under Starter’s orders …..

Whether or not you are into Horse Racing there is an undeniable buzz in the air in Prestbury, Cheltenham and Gloucestershire as The Festival approaches. The statistics surrounding the Cheltenham Festival are quite staggering, here are just a few: The economic benefit to the county is estimated at around £100 millionIn 2016 236,472 pints of […]

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Pupil changing name of School to “Prison and Hell on Earth” is a lesson for all businesses

Hornsea School and Language College in East Yorkshire was recently “rebranded” on Google as Hornsea Prison & Hell on Earth. The temporary change perhaps unsurprisingly attracting national headlines.

Behind this enterprising prank is a lesson for all businesses of the importance of claiming your Google My Business page. This page is what produces the box that appears top right when you search for your business and also generates the red circle on a Google Map when people search for your category of business on Google e.g. Marketing Consultants. What some businesses don’t realise, is that if you don’t set up your own page, Google will set up one for you (as I suspect happened in the case of this school).

You can tell whether your business has been claimed because if it hasn’t – wording along the lines of “Own this business?” will appear as a link on the page. Theoretically, nobody other than you will be able to claim your business as part of the verification process of claiming your page is sending a postcard to your physical address with a code that you need to enter online. But this doesn’t stop somebody from suggesting a change in the listing to Google, something they actively encourage. The problem is that if you don’t own the page there is nobody for Google to contact to approve or reject the change and it will therefore automatically happen. In all probability, this is what happened in this case with the school.

But preventing unwanted or incorrect changes is not the only reason you should claim your page. Far from it. So what can you do once you own your page?

You can add your own photos.
You can fully populate your page. E.g. opening hours, facilities, category of business (you can be in more than one), website, telephone number.
You can enter a short promotional description of your business.
You can add events to your page.
You can run promotional posts that include a photo, text and a call to action button with a link (unless you are a hotel that doesn’t have this functionality on their listing). These are free (at the moment) and will drive more people to your website and are a great way to share content you are creating for other purposes like blogs.
You can respond to reviews.
You get access to the insights which shows how many people saw your listing in the last 30 days (if Google read this, can we have the ability to set a date range for this like with Google Analytics please), how they found it and what actions they took e.g. called you, visited your website or asked for directions.

Impressive functionality I am sure you will agree, all free and a unique insight to what is happening before people make contact with you. One way of thinking about this page is that is effectively extends the sales funnel to allow you to understand the dynamics of what is happening even before you are aware of a potential customer.

So the lesson from all of this, is if you have not claimed your page do it today (we can help you with this if you struggle). Once you have claimed it or if you had done already, make sure you make the most of the functionality and keep an eye on the results. If you don’t have the time or resources to do all of this, then businesses like us can do this for you, feel free to contact us.

One final cheeky request. If you have found this blog useful, or you have already worked with us, please free to Google us and leave us a review (or do the same on our Facebook page). Ask your customers to do the same as the more reviews and the higher the score you have, the more likely you will be to appear higher in category searches and the more positive first impression you will give.

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20 questions to ask yourself to understand whether your Marketing is working as well as it can be.

To say we live in interesting times is an understatement. Uncertainty around the world of politics, our relationship with Europe and the economy are occupying our minds daily (if not hourly). Combine this with the fact that despite all the labour saving tools at our disposal (both domestically and in our businesses) we all seem to be “so busy” and there is a risk that we can miss what is right under our noses. This is not to say that we should not take an interest in the wider world, but maybe we should take a few moments to focus on some things that we can influence positively for our business right now.

We have put together 20 questions that you can probably answer quite quickly about the marketing in your organisation. If you look at all of these and can honestly say that you are doing all of them, then give yourself a pat on the back and relax safe in the knowledge that your marketing is in a good state of health and in all probability better than your competitors. Answer no (or yes depending on the way the question is phrased) to any of these and then you probably will have a handy list of areas to focus on to improve the marketing of your business.

1. Do you have a Marketing Plan? If nothing else, have you mapped out what turnover you expect to do each month, that you can measure progress against (too many organisations realise too late that they are not going to achieve their goals to influence the outcome) and a plan of marketing actions geared to deliver these results.

2. Are you reviewing your Google Analytics on a regular basis? For pretty much every type of organisation the web plays a pivotal role in the customer journey. Do you know where your visitors are coming from, how many there are compared with the previous month and the previous year. Google Analytics can tell you this and much, much more.

3. Do you have a plan to increase web traffic to your site? Of course how you rank in search is vital, but what are you doing to influence this and drive traffic direct (where they key in your domain name) through referrals from other sites and of course through social media.

4. Do you have goals set up in Google Analytics? The majority of businesses we meet do not have goals set up for telephone number clicks, email clicks and form completions. This means they may not be accurately tracking what activity their website is driving and what led these people to the website in the first place.

5. Are you using your Google My Business page and your Bing Places page? Have you even claimed your page? If there is a line on your profile that says “Own this business” then you haven’t claimed it. Is your profile complete are you using the free post updates feature on Google My Business or the offer feature on Bing Places. Are you looking at the insights available to see how many people are looking at your business and what actions they are taking?

6. What impression are your reviews giving your potential customers? What is your score on reviews and how many do you have on platforms like Google My Business and Facebook? How does this compare with that of your competitors (particularly important if you are targeting local business).

7. Are you delivering a consistent message and impression. If I look at your website, then your Linkedin company profile or your Twitter profile would I get the same message. Is it as strong as it could be? Ask yourself honestly when you look at yours and those of your competitors – which would you choose?

8. Do you have a Marketing budget? If the answer is no, then how do you ensure that you do not spend more than you should or you intended to? The easiest way to say no, to that advertising sales person that is offering that last minute must buy opportunity, is to say that your budget is already committed or spent.

9. Are you making the most of the enquiries you are getting? Do you respond to every one that you get, do you issue every quote that you should and do you follow up on enquiries as well as you could. Reviewing your sales funnel for leakages and improvements to your sales practices can be a very valuable exercise. Monitor regularly, conversion rate from enquiry to quote, quote to sale and try and understand how this differs by product, channel or route to market.

10. Are you measuring your customer satisfaction and looking for improvements? If not, then how do you gauge whether or not you are at risk of losing them. Ask them to sum up their experience (and if you can use this in marketing) and what one thing you could do to improve their experience.

11. Do you know which are your most profitable products or channels and are these the ones that you are promoting the most (subject of course to the cost per enquiry being satisfactory – see 12 below).

12. Do you know what your marketing cost per enquiry is, and your cost per sale and the £’s taken in sales per pound of marketing spend? Are you evaluating each form of marketing on this basis and making decisions about future spend accordingly.

13. Do you have the skills necessary to run your marketing and evaluate it? If not, what is the best way of plugging this gap. A training course perhaps, recruiting your first marketing specialist or even perhaps using a Marketing Consultant (couldn’t resist that one).

14. Are you making the most of social media? As a rough rule of thumb we would suggest that you should be seeing between 5% – 15% of your website traffic coming from social media. Are you looking at the insights that each form of social media has to evaluate your efforts, numbers reached, engagement etc.

15. Do you market to past enquirers? These can often respond much better than cold prospects – they are aware of you and they were sufficiently positive about you in the past to enquire.

16. Are you marketing to people who have a need for what you offer? Mass marketing can be good for name and brand awareness, but when it comes to response more targeted marketing can work better. Of course to determine this, you need to know what your target customer is and where you are most likely to find those who have a need for what you offer. This is of course why, businesses devote so much effort to being found on google by people who are looking for what they provide.

Take this blog for example, if we have sparked your interest enough to read this blog you are much more likely than somebody who doesn’t want to read this, to have a need for a marketing consultant.

17. Is you marketing integrated? What we mean by integrated is that rather than using marketing tactics or methods in isolation, you use them together in a co-ordinated fashion. Say for example you have a month where you concentrate on one particular product or service and promote it across all channels or direct mail a prospect, then email them, then follow up with a call.

18. Do you market all your products or services or do you expect people to visit your website and discover for themselves. Even with existing customers, how aware are they of your full breadth of services?

19. Do you find yourself describing your business as a best kept secret? If so, then the chances are you are not doing enough to promote your business and get your message out. Of course the cost and effort of doing this needs to be carefully considered, but why should you settle for the status quo?

20. Ask yourself when you last looked at your competitors? You can be pretty sure your potential customers will have done so today. So it is important you keep track of competitors and don’t get left behind.

We hope you find these questions useful and thought provoking. If you decide after going through these that you might need some help plugging the gaps, then we would of course be delighted to hear from you. That is what we do.

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Social Media – What’s New – 12/11/2017

It has been a busy week in the world of social media, as Jenny Jervis outlines in this week’s update. Instagram Stat-attack Instagram Stories have now reached 300 million daily active users, which is up from 250 million for in June 2017. This platform continues to grow at a rapid pace and provides great opportunities for […]

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What’s new in the world of Social Media

This is the first in a series of regular updates from Jenny Jervis on what’s new or interesting in the world of social media. The Internet of things The Internet of Things is big news for social media marketers due to the increase of devices that will be hooked up to the web. Its forecast […]

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