Entries by Darren Stevens

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 million
In 2016 236,472 pints of Guinness were consumed on the course
£2.3 million is taken out of cash machines in the town
Approximately 10,000 Irish racing fans come to the Festival
134,600 travel through the town’s train station
20,000 bottle of champagne are served at the racecourse
1 ton of beef is eaten on the course
The shuttle buses from the town centre to the course make 80,000 journeys
A typical jockey will consume no more than 1,500 calories in a day

The race meeting is also a focal point for Marketing of all kinds. For over a week now the betting companies have been promoting their Festival offers and there will be all kinds of stunts from them during the week to get their brand in front of the racegoers. The picture that accompanies this blog is of the giant Hollywood style Paddy Power sign put up on Cleeve Hill overlooking the course in 2010. Local pubs go to great lengths to promote their racing breakfasts. The local council offers free parking in its car parks to tempt shoppers into the town centre during the lull when the punters are at the racecourse and the Business Improvement District runs a competition for the best racing themed window.

Aside from the direct economic impact, what is the value to the town of being “put on the map” by this event? It is very difficult to estimate this, but a campaign to raise this level of name and brand awareness of Cheltenham would most certainly cost millions.

In the ten years of running Prestbury Marketing we cannot recall receiving an enquiry from a business or business person whilst they were visiting Prestbury for the racing, but maybe this year will be the year? If you or your business need help with your marketing or PR then feel free to get in touch.

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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 […]

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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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New Pizza Hut “Now that’s delivering” TV advert – what is there not to like?

Pizza Hut has launched a bold new TV advertising campaign (watch the advert here) with the ambitious aim of “owning” the UK pizza delivery market in 2019. An audacious aim perhaps, but you have to admire the advert – well you don’t “have to”, but it undeniably has a lot going for it. The campaign is in the context of results for Pizza Hut (for last available full year to 3rd December 2017) that saw sales drop from £233m to £225m and a UK market for delivery and takeaway pizza that is reportedly worth £1,125m.

The advert has humour, very clear, strong unique selling points and even manages to repeatedly take a swipe at its main competitor, where we are left in no doubt who they are referring to despite the fact they don’t mention them by name. Admittedly in a 60 second commercial but Pizza Hut manage to squeeze in strong references to their taste (backed up by consumer research), 30 minute delivery guarantee, the fact they reward loyalty and their value with their “£5 Favourites”.

There is a well respected and still often used Marketing Model called AIDA, that outlines the steps that you have to take a consumer through to get them to respond to any form of marketing. The steps being (getting) Attention, (creating) Interest, (generating) Desire and (prompting) Action. We would argue that this ticks all these “pizza” boxes.

Only time will tell how successful the campaign will be, but it will be interesting to see and also see how Domino’s Pizza respond (surely they won’t just fall over?). Let the battle commence.

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2019 – what is it likely to mean to the world of Marketing?

As one year draws to a close and another is just about to start, it is a good time to try and look forward to the next year and reflect on likely changes over the next 12 months and how these may impact on your marketing and priorities. In this blog we look at some of the key themes that we think are going to emerge.

1. The growth of voice search

With the phenomenal growth in the likes of Amazon Echo, Amazon Dot and Google Home it is little wonder that volumes of voice searches are climbing fast. Estimates already suggest that 20% of Google Searches on mobiles are voice searches. By 2020 it is predicted that every major brand will have a voice strategy. It is also likely that we will see Google introduce a new category of ad campaign specifically for voice searches. Google’s own research has shown that “near me now” searches have grown by 150% over the last two years.

What can you do straight away to enhance your voice search presence? First and foremost if you have not already done so, claim your Google My Business listing (more on these later), ensure they are fully populated. Voice searches are 3 times more likely to be local in their nature. If you are not already doing so, start blogging and try to build into these the longer question type phrases that people may use e.g, How can I improve my marketing in 2019?

2. Embrace Google My Business and make the most of it, whilst it is all still free

Hopefully if you are reading this, you will have already claimed your Google My Business page. These are the boxes that appear top right when you search for a specific brand or company (you can see ours here) and what drives the maps with red teardrops on when you search a category (see below example).

Map of marketing consultants cheltenham

If you haven’t already claimed your page, then do it now.  If you search for your business, and a box appears with wording something along the lines of “Do you own this business” or “Claim this business” then click on this and follow the steps to claim the page (Google has set up pages for many existing businesses in readiness for them to claim them). When you Google if no page exists then go to the Google My Business homepage and click on the green button start now.

See how you compare with reviews, both in terms of number and score. Having more reviews and a higher score can be very powerful for businesses where their market is predominantly local. Cheeky mention that if you work with us and haven’t reviewed us on Google or Facebook, please feel free to do so.

Get into the habit of posting regular Post Updates. These can be highly effective and are completely free promotional updates that appear in your Google My Business box. Post regularly and compare their performance to hone these as a tool. These are completely free at present, but we would not be surprised if 2019 saw Google introduce charges for these. We have seen many of our clients see very good results from these this year.

3. Video’s importance will continue to grow

Opinions differ on the extent to which videos on your website can help with the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) of the site. Cisco however predict that 82% of global consumer internet activity will be video related by 2021.

Why else might you want to embrace video if it may or may not benefit SEO? A growing proportion of people prefer to watch a video than a long block of text. Even in a study of business executives when asked whether they would prefer video or text, 59% said video. Embedding videos on your website can reduce the bounce rate on a page and increase the dwell time on a page which can be beneficial for the Google quality store. Also other sites are more likely to link to pages with video on them. One study found that 85% of interactions can be attributed to images on social media posts, whereas another suggested that video can outperform static images by over 130%.

Whilst all of this is good news for video production companies, more home grown knowledge based videos and animated style videos that businesses can produce at a modest cost are also likely to increase.

4. Internal Marketing (or Internal Communications) will grow in importance

We are currently operating in a very tight job market with historically low levels of unemployment and shortages of skilled employees in many sectors. On a regular basis, we hear clients say that one of their biggest challenges is finding skilled people.

Despite this situation many firms (particularly medium sized ones who perhaps don’t have a dedicated resources, yet also don’t have the advantages that much smaller ones have of one to one communication with the decision maker in the business) are not taking internal marketing/communications seriously enough. Do you really know how engaged your staff are, how many understand what the business is trying to achieve and what their role is in this? How many of your staff will be waking up on New Year’s Day with the new Year’s resolution of finding their next role?

Of course, communication is just one factor in the overall pay, benefits and wellbeing of employees, but how many employers would not want to reduce staff turnover?

5. More and more businesses will embrace integrated marketing

The choice of marketing routes and tactics can seem bewildering and most businesses will have a wide array of forms of marketing at their disposal – website, social media, direct mail, newsletters, email to name just a few. Used together in a structured planned manner focussing on particular campaigns, products and services, these can be incredibly powerful and significantly increase return on investment from marketing.

Radio, TV and Newspaper industry groups are quick to point out the multiplier effect on response when these are used together and they have a point. Whilst not literally true in every instance, there is an old marketing principle that the average person needs to see on average an advert seven times before they respond. In our fragmented media world and with the explosion of social media, this can be achieved much faster than before.

Challenge yourself, do you have a Marketing Plan  and are your planned activities as integrated as they could or should be?

In writing this blog, we set ourselves the constraint of focussing on what we think may be the biggest things to emerge when it comes to marketing in 2019. Many will have different views and certainly we see things like PR, content marketing, paid for social media activity and website page loading speeds also being a key focus (check out Googles nifty tool for checking this here). We hope though that at the very least we have prompted some debate, or given some food for thought. Of course if you need help with any of the areas that we have covered we would be delighted to hear from you – contact us here. Otherwise we wish you a Happy New Year and a successful 2019 – let’s make it a good one.

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Recruiting for your first Marketing person – some top tips

So you have decided that the time is right to recruit your first marketing person? Maybe the amount of marketing that your organisation undertakes has grown to a point where you consider you would be better off having a dedicated person. But you are not sure what to do next? Well here are our top tips on the steps that you need to take.

Firstly make sure that you budget for the other marketing costs that might be associated with that person and we are not referring here to HR costs like pensions or holiday pay. Whilst some forms of marketing do not involve expenditure, just effort and activity if you do not budget for some paid for activity (e.g. paid for social, Pay Per Click) you are unlikely to see your new person achieve their full potential.

Then decide what you want them to do. Obvious right? Well possibly, but you need to form these thoughts ideally into some form of job description that potential applicants can look at and determine whether it is something that interests them and matches their skill-set. One of the most common issues we see at this point is where businesses want to incorporate both marketing and sales tasks under the same role. There is nothing as such, to prevent you from doing this, but be aware that they require very different skill sets and finding both of these in one person can be very hard.

Next determine the level of person you think you need. Whilst you cannot now put the number of years’ experience required on discrimination grounds you need to have in your own mind the likely level of person you will be looking for, so that you can determine the salary that you will offer. People already in marketing roles will be able to determine the level of person you are looking for through a combination of the job role and the salary you offer.

Then you need to determine how you are going to recruit. The more senior the role, the more you are likely to benefit from using a recruitment agency that specialises in marketing (if you want recommendations on who you should consider in Gloucestershire please get in touch). Agencies have the advantage of a strong list of contacts and ability to reach people who are already in a role and not actively looking. For a more junior role you should be able to attract sufficient interest yourself. In Gloucestershire we are fortunate to have services like GlosJobs that can be very cost effective. Boosted Facebook posts can also be a highly cost effective means of generating interest and make sure you make the best possible use of your own social media, particularly Linkedin.

Once the applications flood in (hopefully – but be realistic there has been a shortage of good marketing people in recent years), the next task is to sift through applications to arrive at a shortlist for interview. We would usually suggest a minimum of 3-5 for this, as you can lose potential candidates along the process as they find other roles.

You then need to determine what the selection process is. This is usually one set of interviews or a first interview, followed by a second for a final one or two candidates. We would usually suggest asking candidates to sit some form of practical tests to gauge their abilities. Perhaps a writing task (draft a marketing letter), a proofreading task (with errors added in) and a task where they have to evaluate the results of a fictitious campaign. These tests are best done as part of the first interview, with the test being done first and then a break to allow marking – so that you can then discuss how the applicant found the tests. If you are having a second interview consider bringing in somebody different for the interview from your side to give you a fresh perspective.

At this point you need to try and reach a decision as soon as possible and make an offer. We would suggest not declining unsuccessful candidates until the preferred one has accepted, unless you are very confident that you would not consider them.

Once a candidate has accepted, try and keep in contact with the successful candidate whilst they are working their notice, to minimise the chance of them dropping out at this late stage. Also plan an induction programme for the first few weeks and think about what goals for the first few quarters and the first year you are going to set.

Simple isn’t it? If you think you might need help with this process, then get in touch as we can help with everything from writing job descriptions, shortlisting candidates, practical tests and interviews through to fast track induction and personal development plans.

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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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The end of an era

It was with more than a little sadness we heard on Wednesday of the decision to stop publishing The Gloucestershire Echo and Gloucester Citizen as daily newspapers and instead to publish them as a weekly paper. Now to put this into context I am of a generation that I still recall as a child rushing […]

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