Entries by Darren Stevens

Come and see us at the Gloucestershire Business Show

The countdown is well and truly on for this year’s Gloucestershire Business Show on the 17th and 18th May at The Centaur, Cheltenham Racecourse – 9.30am-4pm each day. This has got to be the biggest and best business event in the county now in its third year – with over 140 exhibitors, a number of special themed areas, workshops, seminars and a number of networking opportunities.

You can book free delegate tickets here. A full programme for the event can be viewed here.

We will be exhibiting at the show and you will find us on stand GD4. Why should you come and visit us at the show?

A great opportunity to meet the team.
Bring your Marketing or PR questions or problems for FREE advice on the stand.
Take our 20 point Marketing healthcheck to see how fit for purpose your marketing is. To avoid disappointment, please book your slot in advance through the Contact Us form on this website specifying a preferred date and time.
Enter our FREE Business Card Draw to win either a FREE half day of Marketing Consultancy or a Hamper packed full of Gloucestershire food and drink items – celebrating the county’s rich heritage in this sector.
Pick up a FREE Prestbury Marketing pad and FREE Chocolate Orange bar (well our brand is orange!)

Did you know?

Prestbury Marketing came up with the idea for the Gloucestershire Business Show due to a growing annoyance amongst its business to business clients that to attend a business exhibition, they either had to to go Swindon, Bristol or even further afield. Having planted the seed of the idea with Pete Allison at a Circle 2 Success event at The Daffodil, he picked up on the idea and ran with it.

Come and see us

So what are you waiting for? Book your place and call in and see us on stand GD4.

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What to do when Marketing goes wrong ……

In the ideal world, everything you ever do on the Marketing front will be a rip roaring success. But from time to time things can go wrong for even the best marketers – but then is the time for a calm head and to ask yourself some questions (or ask somebody like us), to help identify what went wrong and how you can improve things in the future.

Here are our 10 top questions to ask yourself, if you find yourself in the situation where marketing has either failed or not lived up to your expectations.

1. Did it really fail? This might seem a daft question but how reliable are your measures for determining the success or otherwise of your marketing? When new enquiries come in or new customers approach you, how rigorous are you at finding out what prompted them to contact you and is this recorded and analysed (not just for this one campaign, but compared with the previous month and the same month the year before). Are you examining the other indicators that might highlight the impact of marketing – an increase in web traffic, an increase in calls or footfall?

2. Was the market there? If your marketing happens to coincide with what is seasonably a poor time or an “event” that might suppress response, then it may not be the marketing tactic that you deployed that was at fault. For many businesses for example, August can be a difficult time to market because so many people are on holiday. If you are marketing to the general public the weather or even clashing with a major sporting event can have an adverse impact.

3. Were your expectations reasonable? This can be one of the most common reasons for marketing to have deemed to have failed. If your gauge or measure for success is beyond what you might reasonably expect, then you are almost doomed to fail. Look back at previous marketing to see whether your expectations are reasonable, ask somebody (not a competitor) what their experience is of using the same form of marketing or get a marketing experts view.

4. Was there a sufficiently strong call to action? For Marketing to work it must take the audience through the four steps of AIDA. You must get their attention, spark their interest, create a desire and get them to take action. Critically self examine your marketing to see whether there is something in it to take a person through these stages – is there a “why now” element that means people won’t put off the decision to another day.

5. Was there sufficient repetition or reinforcement? It can be very rare for a one off isolated form of marketing to work on its own. Put yourself in the place of your customer if they have never heard of you before, it is quite a tough task to create awareness, build trust and persuade the customer they want what you have to offer, all in one go. This is why larger businesses will model and evaluate the number of times somebody needs to see an advert to respond, so that they can buy their media more effectively. Ask yourself could/should your campaign be multi-stage i.e. direct mail, email, call or should it be integrated i.e. press/radio, online, social media and PR.

6. Was the marketing method wrong? Do you really have a very clearly defined view of who your target customer is and is the marketing method a good fit for this audience? Somebody targeting young female consumers would choose a very different form of marketing to somebody targeting say, recently retired. When you are buying media do not disclose details of your target audience, but do ask the sales person to describe or outline their audience so that you can then compare it with your profile.

7. Was your Marketing affected by competitor activity? So for example if you run an advert in a publication or on a website where there are 2 or 3 competitors advertising at the time – this will divide response. You will be particularly badly affected if somebody has a much bigger presence or is running a better offer. Equally though don’t fall for the sales trick of “you will be the only business of your kind in the publication” (an easy promise for some to make and begs the question why).

8. Is all lost? If you have had enquiries but they have not turned into business, might there be any residual value in these? Depending on the industry concerned it can be surprising how great a proportion of people that make an enquiry but then do not go on to make a purchase (even with somebody else). If this was a big campaign consider surveying those that enquired but who did not go on to buy, to seek their views.

9. The “but it has always worked before” syndrome. If you are still using the same forms of marketing that you were say, three years ago, then you may be missing a trick. There has been a major shift in marketing spend for example from more traditional methods to digital ones. The traditional methods still have their place but maybe the time is right to re-evaluate the methods you are using and the split of your spend. Fortunately with many of the alternatives available they can be relatively inexpensive to “dip your toe in the water” and can also be highly measurable.

10. Would expert help be of any benefit? Because we all consume marketing on a day to day basis it can be all too easy to form a view on a form of marketing – what we like to call a “focus group of one” (which is something you would not be advised to run). Sometimes an external expert can view things in a way that it would not be possible for somebody who is either not a marketing expert or tainted by being on the inside. If any of the points in this blog have made you think, then imagine how this kind of insight might feel if it were tailored to your business and industry. This is one of the reasons we find our Marketing Audits to be so popular.

Hopefully we have given you some food for thought in this blog. Overall we would say don’t get down because of failure, use it as a springboard to reflect on it and look for ways to improve your marketing in the future. Of course if you come to the conclusion that you might need our help, then we would be delighted to hear from you.

 

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You have a website, so what …………. next?

Our top 10 tips for making sure you make the most out of your website and what it can do for your business.

The chances are that if you are reading this and you either work in a business or run a business yourself, then that business will have a website. The possible exceptions might be if your are just starting out, your business is very small or you consider that the internet is not important to your business (I know hard to imagine, but some people still think that way).

Far too many businesses though fall into the trap of thinking “thank goodness for that” when they finish their website and consider it a job done. That might be the case when you produce a brochure – after all you cannot change a brochure once you have had it printed, but this should most certainly not be the case with a website. We would urge you to think of it more as the start than the finish. In many respects websites should be thought of being a little like painting the Forth Bridge – it is never finished (although having decided to check our facts it turns out that even painting the Forth Bridge finished at some point as you can see here).

So if you accept our argument that you should regard your website as never being finished what exactly do we suggest that you should be doing to/with it. Here are our top 10 suggestions:

1. Check your Google Analytics. The amount of information and insight that the free version of Google Analytics provides is quite remarkable. It allows you to understand how many people are visiting your website (whether that number is increasing or decreasing), how they found your site, how many pages they looked at, what they looked at and much much more. If you don’t have Google Analytics on your website we would strongly suggest you get your web company to add it. Even if you don’t look at it now, from the point it is added it is compiling a history for you that you can look at the future.

2. Ask yourself what is the Google Analytics telling you (or for that matter, ask us to to do that for you)? It can for example help guide you on what aspects of your marketing are working best for you. For example if you are running a direct mail campaign or perhaps doing a door drop, does this lead to an increase in the amount of direct traffic to your website. What proportion of your website traffic is coming from social media – anything less than 5% and it is worth looking at more closely. Where is your most engaged web traffic coming from and where are you losing visitors? These are just some of the questions you should ask yourself.

3. Is your website mobile friendly or to coin an industry phrase – responsive? Google announced in February 2015 that from April of that year it would start to penalise websites that are not mobile friendly by ranking them less highly in searches on mobile devices. If you are at all unsure whether your website is mobile friendly or not, then Google have a free to use tool where you can check your website – you can find it here.

Aside from the rankings though, there are other compelling reasons why you would want your website to be mobile friendly. Firstly and perhaps most obviously you would want your website user experience to be as good as possible regardless of what device they were using wouldn’t you? Google Analytics also tells you what your bounce rate is (the bounce rate is the percentage of people who arrive on one page and leave the site immediately), not just overall, but also by device. A “bounce” could in certain circumstances be good, for example – I look at a website for a telephone number and I find it straight away. Most bounces though are considered bad and you should be looking for the lowest bounce rate possible. If your website is not mobile friendly you will usually see a higher bounce rate for tablets and an even higher bounce rate for mobiles.

The good news about responsive sites is that most new sites will be built as a responsive site and the days when it cost more to have your website built mobile friendly are long gone.

4. Look to see whether there is a correlation between web traffic and business levels. If there is, then this might increase the argument for doing more to drive traffic to your site e.g. more social media, pay per click etc – at least on a trial basis to check that this also leads to an increase in enquiries and business levels.

5. Keep your site fresh. It is generally well accepted that Google and other search engines, “like” websites that are regularly updated. It is one of the reasons that we write blogs like these, although they are also a great way through social media of driving traffic to our site. Even if you don’t blog, there are other ways of keeping a site fresh, adding testimonials or case studies are another good way.

6. Check whether your site is secure. Aside from the fact you would not want your site hacked or enquiry data stolen, Chrome announced last year that they would progressively highlight to users the websites that they considered to be not secure. If you look at an insecure website (ours included but we are taking steps to address this), Chrome will currently show an “i” in a circle next to the address in the browser, which if you click on it will show that the website is not secure. Later this year they will make this much more prominent with a red warning bar, that is likely to have a damaging effect on the traffic that visits your site. Fortunately it is not very difficult to change your site from being http to https, which is what is required to make your site secure. You will also need a security licence. Your web company will be able to quote to do this or we can direct you to firms that can help with this.

7. Measure what you can. Google analytics will tell you a lot about how your website is performing but you also need measures in your business as well. Make sure that all enquiries are logged and that new enquirers are asked how they found your business, then monitor this information and ensure that you calculate the amount of business that the website generates and that you can gauge how well web enquiries convert compared to others.

8. Look for opportunities to list your website on other websites, as this can be a good way of driving traffic to your website that might not otherwise find you. Make sure that you set up a Google My Business listing, as it is free and will help you be found even when people are searching for your type of business rather than your name. A glance at our referral traffic so far this year, found that 3 people already this year had come to our website via our listing on the Cheltenham Chamber of Commerce website. PR activity that leads to online articles can also sometimes include links to your website.

9. Consider Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). SEO is where you, or someone on your behalf will make changes to your website to make sure that you rank highly on searches for the terms that you want to be found for. Large organisations that drive a lot of traffic to their site and get a lot of business from it, can spend thousands a month on this. A one off exercise though, costing hundreds rather than thousands can highlight changes that you can make to your site that will improve its ranking. We usually suggest this is done as part of building a new website.

10. Consider paid for activity to drive more traffic to your website. If your website is performing well and you are generating business from it, then it may be worthwhile considering paid for activity to boost the amount. There is a huge variety of ways this can be done, but Google adwords (pay per click), boosted Facebook posts or online advertising are some of the most popular. The great thing about any form of online marketing is that it is highly measurable. Could you also do email marketing or e-newsletters to prospects to drive even more traffic? It is crucial though to make sure that you ensure your website is working well before you start spending money on driving more traffic to it.

Hopefully we have given you some food for thought with this blog, but if it all sounds a bit daunting or you don’t have the time or expertise to carry out this work, then that is what we are here for. You can contact us here. So what are you waiting for?

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Our Marketing predictions for 2017

As we approach 2017, here are our 12 predictions for the Marketing industry in 2017.

1. The percentage share of Marketing budgets devoted to some form of digital marketing will increase.

2. There will be a rush to make website https as Chrome rolls out its planned changes to mark non secure websites as insecure.

3. The importance of social media will increase, but the market will also become more fragmented, with the dominance of the likes of Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin becoming increasingly challenged (very much a continuation of 2016).

4. More and more businesses will adopt content marketing as they strive to increase traffic to their websites.

5. Demand for experienced Marketing staff will climb, outstripping supply and leading to more firms to “grow their own”.

6. Integrated marketing, will become the norm – with less and less businesses running marketing or campaigns in silos.

7. Businesses will devote more time and energy to their full digital presence, not just their website and will strive for a more consistent brand image.

8. Economic uncertainty will prevail driving businesses to source suppliers locally.

9. Customer expectations will continue to climb and the gulf between expectations and reality will grow wider. This will drive more firms to measure customer experience and invest in training and technology to improve results.

10. Pressure on marketing budgets will increase the focus on customer retention, cross selling and improving conversion rates on new enquiries.

11. Businesses will place an increased importance on customer and prospect data. Ensuring it is up-to-date, complete and increasingly segmented.

12. Growing numbers of businesses will turn to outsourced providers to supplement existing resources or skills (well you would expect us to say that wouldn’t you?)

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2016 – a month by month guide to what happened

In a year of such major political events, it is all too easy to overlook some of the main events in the world of marketing. We list here a light hearted look at twelve marketing things that happened in 2016 – one for each month of the year.

January

John Cleese returned as Basil Fawlty for a TV advert for Specsavers.

February

Google stopped showing adverts on the right hand side of search results.

March

21st March Twitter celebrated its 10th birthday.

April

Facebook announced major news feed algorithm changes.

May

The Content Marketing Association unveiled a forecast that UK businesses spend on Content Marketing will increase by 179% to £349m by 2020.

June

27th June – England vs Iceland – The most tweeted about TV event of the year with 2.1 million tweets

July

13th July – Pokemon Go was first released in the UK and high street brands were quick to try and make the most of the phenomenon.

August

The domain .blog first became available.

September

8th September – Chrome announces that from January 2017 it will start to mark websites that are not https as insecure.

October

Tesco and Unilever have their very public spat over pricing that saw Marmite come out as the big PR winners.

November

11th November Buster became a household name, featuring in the John Lewis Christmas advert for 2016.

December

Amazon launches its own food label brand – Wickedly Prime.

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Tis the season of Corporate Giving

Here at Prestbury Marketing we have always been firm believers that businesses should play an active role in supporting their local communities. This belief is not just based upon a gut feel that it is the right thing to do, but more the fact that we believe that “doing good is good for business”. The proof in the pudding is that several of our clients have come to us through a mutual involvement in supporting a charity or cause. We also find that the support we give boosts our profile significantly.

One of the causes that we support at this time of year is Hamper Scamper, a gift and food hamper collection and distribution appeal organised by our charity client County Community Projects (CCP). The appeal has gone from strength to strength. The origins of Hamper Scamper go back to 2007 when Zurich, a charity partner of CCP asked them for their help in organising a food donation collection amongst staff to give to local disadvantaged people. They collected enough food for 10 hampers that CCP distributed for Zurich. Fast forward to 2016 and CCP collected hundreds of gifts for children in the county that might not otherwise have received a Christmas present. They also collected enough food to make up hampers for over 1,100 families or individuals who in one way or another are struggling.

Thanks to amazing support from The Regents Arcade and Cheltenham Borough Council, the home for this year’s appeal was the former BHS store in the arcade. The venue was ideal, not least because of the increased visibility it gave to the appeal but also the large area it offered to work in. The Prestbury Marketing team were fortunate enough to be invited along to help for half a day this week, joining our clients Officeworx and Smart Computers. It was a hard working, non stop morning of filling large Hamper Scamper boxes with food items, to keep up with the constant stream of volunteers and community groups, calling in to collect their hampers for distribution to the disadvantaged. It was also incredibly rewarding and satisfying to see the sheer scale of generosity of individuals, organisations and businesses that had donated food items. We were delighted to have donated a car load of items that we purchased for the appeal as well as a collection from our recent business breakfast that all the attendees generously contributed to.

We were also delighted to see many of our clients supporting the appeal. We have already mentioned Officeworx and Smart Computers, but we also know that Printwaste Recycling and Shredding, Circle 2 Success, Questline and The Royal Oak to name just a few, also got behind the appeal.

Hamper Scamper is a great way to support your local community and the team behind it, ably led by CCP’s Chris Knight deserve huge praise. We only hope they get the sense of satisfaction of a job well done – they deserve it. It is great to know that this Christmas for over a thousand families, will be a brighter and happier one as a result of Hamper Scamper.

If your business is looking to get involved in your community or to adopt a charitable cause, we can help guide you through the process, to make it as easy as possible and to maximise the benefit of the arrangement for both parties. You can find out more about this service here.

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The power of Social Media

Social media isn’t just there to grow your brand and connect with old friends, when done correctly, the big platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Instagram can play a key role in creating new business leads and attracting new customers.

Let’s take a look at how Trumps triumphant yet surprising win in the USA presidency last week has been marked as ‘the first true social media election’ of all time. We know that social media is forever growing in users; since the USA election in 2012, Facebook now boasts more than 60% monthly active users along with Twitter’s influx of more than 185 million users. This substantial increase in active users made social media the obvious option for reaching voters and creating global conversation. The Wall Street Journal summed the situation up nicely when it said the “traditional media” and the Democratic and Republican parties have lost “dominance” of public opinion to the “digital revolution.”

Trump and Clinton succeeded by getting people to talk both about and with them. Both candidates had an on-going relay in campaign messaging, barely missing a day without updating Twitter. The power of social media has had a similarly positive impact on helping businesses create leads and reach new consumers, just like Trump and Clinton searching for voters. We see typically between 5% and 15% of our clients web traffic coming from social media to see whether you are achieving this you do of course have to monitor the evaluation tools of each form of social media and google analytics.

Some of the key features on social media can allow businesses to create free engaging content, set up paid for adverts, upload 360 degree imagery and post live footage in order to potentially reach thousands and thousands of people.

We’ve listed a few pointers to help your business shine on social media:

1. Keep content regular – It is important that you’re constantly posting on social media, we don’t mean every minute of everyday but enough to ensure your business is being seen and your content is fresh in users mind.

It can take a little while for you to build social media followers, it never happens in an instant but the more engaging content you upload the more interaction you are likely to receive thus driving website traffic and increasing likes, comments, click through’s and shares. Focus also on growing a relevant audience and not just chasing numbers for numbers sake.

What level of frequency should you aim for? We suggest you begin sharing up to two Facebook posts, 10 – 30 tweets and 3 – 5 Instagram posts a week.

2. Be engaging – The most engaging content on social media requires images, videos, links and graphics to be uploaded with your posts. This will increase the chances of your content being seen as users are more likely to interact and click play to watch short videos than they are to engage with words on there own.

3. Do your research – These days you’ll find the majority of businesses are using social media and moving their marketing budget towards digital and social media advertising but we are a big believers in doing research first, then testing and evaluating..

We recommend you distinguish where your audience is online, what platforms do they use? What is their daily routine, the times when they are online? Can you find key hashtags being used in your industry? Are there any popular conversations or weekly Twitter chats you can join in on?

4. Stay connected and honest – As well as posting your own content and driving traffic to your website, the key to creating new business leads on social media is to keep up to date with users in your industry, stay connected, follow competitors and find the top influencers that can help your content be seen by others.

Building an honest and positive brand reputation online is crucial. Once your live on social media pretty much all your content can be seen, reviews can be read and follower stats can be found. Consumers look at social media accounts when deciding on a purchase, make sure you are delivering content that says what’s exactly on the tin. Also finally, don’t forget the value and benefit of watching social media, it is not just enough to post and share, you need to respond to and interact with your customers.

We offer various levels of social media management as well as social media training, so if your social media marketing could do with a boost please get in touch.

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HTTPS – Is the answer for you – Yes, No or When?

Last month Chrome came out and announced that all websites that are not HTTPS, will from January next year start to be flagged by them as not secure if the sites either require passwords or take credit card details. The move has been designed to “encourage” firms with HTTP sites to turn them into HTTPS ones.

The motivation for this announcement was to quote Chrome to “help users browse the web safely” and part of “a long-term plan to mark all HTTP sites as non-secure.” So in time this will affect all HTTP sites and not just those that take passwords or credit card details. Below is how Chrome will eventually flag up all HTTP pages.

So exactly what is the difference between a HTTPS or HTTP site? If a website is not HTTPS, it is not secured and it is possible for someone else to interfere with the website before you see it. For a long time, only websites with serious security concerns bothered to get a certificate (which is what sits behind a HTTPS website) – for example businesses taking payments or banks allowing people to log into their accounts, but HTTPS sites have become increasingly common.

From enquiries we have been making to web companies on behalf of clients, changing your site from an HTTP site to become HTTPS is nowhere near as big a deal as it was for example to make a non mobile site, mobile friendly. It is an additional cost however and yet another thing to add to your growing “to do list”.

Is it worthwhile making it the change? We think so. No-one yet knows how the general public will react to these changes, but it is likely to put many users off and that cannot be a good thing for your website. If that were not reason enough it is a widely held view in the Search Engine Optimisation community that making your website HTTPS will give it a google ranking boost as well. So all in all, it probably is really a question not of yes or no but when.

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Who was the big winner of the Tesco versus Unilever battle?

When two mega brands like Unilever and Tesco clash, it is always going to be interesting and this week was no exception. Both brands hit the headlines this week, prompted by an attempt by Unilever to raise the wholesale prices it charges Tesco by about 10% of some of its household name brands (Hellmans Mayonnaise, Comfort and Marmite).

Somewhat ironically the Chief Executives of both brands had previously warned that the sharp drop in the pound post the Brexit vote would lead to price increases in the shops. But it seemed at one point that Tesco considered this week that it should not apply to them. Now I am sure that disagreements between suppliers and supermarkets are common but for these to become quite so public is not (apart from the very public Dairy Industry versus supermarket tug of war). Tesco tried to act tough, by seemingly withdrawing from sale (at least online) some Unilever brands that led to them showing as out of stock on their website.

Why did this attract quite so much media interest? A coming together of two things in our opinion – the insatiable appetite of the media for any signs of changes following the Brexit vote and product shortages (or complete unavailability). As for the latter you only have to look at how the media has handled petrol shortages in the past and their coverage of queues at petrol stations, by way of an example or the seemingly annual Prosecco supply “may run out” put out by that industry.

After a day or so, the situation was resolved, presumably with Tesco agreeing to some form of price increase, probably some way short of the 10% sought by Unilever. Was there a winner in this very public tug of war? Tesco would claim it was them, as they were portrayed as taking a tough stance with suppliers, trying to increase prices that they would then have to pass on to customers. Tesco’s mission statement includes the fact that they will “be a champion for customers” and their statement echoed this – “We always put our customers first and we’re pleased this situation has been resolved to our satisfaction”. The Tesco share price also climbed by 5% due no doubt in some part to the result of the battle.

Asda tried to jump on the same bandwagon with a statement about their own negotiations, but this attracted much less interest.

Unilever meanwhile were clear winners in terms of brand awareness, rarely if ever, has a number of household brands seen so much free coverage in the media. Now here at Prestbury marketing we do not necessarily subscribe to “all publicity is good publicity” but in this case the brands were clearly portrayed as household favourites, with any potential negativity being limited to Unilever (and arguably even they were portrayed as victims of the fall in the pound). A clever bit of opportunistic marketing by Iceland and a Daily Mail front page offer of a free jar of marmite right in the midst of this.

Image result for daily mail front page marmite offer

For what it is worth we would probably adjudge Marmite as the winners of this whole episode, but then we have always been very much in the “love it” camp (as opposed to the “hate it” one).

What is the marketing lesson from all of this? Firstly to try and anticipate any PR implications of major decisions before they are made and to have a plan for the most likely outcomes. Secondly, to monitor situations closely and ensure a speedy reaction as things develop. Lastly, if you want to be the next Iceland always be on the lookout for what is happening in your marketplace and consider how you can turn events into an advantage for you.

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When Adidas compares TV advertising to the fax – should we all listen?

Marketing Week Magazine has this week reported on the fact that the snappily titled Adidas “global head of digital ecosystem design” David Greenfield, has compared TV advertising to the fax. Clearly a damming and unwelcome comparison for TV advertising, but is it a viewpoint that all marketers should listen to?

According to Thinkbox (the marketing body for commercial TV in the UK), TV advertising revenue in the UK totalled £5.27 billion in 2015, up 7.4% on 2014. This is the sixth consecutive year that TV advertising revenue has grown in the UK. Forecasts suggest however that digital advertising will overtake TV advertising for the first time in 2017.

TV viewing figures are also on the up, with first half of 2016 figures showing that commercial TV viewing on TV sets had increased for individuals, ABC1 adults and 16-34s.

Yes, the TV market and the way in which we consume media means that audiences are fragmented, but this has also brought TV advertising into the reach of many brands that could not have otherwise considered it. The fragmentation has enabled talented media types to really focus targeting on the desired audience and technological innovation means personalised ads are becoming a reality.

David Greenfield though didn’t hold back with his views – “Of course TV still has a place but the fax machine still has a place too and I’m not about to create a fax machine marketing strategy. Digital is the most relevant channel for our audience.” This viewpoint led the brand to concentrate its spend on social media marketing rather than TV.

Does TV advertising still have a place? I would suggest the answer to this is yes, but it will have to continue fight a rearguard action and innovate to mimic further the targeting and measurement capabilities of digital marketing. TV can be great for brand awareness and direct response, but will always be innaccessible for many and struggle to match the flexibility and speed of movement possible with digital marketing.

We live in interesting times when it comes to the options available to businesses and their marketing budgets. The basic fundamentals do not change though. Any Marketing will struggle unless you are clear on who is your target audience and what your proposition is. Businesses can also improve the chances of making the right choices by making sure that they have the measurements in place to understand where business is coming from. Anyone in need of a fax marketing strategy? Perhaps not.

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