BUSINESS MONITOR
Follow these top tips for growth from our marketing guru PAUL CLAPHAM and you could soon be seeing a change in your fortunes...
Kickstart your business W
hatʼs the best marketing idea, technique or route for selling business to business? Amongst a group of acquaintances from the business I raised this question recently and picked what I thought constituted best advice. There were definitely some overall issues that I found surprising.
Budgets
The first is the question of budgets. On the one hand, it was generally agreed that a lot of marketing spend is wasteful (I didnʼt expect people in the business to own up to that one). At the same time, they all said broadly that a bigger budget would almost always win the day. There was also the overall view that if you canʼt afford to do a project properly, doing it in bargain- basement style usually has very negative results: save your money until you can do it well.
Fashions and marketing
Next comes fashions and marketing is very susceptible to the new latest thing. As a case, it is not so many years since SMS (text messages) was predicted to dominate marketing activity across all sectors – quick, personal, cheap. SMS was it. In the event, customers decided they didnʼt like it, so it fell by the wayside. A number of agencies and their clients lost a lot of money backing that horse.
Research People donʼt do enough research. They donʼt find out what their customer wants or is buying, instead they charge ahead selling what theyʼve got. You can see where the above waste comes from. Two particular comments came back time and again. First, small businesses should pester their larger suppliers for this information (which they typically have) and few do. Second, they donʼt ask their clients a series of
questions that can provide that basic research. Conversely, donʼt trust research to the exclusion of gut-feel. Consider these examples. James Dyson had some research done when developing his vacuum cleaner. It told him that the large majority were happy with the performance of their existing cleaner and that they werenʼt ready to pay twice as much for a better one. Ignoring it has made him a billionaire. By contrast, just a small amount of consumer testing of the C5 could have saved Sir Clive Sinclairʼs reputation and wealth.
The internet
The internet is a wonderful tool – if you use it properly. Otherwise itʼs next to pointless and potentially harmful for a business. Businesses use it first to source and check suppliers and they look at a lot of sites before making contact, typically at least ten. So itʼs competitive and your site has to be accessible, professional and interesting. If it gives a customer the run around, is dull to look at or badly written, click, youʼre toast. Get it professionally designed and make sure the designer knows about search engine optimisation (SEO). Thereʼs no point having a stunning site that Google and Bing canʼt find. Spend some money on a copywriter or at least on someone who is practised in writing for public consumption, eg a journalist. Use the best photographs you can. Show people! So many sites, especially in a technical field miss that trick – people buy from people and they always will. Keep it updated! It helps with SEO and itʼs vital to prove cutting-edge competencies.
Email marketing
Share of shout is increasingly important. There are so many types of media now and they are in peopleʼs faces so much that your message can get lost very easily. A first class case is
| 22 | March 2013
www.printwearandpromotion.co.uk
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