Marketing Ideas and Inspiration

Marketing Focus – Why is it beneficial to create a marketing plan?

To plan or not to plan… if this is your question, then there’s only one answer – MAKE A PLAN!!

This is true for almost all areas of business, as a good plan gives you focus, direction and a calm determination to tackle things in the correct order at the right time. I am a great lover of lists, so every day I like to make a new one, but behind all the lists is a solid plan which can be referred to, checked and modified as things change and we move forward.

However, I know not everyone does like to plan and do reports and lists, and I also know that when you’re busy it’s tough to be able to find the time, or be motivated enough to make time to put a plan in place. None the less, the busier we are, the more important it is to plan, as having this behind us stops the panic and the chaos and gives you a clear path to follow, making you more effective and efficient. It is also important for any team members you may have, as it enables them to make sure they are following the right lines and working towards the same objective.

Marketing plans are hugely important for any company spending money on promoting themselves, but sadly very under-used. Most companies we deal with and meet respond to marketing needs in a knee-jerk way, panicking when they don’t have enough business coming in, throwing money at the problem in the short term. This is often expensive and ineffective, as it does not really meet the company’s objectives and because it’s rushed, the materials, offer and response are often not as good as they should be.

Having a strong marketing plan avoids this, as it sets clear and achievable objectives, forces you to analyze important things about your company such as strengths and weaknesses and requires you to look at what you are currently doing. This analytical approach to your company objectives and vision is really beneficial, especially when done with a team as you can discover some surprising inconsistencies of mission and belief which may have been working against you within the company. It is also a great way to bring staff members into the loop and get them to understand the thinking behind some management decisions which they may have resisted in the past. It can also take you down a new path and push you towards improving materials which you haven’t looked at for a long time, but may be letting you down.

Workshop – Marketing Planning for Success

On November 4th from 10-13.00 we will be offering an informative and practical session on marketing planning and how to do it to make your business succeed. It is surprising how many businesses on the Costa del Sol start work without producing a solid plan...

Marketing Focus – The 5 Key Marketing Methods

On 7^th October we will be offering our first training course which will give delegates an introduction to the five basic tools of marketing and work with them to fully understand them and learn how to apply them for their business. Click here to find out more and register.

Before the course, I wanted to give you a quick overview of the methods which we will explore in depth at the event, to give you a taster and help you become more informed about the different options open to you from a marketing point of view.

There are 5 main elements which make up marketing, and businesses should be using a combination of techniques to make the most of the power of each technique.

Advertising

This is used to:

o Create awareness of your company

o Persuade people to buy from you by promoting products and services

o Reinforce your existence by consistently repeating key messages

Support Arboretum Marbella and boost your business image

Arboretum Marbella are looking for businesses to sponsor their project “Step by Step for a Dream” where their Director will walk 150,000 steps or 120km dressed as a tree as part of the Marbella 4Day Walking event in October. This is to raise money to...

Marketing Focus – Twitter Part 2

The last time I looked at the topic of Twitter was back in 2010 when I gave an overview of how to use Twitter as a marketing method for your business. Four years on, I wanted to take another look at Twitter and how things have progressed over this time, looking at the possibilities of Twitter ads and promoted accounts which allow you to generate more followers or get more exposure for a particular tweet.

Twitter themselves offer some great help and advice I suggest you start with the Twitter Help Centre which is a mine of information – https://support.twitter.com/ Then they have their own Twitter accounts such as this one https://twitter.com/TwitterUKI_SME which offers advice for small companies in the UK and runs webinars and creates glossaries which we can apply to business here in Spain. There’s also the general one out of the US which includes all the updates as well as top tips https://twitter.com/twitter

I recently did a webinar with the Twitter team in the UK to refresh my knowledge of this great marketing tool (things change so quickly so you need to keep up to speed) and they shared some really interesting facts related to doing business on Twitter – very different to sharing what you had for dinner!

Marketing Focus – Creating Exceptional Web Content

As I mentioned in my last marketing focus post, more and more emphasis is being put on content marketing and creating really interesting information which people can find and enjoy through search. But it can be difficult to write engaging information, especially in a field which might not be the most exciting to the outside world, so is content marketing really for everyone?

In my opinion, everything is interesting to someone, and if you’re a specialist you should be showing that off online, so fellow enthusiasts can find you and engage in your knowledge. However, be careful of being too niche or specialist, try and run your content by an outsider who might buy your product, but not understand what’s behind it.

My first PR job was for the engineering giant ABB and they had the most amazingly knowledgeable people working for them, but trying to get them to speak in a way that the world could understand was hard. My job was to try and take the knowledge and convert it into a benefit driven, global language which could be understood by the buyers of their equipment, even if they were not engineers. Translating and repackaging their information into a more easily digestible form created some really interesting stories and if that can work for flowmeters it can work for anything! So try and step outside your specialist bubble and think what your consumers want to understand or know and go ahead and share your knowledge.

Marketing Focus – The Hidden Sales Cycle

Last week I took part in a fascinating webinar by The Marketer all about how internet use is changing the buying process and changing the roles of marketing and sales and where these two functions interact and I wanted to share the insight.

The experts explained how the online buying journey is quite erratic, but that the research tends to be comprehensive and rely on different sources to make the correct decision. They summed up the buying journey as follows – Consider, Evaluate, Buy, Enjoy & Advocate

The message was that as modern marketers, the role is increasingly to create the best content on your subject matter to assist your buyers in the evaluation stage and give them no reason to look elsewhere. This is a more passive form of marketing driven by search, but can capture many more people in the research phase and drive them towards purchase.

Marketing Focus – Understanding Marketing in 2014

For our first marketing focus of the year we’ve been looking at a really interesting report by Vocus on digital marketing for 2014, trends and ideas. The key messages are as follows –

Integration – Integrate digital marketing into your strategic marketing plan using it as one of the tools for getting the message across

Measurement – Make a plan to measure the effectiveness of any new digital method you use and decide if it is worth the investment

Data is king – the most profitable companies are data driven and respond to data to make better decisions, automate processes and respond to customer demand. Try to capture as much data and analyse everything you can to make your company work better and understand your customers.

Marketing Focus – How often to send email newsletters

This is a really tricky subject which we’ve dealt with before in previous email marketing posts. At the time I advised on the side of caution in terms of not sending too many emails and risk alienating your clients. We suggested that a monthly mail out works best for most businesses and I do in general still subscribe to this theory, however I recently read an interesting article which gives a different view on it.

According to this article, because we’re all checking emails all the time either at our computers, or on smart phones, people aren’t as worried about receiving multiple emails as long as they are interesting. In fact, research done by Getty Images suggests that higher frequency led to higher returns, more engagement and revenue per contact and it seems that it did not lead to more opt-outs. They say that the key to it is personalising the email through segmentation and understanding what the customers want and then mailing regularly to suit them.

Marketing Made Simple – Marbella Business Workshop

Costa Women is a social and business network community for women living in Spain, and recognised by the Telegraph’s Best of British competition as the Best of British Social Club internationally in 2012. In addition to helping Spain’s expat women with free advice and online networking, Costa Women are supporting a one day marketing workshop in Marbella. The workshop titled “Marketing Made Simple” will review the most successful marketing methods with the aim of empowering attendees to take control of their marketing.

The day will be presented by four professionals from successful local businesses; Georgina Shaw of Shaw Marketing Services, Ali Meehan of Sociomimetics, Pancho Campo of Chrand Management and Joy Fahey Motivational Coach and Entrepreneur. It will be held on 1^st October at the American College of Marbella from 9.30-17.00 and will cover the following:

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