Marketing

Marketing Intelligence

Constant Improvement

Always be on the lookout for ways to improve your marketing intelligence. When you make adjustments along the way, change only one variable at a time, so you can determine which variable made a difference.

One way to test and measure your marketing results is to conduct a marketing audit. Ask your customers for some honest (and brutal) feedback regarding your business. Find out where they think your business excels and where some improvement wouldn’t go astray.

“Negative responses are good”

What! – NO WAY.

Yes they are… it means that your customers want you to do better otherwise why would they bother? It’s important to develop a strong rapport with your customers so they feel comfortable telling you how it really is.

Intelligent Direct Mail.

“Is there any other kind?”

When using direct response marketing always test the headline and the body copy. Write a number of variations of each and record the responses that come back. Over a period of time, you’ll find that one particular message works better than all the others.

So use this one & trash the rest… but don’t stop there.

“Testing & measuring is a work-in-progress thing and you need to keep on doing it & doing it & doing it”

Keep accurate & up to date records of the costs & success rate of every strategy. This information will prove to be invaluable in the future & will ensure that you don’t tread old ground.

When comparing the costs to the marketing results, consider both the tangible and intangible results. Increased sales, a tangible result, and enhanced business credibility, an intangible result, are both important to the growth of your business.

Looking at overall costs can help you determine which tactics are putting a strain on your finances without reaping any benefits.

Ah Yes… A Web Site.

Internet based marketing is also a great marketing intelligence tool for tracking results.

Set your Web site up to track how many visits are made by consumers each day. You can include customer information forms on your Web site for those interested in more information.

Comparing the conversion rate of visits to the number of submitted information forms can give you an idea of how effective your marketing is and you can then adjust it to suit.

Keep track of how many new and repeat customers your business has.

Ask your new customers how they heard about your business and keep a record this information, as it will reveal your strongest marketing tactics.

An extended period of slow activity may indicate that your marketing techniques need to be adjusted and a decrease in repeat business is a certainly a clear sign that something’s not working.

Through a strategic approach to marketing intelligence, you’ll keep your fingers firmly on the pulse of your business.

Content Marketing: Let Customers Come to You

By Christian

I’ve been learning a lot more about inbound marketing lately, and it’s really captured my interest. We’re all familiar with traditional marketing strategies that push messages out to consumers, often interrupting them in the middle of something else (such as watching TV or reading a magazine), and therefore only gaining their attention for a short time. If outbound marketing is a push, than inbound can be thought of as a pull. Alex Rascanu highlights this difference as he describes how inbound marketing “earns the attention of customers rather than buying it, makes the company/ product/ idea easy to be found, and draws customers to the website by producing relevant and interesting content.”

Inbound marketing is used to attract visitors to your site, where they can be converted into leads, customers, and eventually brand advocates. The key to attracting these consumers in the first place is content marketing. This means providing consumers with free content in exchange for their time and attention. This content can be blog posts, podcasts, videos, webinars, whitepapers, eBooks, infographics or guides. No matter which option(s) you choose, promoting your brand should always appear secondary to providing real value for consumers either through entertainment or education. For instance, a blog filled with useful tips and advice can make your business stand out as a resource within your industry, and is far more valuable to consumers than a series of posts plugging your products. The Home Depot has recently created a series of how-to gardening videos for spring, and while they feature products available through the retailer, the focus is really on helping viewers make the most of their outdoor space.

While consumers continue to find new ways to tune out traditional marketing, producing great content will make them want to listen to what you have to say. Identifying your target audience and learning their wants and needs are crucial to determining what type of content you will create. Targeting increases the likeness that the people consuming your content will be interested in your product or service. The KISSmetrics guides that I’ve consulted for this post are great examples of content that speaks to a specific target audience of marketers, and has drawn me back their site again and again. Not everyone who accesses your content will become a customer, but every time someone visits your blog, watches a video, or downloads a whitepaper it’s another chance for them to deepen their relationship with your brand and potentially become a buyer.

A great way to expand the reach of your content is through guest blogging. Writing content for another blog helps you to position yourself – and your company – as an authority within your industry. It can also gain exposure and build backlinks for your website.. Just like the content you produce for your own blog, the guest post should be useful and relevant to the audience, not purely self-promotion. However, your author bio should mention your business and provide links to other pages, such as your website or blog. You can also invite other people to be guests on your own company blog to ensure a steady stream of fresh content.

So what benefits can you expect to get out of a content marketing strategy? [Read more…] about Content Marketing: Let Customers Come to You

SWOT Analysis

By Christian

Swot Analysis is a very useful technique to analyse your business and find your competitive edge… call it high-brow business intelligence.

Marketing intelligence is one thing…

… this is most definitely something else!

The result of internal analysis and external research, it’s actually an acronym for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

Strengths & Weaknesses – The internal aspects generally considered to include marketing, financial, manufacturing and organisational.

Opportunities & Threats – External issues such as demographics, the internet & other technological developments and the local or world economic situation.

Here’s a Simplified Example of a SWOT Analysis –

Strengths

• High performing sales team
• Wide spread company recognition
• Well established consumer base

Weaknesses

• Prices perceived as too expensive
• Increases in raw material cost affecting retail prices
• Brand identity inconsistent

Opportunities

• Internet growth presenting new opportunities to increase sales
• Boutique markets emerging
• Changing market trends

Threats

• Sales threatened by new, low cost competitors coming into the market.
• Some wholesalers planning to market directly to the consumer
• Rise in popularity of competitors niche product

More than just marketing information, a SWOT analysis can be used for the entire company or a small department within a large company.

Wherever the area of focus is, the results will vary, even between companies competing in the same industry.

For example, one company may see the internet as a huge opportunity whereas a not-so-savy competitor may view it as a huge threat.

How Important is it?

The primary benefit of this wonderful competitive intelligence tool is its ability to help clarify and summarise important issues and opportunities that a business may be presented with.

It plays a major role assisting a business to focus on important aspects and strategies.

The desired result is to –

Maximise strengths and minimise weaknesses

in order to

Take advantage of external opportunities and overcome the threats.

The SWOT analysis template is normally presented as a grid, comprising four sections, one for each of the headings: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

The Greatest Advantage.

The greatest advantage of a SWOT analysis is they’re easy to do and they cost nothing, just some time. Any business that’s aware of market threats and its own weaknesses is in a very strong position, strategically. The analysis will expose the strengths the business needs to defend itself against these threats. It can help generate new ideas as to how a company can use a particular strength to defend against threats in the market. If a company is aware of the potential threats then it can have responses and plans ready to counteract them when they happen.

The Disadvantages.

Usually, a typical analysis is a basic list and not a scientific document. A company may not be sufficiently focused on how it’s going to achieve the objectives if too much time and energy is wasted on creating lists.

Prioritising also suffers with a list option. A large number of threats may be discarded by creating a bigger list of opportunities whereas the threats may be way more significant.

Used correctly, this analysis is a powerful business tool but more often than not, it’s used in an informal fashion. You can purchase software to achieve more scientific results and give the analysis a better structure.

Spend time & effort assembling an accurate analysis so it’s much more than just a tick list.

Done correctly it will allow you to measure your company’s strength against your competitors. You may have the best sales team that you’ve ever had but… your competition might be better.

And… you may never, ever know without the benefits of a SWOT analysis.

World Cup Fever Is Real, Awesome, and Can Teach Us Loads About Digital Marketing

By Christian

It depends on which source you check, but the numbers are still pretty large everywhere you look: over 1 billion people have tuned into the World Cup 2014 to watch the opening game between Brazil and Croatia. That’s a huge number. If you go online and look, you’ll find that plenty of people have gone online to talk about the World Cup, check out merchandise, and basically figure out if it’s really going to come down to Brazil vs. Argentina in the big finale now that both Spain and England are out of the tournament.

Marketing is what connects customers to a brand. Without marketing, there’s no way for customers to stay tuned to what’s coming out. As much as people like to disagree, we’re all buyers where it counts. Get us thinking about something that interests us, and we’re bound to buy it. The trouble comes in when people search high and low for ways to connect a person to their brand.

Why not take cues from the World Cup?

World Cup fever is definitely real. You have people logging onto social media to share all of the highlights of the game, from penalties to fouls to the most emotional of victories. It’s more than just national pride. Watching football is like a large drama unfolding right before your eyes. Who will score first? Will the momentum carry? You can go from knowing a team will take it to being shocked by the surprise victory from the underdog.

There were some sponsors that we pretty much could predict would throw their hats in the ring. McDonald’s is well known for sponsoring most major sporting events. Then you have Nike, who sits in pretty much the same boat. But did you know that Castrol oil has a big advertising push? We thought it was pretty cool to link something you think of with cars to something as human powered as football. But if you check out the long ad, it really fits.

Long ads are the name of the game, and one of the best things to take from the marketing examples from these big companies. No, you might not have a multimillion dollar budget for advertising, but you can tell a story that people will connect with. At the heart of marketing rests the people that you want to speak to, along with the product that you want to offer them. Lifeless marketing goes straight to the sale, but vibrant marketing is about people.

World Cup Betting: An Activity Worth Watching

It’s hard to pin down how much money is truly being thrown around when it comes to World Cup betting, but we do know that it’s quite a bit! If you want to make a few bets yourself, you should go with a reputable place to do it. Check out this awesome gambling blog that’ll get you up to speed in a flash: http://blog.betbright.com/. The folks over at BetBright are really good with newbies and veterans alike, and they are determined to turn you into a sports betting fan in no time.

Even if you’re not much for betting, you have to find it interesting to look at the flow of money. There’s going to be plenty of people betting on this game, to the point where it will dominate the conversation in social media channels, offline, and beyond. What can you do as an online business owner to tap into that conversation while being as authentic as possible? Food for thought, indeed!

How To Make Your Website More Visible For Potential Clients On The Internet

By Christian

With the way in which consumer habits are now happening, the importance of having a website which is not just fully functioning, but also visible to your potential customers is highly important as most of us are now using online alternatives to do their everyday shopping due to the benefits that it poses. However, being a business owner and making your website more visible might seem like the impossible task and so we thought we’d investigate how you can ensure your website is in front of all the right people.

[Image: SimpleSite Blog]

One of the main ways in which you can improve your visibility and searchability on the internet is by improving your content on your page, as in the digital marketing world, content is king. Writing content that has lots of keyword-relevant test is something that you need to investigate if you are looking to improve your on-page SEO. Ensuring that all your content is relevant, engaging and educating is important yes, but by conducting in-depth keyword research to find high search volumes, relevant keywords and then using them keywords in your text is one way to improve your visibility. [Read more…] about How To Make Your Website More Visible For Potential Clients On The Internet

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