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Top 10 Tips for Effective Marketing

April 2009

Now more than ever, paying attention to your marketing is essential to ensure your Company prospers through a difficult year.

So how on the ball is your marketing for the 09-10 financial year?

You might already have your marketing plan in place or maybe you haven't given it a second thought. Either way, have a read through our Top 10 Tips for Effective Marketing and make sure you are on the right track.

  1. Know your customers - for successful marketing, you need to know exactly who your target audience is. What are their demographics? What keeps this person awake at night? What do they do in their spare time? How do they like to be sold to? By creating a clear picture of your audience, you can then sculpt a marketing message that is pertinent to their concerns, needs, wants and move them to enquire and ultimately buy.
  2. Unique selling point and corporate values - to ensure you stick out from the competition, you need to know what makes you different and focus on it. Customers find it easier to associate to a brand if they know exactly what you are offering, what values as a Company you adhere to and why they should choose your product or service over a competitor's.
  3. Brainstorm - two minds are better than one. The most creative ideas will come when working with creative people. Don't feel like you have to have all the great ideas - you may start with a seedling of an idea that will grow and grow into an award winning campaign when developed with creatives.
  4. Sell on added value not on price - especially in these economic times, Company's are tempted to start lowering prices. This can be the start of the end with discounting price wars with competitors and the de-valuing of your brand. Focus on creating added value through other areas so that price becomes insignificant.
  5. Be consistent with your messaging - if you're a professional suited and booted organisation one day and a funky tree hugging Company the next - your customers aren't going to know what's going on. It doesn't take much to confuse your customers so keep your messaging consistent - make it easy for them to make their buying decision.
  6. Integrated marketing is King - following on from consistent messaging, you need to ensure that the communication of the messaging is integrated with campaigns running in sync for best results. If all of your communications are singing from the same hymn sheet, then your customers are going to start becoming familiar with your company, product or service.
  7. Test, test and then just to be sure, test again - you can never have enough testing. The most common testing is 'split testing' which enables you to test two versions of something simultaneously, whether this be a web page, direct mail piece, online adverts or email campaign. Split testing is essential for improving performance.
  8. Aftersales is key - once you have converted your customer, the relationship doesn't end there. It can be 5-10 times as expensive to find a new customer than it is to keep an existing one, so ensure you make an impression with your customer after their purchase so that they come straight back to you next time. Improving the lifelong value of your customers is an essential part of excellent marketing.
  9. Measurement and research - don't just spend your marketing money and keep your fingers crossed. Well executed marketing will put in tools to measure the campaign success and carry out post campaign research to analyse the relative success. This information is essential to help you form decisions in the future and to ensure you spend your marketing pennies in the places that you know deliver the best return on investment.
  10. Continual planning - if you want to stay one step in front of your competition, you can't relax for a minute. Many companies will carry out a big campaign and then nothing for the rest of the year. Regular drip feeding of your marketing with regular reviews and forward planning will mean that your marketing continues to snowball.

For more tips and advice on marketing strategy planning and implementation for your business, visit our website for more information, or get in touch on 0845 688 4497.