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Marketing Plan

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Summer marketing checklist

By A Helping Hand, Marketing Performance, Marketing Plan, Uncategorized

As the summer holidays start, are you expecting to get quieter for the next few weeks, or does business carry on as normal?
If you do find yourself with a bit more time on your hands, using that time to improve your marketing is a great idea. Here’s a summer marketing checklist for you, to help you get better results when business starts to pick up again when the kids all go back to school….

Website Checks

Copyright date

Does your site have a copyright date that is not the current year? Whilst only a little thing, it does show both the search engines and your potential clients that your website isn’t important to you. This link will show you various ways to auto-update this, depending on your website’s CMS.

We or you?

Which word is more popular on your website – we or you? Your website should be talking about how you help your clients rather than talking about you. If your home page headline begins “We are the UK’s leading….” or something similar, you really need to review your content.

Proof

How much proof do you have on your website, and is it complete?

  • Case studies that have all the sections they need – click here to see what they are – and that aren’t all 5 years old, or more.
  • Testimonials that show your clients get real value from your services/products

404s

When was the last time you checked how many times people hit a Page Not Found? This is another thing that doesn’t look great, so regular checks are important. Maybe you’ve got incorrect links within your site, or you’ve posted something incorrectly on your social channels.
If its not something you can easily fix, put a redirect in place so website visitors get a great experience when they visit your site.

Basic SEO

Let’s make sure more people find your website and can read about how you can help them.

  • Do you have alt tags on all your images so the search engines (and disability tools) know what is there?
  • Are there unique page titles and meta descriptions on all pages and posts on your website?
  • Broken links cause issues, so finding and fixing them regularly is important

WordPress tools such as Yoast or RankMath can help with this, as can more comprehensive tools such as SEMrush. All have free and paid versions.

Data

A lack of contact information, or incorrect information, is a big issue for many small businesses. Incomplete CRM records are not just a problem for the Sales team, but a big one for Marketing too.

  • Missing email addresses mean focussed email campaigns cannot go out
  • Hi <first_name> doesn’t look great in an email or SMS message
  • Missing lead source data makes it almost impossible to calculate accurate marketing ROIs.

We are all busy, but if you make key fields like this required, it takes seconds per field to ensure that everyone has the data they need.
Look at what integrations are possible between your platforms to save time. Website forms that integrate with your CRM, email platform and others will save you time and keep data records accurate.

Social Platforms

When was the last time you updated your LinkedIn profile information, both for your organisation and personally? Is your Facebook business page up to date? Old pictures, out of date experience and a lack of posts is another negative impact on your marketing performance.
Are you posting regularly? If you haven’t posted on X or Facebook for some months, you should seriously consider whether you should have a business page or account on there. If people are visiting, it’s unlikely that they are clicking through to your website because your content is so old.
We see lots of small businesses trying to maintain lots of social media channels – just in case. You will be much better off doing one or two really well, rather than 5 periodically and inconsistently.

Printed collateral

If you do trade shows/exhibitions as part of your marketing mix, do you have enough collateral printed? Is the information on there up to date, and does it still show your business in a positive light?
Print material should be updated periodically to ensure they maintain a fresh look, the right information and the correct marketing messages.

Strategic marketing

Leaving the biggest bits to last was deliberate. Getting you to do smaller bits will get you DOING some marketing work, so then making the bigger steps into the strategic side of your small business marketing should be a little easier….

Measure

What marketing is working, and what isn’t? Do you know? When was the last time you actually checked? Even if you are getting plenty of leads into the business, are there marketing channels that aren’t delivering for you? Identifying and cutting out marketing that isn’t working gives you back time and budget. Resources that can be used to generate even better marketing results, or if you must, be used in other parts of the business.

Your Marketing Messages

If you found more “we”s than “you”s earlier when you checked your website content, there’s a pretty good chance your messaging needs attention.
To put it bluntly Nobody Cares What You Do! They do, however, care about how you can help them. If the marketing messages used across all channels talk more about your target audience than about you, they will be far more effective.

  • Accountants can produce your Annual Accounts, but you’d be far more interested if they talked about reducing your tax bill.
  • IT support providers will keep your Microsoft365 licensing up to date and back up your files, but they’ll grab your attention if they show how they give you peace of mind and security.
  • Solar panel providers will talk about your eco-footprint and reducing carbon outputs, but when they show how your electric car is running on free energy, you sit up and take notice.

What is it that your Ideal Clients really want? Talk about how you can give them that!

Consistent Marketing Activity

Sod’s Law says people will forget your brand just before they need what you sell. If your marketing is happening consistently, on the right marketing channels and using marketing messages about them (not you), they will remember your brand when it is time. They will see the messages, read the proof on your site and be happy to talk to you.

If there is some seasonal variation in your business and you are quieter in the summer, there’s no reason why you cannot work through this checklist and get far better marketing results going forward.

If you are still busy, but concerned about your marketing, we will be happy to help you through this checklist, both the small stuff and the strategic marketing aspects. Get in touch and lets put some time in the diary to talk.

If you would like to discuss your marketing budgets and plans, give us a call and let’s talk.

Tel: 020 8634 5911

July 22, 2026
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infographic showing what happens with inconsistent marketing

Why Consistency Matters in Your Small Business Marketing

By Customer Understanding, Delivering your marketing, Marketing Plan

As a small business owner, you don’t have unlimited time, budget or staff to dedicate to marketing. That makes consistency even more important.

Many small businesses market in bursts. You update the website, post heavily on social media for two weeks, send a few emails, then get busy with running the business and everything goes quiet again. The problem is that inconsistent marketing (sometimes described as feast or famine) makes it harder for people to remember you, trust you and eventually buy from you.

Consistency is what turns marketing from random activity into long-term growth.

Who are you?

Whether someone sees your brand through their own efforts, or they receive some form of marketing from you, the chances are slim that they will get in touch. If they found you, they may be in the market, but they don’t know who you are. They will need more interaction to get to know you more.

If you reached out to them, they’re almost certainly aren’t actively looking for what you’re selling – and they don’t know who you are.

Over time, they may decide to buy from you. If your marketing disappears for months at a time, people forget about you and move on to competitors who stay visible. The Law of Sod says the moment they need what you sell is just after they’ve forgotten your brand!

Consistency builds trust

When your branding, messaging and activity are consistent, your business feels more established and reliable.

That means:

  • Your website matches your social media
  • Your messaging is clear everywhere
  • Your business regularly appears active
  • Your tone of voice feels familiar

Your target audience will notice these things, even subconsciously. Consistency gives them confidence that you are organised, dependable and professional.

For a small business, trust is one of your biggest competitive advantages.

You do not need to be everywhere

We had a client a few years ago that believed they should be on as many social media channels as possible. They wanted to that they were seen in as many places as possible so that as many people as possible saw their brand…. just in case! Whether its just social media, or you’re using many other marketing channels, trying to be everywhere is a bad idea.

Remember the very first line of this article – you don’t have unlimited resources – so you can realistically generate quantity for a period of time, or quality consistently. To be everywhere you will need quantity, but if the quality of marketing isn’t there, it isn’t going to be effective.

Think about who your Ideal Client is. Limit your marketing to the channels most likely to get your brand and messaging in front of your ideal clients. By limiting activity to what is most likely to be effective, you reduce your workload and are able to maintain things consistently.

Repetition strengthens your message

There is no magical frequency that anyone in marketing can tell you will work; you will have to work it out through experimentation. What we can say is that you need to regularly and consistently appear in front of your target audience to ensure they remember you at the point they decide they want what you are selling.

You need to consistently reinforce:

  • Who you help
  • What makes you different
  • Why customers should trust you

The clearer and more repetitive your messaging becomes, the easier it is for people to understand and remember your business.

Consistency helps you compete with larger businesses

Larger companies often have bigger marketing budgets, but small businesses can still compete effectively through consistency and personality. A business that communicates clearly and consistently often appears more professional than a competitor with better resources but weaker messaging.

Over time, consistency creates familiarity, and familiarity creates confidence.

Marketing works over time

One of the biggest mistakes we see small businesses make is expecting immediate results from their marketing. Most marketing works gradually:

  • SEO builds over months
  • Social media grows through repeated visibility
  • Email engagement improves steadily
  • Brand awareness compounds over time

The businesses that usually win are not always the loudest. They are often the ones that simply keep showing up consistently.

Consistency also makes marketing easier

Once you establish a consistent approach, marketing becomes less stressful. You stop reinventing everything every week. You develop:

  • Clear messaging
  • Repeatable content ideas
  • Stronger branding
  • Better customer recognition
  • More efficient workflows

That saves time and helps your marketing feel more professional without constantly increasing effort.

You do not need a huge marketing budget to build a strong business presence. What matters most is consistency.

If your business regularly communicates a clear message, stays visible and reinforces its value over time, you build trust and recognition naturally.

Small business marketing is rarely about one big campaign. It is usually the result of steady, consistent activity that keeps your business in front of the right people long enough for them to choose you.

May 14, 2026
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EastEnders, not Titanic

By Customer Understanding, Delivering your marketing, Marketing Plan

What you can learn for marketing a small business

What’s your favourite film?

For the record, we love Shawshank, both Top Gun films and anything Tom Clancy related…

What’s your favourite long-running TV programme?

Nigel was brought up on EastEnders, Corrie and Emmerdale Farm (as it was called in the old days), but only until he left home!

How are they different?

Now think about how these two programmes differ..

  • One-off (let’s ignore the probable sequel for now) vs. weekly event
  • One if much longer than the other
  • Effectively unlimited budget vs tight budgets (Titanic cost $200m to make if you were curious. Eastenders has a £250K per episode budget)
  • No real deadline vs very strict deadlines
  • Keep filming until its perfect vs. get it to good enough
  • Stunning film from the 1st to the last minute compared to some great episodes and some not so good.
  • Both have a strong audience

Whatever you think of these programme choices, there are stark differences between them. Now compare the marketing of your small business to these two. Which is your approach?

The Titanic Approach

Mostly filmed in Mexico and costing £200m, Titanic took 8 months to produce, starting on the last day of July 1996. Originally meant for release in July ’97, it did not hit screens until December. Technical challenges, a perfectionist director (James Cameron) and even a spiked clam chowder meant delay after delay. Once released it became the highest grossing film of all time and is still ranked 4th.

Do you focus on one thing and will not release it until it is perfect, even if that means nothing goes out in the meantime? Imagine a social post that goes viral for a week. If you asked someone to name a film, even though it’s estimated that 85% of Americans have seen the film (probably similar stats around most of the world), would Titanic be one of the first 2-3 films they mention?

The EastEnders Approach

Filmed on a production set in Hertfordshire, the team responsible has produced 4 episodes a week since 1985 on a budget that is currently around £250K per episode. Episodes typically take no more than two days to produce and are filmed 6-8 weeks in advance to keep everything on schedule. Every episode gets around 3.5m viewers.

Do you work to produce the best you can on a regular and consistent basis, knowing and accepting that sometimes what goes out could have been better? You’re producing marketing that is seen by your target audience regularly, and they keep coming back. If you asked someone in the UK to name a soap, they would say either Coronation Street or EastEnders – maybe Emmerdale.

Where we going with this?

As a small business owner, you’ve probably not got $200m lying around. You may not have £250K either, but you will have some budget, in time or money.  You are far better off producing marketing that is always good enough and sometimes outstanding, that is seen regularly across your target audience. If you get brand recognition with many other people, even better.

The Titanic approach ties your money up for a long time and means nothing goes out to maintain brand awareness during that time. Whilst you may then produce a Titanic or Avatar, you may also produce an X Men: Dark Phoenix and lose big.

If you need a hand with moving to an EastEnders approach, get in touch.

 

February 19, 2026
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opportunity cost, time is money, smart time management, opportunities

Getting the Timing of Your Marketing Right

By A Helping Hand, Customer Understanding, Marketing Plan

& get better results

Good marketing is not just about what you say. It is also about when you say it. The timing of your marketing affects how many people see it, how relevant it feels, and whether it leads to action. When your marketing appears at the right moment, it works harder and delivers better results.

Understand When Your Product or Service Matters

Every product or service is more useful at certain times. For some businesses this is seasonal. For others it depends on events, customer behaviour, or business cycles.

Seasonal and Event-Driven Opportunities

If demand rises at certain times of year, your marketing should start before that demand appears.

Begin by listing key dates such as holidays, industry events, budget planning periods, and major sales moments. Planning early helps you stay ahead of competitors and avoid rushed decisions.

Instead of launching everything at once, break campaigns into stages:

  • Awareness activity to introduce your offer
  • Consideration activity to help customers compare options
  • Conversion activity to encourage action

This approach keeps your brand visible and supports customers as they move closer to a decision.

Look back at previous campaigns. Note when interest increased, when enquiries peaked, and when sales slowed. These patterns help you improve future timing.

 Match Marketing to the Buying Journey

Most customers do not buy straight away. They usually move through a process that starts with a need, continues with research, and ends with a decision.

Timing Based on Customer Thinking

Marketing works best when it appears while customers are thinking about the problem you solve. If it appears too early, it may be ignored. If it appears too late, the opportunity may already be gone.

Search data, website visits, and enquiry patterns can show when people begin looking for solutions. These signals are often more useful than fixed calendar dates.

Behaviour-Based Timing

For products and services that sell all year round, customer behaviour should guide your timing.

Examples include:

  • Sending follow-up messages after a website visit
  • Starting email journeys when content is downloaded
  • Changing messages when someone returns to your site

Automation tools help you respond at the right time without extra manual work.

Set a Sustainable Marketing Frequency

For non-seasonal businesses, the main question is how often to communicate.

Consistency Matters

Long gaps followed by heavy bursts of activity can reduce impact. A steady flow of marketing builds recognition and trust over time.

Spreading messages across days or weeks usually works better than sending everything at once. Testing different days and times will show when your audience is most responsive.

Timing Across the Funnel

Different stages of the customer journey need different timing.

  • Top-of-funnel activity should run regularly to attract new people.
  • Mid-funnel activity should support research and build confidence.
  • Bottom-of-funnel activity should respond quickly when interest is high.

Use Data to Improve Timing

Data helps remove guesswork from marketing decisions.

Personalisation and Smarter Targeting

Modern tools can spot patterns in behaviour and suggest when people are more likely to engage. This helps you send messages that feel relevant rather than repetitive.

CRM and Engagement Signals

Your CRM can highlight useful timing signals, such as:

  • Email opens and clicks
  • Pages viewed on your website
  • Past purchases or renewal dates

Using this information helps you follow up while interest is still strong.

Plan Ahead With a Marketing Calendar

A marketing calendar keeps activity organised and on track.

It should show:

  • Key campaigns across the year
  • Content deadlines and publishing dates
  • Important industry or seasonal events

Planning at least three months ahead makes it easier to stay consistent and make improvements.

Review and Improve Your Timing

Timing should be reviewed regularly. Customer habits change and marketing platforms evolve.

Track results by day, time, and channel. Look for trends in engagement and conversions. Use what you learn to adjust future campaigns and improve coordination across channels.

Small timing changes can lead to better results.

Getting the timing of your marketing right helps you reach customers when they are most open to your message. It relies on good planning, consistent activity, and learning from data.

When timing is treated as part of your strategy, marketing becomes more effective, more efficient, and easier to manage. Of course, if you need a hand, click here and let’s arrange a time to talk.

January 4, 2026
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getting your marketing ready to make a great start to 2026

How to Make a great start to 2026

By A Helping Hand, Marketing Plan

 

If you have not yet developed a marketing plan for 2026, you are late, but not too late. Here are our recommendations for ensuring your marketing supports your business goals over the year ahead.

Measure: what happened last year?

Understanding what worked in 2025 and what did not is the essential first step in shaping a more effective plan for 2026. Every marketing activity you invested in last year will fall into one of three categories:

  1. It worked, generating strong leads that you successfully converted.
  2. It did not work, but mainly because the execution was not strong enough.
  3. It did not work because it was not the right approach for your target audience.

The data you will need:

  • Your CRM or pipeline tracker, with a clear lead source recorded for every enquiry.
  • Your accounts data, showing what you spent on marketing in 2025 and what revenue those clients generated.

Your goal at this stage is to identify the channels and activities that delivered results so that you can do more of them in 2026.

What about the marketing that did not work?

If an activity underperformed because it was not implemented well, consider bringing in an expert. They can train you to improve your approach or take the work off your hands entirely. If you are confident the activity was delivered properly but still failed to produce results, the decision is simple: stop doing it.

Freeing up that time and budget allows you to focus on what you know works or to test something new.

Focus: who do you want as new clients in 2026?

Look back at the clients you gained in 2025. Did they match your Ideal Client profile, or did you take on some purely for the cash flow?

If your business has evolved, your target audience may have shifted too. If that is the case, it is time to refresh your Ideal Client profile.
Remember, this profile guides your marketing focus. It does not require you to turn away good clients who fall outside it.

Plan: what are you going to do?

By now, you know what worked last year, so those activities should remain in your plan and may even increase.

Based on the assumption that your marketing will perform similarly to 2025, consider how many additional leads and new clients you will need to reach your 2026 goals.

From here, decide:

  • Which activities you will repeat, but with expert support.
  • Which new marketing initiatives you will introduce.

Then ask yourself three key questions:

  1. Do you have the time to manage and deliver this marketing consistently?
  2. Do you have the skills to ensure it is done well?
  3. Even if you can do it, is this the best use of your time?

Deliver: get on with it consistently

With your plan in place, the priority is disciplined execution. Consistent marketing activity is essential if you want to achieve your goals for 2026.

If you would like help at any stage, from strategy to hands-on delivery, get in touch. Click here to see the results we achieve for other clients and then click here to book a time to talk.

December 10, 2025
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getting your marketing ready to make a great start to 2026

How to Get Your Marketing Really Performing by the New Year

By A Helping Hand, Marketing Performance, Marketing Plan

getting your marketing ready to make a great start to 2026As we enter the final quarter of 2025 you may be starting to reflect on the year so far, in order to make 2026 a great one.

  • How has the business performed?
  • Has your marketing been a key driver of your business performance this year?

If you want to make 2026 a great year, its time to start planning now, and not leave it until January. Here’s what you need to review and consider to make sure you get the results you’re looking for when then New Year arrives

1. Review What Has and Hasn’t Worked

The first step is a audit of your current marketing activities (here’s some tools to help with this). Look at your marketing channels: across email, social media, paid advertising, networking, events, and content (delete as appropriate). Which channels have driven leads? Which ones are costing you money without measurable results?

Use the right metrics. Impressions and Likes are indicators but traffic, leads and sales are the real measures.

By cutting what underperforms and doubling down on what delivers, you make your budget work harder well before January.

2. Refresh Your Brand Message

When was the last time you properly reviewed what your marketing is actually saying to your target audiences? Are your brand messages even aimed at specific target audiences or (heaven forbid) at “anyone who….”

Do your messages talk about you or do they talk about your target audiences and how you can help them? The latter is always going to be more effective.

3. Optimise Your Website and Landing Pages

Your website is often the first place people encounter your brand. If it’s slow, unclear, or cluttered, potential customers won’t stick around. Before the new year rush, review your site’s performance.

  • Test loading speeds on mobile and desktop.
  • Check that calls to action are clear and prominent.
  • Update landing pages so they match the promise of your ads or emails.
  • Make sure contact forms work smoothly and are easy to complete.

Small tweaks now can dramatically increase conversion rates, making all your marketing spend far more efficient. If you don’t have (or know anyone) with a SEMrush account, Google Analytics and Search Console can give you a real steer on what is happening on your site.

4. Get Ahead with Content Planning

Content is the engine that powers many marketing channels, from SEO to social media. If you’re creating content on the fly, it’s likely inconsistent and less effective. Plan at least the first quarter of next year now. Outline themes, campaigns, and key messages you want to push. Map these across your blog, newsletters, social media, and video output. Creating a content calendar means you start January with a strong pipeline of material ready to go, rather than scrambling to produce pieces at the last minute.

5. Do you have the right tool set?

Marketing technology has become more accessible than ever, with automation platforms helping even smaller businesses run sophisticated campaigns. If you’re still manually sending newsletters or juggling spreadsheets of contacts, now is the time to invest in tools that save time and improve results.
Email automation, social media scheduling, and CRM integrations can nurture prospects automatically, freeing you to focus on strategy rather than admin. Pair this with data analytics tools, and you’ll have sharper insights into customer behaviour and campaign performance. The sooner these systems are in place, the smoother your new year campaigns will run.

6. What about current clients?

Many of SME Needs’ clients work long term with their clients, rather than on a transactional basis, but these questions still need to be asked:

  • Can your current clients buy more of the same thing?
  • Can your current clients buy more of the full range of products/services you provide?

Making sure that your clients know the full range of products/services you sell can uplift sales quickly. Many of them, if you ask, will say “I didn’t know you did that”.

7. Strengthen Your Social Presence

Social media evolves rapidly, with algorithms rewarding brands that create consistent, valuable content. If you’ve been posting sporadically or relying on generic updates, now is the time to rethink your approach.
Focus on platforms where your target audience actually spends time, and commit to a schedule of meaningful posts that encourage interaction. Consider experimenting with live video, polls, or behind-the-scenes content to make your brand feel more authentic and engaging. By building momentum now, your social profiles will quickly start to deliver results. That means traffic to your site and enquiries – not impressions and Likes!

8. Align Sales and Marketing

Even the best marketing falls flat if it isn’t aligned with sales. Ensure your sales team (if you have one that isn’t you) knows what campaigns are running, what offers are being promoted, and what messaging customers are hearing. Ensure that they agree with what you are doing too. If your marketing is making promises Sales, or even Operations, cannot deliver, you’ve got a problem.

Take a look at your pipeline and see how much is qualified out. That will give you a good steer on what is and isn’t working.

9. Set Clear Goals for the New Year

Finally, don’t go into January with vague ambitions. Set measurable goals now. Whether it’s increasing web traffic by 20 per cent, generating a specific number of qualified leads, or improving conversion rates, clear objectives keep everyone focused.
Break these down into monthly or quarterly targets so progress can be tracked and adjusted as needed. By knowing where you want to be by mid-year, you can course-correct early instead of wasting time.

Getting your marketing performing by the new year isn’t about a frantic December push. It’s about preparing smartly, refreshing your approach, and equipping yourself with the tools and strategy to hit the ground running in January.

Audit your past performance, sharpen your brand message, optimise your digital presence, and plan content in advance. Invest in automation, re-engage existing customers, and build momentum on social platforms. Aligning sales with marketing and setting clear goals ensures your team stays focused.

By taking action now, you’ll transform January from a slow start into a launchpad for sustained growth throughout the year ahead. If you need a hand, please get in touch.

September 8, 2025
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generative AI being used in marketing

Should You Use AI Tools to Produce Marketing Content for Your Small Business?

By Delivering your marketing, Marketing Plan

When time and money are limited, how do you build and then keep your online presence strong? If you’re to do this, finding innovative ways to create and distribute high-quality marketing content is essential. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a game-changer, helping businesses like yours streamline marketing efforts, boost creativity, and engage audiences more effectively. But should you rely on AI tools for content creation? Here are what we consider to be the benefits, potential drawbacks, and best practices for integrating AI into your marketing strategy.

Benefits of Using AI for Marketing Content

1. Cost Efficiency

As a small business owner, managing marketing costs can be a challenge. Hiring professional content writers, graphic designers, and social media managers can be expensive. AI-powered tools like ChatGPT, Copy.ai, and Jasper allow you to generate blog posts, social media captions, and ad copy at a fraction of the cost. AI-driven design tools like Canva and Adobe Sensei let you create high-quality visuals without hiring a graphic designer.

2. Time-Saving Automation

Creating consistent and engaging marketing content takes time—something you may not have in abundance. AI tools can automate various aspects of content production, from idea generation and writing to editing and scheduling posts. Platforms like Hootsuite, Publer and Buffer integrate AI to help you manage your social media calendar efficiently, freeing up your time to focus on other critical aspects of your business.

3. Enhanced Personalisation

Your customers engage more with content that feels tailored to them. AI-driven tools analyse customer behaviour, preferences, and past interactions to create personalised marketing content. Platforms like Persado and Jacquard use AI to generate personalised email subject lines and ad copy, helping you connect with your audience more effectively and increase conversions.

4. Improved SEO Optimisation

If you want your business to be found online, search engine optimisation (SEO) is crucial. However, optimising content for search engines requires extensive research and strategy. AI-powered tools like Clearscope, SurferSEO, and SEMrush help you optimise your content by analysing search trends, suggesting relevant keywords, and providing real-time SEO recommendations. This can improve your website’s ranking and bring in more organic traffic.

5. Consistency and Scalability

Maintaining a consistent brand voice across multiple platforms can be difficult. AI tools help you ensure uniform messaging, tone, and style across blogs, emails, and social media. They also allow you to scale content production quickly, helping you keep up with increasing marketing demands without hiring additional staff.

Potential Drawbacks of AI-Generated Content

1. Lack of Human Creativity and Emotion

AI-generated content is efficient, but it often lacks the creativity, emotion, and authenticity that you bring to your brand. AI analyses data and generates text based on patterns, but it struggles with storytelling, humour, and cultural nuances. If your audience perceives your content as generic or robotic, it could weaken their emotional connection with your brand.

Use the content AI produces as a base, editing it to ensure it comes across with your personality and tone.

2. Ethical and Authenticity Concerns

Your customers value transparency and authenticity. Over-reliance on AI could raise ethical concerns, especially if you don’t disclose the use of AI-generated content. Additionally, AI can sometimes produce biased or misleading content, which could damage your reputation if not properly monitored. Left to their own devices, many AI-tools will adhere to US language and often legislation.

Never publish directly. Always review the content to ensure it doesn’t say anything that you don’t want it to say.

3. Dependence on Data Quality

AI tools rely on large datasets to generate content. If the data you feed into these tools is flawed, outdated, or biased, the content they produce may be inaccurate or irrelevant. To get the best results, you need to ensure that the data used is of high quality and regularly updated.

As with all aspects of your marketing, output quality is only as good as that you input.

4. Limited Customisation and Originality

While AI tools can generate large volumes of content, they may lack originality. Many AI-generated articles, captions, and ads sound similar, which can make your marketing campaigns repetitive and unremarkable. To stand out, you need to refine AI-generated content with your unique voice and strategic insights.

5. Initial Learning Curve

Using AI in marketing requires an initial learning curve. You’ll need to familiarise yourself with different AI tools, understand their functionalities, and fine-tune content to achieve the best results. While AI can simplify content creation in the long run, the initial investment in training and adaptation can be a challenge.

Best Practices for Using AI in Your Marketing

1. Use AI as a Complement, Not a Replacement

AI is great for providing the core ingredients and an initial mix. If you want “10 tips to…”, AI will provide you the list in moments. You can take that list and build upon it, using your own language and personality.

2. Choose the Right AI Tools

Different AI tools serve different purposes. Identify your marketing needs and select tools that align with your goals. If you need help with writing, try Copy.ai or ChatGPT. If design is your focus, Canva or Adobe Sensei may be better suited. AI-powered analytics tools like Google Analytics can also help you track performance and make data-driven decisions.

3. Maintain Your Brand Voice and Authenticity

AI can help with consistency, but your content should still reflect your brand’s personality. A combination of AI-generated and human-written content will ensure authenticity while benefiting from AI’s efficiency.

4. Continuously Edit and Improve AI Content

Never publish AI-generated content without reviewing it first. Edit, refine, and add a personal touch to ensure quality, relevance, and originality. Testing different AI-generated variations can also help you determine what resonates best with your audience.

Edits we frequently use include:

  • Write in UK English
  • Write in the 2nd person

5. Monitor Performance and Adapt Strategies

AI will save you time, but you need to ensure it is delivering for you and for your target audience. AI-generated marketing content that doesn’t engage your audience and convert them to prospects isn’t a good investment of your time and money. When you add the human touch, you get better results, whilst still making savings.

Conclusion

AI has transformed content marketing, offering small businesses like yours cost-effective, efficient, and data-driven solutions. While AI tools provide significant advantages in automation, personalisation, and scalability, they are not without limitations. The key is to use AI strategically—leveraging its power while maintaining human creativity, authenticity, and ethical considerations.

Ultimately, AI should be your assistant, not your replacement. By finding the right balance, you can use AI to create compelling, high-quality marketing content that engages your audience and drives business growth.

March 18, 2025
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Why Knowing your Churn Rate Is Crucial for B2B Marketing

By Marketing Plan, Measure, Small Business Marketing, Strategic Planning

When a new client says they want to grow their small business by 20% per annum over the next three years, there one key statistic we first look at first: churn rate. If that new client is losing lots of clients, the task of growing by 20% suddenly becomes much harder. Here’s why churn rate is so important and what can be done about it.

1. Churn Rate Directly Impacts Revenue

The relationship between churn and revenue is straightforward: when your clients leave, revenue is lost. For subscription-based models or businesses with recurring contracts, this can have an especially detrimental effect on your cash flow and financial forecasting.

To achieve the growth target, the churn has to be replaced and then new clients added to achieve the goal.

2. Retention Is More Cost-Effective Than Acquisition

It’s widely accepted that retaining an existing client is far more cost-effective for you than acquiring a new one. B2B marketing must focus on churn rate because:

  • Acquisition Costs: new client acquisition involves higher expenses, including advertising, lead nurturing, and onboarding.
  • Retention ROI: loyal clients typically spend more over time and require less marketing effort to maintain.
  • Referral Potential: satisfied clients are more likely to recommend your business, reducing the cost of new leads.

3. Churn Reflects Client Satisfaction

If your clients are leaving, there’s a problem with product fit, service quality or your value proposition. Whilst service quality is not a Marketing deliverable, the other two can be heavily influenced by your marketing.

  • Is your marketing over-promising for your product or service?
  • Are your clients expecting far more for their money than they receive?
  • Are your competitors marketing and delivering something better?

4. Churn Data Drives Strategic Decision-Making

Tracking churn rates gives you valuable insights that can inform business strategy. Identifying exactly where the churn is happening is key to making the right strategic decisions.

  • Analysing churn by client segment helps identify which groups are most at risk, enabling targeted retention campaigns.
  • Feedback from churned clients can highlight areas for improvement in your product or service offering.
  • A declining churn rate often signals that client engagement strategies and campaigns are working effectively.

5. Churn Rate Affects Brand Reputation

In the B2B space, word-of-mouth and reputation play a significant role in winning new business. A high churn rate can damage your standing in the market.

Are you watching your reviews?

Whether you use Google or something like Trustpilot, identifying when people start to share their dissatisfaction is vital.
A hit on your brand’s reputation can cause a lot of damage and take a long time to repair.

6. Predictable Growth Relies on Low Churn

Sustainable growth in B2B markets depends on predictable revenue streams. A high churn rate makes it harder to:

  • Forecast Revenue: fluctuations in client retention rates create uncertainty in financial planning.
  • Scale Efficiently: high churn can offset gains from new client acquisition, making growth less predictable and less impactful.
  • Impact budgets: high churn impacts Client Lifetime Value (CLV) and what the business can afford to invest in marketing.

How Marketing Can Address Churn

To mitigate churn and enhance retention, B2B marketing directors can adopt the following strategies:

1. Understand Your Clients

Use surveys, interviews, and analytics to identify client pain points and unmet needs. You need to know both what is causing churn and within what parts of your client base.

Identifying issues before they become termination issues will help manage your churn rates. If you realise a client has an issue in time to make necessary changes, you have a chance to retain them. If you’re too late to stop the churn, at least understand why they are leaving or stopping buying from you.

2. Review your marketing messages

If product fit is the issue, it is likely that your marketing is attracting the wrong audience with inaccurate messages. A review of who exactly your target audiences are and how you help them will give you the opportunity to edit your messaging to attract the right people.

3. Improve Onboarding

Ensure new clients receive a seamless onboarding experience to maximise satisfaction early on. The more engaged they are with your brand, products and services early on, the better.

4. Deliver Value Continuously

Regularly communicate how your product or service solves their problems and delivers ROI. This needs to start from the first engagement, through the first purchase and onwards.

5. Engage Regularly

Build relationships through personalised email campaigns, thought leadership content, and proactive account management. Be careful that you are segmenting your communication so that what people are sent is relevant to them.

6. Monitor and Act

Regularly track churn metrics, identify trends, and take immediate action to retain at-risk clients.

Conclusion

Churn rate is a key performance indicator that no B2B small business can afford to ignore. It provides critical insights into revenue health, client satisfaction, and overall business performance. By prioritising retention and understanding the causes of churn, you can secure long-term growth, strengthen client relationships, and enhance your brand’s reputation in the competitive B2B marketplace.

February 22, 2025
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Does your business stand out?

By Customer Understanding, Marketing Performance, Marketing Plan, Measure, Strategic Planning

Why It’s Important for Your Small Business to Stand Out from the Competition

In today’s highly competitive marketplace, your ability to differentiate your small business from your competitors is more crucial than ever. With thousands of businesses offering similar products or services, standing out is not just an option but a necessity for growth and long-term success. Whether you’re running a membership organisation, an e-commerce business or a tech startup, creating a unique identity and offering something distinct can make all the difference in attracting and retaining clients. Here, we explore why it’s important for your small business to stand out from the competition and how it can lead to increased brand recognition, client loyalty, and profitability.

1. Attracting Attention in a Crowded Market

One of the primary reasons for standing out is to capture the attention of potential clients. With the rise of online shopping, social media, and digital advertising, your target audiences are bombarded with marketing messages every day. If your small business doesn’t offer something unique or memorable, it risks being overlooked.

A distinctive offering, whether it’s a unique product feature, an innovative service, or an eye-catching brand aesthetic, helps you grab attention in a crowded space.

In industries where multiple businesses are vying for the same target audience, standing out can be the factor that causes clients to choose your brand over the competition.

2. Building a Strong Brand Identity

A well-defined and memorable brand identity is key to making your business stand out. This identity isn’t just about a logo or colour scheme. It’s about how your brand is perceived by your target audience. This perception is shaped by your company’s mission, values, client service, and the overall experience you provide.

When your business stands out with a strong, consistent brand:

  • it creates a sense of trust and reliability.
  • Clients are more likely to remember and return to a brand they resonate with.

Whether through a compelling story, a distinct personality, or a clear value proposition, having a standout brand identity ensures you don’t fade into the background of a sea of competitors.

3. Creating Client Loyalty

In a competitive market, it’s not enough to simply attract clients – you need to retain them. Offering something unique that aligns with your clients’ needs or values can turn one-time buyers into loyal, repeat clients. Brand loyalty is crucial, especially for small businesses that rely on a steady client base for sustainable growth.

When clients feel a connection to your business, whether because of the personalised service you offer, your unique product offerings, or your commitment to social causes, they are more likely to return and recommend your business to others.

Differentiation helps create this bond. This can be more difficult to establish if you simply follow the crowd and offer the same products and services as everyone else.

4. Commanding a Premium Price

One of the most significant benefits of standing out from the competition is the ability to command a higher price for your products or services. When you offer something distinctive that your competitors don’t, you create perceived value in the eyes of your clients. This perceived value allows you to justify a higher price point without fear of losing business to cheaper alternatives.

For instance, small businesses that offer high-quality craftsmanship, eco-friendly products, or exceptional client service can often charge more because clients are willing to pay a premium for these unique qualities. Differentiation allows you to move beyond competing solely on price, positioning your business as a top choice for clients who value quality or uniqueness.

5. Better Marketing and Word-of-Mouth Promotion

When your business stands out, it’s easier to create a buzz and attract attention through word-of-mouth marketing. Clients are more likely to talk about your business and recommend it to others if they have a positive and memorable experience. This kind of organic marketing is invaluable for small businesses, as it’s both cost-effective and highly credible.

Differentiation makes it easier for clients to be advocates for your business. If your brand or product resonates with them in a unique way, they’ll be excited to share it with their network. Whether it’s through social media, client reviews, or personal recommendations, word-of-mouth marketing is often the most powerful tool in attracting new clients.

6. Attracting the Right Clients

Standing out also helps ensure that you attract the right clients who align with your business’s values, products, and services. When you differentiate yourself, you clarify exactly what your business is about and who it serves. This helps to weed out clients who may not be a good fit and attract those who are more likely to become loyal patrons.

For example, a small business that focuses on sustainability or eco-friendly products may attract clients who prioritise these values. By standing out and clearly communicating your unique selling points, you can attract clients who share your values and are more likely to stay with your business for the long haul.

7. Enhancing Client Experience

To stand out from the competition, many businesses focus not only on their products or services but also on the overall client experience they offer. From the first point of contact to post-purchase support, every touchpoint is an opportunity to differentiate your business.

Providing an exceptional client experience that goes above and beyond the norm can set your business apart in a meaningful way. Whether it’s through personalised service, fast response times, or going the extra mile to solve problems, clients remember businesses that treat them well. A remarkable client experience can be a significant differentiator and a reason why clients choose your business over others.

8. Long-Term Business Success

In the long run, standing out from the competition is essential for business growth and sustainability. Without differentiation, your business may struggle to adapt to changing market conditions or consumer preferences. Having a unique identity and value proposition provides a solid foundation for growth and helps ensure your business doesn’t become obsolete or irrelevant over time.

By continuously innovating and reinforcing what makes your business unique, you can build a lasting brand that stands the test of time. This is regardless of the competitive pressures you face.

Conclusion

In a crowded and competitive market, standing out is vital for the success of any small business. It allows you to attract attention, build brand loyalty, command higher prices, and ensure long-term success. By offering something unique, creating an exceptional client experience, and focusing on what differentiates your business, you increase your chances of thriving in an increasingly competitive environment. In the end, differentiation is not just about being different. It’s about being memorable, valuable, and relevant to your target audience.

Our Focus Workshops are all about identifying who you want as Ideal Clients, about why you and what makes you stand out. For more information about this phase of our strategic marketing support, click here.

 

January 22, 2025
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2025

How to make 2025 your best year yet

By Marketing Plan, Strategic Planning

2025 has begun. If you haven’t yet planned your marketing for 2025, here’s our recommendations

Commit time to working on the business

As the owner of a small business, it is easy to get lost in the business. There’s always something you need to do for your clients, your prospects or your team. Even more so if your business is just you. However, if you don’t spend time working on the fundamentals, you’ll struggle to make 2025 any different from previous years.

Therefore, it’s essential to schedule regular time into your diary to focus on the business as a whole. Ideally this time should be away from your day-to-day responsibilities, or at least away from your phone and laptop. Remove the distractions and you’ll use your time more effectively.

Know where you are now

For 2025 to become your best year ever you need to be clear on a few things. What do you have to achieve? How did your business perform in 2024? Was that better or worse than 2023?

Go through your accounts and your CRM to get the information and then set targets for 2024 for…

  • Revenue
  • Profit
  • of leads and conversion rate
  • of clients

These are just some of the measures you can use for your targets, but you need to choose what will work best for you.

Focus on your Ideal Clients

Every business has clients they like working with and clients they don’t. We all work better and deliver better results for the clients we like (and who pay their invoices), so focus on attracting more of the clients you like.

Develop personas for these clients:

  • Who are they?
  • What is important to them?
  • How can you help them?
  • What does success look like?
  • How can you get in front of them?

If your marketing is focused on the types of clients you like working for, it will attract more of them.

Get your messaging right – it’s not about you

Building on the previous point and being blunt: Nobody cares what you do as a business. They care about how YOU can HELP THEM. If your marketing starts with the word “we” you’re heading in the wrong direction.

Your marketing must demonstrate that you understand their pains, needs and issues – and that you can deliver a solution.

Quick tests:

  • Does your website’s home page talk about your business or your target audience?
  • Is the first thing in your website menu the About Us page?
  • Does the phrase “leading provider of…” appear anywhere on your website or marketing collateral?

If you say, “yes” to any of these (unless you can prove you’re the leading provider), you’re going to alienate people you can help.

Schedule marketing into your diary

We’ve talked about the feast and famine cycle in previous articles (see one of them here) because it can happen so easily. You do some marketing, sell some stuff and then get your heads down delivering what you’ve sold. While you’re delivering no marketing is done and then you wonder why you have no more leads and sales opportunities.

So, schedule time into your diary to ensure your marketing happens. Even if you have internal marketing staff or you use someone like us, you still need to dedicate time to marketing. Outsourced providers will need things from you, such as checking new content is absolutely correct or to discuss upcoming campaigns. So will your internal team. Don’t remove this time. You wouldn’t move a sales/client meeting, so don’t move your marketing time. It’s just as important as a sales meeting.

Make more noise

If you’re converting a decent percentage of your leads, but you want to grow your business more than last year, you need to generate more leads. That means either improving your marketing performance or doing more. If you haven’t measured your marketing performance recently, there’s a great tool here.

More marketing will require a bigger investment (in time or money). However, when it leads to more growth, it’s all good.

Talk to more people

Most small businesses get a big percentage of their leads through referrals. Having a stronger network is highly likely to generate more referrals and introductions for you. BUT that doesn’t simply mean more connections on LinkedIn. This only works with a quality network, rarely with a quantity network (see point 7 here).

And, with the acceptance of Zoom/Teams since the pandemic, there’s no reason not to regularly talk to people so you can maintain and grow your network.

Respond fast

When you get a lead through your website (or other online tools), get in touch with them as fast as you can. Pick up the phone and call them within 10 minutes and you have a far better chance of converting.

Make sure that your Contact Forms don’t go into your Junk folder. If you aren’t the lead sales person in your company, make sure that person always has their email open. If your website is integrated into your CRM, can you set up a task that tells people a new lead has come in?

Be consistent

Marketing consistency is about frequency and quality. Keeping a regular flow of good quality marketing going out the door does three things:

  • Maintains and increases brand awareness
  • Proves you know what you are talking about
  • Ensures your brand will be remembered when someone has a need for your services/product

If you do find yourself in a quiet period, use the time to create marketing content, collateral and campaigns, but don’t send it all out over a short period of time. Spread it out, so that you maintain consistency and take the pressure off when you’re busy.

Test

Try new things. Perhaps try marketing channels that you’ve not used before. Maybe send campaigns out at different times to normal. You may be getting good results now, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get better results by doing something different.

Keep a log of what you test, so that you know what works and what doesn’t.

Measure

The only way you’ll know if 2025 looks likely to be the best year ever is to keep measuring your performance. Your accounts will tell you whether the financial aspect is on target, but to achieve that side, you need the lead flow.

  • Are you getting enough leads?
  • Are they converting consistently?
  • Are they your target audience?
  • What marketing is most effective?

Keeping an eye on the numbers as you go through the year will allow you to adapt things if needed

Get help

As your business grows, the demands on your time will only increase. To maintain the quality all around the business, you’ll need support in the right places. If you’re a customer delivery expert, bring in back office help (marketing, accounts, admin etc.), so there are no issues in those areas. If you’re better in marketing/sales, perhaps an Operations person is what you need.

Remember, without this help things will suffer. Either your client delivery work will, leading to unhappy clients. Or your marketing will, which stops the lead flow and the growth you want.

Start the process now…

So, now is the time to act if you really want 2025 to be your best year so far. Start by working out what you want and what needs to happen to get you there. And, if we can help, call us on 020 8634 5911 or get in touch here.

If you would like to discuss your marketing budgets and plans, give us a call and let’s talk.

Tel: 020 8634 5911

January 1, 2025
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Why Word of Mouth still needs marketing

By A Helping Hand, Marketing Plan

“We don’t need to do any marketing. We get all our work through word of mouth!”

This is something we hear regularly and we absolutely agree that word of mouth marketing (WOM) can be highly effective, but let’s look at why marketing is essential to small businesses, even if most of their business comes via this route.

A few stats about word of mouth marketing

Brand control and positioning

When someone talks about your business, you have little control over what they say. You don’t know how they describe you and whether they communicate your key strengths effectively. Marketing, particularly your branding and storytelling, helps you shape the perception of your business in the eyes and minds of prospective clients.

WOM gets people looking, not buying

Someone talking positively about your business will get others looking at you. They’ll visit your website and check out your social media posts. It may even get them to pick up the phone and start talking to you. What it doesn’t do is get them to sign on the dotted line.

The marketing messages and stories they see and read on your website move them through your pipeline. The content on your LinkedIn/Instagram/Facebook (*delete as appropriate) supports your sales process, taking them closer to signing. Your sales team hands them the pen!

WOM is inconsistent

You also have no control on when people are going to talk about you and generate the next lead for you. Word of mouth marketing is inconsistent and may leave you rushed off your feet at times and twiddling your thumbs at others. Supporting this marketing channel with other marketing activities helps to smooth out the peaks and troughs in your sales pipeline.

What are your competitors doing?

Word of mouth marketing will keep feeding your pipeline, but if your competitors are doing more marketing, they will be getting noticed by the people being referred to you. Your competitors will make it onto the shortlist and are likely to take some of the business that should have come your way.

Marketing, such as search engine optimisation (SEO) and other digital channels, keeps your brand out there. It ensures you are seen alongside your competitors and that people are seeing what makes you the right choice.

WOM doesn’t build long term relationships

Word of mouth marketing gets you in the door. It gives you the opportunity to make that first sale, but that’s it.

Marketing builds the long-term relationship that generates more sales, particularly the other products or services the client doesn’t initially buy from you. Email marketing is a great tool for this. Your account managers may do some of communication work, but there is only so much of their time available.

Expanding Reach Beyond Your Current Network

When you move into new markets or start selling new products/services, Word of mouth marketing will not be enough. Nobody knows you in the new markets. Nobody knows what your new products are like.
Other marketing channels, such as search engine optimisation, social advertising and direct mail can help you break into the new markets, WOM can then follow on and help you build that market.

Are you amplifying your word of mouth marketing?

Most small businesses leave WOM to its own accord. They wait for the introductions and referrals to come in, but rarely ask for them. Asking for introductions, for referrals and for reviews/testimonials helps in two ways:

  1. It provides you with the reviews/testimonials that are a core part of the proof you need to convert WOM opportunities into sales.
  2. Asking for introductions keeps your advocates aware that you are always looking for more.

Email marketing and social media are great ways to amplify your word of mouth.

So, even if word-of-mouth drives a large portion of your business, marketing is necessary to ensure long-term growth, control your brand narrative, maintain consistency, and compete effectively in your current, and new, markets. It complements word-of-mouth by reaching new customers, reinforcing relationships, and helping your business thrive in an increasingly competitive market.

 

If you would like some help building a marketing programme that supports and enhances the results of your word of mouth marketing, call us on 020 8634 5911 or book a meeting here.

October 22, 2024
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daily marketing tips landing page image

Why Landing Pages are a great tool for your marketing

By A Helping Hand, Marketing Plan, Small Business Marketing

The what, when, why and how for landing pages

You will have visited numerous landing pages over the years. Some you will have engaged with, some you will have clicked away from. The next few minutes on this page will guide you through when to use them, why they are so effective and your options when it comes to building them.

What is a landing page?

A landing page is the first page you land on, usually after clicking on a PPC ad or social media post. It is designed to get you to do just one thing. That may be signing up for an event, subscribing to a newsletter or purchasing something.

Its single job is to convert you to a lead or a customer.

How landing pages differ from web pages

The biggest difference is the single-minded focus of a landing page. It is designed to quickly get you to do that one thing. Website pages are a communication tool. They are designed to help you understand something and then act. Landing pages want you to simply act.

Landing pages will lack menus and any links that can distract you away from doing that thing. They don’t want you wandering away and getting distracted.  You have three choices on a landing page:

  1. Do the thing they want you to do
  2. Click back
  3. Close your browser

Web pages aim to keep you on the website. They are part of a journey around the website that wants you to eventually contact the company to talk about their products/services, or to buy online.

When you should use a landing page

As alluded to before, landing pages should be used when you want someone to do something. That may be

  • To subscribe to a mailing list (you can subscribe to our Daily Marketing Tips here – via a landing page of course).
  • To register for an event
  • To buy a product, often a relatively low cost product such as books, guides and digital tools

Your landing page will be the final step in the marketing process, where people basically say yes or no. You can use email marketing, social media or PPC ads to drive people to the landing page.

They can be particularly effective when you launch a new service or product, for special promotions or for events.

Why are landing pages so effective?

They’re effective for these reasons:

  1. There are no distractions or easy ways to go elsewhere
  2. The messaging is aimed precisely at you and your peers
  3. The Call to Action stands out, making it very clear what you have to do

Stats show that landing pages convert, on average, 4.3% of the time – one conversion for every 24 people visits. Ecommerce websites convert, on average, 2.5% of the time. Average B2B buyers will visit 7 different websites and consume 5-7 pieces of content before engaging.

How to build a landing page

You have a myriad of options when it comes to building landing pages for your small business…

  • Add them to your website. If you use WordPress, you may have functionality within your theme, or you’ll need a specific plugin.
  • Mailchimp has a great landing page tool, as do most of the email marketing platforms.
  • Specialist one page site applications such as Carrd are a good alternative.
  • SEMrush has a specialist landing page builder as a paid addon to its SEO performance tools

As a Mailchimp Pro Partner, we often recommend their tool, as it is built into your subscription, even the free version (although you don’t get Customer Journeys, so we wouldn’t recommend using the free account). The ability to follow up immediately using their Customer Journeys and tagging makes it a very easy tool to use.

What data do you need?

Depending on what people get from using the landing page, you need to decide what data you really need to collect. Less is frequently more at this point. Remember that you can always ask for more later on as the engagement between you and the customer increases.

We recommend at least first name, as well as email address of course – helps you to personalise future communications.

Grab their attention

You have moments to create a great first impression so your hero image/colour scheme and headlines need to be good. Make them relevant to both your target audience and what you are giving them.

The headline is the main benefit – less than 10 words.

Sub-heading should be less than 25 words and convey additional benefits.

Any additional content should be concise and only there if really necessary.

Call to Action

An easy to complete form and an obvious button that completes the transaction are essential. Click Here or Subscribe Now won’t hack it anymore. The button wording should convey immediate action is needed and be about the benefit they’re about to get.

Social proof

Testimonials and review ratings can help you increase your conversion rate. This is particularly important if people are parting with money at this point, as it helps reduce perceived risk in the mind of the buyer/subscriber.

What next?

By this point you have a landing page. You have tested it does what you want it to do – haven’t you?

The next challenge is driving traffic to the landing page and then following up to either convert them to customers (if they only subscribed at this point) or get them to buy more, if they bought from you.  We’ll cover these in future articles, coming soon!

If you would like to talk more about how landing pages can work for you, or you need a hand building them, please get in touch. BTW, if you want to get a Daily Marketing Tip, click here to subscribe and improve your marketing performance.

 

 

 

 

 

October 11, 2024
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triangle of time, skills and money making up the budget triangle

Balancing the three key resources you need for effective marketing

By Marketing Performance, Marketing Plan

When you’re planning your marketing, you need a mixture of three key resources – time, skill & money To get the results you want from your marketing requires a careful balancing of these three key resources. Here’s how you balance your resources to keep your marketing working well.

Time & marketing skills

In a perfect world you will have all the marketing skills and knowledge you need, and the time to use them, available within your business. You’re doing your marketing well and the leads are coming into your business.
A common starting point for many early-stage businesses, simply because the money isn’t there. You make use of the skill you have to generate the early growth you’re looking for.
But what happens when one of these starts becoming scarcer?

Running out of time

Your early marketing was effective, generating leads that led to sales. Now you have to deliver on those sales, and that takes time. As time is limited for all of us, it has to come from somewhere – usually marketing!

Running out of skills

Marketing is constantly evolving. Thirty years ago, the Yellow Pages, networking and direct mail ruled the roost. Then along came websites and Google Adwords (now called Google Ads) and email marketing. In the last decade or so, social media is at the forefront, alongside other digital marketing channels. Has your knowledge kept up?

You’re running your business, meaning other jobs take priority. There simply isn’t time for you to maintain your marketing skillset.

Adding budgettriangle of time, skills and money making up the budget triangle

When your time and skill resources dwindle, but you need to keep the leads coming in, you have to add the final key resource – money.
But that is also a finite resource, often a limited one. But you need to add budget to top up the time and skills you have to reach the levels you need.
Here’s what you need to do to ensure you’re using the right balance of these key resources…

1. Assess Your Current Skills and Resources

At every size of business, before calculating the budget you will need, you need a clear understanding of the marketing strengths and weaknesses within your business. Identify which marketing tasks you can handle efficiently and which tasks are beyond the expertise within the business or would consume too much time. At a minimum level do you have:

  • Copywriting skills, for blogs, brochures and social posts
  • Graphic design skills
  • Website management/maintenance skills, so you can update your own website
  • Networkers, able to develop relationships with people without always trying to sell to them
  • The ability to properly assess the marketing performance

As you develop your marketing plan, you will identify other skills that are needed.

2. Determine your marketing strategy and develop your plan

Truly understanding the skills and resources available within your business helps you to develop the right marketing strategy for your small business. Over the years we have seen many businesses limit their marketing activities because they’re worried about costs. If you know that some of the marketing can be done in-house, you know your costs will be lower.

Developing a marketing strategy that only uses the skills and time available within your business will lead to missed opportunities and a lack of growth. This will only get worse over time as the marketing landscape evolves, but the skills don’t keep up.

3. Where are the gaps?

Once you have a plan, identifying the gaps is relatively simple. Plugging the gaps is then about finding the right mix of expertise and technology

  • What marketing technology can give you back time?
  • Social media platforms such as Publer or Hootsuite
  • Email marketing tools, such as Mailchimp
  • Performance reporting tools such as Google Analytics or SEMrush
  • Who are the marketing specialists who can provide the expertise in other areas, perhaps PPC or PR, maybe SEO or email marketing

Complementing internal skills with external expertise and technology delivers both the quality and quantity of marketing your business needs to hit your marketing targets and business goals. You don’t need to outsource everything. Prioritise high-skill, time-intensive tasks that will make the biggest impact on your marketing strategy.

The third of the key resources, money, is what enables the gaps to be filled. Wise choices in these areas will deliver a great ROI and be a good investment for your business.

4. Review and Reallocate Regularly

Regularly reviewing your marketing performance is key to maintaining the right balance of resources. Monitor your marketing performance and assess whether the budget, time, and skills allocated are producing the desired results.
If certain areas are under-performing, changes can be made. If the under-performing areas are being delivered by external resource, changing supplier is far easier than replacing or upskilling internal staff

Conclusion

The right balance of time, skill and money will deliver the results you are looking for, so approach this in a careful, strategic way. By assessing your team’s skills, outsourcing when necessary, making good use of automation tools, and continuously reviewing your marketing performance, you can create a marketing strategy that maximises efficiency and results.

 

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September 13, 2024
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good marketing helps your small business hit the target - an image of a dart to support the article

You’re Not Your Target Audience

By Customer Understanding, Marketing Plan

Why Small Business Owners Need to Think Differently

As a small business owner, it’s easy to assume that what you love about your product or service will naturally appeal to your clients. If you’re passionate about what you sell, surely your target audience will feel the same way, right? Well, not quite. One of the most common mistakes business owners make is believing that they reflect their clients. Here’s 3 reasons why it’s important to recognise that you are not your target audience – and what to do about it…

1. Personal Preferences Can Skew Your View

As a business owner, you started your business because you identified an opportunity, or you wanted to work for yourself, after doing something you love for someone else. You’re deeply attached to your product or service, which can lead to personal bias. This emotional attachment sometimes clouds judgement, causing you to focus on details that matter to you but might not resonate with your audience. Just because you love something doesn’t mean your clients will.

For example, if you’re drawn to sleek, minimalistic designs, you might prioritise aesthetics over functionality. However, your clients may care more about ease of use or affordability. By assuming your tastes match theirs, you run the risk of misjudging what really matters to your audience.

Have you ever found yourself saying:

  • I don’t like that design/colour/language
  • I never go on Facebook/LinkedIn, so let’s not….

2. Clients Have Different Priorities

Steve Jobs developed products and then made huge numbers of people want them. He was one of a very rare breed. He also had mega-marketing budgets behind him; something very few small businesses owners have.

When talking to prospects and new clients, we frequently hear them focus on the tech or the complexity. They’re immensely proud of what it has taken to develop their product – and so they should be – but their target audience is rarely interested in the bells and whistles. They want to know whether it will solve a problem they have, in a convenient, reliable or cost-effective way.

A fintech client of ours used to talk about the power of their analysis platform and the size of their data warehouse, wondering why people weren’t engaging. Put simply, its because nobody cared about those things.  They cared about the results of the analysis and what it enabled them to do. Now that company talks about increased capacity, time savings and profitability – because that’s what their clients get from the work they do.

3. You Don’t Always Share the Same Background

Your age, income, lifestyle, or even geographic location might be quite different from your ideal client. These differences matter when it comes to purchasing behaviour, communication preferences, and product expectations.

If you’re a 40-year-old business owner, but your target audience is primarily 20-somethings, your marketing approach might miss the mark if you’re only drawing from your own experience. Just because you may not understand TikTok or Instagram, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be active on them as part of your marketing.

Recognising these demographic differences helps you craft messages that better align with your clients’ lives and use the right marketing channels.

4. Client Insights Matter More Than Assumptions

Instead of guessing what your clients want, listen to them!

Gathering feedback, tracking behaviour, and conducting client research are essential for understanding your audience’s real preferences. Assumptions can lead to costly mistakes, while actual data can guide you in the right direction.

Whether through surveys, reviews, or even informal conversations, hearing directly from your clients ensures you’re making decisions that are aligned with their needs, not just your personal vision for the business.

5. Show you understand your clients

To truly connect with your audience, you need to understand them. What challenges are they facing? What motivates them to make a purchase? Putting yourself in their shoes and empathising with their situation can transform the way you approach everything from product development to marketing.

Your website wording should be talking to them and you need a convincing set of evidence that proves you understand them.

When you take the time to understand what your clients care about, you’re better positioned to create solutions that genuinely resonate with them, rather than simply catering to your own preferences.

Final Thoughts

At the end of the day, running a successful business isn’t about what you want—it’s about what your clients want. Recognising that you are not your target audience is crucial for making smart, client-focused decisions. By stepping outside of your own perspective, you’ll be able to create marketing strategies that better serve the people who matter most: your clients.

If you need some help with this, let’s talk.

September 9, 2024
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Planning your small business marketing for 2024

Are you ready to start marketing?

By Marketing Plan, Small Business Marketing, Strategic Planning

When you start thinking about doing more marketing to generate the growth you’re targeting for your small business, you need to ensure you’re ready to start marketing. Let us explain what we mean by this…
If you’ve not done much marketing recently, there’s a possibility that some things have slipped somewhat. As SME Needs works exclusively with small businesses (we rarely work with businesses with more than 40 staff, and usually less than 20), we see a lot of companies where their marketing collateral will not make a good first impression. This normally means one, or more, of the following:

Signs why you’re not ready for marketing

  • The website looks like it was built in the last century. What year does your website’s copyright say? I found this on a website the other day:image of copyright year from an old website to support an article about getting ready for marketing your business
  • The messaging is wrong, normally talking about the company rather than the customer.
  • Brochures and flyers are out of date or poorly designed.
  • The mailing list is woefully out of date, or even non-existent.
  • There isn’t an up to date client list, ideally with a record of what services/products they’ve bought.
  • Case studies/ testimonials are missing or of poor quality.
  • Social media accounts haven’t been added for months, if not years.
  • You don’t know what marketing is, and isn’t, working for you.

Are you guilty of any of these?

Will your current marketing make a good first impression?

If a prospective client were to see your website or an advertisement in a trade magazine for your business, what would they think? If they saw a flyer or brochure, would they keep it, or is it heading for the B1N file?

As you only get one chance to make a good first impression, you need to be confident that your marketing material is ready for you to start marketing your business.

What if it isn’t right

Put simply, you will struggle to generate the new clients you need to hit your growth targets if you’re not ready to be marketing. Some of the people reading this will get virtually all of their new clients through word of mouth (WOM), saying they don’t need a website or other marketing material.

Whilst they may be generating the leads and new business they want, you can guarantee they are missing out of other business opportunities that would help them grow even faster, even from people who were referred to them. For every new client they pick up, there will be some that wanted to see case studies and testimonials. There will be some that need more information about what they do and how that helps them.

How to fix this

The great thing is that, no matter what your current marketing collateral looks like, it can all be fixed, and fixed relatively quickly. Developing answers to the following five questions will move your forwards:

  1. What marketing has been working for you?
  2. Who are your target customers for each product/service?
  3. What are the right marketing messages for your business?
  4. Where and how should these messages be used?
  5. Which client projects best demonstrate your ability to deliver?

Make the changes needed

The answers to the 5 questions above give you what is needed to get ready. Now you need to:

  • Replace/update your website so that it grabs the attention of your target audience
  • Use the right marketing messages on your website, flyers/brochures, and social media channels.
  • Develop and maintain an up-to-date list of your clients and what they have bought from you – allowing you to cross-sell/upsell to them.

If you’re worried that your small business is not yet ready to start marketing, let’s talk. We have a 100-day plan to get your marketing-ready. Call us on 020 8634 5911 or click here to book a meeting.

July 3, 2024
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person holding mobile phone receiving SMS marketing messages

How SMS marketing can help you grow your business

By A Helping Hand, Marketing Plan

SMS (otherwise known as text) messaging has been around for decades. Who remembers when the cost per message depended on how long your text message was? Even though they’ve been around for a long time, very few businesses, particularly small businesses, make use of this channel with their marketing. If you’re thinking about your current marketing mix at the moment, here’s why you should consider SMS messaging…

Everyone has a phone

98% of the adult population has a mobile phone; some have two. There aren’t many people you cannot reach by SMS. With no spam filters to avoid, you know they are going to be delivered.

Great open rates

When was the last time you deleted a text message without reading it? That seems to be the trend everywhere because 98% of SMS messages are opened. Even if recipients don’t engage any further, they have seen your brand one more time (let’s hope you’re not sending too many, creating a negative brand opinion).

With 90% of messages opened within three minutes, you also get an immediate reaction to your SMS marketing campaigns.

Click rates

The stats on this vary massively. The highest figure seems to be 36%, with many sources giving an average of 6.6%. It varies considerably across industries too. However, all the figures are 2-3 times the average for email marketing campaigns.

Personalisation

In the same way that you can personalise email marketing campaigns using the data you have about someone, you can personalise SMS campaigns too.

Targeting

SMS campaigns can be focused in on contacts that meet certain criteria in the same way as email campaigns. Use the data about where people are, what they’ve bought, their birthday and many more criteria, to ensure you’re not spamming people and annoying them.

Cost effective

As a Mailchimp Partner, SME Needs is going to promote the new SMS service that is available from them. They run a credits system, with each SMS sent costing 5 credits. The cost of credits varies depending on how many you expect to use each month. At the minimum level (1000 credits), each SMS costs 7.5p to send. If you subscribe to 2500 credits per month (500 text messages), the cost reduces to just 3.9p per SMS and drops even further, to just 2.5p each, if you’re subscribing to 50,000 credits per month. You can find out more information about their service here.

Combining email and SMS can produce a real step change in your marketing performance.

But

Risk of spamming

Nearly half of consumers are annoyed by constant SMS marketing! Because of the high open rates that SMS delivers, there is a real temptation to have high frequency marketing campaigns. NO!
If you do that, you simply upset people. They unsubscribe and they probably tell their friends, losing you more subscribers/customers.

Limited room

Both a blessing and a curse, the limited space makes it harder to put everything you want to into the message (link shorteners really help here). What they do is force you to be succinct; something that email doesn’t.

Possible uses of SMS marketing

Here’s a ways you can use SMS marketing…
1. Get customer feedback through surveys
2. Delivery time confirmations
3. Increasing event attendance, particularly webinars
4. Special offer/flash sale notifications
5. Appointment reminders
6. Annual subscription/membership reminders

If you want to look at an alternative marketing channel, to add to your current mix, why not look in more detail at SMS marketing. Give me a call (020 8634 5911) and we can talk more

 

June 26, 2024
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case studies are a great way to prove you can deliver great results for your prospects

How to Get More Reviews, Testimonials, and Case Studies for Your Business

By Marketing Plan, Small Business Marketing, Strategic Planning

Social proof is a powerful tool and a must-have for any small business. Positive reviews, compelling testimonials, and detailed case studies can boost credibility, build trust, and attract more clients. But gathering this kind of feedback doesn’t happen by chance—it requires strategy and effort. Here’s how you can encourage your clients to share their experiences and make it easy for them to do so.

Why Are Reviews, Testimonials, and Case Studies Important?

Here are 4 key reasons you need more social proof:

Builds Trust: People trust other clients more than they trust marketing. Honest feedback provides assurance and makes potential buyers more confident in their decision.
Improves Conversion Rates: Reviews and testimonials act as endorsements, showing that others have had positive experiences with your business.
Provides Insight: Client feedback helps you understand what you’re doing well and where you can improve.
Enhances Marketing Efforts: Case studies, in particular, tell a compelling story that can be repurposed in blogs, social media posts, and email campaigns.

Finally, whilst they last online forever, they have a shelf-life. If you’ve not had a good testimonial for a while, does that mean you’re not as good as you used to be?

Strategies for Gathering Reviews

Ask Directly

The simplest way to get reviews is to ask. After a successful interaction, politely request feedback. Be specific about where you’d like the review—whether it’s Google, Trustpilot, Yelp, or your website.

Example Request:
“We hope you’re happy with your experience! If so, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Could you take a moment to leave us a review on [platform]? Your feedback means the world to us.”

Make It Easy

Provide direct links to review platforms in your emails, on your website, and in follow-up communications. The easier you make it, the more likely clients are to follow through.

Offer Incentives

While it’s important to comply with platform guidelines, offering a small incentive (like a discount or entry into a prize draw) can encourage reviews. Just ensure the incentive doesn’t bias the content of the review.

Follow Up

Sometimes clients need a gentle reminder. Send a follow-up email or message a few days after a purchase or service, asking for a review. Timing is key—catch them when they’re still thinking about their positive experience.

Strategies for Collecting Testimonials

Identify Happy Clients

Keep an eye out for loyal clients or those who’ve expressed satisfaction. These individuals are more likely to be willing to provide testimonials.

Use Surveys

Incorporate a question in your client satisfaction surveys, such as: “Would you be willing to share your experience as a testimonial?”
Follow up with those who say yes to formalise their feedback.

Guide the Testimonial

To avoid generic responses, guide your clients with specific questions:

  • What problem were you trying to solve?
  • How did our product/service help?
  • What results have you seen since working with us?

Make It Easy and Convenient

Some clients may prefer to write a testimonial, while others might be comfortable doing a short video or phone interview. Offer flexible options to suit their preferences. We recommend that you don’t write them for your clients. Whilst it may seem easier for you to write them and get them to sign them off, it can be very easy to spot these through the language. Far better that they are authentic.

Strategies for Creating Case Studies

Choose the Right Candidates

Look for clients who have achieved notable success or overcome a significant challenge with your product or service. Their stories will resonate more strongly with potential clients.

Get Permission

Once you’ve identified a good candidate, reach out to explain the process and ask for their consent. Assure them you’ll share the final draft before publication.

Structure the Story

A strong case study includes:

  1. Who is the client?
  2. What issue was the client facing?
  3. How did your business address their needs?
  4. What results were achieved?
  5. What did the client say – add their testimonial

Promote the Case Study

Share the completed case study on your website, in email campaigns, and across social media. It’s a versatile marketing asset that can attract and convert new leads.

Tips for Success

Timing Is Key: Ask for reviews and testimonials shortly after delivering a product or service when the experience is still fresh.
Be Grateful: Always thank clients for their time and input. Acknowledging their effort strengthens the relationship.
Stay Ethical: Avoid paying for fake reviews or testimonials. Authenticity is crucial for building long-term trust.
Monitor Feedback: Keep track of where your reviews are being left and respond to them—whether positive or negative.

Conclusion

Building a collection of reviews, testimonials, and case studies requires consistent effort, but the rewards are well worth it. These forms of social proof can establish trust, drive conversions, and differentiate your business in a crowded marketplace. Start by engaging with your clients, making the process easy, and showing appreciation for their feedback. Over time, you’ll create a library of powerful endorsements that will bolster your business’s reputation and help it thrive.

If you need a hand with this, get in touch. Let’s talk about how we can help you collect and then make best use of the social proof you need. Click here to book a meeting or call us on 020 8634 5911

 

June 10, 2024
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Getting your marketing messages right

By Customer Understanding, Marketing Plan

Marketing success is getting the right messages in front of the right people at the right time. Our recent article looked at the timing, so this one looks at another aspect – getting your messages right. There are three aspects of your marketing messaging you need to think about – and one to definitely not focus on.

  1. How you help your clients
  2. What success looks like
  3. The evidence you have to support what you’re saying

We’ll look at these in more detail in a moment, but let’s first look at why you need to do this.

Making you stand out from the competition

Unless your small business offers something rare or unique, there will be others who are competing with you. To win more business, you need to stand out from your competitors. Luckily for you, a lot of your competitors will be doing one of two things:

  1. Still talking about features of their business, or
  2. Saying the same things as everyone else.

If you’re not doing either, you will stand out and have a far better chance to engage with, and sell to, your target audiences.

How you help your clients

If your marketing messages are about how you help your clients, they show two things:

  1. That you understand your target audiences, and
  2. You have ways to help them.

We are all exposed to 100s of marketing messages every day, so we have very little time to process each message, seeing whether it sticks. If it becomes difficult to work out whether the company using that marketing message is going to be useful to you, you generally discard it. Onto the next one.

If your marketing messages make it easy for people to identify how you can help them, the message, and your brand, will stick. Of course, you need to keep getting the message to stick regularly until they need what you sell.

What success looks like

The classic line, from Harvard Business School Professor Theodore Levitt, is that “nobody buys a quarter inch drill; they’re buying a ¼ inch hole”. The more your marketing messages talk about the end result, the more your target audience will believe that you understand their needs and issues. The more they believe, the more likely they are to buy from you.

Supporting Evidence

But all of the above has to be supported by evidence. Evidence that you can deliver what your marketing messages are promising. Let’s face it, we all shop online now. The first thing we look at when considering whether to buy a particular brand or model of the product we want is the reviews. We’re looking for evidence that others have tried and really like what we’re considering buying. It’s the same whether the product is from a huge business, or from one of the smallest.

It’s just as true for B2B as it is for B2C, except we look for slightly different evidence. Case studies, testimonials, knowledge pieces – all will be considered when deciding who to buy from.

When using evidence, particularly at the bottom end of the sales funnel, make sure that the evidence you present to potential clients is from their peers. If you are selling, for example, temporary space solutions for construction sites, you wouldn’t show a prospect case studies for 50th birthday parties or for restaurant seasonal extensions. All are valid uses of a marquee, but the construction prospect wants to see that you have worked with other construction firms – and delivered a great solution effectively.

A Set for each target audience

Something we see too much of is trying to use the same marketing messages for different target audiences. Don’t do it!

Whilst many different people may use the same product, they will have many different reasons for using it. They may even use it differently.

Final point

There is one final key point when it comes to your marketing messages – stop using big words!

Too many people think that big words make them look intelligent and that they know a topic inside out. Big words and jargon usually do the opposite, and you run a real risk of using them incorrectly. And that’s never a good thing.

If you want to discuss your marketing messages or need some help developing them, get in touch. Call us on 020 8634 5911 or you can book some time directly into Nigel’s calendar.

May 7, 2024
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where to start with digital marketing especially when it isn't working

6 reasons why your marketing isn’t working

By Delivering your marketing, Marketing Plan

and what to do about them!

 

Assuming you are like every owner of a small business, you want your marketing to deliver the leads you need to grow your business. If your marketing isn’t working, there are six main reasons why. This article will look at each of these six reasons, explain the issue and what you can do about it.

Let’s go!

1. Focusing on the wrong audience

There are currently 68 million people in the UK. The vast majority of these people will never buy what your small business sells, so why do so many businesses try to maximise the size of their target audience?  Too many people believe that trying to appeal to huge numbers will generate more sales. The opposite is actually true, and will save you a huge amount of money that will be wasted when you try to engage huge numbers.good marketing helps your small business hit the target - an image of a dart to support the article

The more people you’re trying to market to, the more your messaging is compromised. It becomes ineffective and a waste of time and money.

Even the biggest companies focus their marketing. They have a range of different products that appeal to different audiences.

What to do

Develop personas for each of your Ideal Clients; most businesses will have more than one. Your marketing must focus on your Ideal Clients to be effective and you can find out more about how to do that here.

2. Ineffective marketing messages

Too many businesses use ineffective marketing messages. 43,600 companies claim to be “London’s leading provider” of whatever they do. 435,000 companies claim to be the “UK’s leading provider” Chances are none of them are – and people won’t believe them either.

Let’s use accountants as an example, but this applies to all business types.  If an accountancy firm’s marketing says “We are accountants” or “We are London’s leading accountants”, there are three problems:

  1. People say “And….”
  2. They have a preconceived idea of what an accountant does – that is often wrong.
  3. They don’t stand out from the competition.

How can we put this? Nobody cares what your business does!

They care about:

  • how you can help them.
  • how you solve their needs and issues.
  • Having someone who understands them.

What to do

Think about the needs and issues of your Ideal Clients and how you can help. Think about what success looks like for your Ideal Clients. That will help you develop far more effective marketing messages.

3. Using the wrong marketing tools

Using the wrong set of marketing tools happens for three reasons:

  • FOMO (the fear of missing out) is often a major problem within small business marketing, particularly when it comes to social media. “If we have content on all the social media platforms, we’re making sure that people don’t miss us”.
  • “These are the tools I know and understand”. This is particularly relevant when small business owners are not willing to get some expert advice.
  • A marketing agency sells you what they do as the right set of marketing tools for your business. Find out more about our approach here.

When the wrong tools are being used, it means your marketing isn’t reaching your target audiences. It doesn’t matter how good you are with these tools or how effective your marketing messages are, if they are never seen, they won’t work.

What to do

Yet again, think about your Ideal Clients.

  • social channels are they most likely to be on regularly?
  • How do they travel to work?
  • How are they likely to search for companies who can help them?

If you’re really not sure, you can always ask some of your current clients.

The other thing to do is look at the ROI of each marketing channel up to now (great tool to help you available here).  Which are effective and which aren’t? If something isn’t working, stop doing it and invest that time and money in something that will.

 

4. Using the right tools poorly

Getting the best from many, particularly online, marketing tools requires training, practice and regular use. That’s why SME Needs works with a range of marketing specialists to deliver what our clients needs. Typical mistakes we see regularly being made include:

  • Email marketing campaigns always being sent to the whole contact list (see some tips here).
  • Social media activity that is only ever posting, rather than engaging with your audience and responding to posts/comments.
  • Very little use of video to explain complex stories.

You may get some results from using the right tools, but imagine what is possible when they are used well!

What to do

This depends on how much time you have available. If you have time and want to do your marketing yourself, get some training. There are plenty of companies that will train you in various aspects of small business marketing.

If you don’t have time, bring in the specialists. Whilst you will have to pay for their services, the ROI from improved marketing will be much higher than you will get without them.

No marketing consistency

Consistent marketing ensures your target audiences see your brand regularly. They get to know more and more about what you do and how you can help. When they realise they need what you sell, they are much more likely to get in touch with you. If your marketing is inconsistent, Sod’s Law says they will need your products/services just after they’ve forgotten who you are because they haven’t seen your brand for some time.

What to do

When planning your marketing, make sure that you are consistent with everything you do. If you simply don’t have time to produce a, for example, LinkedIn post every day, make sure you can get one out every other day. Make use of scheduling tools (we often use Publer and Mailchimp) to help you and build up a bank of marketing material in advance so that you can keep the consistency going.

If you really cannot meet the consistency levels needed (the more competitive your industry, the more frequent you are likely to need to be to maintain and build your brand recognition), bring in some help.

Not doing enough marketing

Related to consistency is the sheer volume of marketing you need to do. The more competitive your industry sector, the more you have to do.  That doesn’t mean doing 10 Instagram posts a day; rather its making sure that you are seen in multiple ways. Unless you have something that makes you markedly different from your competitors, you will need to be seen frequently enough that your brand and your messages are seen sufficiently enough that you are remembered at the same time (and ideally before) your competitors are.

What to do

Based on your Ideal Clients, you need to maximise the number of opportunities they have to see and engage with your brand and your messaging. An omnichannel approach (see here for a full explanation) means people continue to see your brand and your messaging, even when they are not actively searching.

 

If your marketing isn’t working, let’s talk. After reading this, you may have identified why your marketing isn’t working and simply need help fixing the issue. If you need help identifying why it isn’t working, that is always the first step we take new clients through. Give us a call on 020 8634 5911 or simply book a meeting into Nigel’s diary by clicking here.

 

April 16, 2024
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opportunity cost, time is money, smart time management, opportunities

Getting the timing of your marketing right

By Delivering your marketing, Marketing Plan

Marketing is all about saying the right thing to the right people at the right time. This article will concentrate of the last piece of that statement – the right time. When is the right time?
This, of course, depends. It depends on two key things:

  1. When your product/service is going to be used
  2. When the buyer starts to think about the issue you help them with.

Let’s look at each of these in more detail…

When your product will be used

At the simplest end of this scale are highly seasonal products: Easter eggs, Christmas decorations, gifts that are aimed at any of the parent’s days. The purchase must be made directly from the manufacturer/ecommerce retailer in time for it to be delivered. If a store-based retail purchase, it can even be the same day.

In this scenario there is wholesale and consumer marketing times to consider, but for the purposes of this article, we’ll focus on direct to user marketing.

For these products, there are firm start and end points for the marketing. Whilst this makes the timing easier, the competitive nature of the markets means your marketing needs to really stand out.

At the other end of the scale will be high value services that are used all year round and can be bought at any time of the year. Marketing is going to have to be done all year round, with other factors having more of an impact on your marketing timing.

When people start thinking about the issue

When buying something, people don’t think about the product, they think about the issue, the activity or the holiday. Business owners that buy accountancy or IT support services don’t initially think about IT support or accountancy, they look at productivity, lost time or think about why their tax bill was so high last year. Consumers of seasonal products look back at last time thinking “did we have a good Christmas?” – or equivalent.

Next their minds go to “how can this be better?”
• Should they buy something different, or a better version of what they bought?
• What else is needed?
• What does a good result look like?
• Should I have bought earlier, or later?

Whilst the first three questions here relate more to your marketing messages, the last one is absolutely relevant to the timing of your marketing.

Let’s start with the same two scenarios initially…

Seasonal timing

If we go to extremes, you will see many of the supermarkets selling Christmas products in August. People have usually booked (maybe even gone on) their summer holidays by this point, so the next big expenditure is Christmas. Because some people will want to spread the cost of the festivities over a period of time, it makes sense to start so early.

For you, it may be different. Consider these questions:

1. When did you starting marketing your seasonal products last year?
If you had a good year last year, it may make sense to simply start at that point again.

2. Were sales quick or slow when you started?
Slow sales are likely to indicate that you started your marketing too early. You were marketing before people had really started thinking about it. If sales were really quick, you may want to start a little earlier.

3. When did your competition start their marketing campaigns?
Keeping an eye on your competitions’ marketing is always a good idea, but don’t immediately think that you need to match them. They may be going too early and you definitely don’t want to rush the design of a campaign just to get it out there.

4. What is the best day?
Particularly for consumer marketing, knowing what days, and times, to start marketing campaigns is important. We’ve just analysed the email marketing for an ecommerce client and it clearly showed:
• Fridays are a really bad day to send email campaigns for them, with Monday & Thursday being far better.
• Weekend mornings perform so much better than afternoons

Just make sure you’ve been sending throughout the week before you do the analysis!

5. When did your seasonal products start selling last year?
If your products started selling before you were actively marketing them, people were definitely looking for what you sell before you realised it. If you’ve got an ecommerce site, your records will show when you started selling products, so you can alter your marketing schedule accordingly.

Timing for your marketing for year-round products/services

If there really is no seasonality for your products/services, you will need to be marketing throughout the year. Frequency of activity is important, as you need to tread that fine line between too much marketing and not enough.
Your marketing has three goals:
1. Get them into the top of your pipeline
2. Nurture them so they move through that phase
3. Get them to become a sales opportunity.

Top of pipeline timing

This activity has to take place throughout the year with your principal timing issue being about how frequently you are marketing.

A constant light touch

Spread your activity out when using multiple marketing channels. You don’t want your target audience to see you everywhere for a few days and then see nothing for weeks. Far better that they see a message a day over 10 days (for example) than 10 messages in a day and nothing for two weeks.

Moving them through your funnel

Decision makers will need to be confident that you can deliver what they need. Content that demonstrates the knowledge and expertise within your business should be shared with your target audience regularly.

Permutate the knowledge demonstration campaigns with more salesy campaigns that challenge their thinking and get them to think about their current provider. These should generate some inbound enquiries, converting them to sales opportunities.

Converting to a sales opportunity

Many small businesses simply rely on the funnel to call them when they are ready. Whilst you know at this point they are ready to talk, you are leaving things to chance. Keeping an eye on how your pipeline is engaging with you, and then following up, can generate sales leads more proactively, assuming you have the tools to show you who is engaged.
• Email marketing tools, such as Mailchimp, will tell you who is opening and clicking on your campaigns.
• CANDDi can give you a real insight into who is looking at your website, what they are looking at and how they got there.
• Integrating both of these with your CRM puts all the information needed in front of your sales team (whether that is you or others in your business).

Regular reviews of the information in your CRM can give you a list of people to follow up with. That can be through personal emails, but far better if you pick up the phone and call them.

 

Can you get helpful information?

As people enter your funnel, can you get information from them that will help you? Renewal/replacement dates would be really useful to you, as would notice periods. Perhaps a short survey can get the information you are looking for, if you’re not yet talking to them.

What to do when you have a date

If you can get a date, work backwards from there based on your experience.
• If you have a renewal date, how much notice do they normally need to give?
• From the notice date, how long do people, on average, take to review a proposal and make up their mind?
• How long does it take to complete your sales process?
• Add on some time for the length of the campaign you’re planning.

This is likely to add up to a good few months, so don’t expect the sales to start quickly.

Some marketing options when you have dates

1. Automated email campaigns based on date information
2. Set tasks in your CRM to get you to pick up the phone
3. Direct mail campaigns can be highly effective, as people will keep good quality marketing collateral

This has hopefully explained the importance of timing within your marketing, and given you some ideas on what you can do to improve your marketing. If you would like to talk, or you have some questions about this, please get in touch.
• smegrowth@smeneeds.co.uk
• 020 8634 5911
• Click here to book time into my diary

March 25, 2024
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