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When to recruit marketing staff for your small business

By Nigel DaveyA Helping Hand, Delivering your marketing, Small Business Marketing, Uncategorized

7 questions to help you decide if and when to recruit marketing staff

When you start a new business, you have dreams of growing it to a size that you are comfortable with and one that can give you the lifestyle you want. For some that will mean the business stays small, maybe even always just the business owner. For others, that means 50+ staff and a £multi-million turnover. Whatever size you want your business to be, you will need marketing. In the beginning you will, almost certainly do it all, but when do you start looking for marketing staff, and at what level? Here 7 questions you need to answer to help you work out when to recruit.

Current marketing salaries

Before we look at the questions, let’s look at current salary levels:

Entry level marketing role: £22,991
Marketing Executive: £30,020, increasing to £36K in London
Marketing Manager: £45,201
Marketing Director: an average as high as £98,700 according to some job sites

When you start talking to outsourced marketing providers, like SME Needs, these are the figures you need to take into consideration. Don’t forget you have to then add a marketing budget on top of these salaries.

Do you have a marketing budget?

In the beginning, there is more time resource in your business than cash resource. If this is the case, there are only two ways to get your marketing done:

You do it
You barter your skills for marketing ones

Finding a marketer who needs enough of what you do so that they will trade is likely to be tough. You’ll be doing your marketing, but having someone to bounce ideas off and keep you on the straight and narrow will be useful for you.

If your marketing budget should be 5-10% of your annual turnover and that includes salaries, your annual turnover needs to be £multi-millions to have a marketing team.

Are the skills needed within your team?

Whether your team is just you, or you have got a small number in the team, do they have the skills needed? Can they write good content, build (and respond) to social media posts, develop and manage your website? Do you have people who know their way around email marketing tools?

Perhaps more importantly, is the best use of their time? If they were employed for client-facing roles, their time is probably best spent that way.

You need to source the skills needed, but finding one person with all the skills is not easy. You will then need to manage, and coordinate, the various agencies you are using to deliver your small business marketing strategy.

Are you confident you know what marketing needs doing?

The world of marketing is forever changing. It is continuously developing. As a small business owner, you will be reading books and listening to podcasts to help keep your knowledge up to date, but is it enough.

Ensuring your marketing plan is the right one is, most definitely, a senior role. But is only something that you will look at 1-2 times a year. You don’t need a marketing manager or director unless you have

Do you have time to do your marketing?

If most of your time is spent dealing with clients, it is probably time to add to the client-facing team. You then get to run the business. If doing that leaves you little time to do your marketing, your marketing consistency will suffer – and so will your brand awareness levels.

Regular time needs to be invested in marketing for it to be effective. If you cannot commit, you need to get the time elsewhere. If your marketing strategy calls for 30+ hours a week, then it is time to recruit. If not, outsource.

Do you want to do your marketing?

Some people love doing their own marketing, and would rather employ other to face the clients. If that is you, then great. If not, get someone else to do it. If there is enough marketing to do, recruit a junior marketing exec and get them to do it. If not, outsource.

Is there enough in the marketing plan to need staff?

Marketing activity is resource intensive. Writing, posting and responding to social media posts takes time. Drafting a blog, and then posting it onto the website takes time and knowledge. Organising a webinar or an event really takes up time. To further complicate matters, the skills needed for these are different. When you get to the point there is 20+ hours a week of marketing work needed, you should consider recruiting, if you can find the right person. When there is 40-50+, having two people with complimentary skill sets definitely makes sense.

Do you have time to manage your marketing?

As your small business continues to grow, more and more of your time can become focused on your clients, on your staff and all the other “stuff” that needs doing. Perhaps you are still the main sales person within the business. If you have recruited that first marketing person, are you managing them to ensure they are delivering your marketing plan?

If you have just the one marketing person, recruiting another as a manager is not the best use of your budgets. We help a range of busy small business owners to manage their marketing exec to ensure they are both doing what they need to, and have someone to get advice and guidance from.

Answering these questions will help you decide if and when to recruit marketing staff for your small business. In the meantime, let’s have a chat (call us on 020 8634 5911) about how outsourcing your marketing ensures you get consistent, performative marketing for a budget your business can afford.

June 22, 2022

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image of man pondering about how to market to his current clients

What is in a great marketing plan?

By Nigel DaveyUncategorized

Great marketing results start with a great marketing plan.

As long as that plan is implemented well and measured regularly, the leads, and then the sales, will come. So let’s look at what a great marketing plan contains…

Your targets

To succeed you need something to aim at. The best sport stars have trophies/medals they want to win; it is no different for you as a business owner. Setting a target gives you:

Something to aim for
Something to plan around
A way to measure how well you are doing in your financial year.

Many business owners will have a growth target – XX% more than last year – they use to determine what their target for the year is. Alternatively you may want to have a client number target. For some reason, most IT companies want to add one new client a week. Don’t know why, but that seems to be a standard goal for that industry.

Whatever your target is, you then use it to assess how much marketing has to be done.

Target to marketing goals

Your numbers will help you identify how many sales you need to make, how many leads you need and therefore, how much marketing you need to do. By working out how much marketing you need to do, you can develop a better marketing plan.

Your target audiences

By including your target audiences, and Ideal Clients, within your marketing plan, you make sure that everyone involved knows who they are aiming at. They know who they are talking to and so will use the right language and terminology.

If your plan talks about ‘anyone’ and ’everyone’ too much, you run the risk of generic, non-specific language. If you’ve read anything about marketing focus, you’ll know the more specific you are in your marketing messages, the more effective they will be.

If you have multiple target audiences, you may want to alternate between audiences. Of course, if your marketing budget allows you to focus on more than one audience each month, feel free.

The marketing channels you are going to use

What are you going to do and how often is the core of your marketing plan. For your marketing to be successful, it has to be consistent and coordinated. If your approach is expertise-led you may have something like this:

One blog a month, each looking to help your target audience with a key issue.
A company page post on LinkedIn each week, sharing a key point in the blog.
Two tweets a week, around the same topic, looking for engagement and sharing to increase your reach.
A set of email campaigns, aimed at the different segments within your mailing list, to maintain and increase awareness and generate leads.

If you are using other marketing channels, you must make sure they link with these too.

Who is doing what

If you don’t allocate each marketing activity to specific people, you run the risk of ‘I thought Bob/Dave/Sarah was doing it’. When everyone knows what is expected of them, they can plan their own time and make sure everything happens when it should.

It, almost, goes without saying that your team members have agreed to what has been allocated to them…

& by when

When your team know what they have to do, they also need to know when they have to have it done by. In a ideal world, your marketing is ready well ahead of time, giving you some leeway – just in case. Getting things done ahead of time also allow you the opportunity to make a change, should an opportunity arise.

Space for the results

With any plan, you do three things:

Develop the plan.
Implement the plan.
Measure the performance of the plan.

By measuring what happens, you can make sure you remain on target to achieve, or even beat, the targets at the top of this article. If things aren’t working, you have the opportunity to make changes too. You can get a free Marketing ROI Calculator here.

These 7 parts will be in all good marketing plans. Are they in yours? If they are not, give us a call on 020 8634 5911 and lets talk about getting your plan better structured and working effectively.

If you would like to discuss your marketing plan, or lack thereof, give us a call and let’s talk.

Tel: 020 8634 5911

March 17, 2022

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The power of different

By Nigel DaveyUncategorized

6 ways to make your small business stand out from the competition

It is rare to find a unique business. Having said that, every business is unique.

“That doesn’t make sense”, you cry. “How can businesses be unique whilst not being unique?” Let’s explain what we mean and why the power of different is important to you, as part of your marketing strategy.

Few Businesses are unique.

Doing some research as part of a proposal the other day, we found out that there are:

9955 hotels in the UK (2020 figures)
17,600 care homes
LinkedIn lists around 20,000 marketing agencies in the UK, and
39,000 IT support companies

Developing, launching and making a success of a truly unique business is hard work. Every one of these businesses has customers. Some will have a lot, with others having very few. The difference between them having lots of customers and having very few is how they make themselves stand out. How they make use of their uniqueness and the differences between them and their competition.

Every Business is unique

You do things differently to your competitors. The people and their skillsets will be different too. The reasons why you set up your business will not be the same as others in your sector. Perhaps most importantly, the results you get for your clients will be different. The question is: are you using that uniqueness and those differences effectively?

There’s lots of competition out there.

The FSB says there are 1.4 million businesses in the UK with staff. Let’s, for a moment, imagine that every one of them needs help with their tech and is looking for an IT support company. How does any one of the 39,000 we mentioned earlier make themselves stand out and be chosen by some of those 1.4 million? Let’s look at what can make you stand out and appear different (unique)…

Don’t tell them what you are

If you’re an accountant, don’t tell them you are an accountant. If you do, they will picture you in the same way they think of all accountants. If you tell them you reduce their tax bill, or help them build their business through better financial planning, you are far more likely to get people asking for more information.Think about what they want – not what they have to do.

Talk to and about them

Talking about yourself is never attractive. People want to see that you know them, or want to get to know them. If your website has a “look at me! Aren’t I great” vibe about it, you may get lots of hits, but you will also have a very high bounce rate. People who leave your website quickly don’t buy from you – and you cannot pay the bills with Google Analytics statistics.

If all your marketing shows you understand your target audience(s) and how you can help them achieve what they want to achieve, your next visit to your Google Analytics will show high engagement levels, lots of returning visitors and great conversion rates.

Don’t make outrageous claims

You are not [insert region name]’s leading provider of [insert what you do]. Even if you are, nobody will believe you unless you can prove it. A survey of IT support companies in London (done admittedly quite some time ago) found 53 companies who all claimed to be “London’s leading IT support company”. Who can you think of that makes outrageous claims?

Show the proof

Talking the talk is good – if you can prove you can walk the walk too!
You will have lots of stories (blogs and case studies) about how you have solved issues for clients. You will have lots of emails from clients thanking you for helping them (testimonials). Share them with your pipeline and your target audiences.

The e-commerce world has proved that testimonials/reviews/ratings are highly important in the decision making process. Your proof will show people that their peers use you – if you’re doing good work for their peers, they are much more like to believe you can do a good job for them.

Stick to your specialisms

Too many companies start to provide services, or products, that they get asked for, without thinking things through properly. A client asks if you know someone who does X. As it is slightly related to what you do, you may be tempted to say “we can do that”. If you do it, and do it badly, you run the risk of losing that client. Far better to protect your reputation and refer them to someone you know who really is an expert.

We wouldn’t dream of building a website for our clients, but we know a number of people we can highly recommend. We’ll help to get the user experience and the messaging right, but wouldn’t dream of even trying to do the tech stuff!

Share your knowledge

People want to use experts. You have a huge amount of knowledge and expertise within your business, so why not share some of that. Blogs, PR articles, webinars and speaking engagements are all opportunities for you to share your knowledge. You aren’t giving away the crown jewels when you do this; you are attracting new clients.

When you are in a highly competitive industry sector (aren’t they all!), you need to stand out from your competition and that’s where the power of different comes into play. Following these six suggestions will make you stand out and generate the leads you need to grow your business.

If you would like some help getting these right, give us a call or click here and we will give you a call.

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

Tel: 020 8634 5911

December 7, 2021

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Are you ready for 2022?

By Nigel DaveyMarketing Performance, Marketing Plan, Uncategorized

With the new calendar year just a few weeks away, you really should be thinking. Thinking about what you are going to do to make 2022 a really successful one for your small business. Maybe 2021 has been a quiet one due to the pandemic. Maybe you were able to pivot your business to make this year one of your best ever. Whatever happened, 2022 is a new year and you cannot simply assume that you will get the same results by doing the same things. Here are the four steps you need to take to make 2022 a great year…

What worked in 2021?

Have you reviewed and measured your marketing performance for the last year? If not, it is time to start. By measuring your marketing performance, you can quickly make decisions about:

what to continue – because it is working.
what to review – because you believe it can work better
what to stop – as it is simply not working.

If you have had a really successful year, imagine what next year could be like if you cut out what marketing hasn’t worked and did more of what has been working! Click here to our download ROI calculator.

If you haven’t let’s identify what channels haven’t worked so they can be reviewed or stopped. The time and money saved can be re-focused.

How many new clients did you acquire?

Not gross, but net new clients. Deduct the number you lost from the number you won. Compare this to 2020. Is your net new client number higher or lower? Is it higher because you won more or lost fewer? The other way around if it is lower.

Which marketing channels did the new clients come through? How much did each new client cost? What is your lead conversion rate? What is the value of a new client (average)?

By answering these questions, you start to develop a picture of how much marketing you need to do in 2022 to hit your business goals.

Example:

Your business goal for 2022: increase turnover by £250K
A typical client spends £10,000 per year with you.
Last year you added 15 new clients, but lost 3
Your marketing spend was £30K

If the ratios stay the same, you will need a marketing budget this year of £60K – assuming the ratio of clients lost to clients gained stays the same, as does cost per client acquired.

Focus

What does your Ideal Client look like? If you look back at the clients you acquired in the last year, how many of them match the description of your Ideal Client? If you are acquiring clients that don’t match this description, do you need to review that description or add another?

How many of the clients you lost last year matched that description? If they were a long way from being Ideal Clients, it may be that you simply weren’t able to properly meet their needs. There are times when you need to consider walking away from a sales opportunity if you cannot properly meet their needs.

Reviewing your Ideal client description, as needed, will help to re-focus your marketing messages so that they work more effectively. The marketing messages will be different for each Ideal Client you have as they have different needs and may use your products/services in different ways. Just in case you’re interested, this is one of our Ideal Client descriptions.

Can you help me better understand something?

Answer 4 quick questions here

Planning your marketing

If you have followed the recommendations above, you will know what marketing worked for you in the last year. If they worked last year, it is likely they will work in 2022, so it is now simply a case of scheduling the activity into your marketing plan. Then decide whether to do the same amount, or more, of this marketing.

Now, what else will you be doing this year? If your growth targets are higher for 2022 than for 2021, you need to be doing more marketing in the coming year. You know what hasn’t worked, so what other marketing is likely to work? If want to discuss this, give us a call on 020 8634 5911.

Do you have the time?

If you managed, or even did, your marketing last year, will you have the time to do it again in 2022? If you are planning to do the same amount of marketing as you did last year, you probably have. If you are planning to do more, you may need some help. Of course, once the sales start coming in, more of your time will be focused on delivering what your clients want. Unless you have no need for a work/life balance (??), no worries. But if you do want some time away from your business (it is recommended), you need someone who can manage or do your marketing for you. Our Virtual Marketing Director service is ideal for owners of small businesses who don’t have time, but aren’t yet in a position to employ their own marketing team. Does that sound like you?

Why do all this?

Too many owners of small businesses spend too little time working ON the business, rather than IN the business. This leads to “stuff happening” rather than planned activity. As the old saying goes : fail to plan – plan to fail. By investing a few hours in planning for 2022, you will see a significant uplift in performance and more growth.

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

Tel: 020 8634 5911

November 17, 2021

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image to support article about why you need great stories in your business

The What, Why and How Many of having great stories in your business

By Nigel DaveyA Helping Hand, Delivering your marketing, Small Business Marketing, Uncategorized

Stories have always been a powerful way to get information across. Before the spread of the written word, our elders would tell stories to ensure that information was passed from one generation to the next. In many places cave drawings were used as part of the story-telling process, ensuring that the stories lasted. Over time the communication tool has changed – books, films, audiobooks – but the reason for telling them remains the same. We want people to know them, love them and remember them. This article looks at that third point, ‘remembering them’. It’s the key reason why you need great stories in your business.

5 reasons you need great stories in your business

1. Build the culture

When you first starting thinking about your business, there was a reason for starting it. You wanted to do something. Whether it was about failing lots, but only needing one success (Angry Birds), or Hozah’s mission to stop us all getting parking fines, there is always a story.

Telling that story, and getting it repeated frequently, will help you find the right people for your business. It will help you to shape your business and ensure the way things are done here is the way you want them to be.

2. Attract & converting new prospects

New prospects want to understand your business and how you can help them. Telling them what you do rarely works, but stories are highly effective. Great stories help your prospects in a number of ways:

Stories help them understand what makes you tick and what your priorities are.
They provide examples of how you’ve helped others.
Stories get your prospects relating to you – we have that issue, or I want some of that!
They reduce the perceived risk in their minds, about whether you can help them. You can read more about functional perceived risk here.

Great stories help you convert these prospects too, by:

Proving you can deliver on your promises.
Showing you understand them.
Making you more memorable, so you stick in their minds.

Next time you’re talking to a potential client, think of a story you can tell them, instead of simply explaining what you do.

3. Public Relations

PR can be hugely beneficial for your business, or massively damaging. Both depend on the story that gets into the media. Don’t forget that PR isn’t just about what appears in newspapers or magazines anymore. Social media can be massively important in getting stories out there about your business. Many will be out of your control.

Tesco scored serious brownie points with their recent campaign asking us all to support our local pub instead of buying beer from them. As we all emerge from lockdown, everyone knows that the hospitality industry has really suffered, but the supermarkets have prospered. It’s a simple, but powerful, story.

At the opposite end of the scale was BP’s handling of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The story is still in the press ten years later.

4. Attracting and retaining staff

The right stories will help you to build your company and your culture, and they can also help with staff recruitment and retention. A compelling story will keep people working for you, supporting your business, even when things aren’t going well.

The brand story will help you attract people that will fit in well, simply because they agree with your approach and they want to work for a reason they believe in. More and more people want to work for companies they believe in, rather than the one that pays the most.

Employee experience is massively important in retaining staff. Telling stories about how staff have really delivered (whether this includes naming them or not) clearly communicates expected behaviours. Not only does it help you keep the staff that recognise and agree with the story, it will help weed out those that shouldn’t have been employed in the first place.

5. Attracting Investors

When you have great stories within your business, you attract people for multiple reasons. For some businesses, the most important group is, initially, investors. If you have a great story, but little money to make things happen, you need to attract people who believe in your story and your goals.

Starting to write your stories?

Find out more about the mistakes NOT to make

The 6 parts of every great business story

When looking at why you need great stories, we need to look at what is in them. For your business stories to be listened to, and remembered, each one needs these 6 key parts…

Relevancy

The story has to be relevant to the listener. If you tell a story about something they cannot relate to, you will lose their interest quickly. Stories that show you understand their needs will be remembered.

The Problem

Every successful business solves a problem for their clients. For Bentley, that (seriously first world problem) is how to get from A to B in luxury, whilst showing your status in the world. For Atom CTO, it is about how to use technology to achieve business goals. What’s the pain [problem] your business solves?

Outcomes

Your prospects don’t buy what you do. In the early stages of your business, they may be buying you, as the core of the business, but what they are really buying is success. They want to know what came from you working to solve the problem. At SME Needs, we help people to focus on these outcomes and we help people grow. You can see those stories about our work with Charcoalblue here and with Systems IT here, respectively.

Real people

Including real people is an absolute must in a great business story! For all stories, the real people involved help the listener to engage, empathise and hopefully recognise themselves (the importance of relevance). For example, a story about bringing a network server back to life is likely to bore people to tears, but when the story is about getting, for example, a charity back to helping the homeless, it provides context and impact. Something that the listener will remember.

Believability

A story that sounds too good to be true probably isn’t true. If you do have a story that stretches the bounds of believability, make sure you have the proof. Stories that people don’t believe will negatively impact your credibility, and that isn’t good for anyone.

Consistency

When you tell your business story to people, keep it under control. A story that grows, helping more people or solving a bigger problem runs a real risk. If people hear it more than once, you will not only confuse them, but there’s a danger they may not believe the whole story.

How to make great use of one type of story

Find out more by clicking here

The 5 types of business story

To us, there are 5 different types of business story. Let’s look at what they are and why you should have them.

Your reason for existing

Nobody wants to hear that you started your business purely for the money (well, not many). They want to hear what happened to make you start your business and what you went through in the early days. They want to like your business and to trust it.

The case study

If you’ve been in business for a few years, you will have a great set of stories that show how you solve the problems your clients have. You’ll be able to talk about your client, about their issues and about the results you delivered for them. If you haven’t written these down, stop reading this article and start now. They are a critical part of attracting new prospects and converting them to clients. You can see our case studies here.

When you’re at the very early stages of your business, you will still have stories of this kind – they just happened when you worked somewhere else. People rarely start a business they have no experience in, so use the stories you have from your past.

The employee story

In every company there is the perfect member of staff. The person who consistently delivers great results and lives the corporate culture. There are also those who are the complete antithesis. You will know who these people are in your company and in your past companies.

Talking about these people demonstrates to others who and what you respect and, also, what you abhor.

The failure and recovery story

Nobody is perfect. Stories that show you are fallible will work to endear you to others, particularly to employees and other stakeholders. Stories that include what you did to recover from failure will go even further.

The path to the ultimate goal

Of all the business stories we’ve discussed, this one can change. As your business evolves, this should change because you are moving, hopefully, towards your ultimate goal. If you have a family business, your goal may be to pass it on to your children. If you’re a charity, the eradication of the problem will always be the ultimate goal. The story of why and how you aim to get there will be a powerful one.

Your Next Steps

You will have some great business stories. You just haven’t written them down and remembered them yet. So, it’s time to rack your brains (you and your team) to develop these stories. Tell them to each other to get feedback and to ensure you are telling them consistently and effectively. Then it’s time to start telling others.

Of course, at SME Needs we can help you find your unique business stories and then tell them to the right people. So, if you need a hand developing them or want someone to brainstorm with, get in touch.

Need a hand developing and using your business stories? Give us a call and let's talk

Tel: 020 8634 5911

May 10, 2021

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heartbeat image for feast and famine article

How to avoid the feast and famine trap

By Nigel DaveyA Helping Hand, Focus, Uncategorized

By their very nature small businesses have limited resources. Whether your business consists of one person or 30, there is always a long To Do List. Without very careful use of these resources, it is easy for a small business to fall into the feast and famine trap. This article outlines the feast to famine trap and how to avoid it’s pitfalls.

What is the feast and famine trap?

See if this sounds familiar…

You do some marketing
It generates some leads and you convert some into sales.
Heads down; we have to deliver the sales, so we get paid.

But whilst you have your head down and are delivering what you sold…

You don’t do any marketing
So you don’t generate any new leads

Which means: no new sales and you’ve run out of work again. So you start the process again..

Marketing… Sales… Heads down. No marketing, no sales….

This trap starts happening either to very early-stage businesses, or to those going through a bit of a sales slump. If you’ve been through this (or are in it) how can you get out and avoid it in the future?

Why you need to avoid the trap

There are 4 primary reasons. Let’s look at them…

1. Irregular Cashflow

Never knowing how much money will be coming into the business from one month to the next makes it very difficult to plan for the future. You’ll probably end up with an overdraft for a chunk of the time (paying more bank fees). Whilst you will ensure you pay the staff, your earnings may get hit, at least temporarily.

2. Energy & Stress levels

Across your team, energy levels will rise and fall. Great when energy is high, but you know it can only last so long. If energy levels drop, service quality can easily drop too, threatening the relationship you have with your clients.

Your stress level is, almost certainly, going to be constantly high. You’re worrying permanently because of the fluctuating work and cash levels.

3. High staff turnover and Job insecurity

How can you plan, recruit and retain staffing when you’ve never quite sure how much work you will have next month? Your staff are also going to be worrying, distracting them from their jobs and impacting service quality – again.

4. Client satisfaction

Your clients will quickly see that you are really busy part of the time, as you are dedicating less time to them. They won’t like that and will start looking for alternatives.

Having trouble with your marketing?

Click here for a daily marketing tip

How to avoid the feast and famine trap

If you know that the marketing you are doing is working, why not do it consistently? A consistent flow of marketing activity will deliver a consistent number of leads and sales. Easier said than done, we know, so you have three choices:

1. Dedicate time to marketing

By blocking out time in your diary – and not changing it – you are making marketing a priority and that will help you deliver consistent marketing and avoid the trap.

2. Add an in-house marketing team

These additional resources allow either them or you to do the consistent marketing that is needed to deliver the leads and sales you want. But it does mean recruiting (takes time and money), salaries (more tied up money) and, lockdown notwithstanding, desk space. All of which tie up valuable resources – time and money. This ignores the fact that finding someone with exactly the right mix of skills is going to be very difficult.

3. Outsource your marketing

Of course we are going to say this, but what other option is there? There are also a number of key benefits here:

The outsourced marketing company can start immediately.
They bring with them huge amounts of experience, working with companies very similar to yours.
You get the mix of skills you need, and nothing more.
If they don’t deliver, you can very easily get rid of them.
When there is enough marketing requirement, they will help you recruit and simply walk away.

This is a common trap that many fall into but getting out needn’t be difficult.We hope this article helps and moves your business out of this trap very soon.

If you would like to discuss your marketing vs delivery balance, give us a call and let’s talk.

Tel: 020 8634 5911

March 22, 2021

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infographic showing what happens with inconsistent marketing

7 tips on why and how to deliver consistent marketing

By Nigel DaveyA Helping Hand, Marketing Performance, Uncategorized

Why consistent marketing is the key to success

Good quality marketing should be a lot of things; eye-catching, insightful, subtle, but most of all it should be consistent. Consistency brings with it a host of benefits to your business but it’s often overlooked in small businesses that don’t have a marketing department. When new business and delivery are your main priority, marketing has a tendency to fall by the wayside. In this blog, we’ll tell you why you should be consistent in your marketing, and how to achieve it.

Why you should practice consistent marketing

Break the cycle of “feast or famine”

The cycle of “feast or famine” is a dangerous business model. You need to be consistently attracting a baseline of new business so you don’t find yourself unable to make ends meet in times of dearth. Work within your capacity and slowly ramp up your marketing to achieve sustainable growth, rather than boom or bust.

Be ready for unforeseen opportunities

You never know when your prospect might be looking to buy. Keep your offers at the top of their inbox, and your brand in their mind by always being present. While old prospects might not have bought from you in the past, there’s no reason why they won’t in the future if your marketing is emphasising your quality and reliability.

Make your brand synonymous with quality

Your marketing content is the face of your brand, so you should ensure it’s a consistent quality as well as quantity. Set a brand tone that is clear and professional. Try and employ visual content that’s at least consistent, if not bespoke.

Boost your social and search engine optimization

Social media channels and search engines reward consistent brands with better rankings on their platforms. Posting on LinkedIn and website at least once a week will move you up the search rankings, as well as keeping your content fresh.

Maintain your reputation as a thought leader

Once you’ve built an audience you need to continue catering to their expectations or risk losing them to a competitor. If your marketing content is incisive and well-thought-out, you can establish yourself as a thought leader; the go-to voice in your industry. But once you’ve achieved this, you need to keep it up or risk losing the audience you’ve already built.

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How to implement consistent marketing for your small business

Create a comprehensive marketing plan

The best marketing plans cover a range of mediums and platforms. You should try and create a range of video, audio and written content to get the most engagement from your audience. But most importantly, plan your content in advance. Make sure you’re not constantly marketing on the hoof as this takes more time in the long run, while also looking haphazard or slapdash.

Develop a plan that fits the resources you have available to you.

Sometimes less is more with content

If you’ve got limited resources, worry less about how often you’re posting. Instead, maybe only post a blog every other week, but make sure it is every other week. Consistency is key. Don’t use all your marketing material in the first month and then find yourself out of content.

If you do find yourself with spare time, start to get ahead of schedule. Resist the urge to post or do more, that then cannot be sustained.

Get help

If you want to do more marketing, but you simply don’t have the resources (time or skills) in-house, get help from outside…. You know who to call…

If you would like to discuss your marketing consistency and how to improve it, give us a call.

Tel: 020 8634 5911

March 15, 2021

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How to write perfect case studies and use them to maximise sales

By Nigel DaveyA Helping Hand, Delivering your marketing, Marketing Performance, Small Business Marketing, Uncategorized

In a time when much of what you buy is based on peer reviews, there has never been a time when case studies have been more important. This article will take you through how to write perfect case studies and then how to use them to maximise sales.

What is a case study?

Put simply, it is a summary of your engagement with a specific client. Case studies will describe your client, what you did and what you achieved (more detail to follow). It will be no more than two pages (when printed) and should take only a minute or two to read.

What are case studies for?

Case studies show people what your company is capable of delivering. In the same way that a 5-star review will prompt people to buy on Amazon or TripAdvisor, a case study will help potential clients to move closer to buying from you.

How to write perfect case studies

If you haven’t written any case studies yet, the next couple of minutes will give you a very clear, step by step, guide to writing case studies that will be highly effective.

1. Identify happy clients

Who is your happiest client? Who has been a client for a long time? Which clients have you generated outstanding results for?

The answers to these questions will give you a list of clients to develop case studies for. Now all you have to do is ask them. Asking them when you are delivering good news always helps.

2. Start writing 4 of the 6 key parts of a case study

Thees 4 parts of a case study are:

Who are they? – a description of the client, aimed at helping readers identify with them. Companies like to buy from other companies who understand their industry sector.

Where is their issue? – what did you help them with? Again, potential clients like to see that you understand the issues they face.

What did you do? – probably the least important piece, but still needs to show you know what to do and you have the knowledge and expertise looked for.

Why did it work? – absolutely the most important part. People buy results and success. They want to work with companies that can prove they can deliver. Include numbers to show your results, but be specific. 96% growth, rather than “doubled sales”. Graphics will help communicate these more effectively.

At this point there are two pieces missing from the perfect case study. Let’s look at them in a little more detail.

3. The Headline

The newspapers used to refer to the backbench; where the sub-editors used to sit. They were the highly paid specialists responsible for writing headlines that would sell that paper in the millions. A catchy headline would easily divert people from buying one newspaper to another. They wanted to know what the paper had to say, based purely on the headline. Back then, these were highly paid employees – not any more.

But the headline is still vitally important. It will determine whether someone reads the case study or not. So what should be in a headline?

Our latest case study is headlined: Adding a £million to turnover in six years. It communicates a great result; something any small business owner would like to see happen for them. Headlines should be about something the reader cares about: results, money, solutions – are just some examples. There is plenty of guidance online.

4. The validation

Once you’ve done all of the above, you need sign-off from the client, and you need them to validate your case study.

Sign-off is simple. You send it to them and they agree that what you have written is accurate. The validation is what they write about you and you then use as proof that you have delivered and you have a very happy client. Their testimonial is the final piece of the perfect case study.

The cynical ones out there could, if there was no testimonial from the client, say you made it up. With the testimonial, that goes away. The only time a happy client is unlikely to give you a testimonial is when you are solving an issue that they shouldn’t have, or they don’t want to admit they have. Insolvency practitioners, for example, can struggle at times.

The best mediums for your case study

Written content: accessibility, SEO etc.

Podcast: Interview with client, audio format.

You know that video content is highly powerful and is beloved by the search engines. Video testimonials that support a written case study can really improve the impact of your case studies.

Video testimonials make great social media content too.

Need a hand writing your case studies?

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How to use your case studies to increase sales

Once you know how to write perfect case studies, you can use them to drive sales. Case studies work at both ends of the sales funnel. They will nudge people into starting a conversation with you and they will convince people to sign on the dotted line too. Let’s look at where you should use your case studies to maximise their performance.

1. On your website

This is the first place to put it because it is rare for someone to enter your sales funnel without at least one visit to your website. Make sure it is used in multiple places across your website

A case study page will show website viewers that you have lots of happy clients
Including relevant case studies on the product page will mean they are seen more often, and are more effective.

Include links from the case study both to the client’s website/social media and to the product/services they bought. This helps both your SEO and the user experience.

At the end of the case study, ask if this results sounds like something the reader would like for their business. Get them thinking… and acting.

2. Social media

Sharing your case studies on your social media channels increases the numbers of times they are seen, particularly if you have video content. Perhaps you can pin, at least for a while, your latest case study to the top of your profile page to maximise views. Check your Analytics to see if it is driving traffic when pinned. If not, unpin it.

Remember that individual case studies can go through social media more than once. Only a small percentage of your followers will see it each time. Not everyday of course!

3. Newsletters

If you use a newsletter to keep your mailing list up to date, make sure you include your case studies in there. Mailing lists include clients, prospects, stakeholders, suppliers and networking connections. Showing them the great results you have achieved for a client can encourage new sales (from prospects and current clients buying more/something else) and referrals.

4. Email automations

Email automations are great ways to quickly educate new subscribers about what you do, how you help and the results you achieve. Case studies will help these new subscribers to believe your promises.

5. Proposals

When you get to the point of developing a proposal for a new client, a great case study, or two, supports your pitch and increases the value propositions. Choose highly relevant case studies. Ones that are for companies with similar issues to your prospect and with a similar profile – industry, company size, location etc. Don’t simply use the same case studies for every proposal.

If you use something like CANDDi, you may want to include links to the case studies in the proposal, rather than the whole things. Knowing that they have clicked through shows the prospect really is interested.

Case studies must be part of your marketing collateral. Used properly the perfect case study can be highly effective. It will help you fill your sales pipeline and they will help your Sales function to close more too.

If your case studies aren’t working, or you haven’t got any, get in touch. We can help you both produce them and then make use of them to drive more sales.

If you would like to discuss how to improve your case studies, give us a call and let’s talk.

Tel: 020 8634 5911

February 25, 2021

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Christmas is coming

By lorna@3mil.co.ukUncategorized

& the goose is getting fat……….

But if you rely on the festive season for a significant part of your annual revenue, you better be in the final stages of planning your Christmas marketing campaign to attract customers.

Decision-makers are now returning from their Summer holidays and will be planning what they’re going to do over Christmas. If you’re in corporate catering, venue hire, event organising or people photography, the phone should start ringing very soon.

If not, what do you need to be doing to get it ringing?

Have you spoken to everyone who bought from you last year? They already know the quality of the work you can deliver and, if they liked it, should be considered good opportunities.
How are you communicating with everyone who talked to you last year, but didn’t buy? They may have used a competitor last year but they may not have been completely happy with the service they received. If you time things right you could poach a few additional clients from your competitors
What are you doing to make more people aware of your services? Without awareness there cannot be any interest or sales opportunity
Is your website updated to show the seasonal services you provide?
What evidence is online that demonstrates how great a job you did last Christmas for your clients? Case studies and testimonials are a big help for people trying to decide who they should talk to and buy from
Have you considered Google Adwords to generate new opportunities. For seasonal marketing, this can be very effective

Just a few questions for you to consider in order to make sure that your marketing generates the Christmas sales you are looking for. Of course, if you need a hand with some of your Christmas marketing, get in touch.

I hope this helps

September 18, 2012

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A bird in the hand

By lorna@3mil.co.ukUncategorized

Increasing your sales the easy way

Everyone knows it costs more to win a new customer than it does to keep a current one. The ratios quoted vary but the principle is still the same.

Based on this fact and you’re desire to grow your business, the best route to new business is by marketing to your customers. The question is what more can they buy?

When was the last time you did a review of your client base to understand their buying habits; the products they buy and how frequently?

Let’s imagine your average customer buys two products/services from you. If you can get just 25% of them to buy one more thing, you will have increased your business performance by more than 12% – not bad growth in a country that is reputedly just coming out of recession.

The harder bit is understanding what products would be right for them and then showing them how it will solve a problem they currently face. There are two sets of people within your company who can help you here:

Your account managers
Your operations staff

And it may be that your Operations staff talk to your customers more than your account managers, so don’t under-estimate their ability to help here.

Next Steps:

Make sure that everyone within the company knows what you want to do, so they have the opportunity to contribute. If your accounts/sales staff are on commission, make sure your Operations staff will get something from this. They may be less helpful if they think someone else will get rewarded for their work.
Analyse your sales patterns and your portfolio penetration levels so you know what is already being bought by whom.
Develop the right stories to show your customers how you can help them.

The thrill of the chase comes with acquiring new customers, but marketing to your customers will help keep them and sell more to them.

Of course, if you would like some help with any of this, call or email me on 07770 970 557

September 4, 2012

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