Uncategorized Archives - SME Needs: your Virtual Marketing Director

Summer marketing checklist

By Nigel DaveyA 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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CANDDi to Leadinfo

By Nigel DaveyUncategorized

CANDDi has been part of SME Needs’ marketing techstack for over a decade. We also worked with them in their early days to focus their marketing. So when we were told they’d been bought by Leadinfo, we weren’t sure what to expect. Here’s our first impressions….

The History

Nigel first met CANDDi’s founder, Tim Langley, on LinkedIn sometime around 2011, so the early days of SME Needs. As Measure and Focus are two of the core parts of our approach to successful small business marketing, CANDDi’s functionality fitted perfectly – letting their clients know WHO is visiting their website and what they are looking at on the site.

Since then, we’ve actively promoted CANDDi, rolling it out to a number of clients as well as using it to know what is happening on our website.

What we loved about CANDDi

The core functionality we’ve already mentioned helped us to understand who was doing what on the site. However, there were two other key functions we loved:

A UTM creation tool that allowed us to see who followed our Mailchimp campaigns and what they did after that first click
Notifications when people returned to our website.

Moving forward

When asked about the sale Tim says: “I’d been chatting to LI for about 8 months, I really appreciate their product and customer focused attitude. Their product has a number of features (mouse tracking / LI integration) which will add to the CANDDi client experience”.

Naturally we have started using Leadinfo and we’ve been impressed with the functionality and how it helps us. Here’s the bits we really like

Website engagement

A complete picture of how a visitor moves around our website. If we get to talk to this person, we know what to talk about rather than a standard pitch.

Having a full history or their activity is really useful too.

Leadbots

Encouraging people to engage easily, without filling out a contact form, makes it easy for people to ask questions. The Leadbot makes this really easy and customisable. As you’re reading this, you may have already seen ours!

CRM integration

Connecting to most of the major CRMs is easy, including Zoho, ACT!, Pipedrive and Salesforce. If your’s isn’t on the list, Zapier will connect them.

Mouse recording

Want to know how people interact with your website? The mouse recordings can give you a real insight.

Much more

We’re still in very early days using Leadinfo, but we know enough to say we believe it will be useful to us and to our clients. As we learn more, we will continue to update this article, so keep popping back!

September 17, 2025

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Read This Before You Hire a Marketing Agency

By Nigel DaveyUncategorized

If you’re about to hire a marketing agency to help you get better results for your small business, take a few moments to ready this…

Exploding a myth

Many small business owners think that marketing agencies cost an arm and a leg; that they will be paying £1,000s a month for the help they need.

Whilst that can be the case for bigger businesses with complex marketing needs, it doesn’t have to be. The cost of the marketing support you need will depend, basically, on the time they provide to help you. The more they are expected to do, and the complexity of your marketing will determine the amount of time and therefore the cost.

Some of our clients pay just a small three-figure sum each month.

Things to consider when choosing a marketing agency

There are lots of marketing agencies out there. Some are huge (Saatchi & Saatchi style), and they range in size down. When choosing the marketing agency for you, investigate these three areas:

How they develop a marketing strategy for your business

Marketing agencies can see a lot about your business online. Your website will give a huge amount of information about you, as will your social media accounts. Companies House will tell them more, as will the credit agencies. Of course, you will have spoken to them a few times, but is that enough for them to then go away and write your marketing strategy?

If your marketing strategy and plan are developed without you being the room, run away.

At SME Needs we know you have ideas about where your marketing should go. You will have likes and dislikes (often based on experience) of various marketing channels. We will be in the same room as you and you will be an integral part of the planning discussion. We want to hear your ideas and we want you to challenge/comment on our ideas.

You need to buy in to the strategy that is developed. If you’ve not bought into it, you’re not committed, and you won’t make sure the resources, knowledge and budgets are there.

Does the marketing strategy presented match their service portfolio?

Full-service marketing agencies, as the name suggests, want to give you a full service. They want you to get all your marketing needs from them. Why? Because they have lots of staff and offices to pay for. The more of their services you are using, the stickier you are as a client and the harder it is for you to cut ties.

That can work, but are you missing out? Are there marketing channels that could deliver great returns that they don’t do?

Digital agencies may not recommend trade shows and there’s a good chance they won’t recommend direct mail or other offline opportunities, for example.

Whilst any small business marketing strategy has to include a sizeable amount of digital marketing, it can include offline too. But if it is not even discussed, how will you know?

At SME Needs, our model is different. We work with marketing specialists across all disciplines, on and offline. Our role is to manage your marketing to deliver the ROI you’re looking for. We work with either the people we know and trust, or the people you know and trust.

How long are their contracts?

Marketing can take time to start delivering. A new website will take a few weeks to build and some more time for the SEO work to kick in and generate the traffic needed, for example. Building a social media audience takes time too, as does an email marketing list. But it doesn’t mean you have to sign a 12-month (or longer) contract with the agency. You will be able to see progress over time and if you don’t like that progress, you should be able to make changes.

SME Needs’ approach helps with this is two ways:

Our minimum contract is just three months, with a rolling 30-day notice period after that.. If its not working, you can get out easily.
Working with multiple third-party specialists means we can make changes easily. If the marketing plan includes SEO, but that isn’t working, we can quickly either change specialist or focus on another channel. Not so easy if one agency is doing everything for you.

If the marketing agency you’re about to hire does any of these things and you want to discuss an alternative approach, call us on 020 8634 5911 or book a time directly into our MD’s diary here.

November 11, 2024

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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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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.

Would a Daily Marketing Tip help you improve your marketing consistency?

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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

These 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. The headline will determine whether someone reads the case study or not. So what should be in a headline?

One of our latest case studies 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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A bird in the hand

By Nigel DaveyUncategorized

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 your 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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