Modern Day Marketing

Unfortunately, there are many consultants that still preach the same techniques that they were preaching 10 years ago, to every business that they see. It is just not like that any more, and with the age of the Internet and mobile technology, marketing has become bespoke, not only to different market sectors but also to businesses within the same sector.

There are some things that haven’t changed. You still need a consistent approach throughout the lifetime of the business, as most businesses fail when they enter sporadic marketing activities. How many times have you heard people say that they had sent a flyer out to a thousand contacts and didn’t receive a response? They normally feel that marketing doesn’t work and is a waste of money.

Creating a marketing plan for your business should be exactly that…create a plan. Write a schedule for the year and follow it, measuring the results as you go. Also, don’t forget to ignore the revenue streams for your business. Many businesses have more then one way of making money and so rather than promoting your business as a whole, promote the individual elements. We promote many of our clients in this way as one particular service or product might not appeal to some of their target market.

You should always start off with a good database. Remember that 20% of data goes out of date each year with people moving jobs, so does that 6 year old database really carry that much weight now? Use a reputable company for your data and choose carefully. Data selection will make or break your campaign. Think about the service or product you are selling and who the likely buyers are. Do you want to target businesses locally or throughout the UK? Do you want to target businesses that are less then a year old, or are your service/product better suited to established businesses? Are you planning to run an email marketing campaign? If so, you will need email addresses of your target, not generic info@ but the decision makers within the business. All this is available from a reputable data company.

When you have your data, you will need to select the marketing activities. Look at both passive and active activities.

Passive activities are for people who know they need your service/product and go searching for it. They will use traditional directories or search engines. If your buyers are a younger generation then they will probably use the latter. Ensure your site is optimised enough to get you on page one of the major search engines. Our site http://www.grapevine-group.co.uk has many relevant visitors every day and appears on page 1 for most of our services.

Active activities are for people who don’t know that they need your service/ product or don’t know that it exists. Active marketing is where you take your offering to your selected target list. Email marketing, direct mail, seminars, exhibitions, letter campaigns and text messaging are all examples of active marketing.

Of course, you probably won’t get it right immediately and that’s why you should measure and amend accordingly. If something isn’t working for you replace it with something else, or do more of something that is working.

Finally, remember about consistency. I promise you will get more calls from people when they need your service if you have been sending them messages throughout the year. The chances of them receiving you marketing message at the precise time that they need your services are small. If you have been marketing to them throughout the year you will be the first name on their mind when they do need someone like you.

Contact Information

Dean Spencer

MD

Grapevine Group

Contact via E-mail