Pleased to say we got hold of writer and comedian dominic Holland for our energy awards dinner on 8th September. Should be a fantastic night, starting at 7.30 with cocktails, on through a great three course meal and then to the business end of the evening with the 6 prestigious awards being handed out to the anticipating companies. Wine, brandies and Dominic should round off the evening nicely thankyou!
The Energy Event is THE annual exhibition and networking event for all the national and international energy companies. The Energy Event, residing at the National Motocycle Museum in Birmingham, will this year have the addition of a special gala awards dinner for the industry on 8th September at the Hilton Metropol, NEC.
We are now on the hunt for a tech minded celebrity to host the awards dinner and a worthy charity, possibly linked to the energy market to make the proceedings run smoothly.
Smashing Publicity has just completed the design of a new logo and branding strategy for new start-up ‘Fastclerk’.
Fastclerk ltd., based in Berkshire, offer new dynamic, market leading Smart-phone and PDA applications for any business wishing to deliver instant high quality reports to a customer or client. All of their applications are configured with two fundamental design briefs: (1) Simple intuitive controls derived from the customers needs (2) Finished reports must be to an exceptional standard that meets or exceeds the end-clients expectations.
They use their own innovative ICO-DRIVE navigation controls throughout the application for fast simple use. Just as WYSIWYG has been at the forefront for many years to make software applications easier to use, now Fastclerk’s own ICO-DRIVE makes form filling on a PDA seem like child’s play.
Fastclerk director’s Will Moat and Andy Fountain said “ We made the fatal error of thinking we can manage every single aspect of our new start-up business in-house but were found wanting when our logo and corporate branding wasn’t having the desired effect”.
Will Moat continued “Obviously finance is a major issue when starting a new business but we have found it was a total false economy to try and do it ourselves. Not only was it massively time consuming, we didn’t have the necessary experience and skills to achieve our corporate branding goals. Smashing Publicity instantly understood the brief and came up with a strong graphic idea explaining to us how we could build our presence through strategic brand planning. The results are fantastic. We have our first two clients signed up, our first show this week and look forward to pushing our new look to a broader business base in the coming months”.
Smashing Publicity’s Neil Farrow stated “Fastclerk already had a logo which they designed themselves but because they were so close to the business they were blinkered. Outside experience looking in gives you a fresh pair of eyes and can see a clearer path to your marketing objectives. We simply wiped the slate clean and started again from the ground up. Full credit to Andy and Will for being confident enough to step back and let us do our work”.
‘Customer Engagement’, this year’s new catch phrase for marketers, seems to be sticking as a strategic approach for marketers. Why? Customer Engagement steps beyond traditional direct marketing as it looks to reduce the reliance on any one channel and coordinate two-way communication across all channels rather than just sending direct marketing campaigns. More than a buzz word, Customer Engagement is a new go-to market strategy and new service providers are emerging to deliver coordinated Customer Engagement services that challenge the traditional direct marketing engines that so many have grown to rely on. Changing the face of marketing from mass marketing to engagement with the individual – and its highly differentiated technology, will give customers a cost-effective, scalable and easy to use solution and direction to embrace.
Definitions of Customer Engagement
1. Well-established behaviours that demonstrate interactive multi-channel behavioural attachment and that reinforce commitment to the brand.
2. Engagement is the level of involvement, interaction, intimacy and influence that an individual has with a brand over time.
3. Customer Engagement enables organizations to more effectively respond to the fundamental changes in customer behaviour brought about by the Internet.
Marketing is Changing Because We Are Changing
The marketing industry is undergoing a dramatic transformation – from mass marketing to engagement with the individual and it is consumers who are driving this change and transforming the way that marketers market to them. Marketing used to be about shouting your message as loudly as possible at customers who, on the whole, did not question this method. Gradually, through the maturation of direct marketing, the emphasis shifted towards trying to talk to customers individually, but often without listening to them. The emergence of an era in which commerce and communication via the Internet became a central focus for business forced a more significant change in marketing. Customers now have a voice and therefore an active, creative role in consumerism. The rise in social media means customers can express their opinion about a product or service through email and websites, blogs and social networks, and also seek similar content from millions of other individuals who are now free to publish their preferences online. Consumers trust the opinions of strangers over even the largest brands and, as a result, have driven the most significant shift in marketing history.
Learning to Listen
Marketing has had to become two-way, and marketers must learn to listen and interact with, and not interrupt, their customers. The technology is there to help. With the new Social Media Monitoring (SMM) tools, marketers can, for the first time, listen to their market – indeed their individual customers – on a global scale. Market research has become instantaneous, engagement has become instantaneous – as soon as customers raise their hands through Twitter or a blog for example, or visit a
website, they can be addressed. Marketers can choose to interact with them on an individual level. So marketers need to learn to listen and engage with their customers, across multiple online and offline channels, in a transparent, timely and consistent manner.
A Focus on Engaging the Individual
As consumers decide to opt-out of invasive marketing, the volume of traditional mass brand marketing, which is not designed to engage the individual, is decreasing. The rise of social media, and the resulting need to engage both customers and influencers online, highlights that this is the time for a new integrated marketing, converging on interactivity and engagement to complement traditional marketing methods. The traditional direct marketing industry has become extremely skilful at understanding individual customer behaviour, messaging, getting attention, direct and database marketing, and integration with sales and contact centres for follow-up, and these lessons need to be applied to the online world and the efforts of both integrated. Marketing has typically operated through disparate departments; digital marketers caring only about online, the email marketers focusing on email, the brand marketers advertising, and the direct marketers on sending direct mail. Add to this contending product managers fighting over who owns the customer relationship and who can target them at any time through the various channels available, and it soon becomes apparent why the customer is tuning out of mass communications.
Engaging in the Conversation
The focus now is on engaging the individual, driving integration across marketing, and taking the individual from being an unknown prospect to an engaged customer and on to being a brand advocate. Marketing must become synonymous with customer engagement, and it is only the organisations which have the complete data and engagement process in place to orchestrate this transformation that will succeed.
Engagement Needs to Start Where Google Stops
Google, and search marketing in general, has changed the face of customer acquisition forever. It has made finding products a hyper-efficient marketplace, where increased money spent well really will increase traffic driven to a website. However, although Google and other search engines are highly effective at driving traffic to the website, it is here that their influence stops. When the customer arrives on the home page, if there is nothing compelling to engage them, or no process to move them on through the customer life cycle, they will simply hover over the back button and return with one click to the list of the site’s competitors detailed on Google. Marketing spend is wasted – regardless of the high volume of traffic figures the website team is keen to present. The requirement to have an operational capability which initiates a process of customer engagement with a prospect or customer once they arrive on the website is, therefore, a strategic business imperative.
Built for the Marketer by Marketers
The challenge, therefore, for marketers is to repeatedly engage with their prospects and customers, online and offline, and move them along the journey towards advocacy.
The basic of this principle is about time management. Talking to the right person at the right time and holding yourself back. I realise when you are running a business it is difficult enough to manage your time day to day without the addition of marketing disciplines, but you could save vast sums in a single year if you use print advertising regularly.
The first fundamental principle is that when a magazine or newspaper is printed any unsold advertising space is gone – forever.
You can use this to your advantage by negotiating your rates as close to print deadline as possible. If my newspaper is being published tomorrow and nobody has bought the £500 half page advert on page ten, the chances of it being sold by the end of the day are slim.
If you call me up at 4pm and offer me £80 for that advertising space, I’m faced with a difficult choice. I don’t want to sell it so low but if you don’t advertise that space has gone forever.
Company policy might stop me selling it for £80, but you can rest assured that you’ll get that space for far less than £500.
If you have researched the local and national media and found out which applies to your business you’ll know that if one title refuses, you can always go to the others.
You need to know your market and the ABC/demographic of the media titles you are targeting. If you don’t, let Smashing Publicity’s extensive media knowledge help you work it all out and implement the best course of action.
Give us a call now on 01473 828385 and let us take the headache out of your advertising and marketing.
Recommendations from your existing customers – Referrals – are one of the great ways to grow any business. They’re not only free (or virtually free), they also tend to bring in the best, most loyal customers.
Many businesses do very well from referrals without proactively seeking them. But don’t just wait for referrals to come to you. Go out and get them!
We all know it pays to give customers material to pass on to their friends, family and colleagues. But think about this. If you can get a customer, who thinks you’re great, to have a conversation with someone about you – and get them to hand something to them – surely it’s a great investment to make sure that what they hand over truly impresses the person receiving it. Let’s face it, an ill conceived logo on some flimsy paper just won’t do.
This is where it is so important to make sure your branding and marketing strategy is strong from the out set. It’s too late after the event. The damage will have been done; the referral’s won’t be made.
Talk to us ASAP and we can give you a FREE marketing appraisal and help you steer clear of all the marketing pitfalls that can happen when least expected.
We work hard at marketing so you don’t have to.
Everyone wants to generate more leads from their website but many just don’t get around to it thinking it’s far too difficult, or just think the same old marketing ideas they used ten years will do OK.
THEY WON’T.
Marketing, like all business disciplines, needs to be refined and improved.
The higher perceived value of what you are offering, the higher the conversions.
NEWSLETTERS.
We all remember the old boring impersonal newsletters companies used to churn out. DON’T DO IT. Take the interesting information out, not the hum drum linking statements and dross, and call it something more dynamic like:
WEEKLY TOP TIPS or THE TOP FIVE TIPS of the MONTH. Make a weekly or monthly (nothing longer) email with great tips on your area of expertise.
FREE REPORT. Produce a high value ‘TOP THREE SECRETS of SUCCESS’ in your industry or ‘THE SEVEN SINS to AVOID’. Remember information is king and a bit of razzle in a title will draw the attention.
AUDIO CLIP. Have someone record an interview with you, where you give tips and advice for prospective customers. The subject matter should be all about helping your potential customer, not just saying how good you or your services are. Always leave with an offer at the end, be it a free pack, trial, meeting or service appraisal.
Always remember to use the key words when laying out your text, such as FREE (we all want something for nothing), YOU (the magic word in all good copy), EASY (people don’t want anything too complicated) and NOW (there comes a point when you need to tell your customer what to do).
I’ll go into the fifteen key words in more depth later on but make sure you contact Smashing Publicity if you have any need for more marketing advice. We would be happy to give you a FREE marketing appraisal.
Most business owners have been struggling over the last year and are going to continue to struggle if they buy into the recession.
Most business owners conform to old ways and to what is expected of them. Successful business owners refuse to conform.
Having a great and unique product or service on its own isn’t good enough in this day and age unless other people buy into it. And how do they buy into it? They need to believe in you, your product or service by means of various messages that convey quality and confidence.
While the conformists cut back on marketing they will get over-taken by the non-conformists who are looking at more and varied solutions for getting that quality message across in the most cost effective ways.
Thinking about marketing strategy alone isn’t good enough. From a mindset of focus, determination and action, you must implement your strategies while others freeze in fear, being careful to measure and improve where necessary.
Measurement is the foundation of all successful marketing. You must know where your customers are coming from, how they got to you and why, if at all, they have come back time and again. This enables you to do more of what’s working (so simple, but so true) and change or improve what’s not!
Any part of the system that brings in sales can be improved. That improvement could be an improvement in your website copy, your referral system, advertising copy, direct mail, PR copy, closing skills or links coming to your website. The list is endless. The process of continual optimisation is the foundation of all effective marketing and here at Smashing Publicity we work hard to get it right.
Why not give us a call for a free marketing assessment and start refusing to conform.
Among shoppers who buy something online or offline after conducting online research, 49% buy within three days, JupiterResearch says in a new report. The study, “Behavioral Targeting: Pushing Relevance to Maximize Advertising Spending,” also notes that 65% of online shoppers pay more attention to behaviorally targeted ads, which are based on a consumer’s tracked shopping behavior, than to contextual ads, which appear on web pages showing content related to the ads. JupiterResearch, a unit of Forrester Research Inc., conducted the study of 2,151 U.S. online consumers for AudienceScience, an online marketing services company that delivers behaviorally targeted ads for advertisers. “Since its inception, behavioral targeting has been an evolution of contextual advertising, and these findings are testament to its power to more effectively engage with consumers on their own level,” says Marla R. Schimke, vice president of marketing for AudienceScience, a company formerly known as Revenue Science. “If we conduct the same study in a year, five years, 10 years, I believe we`ll see this already substantial gap between the two continue to widen as more and more brands and marketers realize that they can use behavioral targeting to specifically target their ideal customer.” Schimke adds that the study illustrates the importance of marketers’ ability to send targeted messages to shoppers wherever they are online. “These numbers indicate that the typical shopping process involves a user traveling to multiple sites, multiple times, making the ability to communicate marketing messages to them no matter where they are online, all the more important,” she says. “Since its inception, behavioral targeting has been an evolution of contextual advertising, and these findings are testament to its power to more effectively engage with consumers on their own level.”
