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Category: marketing tips

The cheapest and most effective way to get more customers

Kylie Fennell

Almost every business I’ve come across has one goal when it comes to marketing – get more customers.

Businesses may spend their marketing dollars on advertising, updating a website or brochures, all with varying results.

The reality is that the cheapest and most effective way to get more customers is often overlooked.

What I’m talking about is word-of-mouth marketing, specifically referrals.

According to Nielsen, 92% of consumers believe recommendations from friends and family over all forms of advertising.

So why aren’t more businesses tapping into their existing or past customer network or spending more time nurturing key influencers and decision makers?

Word-of-mouth is the ultimate weapon for all businesses – retail, professional services, it doesn’t matter.

Here are my top tips for nurturing your clients, customers and influencers and encouraging referrals.

  1. Your number 1 communication platform for word-of-mouth marketing is social media.
  2. Reward people – offer loyalty programs, value adding services and referral incentives
  3. Ask for feedback
  4. Ask for case studies or testimonials
  5. Stay in touch – try and stay front of mind by providing useful information or organise casual catch-ups
  6. Use personalised notes, cards and calls as well as thank you notes and even birthday cards (if they happily provided their birthday details) – preferably handwritten and signed personally.
  7. DOING WHAT YOU’LL SAY YOU’LL DO is probably the best way to nurture your customers
  8. NEVER underestimate the importance and effectiveness of nurturing your existing networks.
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Let’s Break The Rules (of Marketing)

Kylie Fennell
If you’ve been doing the marketing thing for a while now and you are starting to get the hang of it, then it’s time to throw out the rule book.
New rules. Old rules. It doesn’t matter. It’s time to break them.
This doesn’t mean forgetting the fundamentals or the foundations of marketing – it means using what you know, to try something different.
If you want to stand out in this noisy world then you’re going to need to adapt what you know – bend the rules sometimes; break them other times.
Why you ask?
Because everyone has caught onto our marketing tricks. Our beloved audience is as learned as we are when it comes to the most used marketing tactics and frankly…they’re over it.
How do I know this?
Simple, because I’m a consumer too and every time I hand over my email address I cringe, because I can see the automated email series coming before it even starts to clog up my inbox.
Do you overflow with happiness every time you receive a “special offer” email or text from a marketer? Do you love those pop-up boxes on websites that so kindly interrupted what you were trying to read?
I know I don’t. So why do we persist with putting our customers through the same worn out marketing tactics.
Unless you’re at the cutting edge of marketing or have the good fortune of starting your own marketing trend – then the facts are, that by the time you’re on to a new tactic, so is everyone else.
Now I’m not saying automated emails and pop-up boxes or any other marketing tactic is bad. They’re not bad, especially if they’re working for you.
I am saying, if the tried and tested tactics aren’t working for you, then STOP DOING THEM.
Try something new.
Here are a few examples:
  • Try three key messages rather than sales scripts
  • Solve a problem rather than selling how good you are
  • Try snail mail instead of email for direct marketing.

Finally, offer free content such as videos, ebooks or guides without asking for an email address – give them the option. If they really love your stuff, they’ll want to subscribe and won’t just delete your emails. Go for quality over quantity when it comes to email lists and the emails themselves.

At the end of the day do what feels right for you and your target audience. Monitor what works and what doesn’t.
Filter what you initially think you want to share online or via email and focus on being indispensable to your audience and not wearing them out with tactics that have been done to death.
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Inspiration to Get You ‘Big Kev’ excited about marketing

Kylie Fennell 1 comment
When it comes to marketing inspiration and excitement – you can’t go past Big Kev – RIP big fella. Image source: photobucket.com

I’m on holidays next week. Just for one week. I’m not doing anything special but heck I’m looking forward to it.

It’s been a busy few months with the launch of my online marketing course and some exciting times with my clients.

The thing about holidays though is that you madly try to get as much work done as you can before you go on leave, so you can have a holiday. By the time you get to your holiday you’re stuffed!

Well that’s where I’m at. I have hit holiday preparation fatigue and need to write a blog post.

So here is a collection of inspirational marketing quotes to keep us ALL inspired. Enjoy!

1. “The objective of all advertising is to buy new customers at a profit. Learn what your customers cost and what they buy…spend all of your ammunition where it counts.” Claude Hopkins-Scientific Advertising (1923)

2. “In marketing I’ve seen only one strategy that can’t miss – and that is to market to your best customers first, your best prospects second and the rest of the world last.” John Romero

3. “Good marketers see consumers as complete human beings with all the dimensions real people have.” Jonah Sachs

4. “Our jobs as marketers are to understand how the customer wants to buy and help them do so.”  Bryan Eisenberg

5. “Simplicity is the ultimate form of sophistication” Leonardo Da Vinci

6. “’Build it, and they will come’ only works in the movies. Social Media is a ‘build it, nurture it, engage them and they may come and stay’.” Seth Godin

7. “A brand is no longer what we tell the consumer it is — it is what consumers tell each other it is.” Scott Cook

8. “As you’ve noticed, people don’t want to be sold. What people do want is news and information about the things they care about.” Larry Weber

9. “Marketing is telling the world you’re a rock star. Content marketing is showing the world you are one.” Robert Rose

AND MOST IMPORTANTLY

10.  “Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department.” David Packard

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Why less is sometimes more

Kylie Fennell

If you fancy yourself as a bit of a marketer, you’d probably be familiar with the 4Ps of Product, Price, Placement and Promotion (which sometimes are 5Ps or even 6Ps – just to confuse things).

That is exactly what I want to talk about today. One of the Ps – Product and specifically product range and how it needs to be as least confusing as possible.

When it comes to your products, confusion is your enemy.

Choice, or too much choice, creates confusion and less choice can be more when it comes to the bottom line.

Have you ever sat down at a Chinese restaurant and pored through pages and pages of options in a state of confusion?

I don’t know about you, but it all gets a little overwhelming. The variety of choice is crippling.

Why are there so many options? What if I choose the wrong dish? How do I know what’s what? What if the person next to me chooses something better? I might miss out on something better…and so on.

In a restaurant situation, while you may be tempted to get up and walk out in fear of making the wrong choice, you usually end up staying and picking the easiest choice or something you’re already familiar with. The experience does usually fall a little flat though because you always wonder ‘what if’ and you end up with a serious case of food envy.

In retail, the customer often does walk away confused and disappointed due to too much choice.

The facts are you can’t be everything to everyone. You have a target market for a reason. Trying to please everyone inevitably pleases no one.

You don’t believe me?

Marketing guru and bestselling author, Martin Lindstrom in his book, Brandwashed, explains the phenomenon. He writes:

“When it comes to shopping, less is always more…we are paralysed by the fear of making a wrong, and expensive choice.”

In an experiment Lindstrom gave a dozen people two options: they could choose a chocolate from a box that contained 30 different types of chocolates, or they could pick one from a box that contained only six varieties.

The vast majority of people chose to select from the box containing only six choices. “The fewer choices and selections we face, the more likely we are to pick up, and buy, something.”

At a bookstore he convinced management to remove all but one of its 7-8 display tables that usually have up to 40 different titles on them. Instead they only displayed a dozen or so book titles, yet overall sales revenue increased within a week.

Lindstrom attributed the increase in sales to the fact that when buyers didn’t need to deal with all of those choices, they were more likely to make a purchase.

The enemy is choice but sometimes it can also be the feeling of non-exclusivity.

Imagine you’re in your favourite fashion store and there is a shirt you really like, but there are 10 of them in your size on display.

You start thinking: “well maybe that shirt isn’t that special? How many people will be walking around in the same shirt as me? There’s plenty there, I’ll go away and have a think about it first, it’s not like they’re going to sell out.”

Now imagine if instead there is only one shirt in your size on display. All of a sudden there is a feeling of exclusivity, a fear you may miss out, pressure and a deadline to buy.

You can see where I’m going. Less choice and limited availability are your friends.

Whether you’re selling products or services, if you’re a small to medium business keep your product range as simple and streamlined as possible. Test and identify what the sweet spot is when it comes to display stock and product range – how much works best for you? Can you create a feeling of exclusivity and a limited time offer for your buyers?

Hopefully less choice and time will result in more sales. There may even be the added benefits of bigger profit margins if you can reduce your inventory and avoid overstocking.

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Surprise

The element of surprise – why fiction needs ‘Red Weddings’ and Soapie-loving tough guys

Kylie Fennell
Out of nowhere, he dropped it on me. I think we were talking about a HR memo and out of nowhere ­

the huge, bearded mountain of a man – the man I regarded as a real tough guy, someone who kept to himself and rarely cracked a smile – drops into conversation casual-like, ‘did you know on the Bold and the Beautiful…’.

‘What?! Did you just say the Bold and the Beautiful.’  I was convinced I must have misheard him. He gave a bashful smile and confirmed that he did in fact say the Bold and the Beautiful. Then he launched into a complete update on the latest storylines, stars and actors to a level of detail rivaling TV Soap magazine. Then he fessed up that he was a major soap fan from way back. Days of Our Lives, Neighbours, Young and the Restless, all of the classics. He was a walking soap opera wiki.
I couldn’t help but laugh. I actually snorted with laughter, and then I howled with laughter and then I cackled. The crazed cackle was enough to bring my colleague into the room to check on me.
I wasn’t laughing because of this tough-guy’s viewing taste. Each to their own, I say. I was beside myself with amusement due to the complete surprise of it. It was totally unexpected, and it made my day. Fortunately this guy, that I now know a little better, saw the humour in it and wasn’t offended by my over the top reaction.
This got me thinking about how the element of surprise can be shocking but also utterly delightful.
Good fiction, particularly sci-fi and fantasy often features twists and surprises. Everyone must remember the (often misquoted) Empire Strikes Back scene where Darth Vader reveals he’s Luke Skywalker’s father. Audiences around the world cried out ‘Noooooooo’ in unison with Luke.
Every good story should have an element of surprise. It doesn’t necessarily mean a twist at the end, just unexpected events.
A good twist in a story or surprise ending shouldn’t be predictable, but it shouldn’t be completely shocking either. What I mean by that is that a reader should be able to go back after the fact and identify clues. However the clues should be laid cleverly enough that they never give the surprise completely away. This is a sign of good foreshadowing.
Sure, readers like to anticipate certain things and surprise endings that seem to come from nowhere can be annoying. A good surprise has to add to the story. It needs to fit and add to the reading experience. It shouldn’t appear disjointed.
It can be really enjoyable to not know how a story is going to unfold, though we tend to anticipate a happy ending – generally speaking of course.
This is where Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin has made surprise his signature. He is known for killing off favourite characters when you least expect it and has turned heroic fantasy on its head. The success of his books and the TV series are proof that you don’t necessarily need ‘happily ever after’ to create a great story.
Martin says that it’s important for his readers never to feel too comfortable. That they mustn’t be convinced that the hero must prevail.
“I’ve said in many interviews that I like my fiction to be unpredictable. I like there to be considerable suspense. I killed Ned (Stark) in the first book and it shocked a lot of people. I killed Ned because everybody thinks he’s the hero and that, sure, he’s going to get into trouble, but then he’ll somehow get out of it,” Martin says. (We all know what happened to poor ole Ned Stark.)
“I try to make the readers feel they’ve lived the events of the book. Just as you grieve if a friend is killed, you should grieve if a fictional character is killed. You should care. If somebody dies and you just go get more popcorn, it’s a superficial experience isn’t it?”
I’m not sure I will ever take surprises to the same extreme as Martin, and I won’t be including a ‘Red Wedding’ in my books any time soon. I just couldn’t do it to myself, least of all my readers.
However I definitely plan on a few surprises. Shocking surprises – maybe; Delightful surprises – I hope. It may not be a man-mountain who loves soap operas, but…then again…
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Sales tips

Sensational sales techniques

Kylie Fennell
Marketing and sales can sometimes be seen as one and the same. While related to each other they are completely different beasts and disciplines.
Sales is a critical component of the overall marketing mix but requires specific techniques and skills.
The difference between a below average salesperson and an excellent salesperson is vast. And the difference between a poor sales call and amazing pitch is just as vast.
At the end of the day, those differences can usually be measured in volume of sales.
Effective sales rely on having the right people and using the right techniques.
Here are my sensational sales techniques and tips on what makes a good salesperson. 
What makes a great salesperson
In an ideal world, it would be great to have salespeople who have extensive sales experience and a proven track record.
Sometimes though you may not have the resources to secure a very experienced salesperson or you are looking to upskill an existing employee. In that case, you might want to consider the characteristics of a good salesperson.
  • A people person – someone who genuinely likes to engage with people. The key word here being engage, that is, two way conversations
  • Problem solver – a desire to help people. Someone who obtains satisfaction from solving people’s problems
  • Proactive and innovative– able to think on their feet, take their own initiative and flexible enough to respond to emerging situations and come up with creative solutions or responses
  • Action oriented – someone who follows through with what they say they will do and instead of focusing on what ‘can’t be done’ they will say ‘what I can do is…’
  • Excellent communication and presentation skills – oral communication skills are particularly important and the ability to tailor information for specific audiences. A good salesperson is always well presented.
  • Resilient – the ability to thrive under pressure and bounce back from set-backs, while keeping an upbeat and positive attitude wherever possible.
GENERAL SALES TIPS 
Don’t use sales scripts!
If you have ever been on the receiving end of a salesperson using a script, you would have recognised the robotic tone immediately. You may have instinctively had a feeling of  ‘here we go, here comes the pitch’. This is not a great start to a sales call especially when selling relies on developing trust and rapport with prospects.
Instead of using scripts, you should develop key messages, phrases or transitional sentences that can be used a guide. Develop a list of questions and anticipated objections as well as potential responses, but these should be used as a reference only, not read word-for-word. Good salespeople sound genuine because they are speaking with their real voice, tone and style.
An exception to this rule is having a set script for when leaving a voice mail. Carefully craft a script that suits your personal style and use a friendly tone. Deliver your message at a medium pace and repeat at the end of the message, key information, such as your name and the number to call back on.
Know your prospect
Before you pick up a phone or approach a prospect in person, know whom you are speaking to.  It helps to develop customer personas or profiles on your key targets. Understand what drives them, what are the barriers, challenges or problems they face and how can you solve them.
If your selling to a business, know the business and industry they are in. Do a bit of research beforehand online and referring to other marketing collateral the business may produce. If you’re prospects are all in the same business type or industry, become an expert in that field.
You need to understand your prospects’ needs and problems, some of which they may not have even realised they have yet.
With any prospect, it’s also a good idea to obtain an understanding of when is a good time to contact them, day/night/time and how, email/phone/in person.
Find out if the person you are speaking to is the right person in terms of influence and decision-making. You can politely enquire by saying ‘I have some information about Y that will assist your organisation with X, but I just wanted to confirm who the best person was to speak to about that’.
Be upfront, honest and make a great first impression
Try and use the prospect’s name in your opening sentence if possible, and aim to be friendly but short and concise. It’s also a great idea to thank them.
Eg.  ‘Thank you first name for speaking with me today…’
For cold calling introduce yourself upfront and be open about the reason for your call.
Eg. ‘My name is full name from company name. I am calling about our X service and to arrange a time to….’
When you do get to the ‘ask’ be clear about what you are asking of them. If you want them to book an appointment, say ‘I would like to set an appointment time for one of our consultants…’. Don’t ask it with an open-ended phrase such as “if you would like a consultant to…”.
Have a conversation
It is critical , particularly when it comes to cold calling that you understand that the sales call (whether in person or over the phone) is a conversation, not one-way dialogue.
A conversation is dynamic where both participants speak, listen and respond appropriately. Something that can never be achieved via a script.
You want to have a professional, open and meaningful conversation with the prospect.
Focus on the prospects’ needs and restate your understanding of their needs eg. ‘From what you are saying I understand…’.
Ask them to elaborate where appropriate to draw out a clearer picture of the situation, simple questions such as ‘and why is that?’ can help.
Know the difference between a question and an objection. Listen and interpret.
You should be aiming to open and maintain dialogue in a genuine way. By opening the conversation and not seeking to control it, you will help to build rapport.
Sometimes you may need to bring the conversation back on track, but your primary role is to listen to the prospect’s needs, empathise with them and provide solutions where needed.
The ask should then fall naturally out of the discussion, without abruptly derailing the conversation or rapport.
A great salesperson ideally needs to believe in the product or service they are selling, or at the very least believe that the solutions they are offering will address the customer’s problems.
During the conversation, they should be enthusiastic about the idea of providing a solution and helping the prospect.
You should use an enthusiastic and friendly tone and smile (even over the phone). You should show active listening skills eg. ‘Uh huh’, ‘I see’ and display positive body language eg leaning in and nodding.
Roleplays are a great way to get a feel for what does and doesn’t work.
Backing up your claims
There are various ways you can provide evidence of your claims and benefits of your product or service. Here are a few of them:
  • Highlight benefits specific to the prospect and their situation
  • Use testimonials/case studies – provide copies or refer to them in conversation eg. “this reminds me of customer X who….”
  • Use facts, figures, charts, images, videos, expert testimonial to support the benefit claims
  • Compare to competitor’s product/service pointing out the superiority of your offering
  • Connect the offering to something they an understand, ‘it’s like X but…’
  • To encourage a wavering or unsure prospect, narrow it down to two choices for them, ‘so you can purchase package X or package Y…’
  • Reduce obvious risks where possible – if there is a cooling off period, trial period or money back guarantee, highlight these.
Offer something special
While you may not be throwing in a set of steak knives, you may be offering something else to the customer that hints at exclusivity or a special deal, such as:
  • A discount or 2 for 1 offer
  • A package or bundle ­at a discounted price
  • Cross-sell or upsell to other products or services. ‘If you like this you may also be interested in this’ or ‘customers who bought this, also bought this’.
Specify a timeframe to secure the offer, so there is a sense of urgency.
Monitor and evaluate success
You should try and keep track of what does and doesn’t work for you. How many points of contact does it take before you secure a sale? How many separate calls before a sale? What time of day best works with this type of customer?
Keep notes and keep in touch with possible prospects where possible. More importantly stay in touch with previous clients to encourage repeat business.
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DIY marketing for small business

Kylie Fennell

“I need a brochure.”
As the saying goes: if I had a dollar for every time I heard that, I would be a millionaire by now.
Often when businesses think of marketing, the first thing they reach for are marketing tactics or tools. They immediately ask for familiar marketing items like a brochure, an advertisement or a website.
Certainly businesses need these marketing tools, but I always urge businesses to take a few steps back. I ask them to first consider their marketing strategy, objectives and goals before jumping to tactics.
The most confusing thing for businesses though is what exactly is a marketing strategy and why is it so important? 
Kylie Fennell
It’s time to start brainstorming your marketing strategy
Image courtesy of nongpimmy/freedigitalimages.net

A marketing strategy is crucial for any successful business. It forms the bones of all communication and marketing activities.
If marketing was represented by a house, the strategy is the initial building plan, foundations and framework. Skipping straight to marketing tactics or activities is like installing the fixtures in your new bathroom, before the framework of the bathroom or even the whole house is in place. It is a back to front approach.
Sure, you can try building this way. It may work, but it is more likely you will go to a lot of time, effort and expense and realise that it didn’t really achieve what you needed.
A marketing strategy can vary in terms of complexity and resource requirements, but here I will outline the basics of a DIY marketing strategy for small businesses.
Marketing strategy framework
For simplicity I like to create a marketing framework in one or two pages.
This can be done in a Microsoft Word table or Excel worksheet.
These are the key headings I like to incorporate:
(OVERARCHING) GOAL
MARKETING OBJECTIVES
CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES (SWOT)
PRIMARY STAKEHOLDER(S)
SECONDARY STAKEHOLDER(S)
CUSTOMER PERSONA(S)
CUSTOMER PERSONA(S)
CUSTOMER PERSONA(S)
CUSTOMER PERSONA(S)
APPROACH AND KEY MESSAGES
APPROACH AND KEY MESSAGES
APPROACH AND KEY MESSAGES
APPROACH AND KEY MESSAGES
TACTICS
TACTICS
TACTICS
TACTICS
EVALUATION
Overarching goal
What is the overarching goal or strategic vision of your organisation?  It should come from your business or strategic plan.
Also what is the overarching goal of your marketing activities? Your marketing goal should help achieve your organisation’s overarching goal or strategic vision and be clearly linked. Some marketing goals may include: drive more sales; increase awareness; increase store traffic.
Marketing objectives
Specify objectives that will help achieve your marketing goal. These objectives should be SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, timely/timeframes).
Sample objectives include: Eg. Inspire 20% more calls-to-action (likes/share/views/comments) or opt-in to your mailing list; Generate 20% more sales leads; Increase customer enquiries by 10%.
Challenges and opportunities (SWOT)
Conduct a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis of what may impact you achieving your marketing goal. This will give you an idea of where you may need to concentrate your efforts.
Primary and secondary stakeholders
Identify the stakeholders or stakeholder groups for your business and categorise them as primary and secondary. Your primary stakeholders are the ones that have the most influence on the success of your business.
Do not limit your stakeholders to just customers. Stakeholders are anyone who has an interest in your business and can impact it negatively or positively. They may include media, community, neighbours, regulatory authorities, government, business partners, industry associations. Try and be specific and break down broad stakeholder groups where possible.
Among your primary stakeholders, include your target market and break it down into market segments and relevant demographics (age, gender, location, education etc).
Next you will drill down into more detail on your customers, but keep in mind all of your stakeholders later when identifying specific marketing approaches and tactics.
Customer personas
Here delve deeper into the persona of each market segment. You want to develop fictional customer persona stories.
Personas are examples of the real buyers who influence or make decisions about the products, services or solutions you market.
They should reveal how, when and why your buyer makes the decisions you want to influence and readily inform your marketing strategies.
The idea behind buyer personas is that you create fictional people who represent your major customer groups and develop a story about that persona.
Give your persona a name. Consider their aspirations, communication style, lifestyle, interests, challenges, why they would want to engage with you, what social media platforms and media they are likely to use.
You should have one main persona who represents your ideal/most profitable customer, plus a few secondary customer groups if needed. You should try and limit your personas to a maximum of five so you can focus your marketing efforts.
Refer to our previous blog post for tips on how to develop a persona and why it’s important.
Approach and key messages
Consider the specific communication approach will you use to target each of the above personas. Are you appealing to their sense of social justice, appealing to their need to keep up with the ‘Joneses’, offering them a new experience, saving them time and money.
Determine if there are any specific key messages you need for each of these personas.
Also don’t forget you may also need to engage/communicate with the other key stakeholders you identified earlier. Consider what specific approaches and key messages may be required for them.
Tactics
This is when you actually start identifying what marketing and communication activities or actions you require.
This may include collateral such as that brochure, website or advertisement you initially thought you needed. However now you should have a clearer picture of whether those tools will help achieve your overall goals and objectives and are the right tools for your personas and target audience.
You may also now have a clearer idea for any specific messages that need to be included in your marketing materials.
Tactics may include, but are certainly not limited to: media releases, flyers, FAQs, hotlines, stakeholder meetings, community meetings, focus groups, key messages, Q and A forums, information sessions, public displays, signage, market stands, sponsorship.
Think as broadly as possible but ensure any tools you identify are relevant to your target market, segments and personas as well as other stakeholder groups. Before proceeding with advertising or paying for any membership or events, ask for demographical information about their audience and members.
Additionally some of the tactics you identify may require separate or more detailed strategies, such as a social media strategy, or crisis management plan. Capture this action in your overarching marketing strategy to ensure it is completed.
Evaluation
One of the components of a successful marketing strategy that is often overlooked is the evaluation activities.
It is important to evaluate the success of any marketing tactics or tools to understand better if they have achieved your objectives and what, if anything, needs to be refined.
Where possible try and calculate your marketing return on investment, though it is difficult a lot of the time to see a direct correlation between marketing activities and sales.
Other ways to evaluate success include: asking all customers ‘Where did you hear about us?’, include this on any contact us forms especially on the website. Media coverage and reproduction of key messages are also important measures. You can refer to website hits/click-throughs, subscriptions, number of people engaging in your social media platforms (notice I use the word engaging rather than number of followers, which sometimes can be overrated if those followers aren’t actually engaging with content).
You can also measure success via anecdotal and formal feedback and customer surveys.
Try to link your evaluation measures and mechanisms back to your original objectives.
How to develop your marketing strategy
One of the best ways to develop a successful marketing strategy is to bring together your key employees and internal stakeholders and hold a brainstorming session.
Work your way through the components listed above in order. Map it out on a whiteboard or butcher’s paper. Give yourself a few hours or half a day if possible to nut out the ideas. Consider what you are already doing marketing-wise, what’s working and what’s not.
Review your plan formally after three months, then at six months (the first time around), then every 12 months.
Putting your strategy into action
You will need an action plan to support your marketing strategy.
I personally favour a simple work-in-progress or WIP sheet.
To create your action plan or WIP sheet, transfer all of your ‘Tactics’ from your strategy into a table (I use an Excel Worksheet). You can then use it to easily monitor and track progress of your strategy.
For each tactic, identify what action is required, who is responsible for it, the deadline and status. It’s also a good idea to specify the evaluation mechanism for each item ­– how will you know if each activity has been achieved.
Review all of the ‘live’ items on your WIP sheet with key staff at a weekly or fortnightly meeting and update as needed
You can also include colour coding to highlight live items. You can use a traffic light system with green meaning the item is on track, orange if there are some obstacles that may impact delivery and red if the item is unlikely to be completed on time or as expected. Once an item is completed or if it is shelved, transfer it to an archived Worksheet. The archived sheet is a great record of what you have achieved and when. It is an especially good reference point for any reporting activities.
Using the above guidelines you should be able to create your DIY marketing strategy and start putting it in place. For more help from an expert contact us at Kylie Fennell .

Marketing vs advertising vs public relations ­– what’s the difference?

Kylie Fennell
When I first set-up this business I needed to create a name that represented exactly what we offered to small businesses. I chose mypr+
There is the ‘pr’ component that focuses on connecting small businesses to their key stakeholders and influencers (mainly through non-paid or low cost means). Then there is the ‘+’ that offers marketing and targeted communication to further engage your audience.
Why did I focus on pr? There is an outdated perception that PR (public relations) is just about publicity and promotion; that it is all swanning about at publicity events, sipping champagne, and schmoozing the right people ‘dahhhling’….I wish.
Well, actually I don’t wish for that. PR represents much much more and I love how PR has evolved over the years. PR is about identifying the people and organisations most important to your business and connecting with them in meaningful ways.
Public relations activities will help you build and maintain your relationships and profile with the media, your customers and stakeholders. These activities are often low or no cost and can boost the effectiveness of traditional marketing activities, such as advertising.
I believe PR represents the best and most underrated opportunity for small businesses, as long as it is used correctly, authentically and part of an overall marketing strategy.
To make the most of it though, you will need to know the difference between marketing, advertising and PR. There are literally thousands of definitions for all of the following terms but here is my take on it.
Marketing
Marketing involves strategic planning and implementing a mix of business activities to facilitate the transfer or exchange of products or services between an organisation and the customer or consumer.
The mix of business activities can involve everything from research, sales and advertising to public relations and evaluation.
It can be easier to picture marketing as an overall pie and the business activities or elements such as advertising and public relations as pieces of that pie.
Other pieces of the pie can include research, sales, evaluation, media planning, product pricing, distribution and customer service and satisfaction. They are all individual components that must complement each other and together contribute to the overall marketing goal.
Advertising
Advertising is the process of making existing or potential customers aware of the product or service you are selling. This is achieved through advertisement placement in mediums such as newspapers, magazines, billboards, TV, radio, social media and the internet.
Advertisements are designed to reach as large a part of your target audience, in one hit, as possible. For this reason it is often the largest expense of most marketing plans.  It is critical that the most appropriate advertising medium and delivery are used to reach your target market.  
You need to fully understand what demographics will see your advertisement and understand what kinds of messages and delivery will best resonate with your audience. If you don’t understand this, your advertising dollars could be wasted.
Public Relations
PR is about communicating, networking and engaging with people and organisations that can influence the success of your business.
This may involve direct engagement with customers, stakeholders or the community. It may involve engaging with your audience via social media. It can also involve engaging with the media and attempting to secure positive media coverage.
PR can be any business activity to build, maintain or protect your profile or reputation. Effective PR enables you to share your story in a positive light without paying for advertising.
Tools that can achieve this include but are not limited to:
  • Stakeholder meetings and engagement
  • Community events
  • Industry networking and engagement
  • Donations and sponsorships
  • Media releases, interviews and engagement
  • Publicity and media events
  • Social media presence.
The basis of good PR is understanding your key stakeholders and engaging with them through targeted and tailored communication; understanding what all of your stakeholders want and need from you and trying to give it to them.
You can start by identifying all of your stakeholders or stakeholder groups and prioritising them. For each key stakeholder or group you may like to create a customer persona. This will get you in the head space of understanding how you should communicate and engage with that particular stakeholder.
Then you should identify key messages and Q&As for each of the key stakeholders. Ask what problem do they have and how can you fix it?
Identify specific engagement activities for each key stakeholder and allocate responsibility to someone in your organisation to manage those activities or relationship.
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The 5 best marketing and business books – Christmas gifts for business owners

Kylie Fennell
As a business owner it is a constant challenge to keep up-to-date and inspired to learn and try new things in business and marketing.
For Christmas I wanted to share my five best business and marketing books, which would make great stocking fillers for any business owner.
Some of the below books have been around a while but are still completely relevant and interesting summer reads.
small business marketingThis is an autobiography jam-packed with business ideas and inspiration. Learn where the Virgin mega-brand all started and how it continues to lead the way in marketing and business. 

This book reveals Sir Richard’s unique story, his personal philosophy on life, the Virgin brand and business. As a hugely successful international entrepreneur, adventurer and icon, and chairman of the Virgin Group, this book has something to interest everyone.


The book also describes the effect on the Virgin Group of 11 September, the rise of Virgin Blue, the flotation of Virgin Mobile, Sir Richard’s world record attempt with the Virgin Atlantic Global Flyer and taking Virgin to the final frontier, as Virgin Galactic is poised for a new era of commercial space travel. 


Jan Carlzon, was CEO of SAS Airlines (1981-1994) and is credited for bringing the airline back from the brink of collapse. 

small business marketing Kylie Fennell

The airline went from losing $17 million a year to making a $54 million profit within a year.
A huge part of his success was his ‘Moments of Truth’ philosophy and focus on customer service quality.
Carlzon drove a message across his organisation that every ‘moment of truth’ or point of contact with every customer or stakeholder made a difference. The book focused on delegating away from management and giving front-line staff the authority and responsibility to make decisions so they could resolve any issues on the spot. He promoted a culture where employees regardless of their level were empowered to make decisions, if they could immediately solve a customer’s problem.
Carlzon accepted that by delegating decision-making down the chain, sometimes mistakes would be made occasionally, but these mistakes could be forgiven.
“Mistakes can usually be corrected later; the time that is lost in not making a decision can never be retrieved.”
The book also shows how the airline adapted to what was a reasonably new customer-driven economy.
           
Carlzon decided that SAS should cater to business travelers, who tend to be decidedly less price-conscious than tourists. Accordingly, he geared the line’s operations to the demands of a commercial market, emphasising such unique selling propositions as on-time departures, convenient schedules and comfortable seating.
Carlzon’s service-oriented plan paid off dramatically and provides some great insights.
Global marketer Martin Lindstrom, who has been on the front lines of the branding wars for more than 20 years, provides an insider’s look at how companies obscure the truth and manipulate our minds to persuade us to buy.
small business marketing Kylie Fennell

He draws on all he has witnessed behind closed doors, exposing the full extent of the psychological tricks and traps that companies devise to win our hard-earned dollars.

Lindstrom reveals how advertisers and marketers intentionally target children at an alarmingly young age ­– starting when they are still in the womb!
He also talks about how marketers and retailers stoke the flames of public panic and capitalise on paranoia over global contagions, extreme weather events and food contamination scares.
Additionally the book highlights the first ever neuroscientific evidence proving how addicted we all are to our iPhones and our Blackberry’s (and the shocking reality of cell phone addiction – it can be harder to shake than addictions to drugs and alcohol).
There is much, much more to shock, intrigue and entertain you in this book. You should also be able to pick up some less insidious marketing tips to use yourself.
This is a must-read for anyone feeling a little bamboozled by what to do with online and social media marketing. 
small business marketing Kylie Fennell

A great refresher for anyone who has been wedded to old-school marketing and PR or anyone just venturing out.

It offers a step-by-step action plan for harnessing the power of modern marketing and PR to communicate with buyers directly, raise visibility and increase sales. It shows how large and small companies, nonprofits, and other organisations can leverage web-based content to get the right information to the right people for a fraction of the cost of big-budget campaigns.
It includes up-to-date information, examples, and case studies plus an examination of popular tools such as Infographics, photo-sharing using Pinterest and Instagram, as well as expanded information on social media such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.        
Ever wondered how a trend becomes a trend? This book explains the idea of a tipping point when an idea, trend or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips and spreads like wildfire. 
small business marketing Kylie Fennell

It will change the way you think about selling products, communicating messages and changing behaviour.
The author describes how readers can apply the tipping point principle in their own lives and work. The book provides case studies on how a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend, the popularity of a new product, or a drop in the crime rate.
So I hope I have left you with some sources of inspiration for injecting some new life into your business and marketing efforts in 2014.

In the meantime, we wish you and your families a safe and Merry Christmas. Find out how you can boost your marketing efforts.

How to write brilliant social media content

Kylie Fennell 2 comments
So you have set up a business Facebook page that you diligently monitor and update once a day with snippets, pictures and videos, which may or may not feature a cat playing a piano.
You may have ventured out further and have been tweeting your thoughts on the latest reality TV show.
If so, you are probably congratulating yourself on taming the social media beast. And so you should.
What happens though if you start to notice that people are not engaging in your posts or updates? What happens when hardly anyone is liking/sharing/commenting/re-tweeting or clicking on your updates? More importantly how do you fix it?
By far the most important component of any marketing activity is content. Content marketing is more than a buzz word, it is the foundation of all marketing activities.

The same rule applies to social media marketing. Your social media content must be relevant and valuable to your target market.
Without this, your social media marketing efforts will be largely wasted.
Here are some tips on developing brilliant social media content.
80/20 rule
It is terribly tempting to blast your followers with promotional copy, promos, offers and sales.
While there is a place in social media for promotional opportunities, especially if they are well managed, by far the majority of your posts should be non-promotional.
Remember when most people are using social media, they are using it in a “social” sense. They are not in the headspace for hard-selling.
A 80/20 rule of thumb can be used as a guideline for posts. That is, for every self-serving promotional post, you should have at least four relevant and interesting content posts. These should be a mix of your own content and re-posts of relevant content written by others.
Posts can be purely entertaining (such as cats playing piano), or personal (such as personal images or anecdotes), but will be most effective if they connect with someone and elicit an emotion, whether that is laughter, empathy or gratitude. It should also have some connection to your business and its products or services. For example, a boutique may post a photo of the owner in their daggiest prom dress.
You should like or follow similarly minded pages that feature content that will be relevant to your target audience.
Content ideas
Here are some tips to help you identify content relevant to your target audience.
+      Think about your audience as people or “personas” rather than demographic profiles
+      Tailor your content and approach – ensure your content is tailored to your personas and packaged and delivered in a format, style, frequency and timeframe most relevant to them.
+      Focus on giving away lots of value – some call this giving away the secret sauce. Don’t always ask for something in return. Why give away the secret sauce? Remember you are in the business of solving problems. Your potential customer has a problem and your content may help solve it, at no cost to them. When they need more help hopefully they will come to you and share the information or experience with everyone they know.
+      Stockpile content – squirrel away content ideas and trends as you come across them. You never know when something may come in handy, especially if it is not time critical. You may come up with ideas anywhere from on the bus, in the shower or driving. It may be something as simple as a road sign, an anecdote a friend has told you or a news feature. Have a pen and paper on hand, or use voice memo on your phone (handy when in the car), or type notes into your phone. Tear out pages from newspapers or magazines as you see something that interests you. Compile your ideas in a hard copy or electronic folder. You may even like to input them into a spreadsheet with specific columns so you can search by particular fields
+      Ask your audience – ask your followers what kind of content they would like to see. This doesn’t make you sound stupid, it demonstrates you really want to engage with your customers.

Finally, be concise – as with any writing keep your content to the point, especially with Twitter where you have limited characters. If you are posting links, take advantage of free url shorteners that create a super-short link for you. Google’s and bitly’s url shorteners are probably the most common.

Call-to-action
Regardless of your overarching social media goal, one of your objectives is likely to be to get people to click it/view/like/share/re-post/comment in some way, shape or form. This would be in the hope it would lead to further awareness, increased traffic and hopefully sales. It also has the added benefit of increasing the likelihood of someone seeing your post (since the more people who comment or share it, the higher up it moves in a feed) and improve search engine optimisation (SEO).
Getting people click it/view/like/share/re-post/comment is a good basis for engaging your audience, and if it isn’t, it is time to review your objectives.
To achieve the above objective there needs to be a clear and persuasive call-to-action.
Keep in mind people share or comment on content based on how they want to perceived by others. So they want to look good/funny/intelligent/caring by liking or sharing something. Certainly high quality and valuable content will go a long way in achieving this. So you may simply go with adding a simple “like this post” or event a question at the end of your post with the hope people will engage with it.
This is a great starting point, but what else can you do to improve engagement? Momentus Media conducted a study of 20,000 Facebook profiles which found that asking a stand alone “question” will result in 23% less engagement that no question at all.

This does not mean questions should be avoided – it means you have to craft your questions more carefully. In fact you need to demand an answer. Sounds pushy right – well it works.
Here is an example:
Question only: “Coffee or Tea. Which is better?
Question with a demand: “Coffee or Tea. Which is better? Tell us in comments”
You may not believe this but research has shown that people are more likely to go to the effort of doing something, if they are told to do it.
Blogger Ryan ‘Haight’ Mail explains further:
“Look at any of the top 100 YouTube channels. They all end with:
“What do you think about turtle racing? Tell us in the comments! And remember to hit subscribe!”
They do this because it doesn’t matter how funny you are, the majority of people will finish your video and go, “Ha! That was funny– omg a cat playing piano. *click*”
And then they’re gone.”
By adding their call-to-action and couching it in a demand, they may have just got some more engagement, possibly even a lead for their email distribution list and SEO.
Let’s explore this concept a little further by using conditionals, such as ‘comment/like IF [condition]’. Eg. Comment if you think tea is better than coffee, or ‘Like’ if you think tea is better than coffee.
Have you noticed again how we are ‘telling’ rather than ‘asking’.
Now time for a little reality check, from Haight Mail who explains why aiming for a ‘Like’ is also a great option.
“People are Lazy. Comments are great on Facebook. They usually include words — sometimes they’re spelled correctly,” he says.
“But ultimately they’re a lot of work. So even with a call to action, people are less likely to interact the more work they have to do. So use this to your advantage and make it easy. You are 216% more likely to get people to click ‘Like’ than you are to have them actually write a sentence.” [Momentus Media]
So in summary, have a call-to-action, and let it demand or tell the audience what to do. 
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