Want to Increase Sales?

A well executed promotional campaign will help any business increase sales. But badly executed campaigns are costly, so how can you avoid making mistakes?

The single minded proposition

The first thing you should do is work out the single most important thing you need to communicate. Promotional campaigns often fail at the first hurdle because they are trying to say too much all at once. Your message has to rise above the millions of other messages that are competing for attention. It’s got more chance of doing this if it communicates just one thing clearly, rather than becoming muddled with lots information for the reader to try and digest.

Effective Creative

Once you’ve defined the single most important thing you want to communicate, you should appoint a creative agency to bring that message to life in a compelling and appropriate way. An effective promotional campaign relies solely on getting noticed and instigating a reaction. You should measure the creative work that goes into your promotional campaign against these criteria. If it doesn’t measure up, it simply won’t work!

A multi-channel approach

It’s not enough now, to rely on one form of media to promote your business. In order to ensure maximum exposure, you need to strike with a variety of media. Print and web advertising, direct mail and email marketing should all be considered and woven together into a multi-disciplined campaign that suits your audience.

Some markets are more specialised than others, however all audiences respond to a variety of media. Some will respond to direct mail or to advertising, some to other forms of promotion. In addition, your message may not be remembered at the first point of contact, but if it’s reinforced with a second activity, you are increasing the likelihood of a positive response and return on your investment.

Contact us on 0117 907 9930 if you’d like to know how to make more of your promotional campaigns.

Five Easy Steps to Brilliant B2B Email Marketing!

Email marketing remains one of the most cost effective ways to promote your business. Whatever approach you take to email marketing, whether you produce a newsletter or direct promotion, in HTML or plain text, there are five overriding principles that you should always adhere to.

1. Ask Permission

If you don’t have permission to email people, then you are intruding. Leave spamming messages to those who are pedalling herbal remedies or worse still Viagra! You don’t want to be tarred with the same brush. If you already have an established promotional e-mail campaign in place (and don’t recall whether you have ever asked permission), then ensure you make it easy for people to unsubscribe at any time.

2. Deliver Value

So many businesses make their promotional emails about them not the recipient. Emails can be deleted at the click of a button, so if the value you are delivering isn’t obvious within the first few seconds, then you’ve just been deleted! If it’s a newsletter, make sure the information is relevant to the readers, if it’s a promotion, then make sure it delivers true value. Always consider your content from the customers perspective—what’s in it for them?

3. Keep it Brief!

You may recognise this term (ah the good old days!). In the last Essentials Guide, we talked about Time Deficit Disorder being a problem for Direct Mail—this also applies to email marketing. Keep your content short and to the point. No-one wants to read scrolling pages of information (unless every line delivers fantastic value!). It’s the virtual equivalent of doing 20 in a 40mph zone… you will get overtaken at the first opportunity (or rather your reader will click to something else).

4. Be engaging

Use short one line descriptions to tease the reader into clicking for more information. Use links to web pages and forms. Anything which will appease their need to exercise those itchy fingers which are just dying to click, click, click away. The more engaging your email, the more likely you are to get a response.

5. Track responses

The only way to ensure you are consistently delivering values is to track responses. Which are the most popular subject areas, who completes competition entry or contact forms, which web pages are looked at? All these things can be monitored and used to adjust the content of your email campaign to ensure it stays relevant and targeted.

If you’d like more information on how email marketing could work for your business, then please give us a call on 0117 907 9930.

Direct Mail—The New Challenge

We’ve had several requests this month from readers wanting more information on Direct Marketing and specifically Direct Mail. Back in 2004, we published our report on ‘10 biggest mistakes in Direct Marketing and how to avoid them’. Although this report is three years old, most of the advice and information is still relevant, so click here to download it, if you haven’t already.

However, our lives have got even faster since we wrote the report in 2004. Prospects have even less time to read mail and even if they did, they certainly don’t have time to switch suppliers or go through the set up process to start using the new product/service which you are trying to sell. So how can you overcome TDD (Time Deficit Disorder)—here are some ideas:

1. Convince prospects to open your mail.

There are two ways of doing this. The first is to make it obvious it’s Direct Mail, but to clearly state the benefit, so the prospect can’t fail to open it. The second is to ‘box clever’ and use whatever means possible to get the envelope opened… this may be hand stamping (instead of franking), handwritten addressing (a bind I know, but worth the effort!), official looking envelopes… etc.

2. Clearly state the benefits.

Once opened, many prospects will do no more than just scan through the mail. Therefore you need to make sure the benefits are big, bold and clear for prospects that scan without reading the main body of text.

3. Make it easy to respond

Some prospects will scan through your mailing and want to respond immediately. Make it easy for them to do this using simple, clear and multiple ways to respond (i.e. web, telephone, email).

4. Focus on being easy

The biggest barrier for most prospects is the hassle of switching suppliers and the bureaucracy involved. Focus on being easy, i.e.save 15% in 15 minutes, Free trial and set up—just call. Whatever you promise, make sure you deliver!

5. Give them more than one chance!

Don’t assume that just because prospects didn’t respond the first time, that they are not interested. It maybe just a matter of timing. You need to be persistent and keep communicating with them.

Persistence and clarity of message are the keys in getting the best responses.

If you’re interested in knowing more about Direct Marketing and how it can work for your business, then Essential Marketing can help. Please call us on 0117 907 9930 for a free consultation and proposal.

Make your Database Work Harder

A database is more than just a list of names and addresses; it’s the most powerful sales and marketing tool available to any business.

A well-managed, up-to-date database enables you to target customers more effectively and stop wasting money.

Apart from the normal information of name, title, address etc, you can also add other information relating to each entry to get maximum benefit from your database.

The type of additional information required depends on who you are targeting i.e. businesses or individuals, but this additional information will enable you to segment your data into useful sections giving you the key to making your future direct marketing more successful.

For example, if you are a hairdresser and you wanted to do a special promotion on hair colouring; you can use your data to select everybody who has had their hair coloured at your salon, thus targeting the most likely prospects. You will not waste valuable time and money on Mr Brown who only comes in for a short back and sides!

Keep in Touch, Keep it Regular!

It’s a well-known fact that companies can gain considerable advantage over their competitors by regularly staying in touch with their customer base. One way to achieve this is by delivering meaningful information to your customers via regularly scheduled email communications.

Here is an easy step-by-step guide to setting up an email communications programme:

• Ask permission. Firstly, keep your current customer email contact information up-to-date. Build on this by asking permission to add the email addresses of everyone who makes contact with your company. They have already shown an interest, so should be willing recipients. However, always make it easy for recipients to ‘opt-out’ if they wish.
• Enlighten, don’t bore. The content should be valuable and informative. Highlight and inform recipients with a combination of both external industry information and internal company information such as personnel changes or special offers.
• Build trust. Develop and design a template style for your communications that recipients will grow to recognise and trust. Make the layout easy to follow and consistent in its use and format.
• Set a schedule. Decide if your communications will be daily, weekly or monthly. Make it something the recipients will look forward to and rely on. Remember, too little and it will be forgotten—too much and it will annoy!

Signed, Sealed, Delivered!

You’ve done all the hard work of getting your direct mail just right, detailed the benefits of your offer, made it eye-catching to the reader and incorporated a call to action; now all you have to do is put it in the envelope, right?

The envelope is vital to the success of your direct mail campaign. Stop and consider what would encourage the recipients to ‘open’ your envelope. Your choice of envelope depends on who you are targeting and what you are offering. Here are some ideas:

• Years of testing have proved envelopes which look like personally addressed business correspondence and hand stamped as opposed to franked can dramatically increase the chances of your letter being opened and read.
• Alternatively, some companies find that undisguised letters work best for them. They make it obvious on the outside that a special offer is contained within, urging the recipient to open the envelope and find out more.
• Innovative and unusual envelopes have novelty value, which the recipient will open out of curiosity. There is a wide range of unusual envelopes out there, all shapes, sizes and materials from textured papers to foil and films.

The Secret of Success—Test and Measure

Direct mail is one of the most widely used marketing tools for generating sales leads. But it also has a reputation for being expensive and ineffective. We’re going to put the record straight.

Certainly badly-produced and ill-planned direct mail campaigns are a complete waste of time and money! However, the chances of making costly mistakes can be greatly reduced by taking the time to understand your target market and their needs, carefully formulating a direct mail campaign which appeals to your target market, and working with experienced professionals to execute the campaign; but this still doesn’t guarantee success.

So what guarantees success? It’s simple—testing and measuring. Here’s how:

Small trials should be initially carried out to test the response rates. Send out a small number first, recording when, who and how much it costs to implement. Measure the response and if it has generated enough potential leads, mail it again to a larger number of recipients.

If you did not get the required response rates to the initial test then look at who, when and what you sent. How accurate is your data list? Was it the wrong time of year/day of the week, did you include an appropriate call to action?

Make the necessary adjustments and test again. Keep testing until you have identified the winning formula, then go for it! You will instantly start seeing results and getting better returns on your marketing budget.

Of course, once the lead has been generated through direct mail, it’s up to you and your sales team to convert that lead into a sale!—but that’s a whole different subject!!!

Standing Out from the Crowd

Trade shows are like a maze, full of people all trying to find their way around and looking for something to inspire them. The creative challenge is to make your stand a showstopper.

Here are a few helpful hints:

Exhibition stands don’t sell! The job of your stand is to make people stop, look and linger long enough to enable your sales people to do the selling!

People don’t read exhibition stands—so get rid of 97% of the text. The trick is to deliver your message in 5 words or less.

You need to grab attention, so don’t hold back! Be Big, Bold, Unexpected, Powerful, Relevant and Compelling.

Clarity versus Clutter—keep your stand clear, clean, dynamic and organised—people will then view your business in the same way.

Be different—make a list of all the things you want to include on your stand. Now list all the things you think your competitors will have on their stand—cross off everything on your list that appears on theirs—you can’t use them if you want to be different!

Creative designers understand the medium and will take into account psychology, colours, fonts, language, etc. This could make all the difference and result in you finding that special new customer who will turn your exhibit from an expense into a profit!

Did You Know Most Press Releases Don’t Work!

Why? Because they fail to grab the interest of the journalist reading it and often get filed straight into the bin!

The truth is journalists and editors are not interested in you or your business. They are only looking for a story with an unusual angle that will help fill the page/publication they are responsible for.

Here are a few pointers that could help get you noticed and into print:

Be ‘The Expert’ in your field

That way the journalist will make you the first point of contact on topical issues or when they are looking for a different angle, for example:

If there is a golf tournament on and you are a supplier/manufacturer of golf equipment, you could supply some extraordinary facts and figures about how many golf balls are produced/lost in a year!

Get straight to the point

Instead of writing a formatted press release, send a letter giving all the details but allowing the journalist to write the article in their own words. Include an eye catching headline and state within the first two sentences what you want and briefly what your story is about. Save the bullet pointed detail for the bottom of the page or hopefully for when they ring you for more information!

Strike while the iron’s hot

Be aware of key dates and events and make your press release topical, then you have a greater chance of it being published. Have a brainstorm with your team and be creative about your angle!

Give them a call

A phone call from you after you have sent in your press release can make the difference between it being published or not!

Is your Company Missing Out on the Benefits of a Newsletter?

Perhaps you’ve already considered a newsletter, but have been put off because you don’t know where to start. Or perhaps you already have one, but aren’t generating the interest or responses you’d hoped for? Whichever your situation, here are a few pointers to help your newsletter become a great company asset…

Uncover the best delivery method

Newsletters are often not read because readers don’t receive it in a format that suits them. Poll your readers to find out what format they are most likely to read; for example, a printed magazine, html email or PDF? Going one step further, have your newsletter available in a variety of formats and ALWAYS have an archive of previous newsletters available on your website.

Ask for ideas

Why not regularly survey your readers and ask them what they would be interested to see. Offer incentives for responses (use a prize draw to encourage them). Monitor which articles from the previous edition got people talking and include more of the same in future editions.

Keep it fresh

There is no greater turn-off than a newsletter which isn’t newsworthy! To avoid this, make the content topical and relevant, perhaps tying into recent industry hot topics or seasonal issues.

Deliver value

Too many newsletters are me, me, me!—If your company sees its newsletter only as a way to promote upcoming events and provide information on new products, then you are missing a trick! A newsletter is an opportunity to establish credibility as an expert in your field… of course, don’t pass up the opportunity of blowing your own trumpet (after all, no-one else is going to!) but combine this with news on latest market trends, views on industry issues and any other information that makes your newsletter more interesting and readable. Additionally including hints and tips are also a great way of adding value.

Finally, for external newsletters ensure you have a subscription process in place. Also use traditional marketing outlets to advertise your newsletter, seek referrals from existing recipients and use your website to actually promote subscriptions.

If you’re interested in starting a newsletter, or simply want ideas on re-vamping your existing newsletter—why not give us a call and pick our brains? Contact eva@essential-marketing.com