marketing

Is Your Small Business Making These Marketing Mistakes?

Most small businesses don’t have extra resources to throw around in a bid to get more customers. However, many decisions that are made don’t result in the best use of the limited resources they do have.

Check out the following 7 marketing mistakes that your business might be making, and see if you can make improvements in the way you’re marketing your business.

1. Mixed Messages = Confused Customers

A lack of cohesive branding sends confusing messages to your customers which dilutes what you’re saying, and leaves them unclear about what solutions you can help them with. This is often due to a haphazard approach to marketing and lack of an overall strategic plan.

Solution: Take some time to plan out what you want to achieve and how you’re going to get there.

2. Stopping, starting & not getting any traction

This type of uncertainty comes about because there is little understanding of what marketing options are available, what will work best for your business and how to implement them so they work together to get you more business.

Solution: Consider getting help to put together your plan and to manage the implementation if that is a weak spot for your business.

3. No way of accurately measuring your Return on Investment

Without information on your key marketing metrics, you could be wasting money on activities that aren’t bringing in new customers or encouraging repeat business from your existing customers. Gut feel is important but not always accurate.

Solution: Put in place achievable goals and tracking so you can easily see what needs to be improved.

4. Unclear product benefits

A visitor to your website, a customer stepping into your business or someone looking at your brochure, should be able to tell within a few seconds what your business can offer them and the key way that you can solve their problem. Many small businesses feel that the benefits of their product are obvious and don’t need explaining.

Solution: Be clear about how your product or service can help your target market.

5. Following others & getting distracted

What works for one business in one market doesn’t necessarily work for other businesses. Just because everyone is doing social media training or jumping on to Instagram doesn’t mean you automatically need to do that too.

Solution: Training & mentoring to help you and your staff implement your plan and be a sounding board for any deviations.

6. No information that explains your expertise

Right after a potential customer has worked out what your product can do and whether it can help them solve their problem, they want to know how you can support that claim. What credibility can you offer?

Solution: Demonstrate your expertise through examples, case studies, testimonials and weave it into your product or service descriptions.

7. Making it hard for customers

There are a number of things that need to come together to make it easy for customers to order from you. Relying on your customers to be committed and seek out the information they need is not a good strategy for success.

Solution: Review where you’re getting it right and what areas can be improved.

Taking a more strategic and considered approach to marketing may seem tedious if you just want to get on and sell more as soon as possible but a little bit of planning upfront will provide benefits that you can build on for many years to come.

Featured image via Pixabay under Creative Commons CC0

JIll-Brennan-Leaders-in-Heels-img Jill Brennan

Jill Brennan is a marketing consultant, mentor and the founder of Harbren Marketing. With around 20 years in the small business trenches, she takes the headache out of marketing by working with small business owners to build their own marketing engine. Get a more detailed guide to the 7 Small Business Marketing Mistakes at harbren.com.

It is easy to just be focused on the product you are selling, and trying to get your clients to purchase your fantastic product. You know how great it is, and perhaps you think everyone needs your product , too!

Clients, buyers and potential customers aren’t concerned about how great you think your product is. The question that the potential clients are asking themselves is “What is in this for me?”

What’s in it for me?

How can this fabulous product improve my life? How can it make my life easier? How can it make my life less complicated? How can this product help save me money? It’s about thinking about the benefits of what your product brings that is the selling point.

At the time, your product might be solving a problem that is totally off the radar of the potential clients you happen to be talking to. You may be raising awareness of your product , which is great, but when people meet you for the first time and hear about your amazing product, they are unlikely to buy. The purchase process takes a number of “Touch-points” before people buy – this is also dependant on the type of product and assuming your are connecting with people who potentially will need your product.

So what will get your potential clients – the ones who you are meant to serve who now know about your fabulous product – what will get them to buy?

1. The Benefits

Marketers and business coaches will talk about selling the benefits, not the features, of your product. This is because talking about the benefits explains to your potential client:

a. What is in the product for them, and
b. How they will solve a problem they are experiencing by using your product. They are interested in knowing how the product will change their lives for the better.

You should be able to clearly define your benefits for your clients if you want to sell your product successfully, and understand how these benefits impact the end user.

There’s four benefits – the financial, emotional, physical and spiritual benefits. So let’s see what these four benefits look like:

Financial: On first thought, everyone may think that this is the most important benefit, but actually it is much lower on the Importance Ladder. The financial benefits come after all the hard work is done, but may be what brings the purchaser to you first.

Emotional: This is what makes people buy – on emotion. How does you product reduce stress, help people overcome nervousness, improve people’s happiness and bring joy to people’s lives? The product has to make people’s lives easier in the areas they are emotionally attached to.

Physical: How does your product help physically? By giving some sound approach, this gives a framework either figuratively or actually. How does the product make people’s lives better in a constructive way.

Spiritual: This is about the feeling of community, support, belonging. This benefit is about engagement. The spiritual benefit is what raises the attention first and then the other benefits follow.

The question really is how does your product enrich and help your client to improve the issues they are facing? The product is just a means to bring the results: the benefits the purchasers are wanting to achieve.

Take some time to think the benefits through of your product because its the benefits of the product that will sell the product or service you are keen to sell.

2. Trust

If you have just met someone , you are unlikely to believe or want a product they are trying to sell to you. Purchasing is really dependant on the relationship the buyer has with the seller – the more trust that is built up over time, the more you have kept your name and business on the front of the buyers mind for that product. Then, when the client is experiencing the problem that your product solves , when the buyer understands the benefits that your products brings from a Financial, Emotional, Physical and Spiritual perspective plus you are on “front of mind”, then the client will give you a call and you can have a sales conversation.

But its essential to be connecting and building the trust. People buy from people they trust.

3. Timing

Buyers are not likely to buy until they have the need. The more urgent the need the more likely they are to buy, and if you have been keeping in touch, and have been building trust and a relationship with this potential buyer, the buyer will come straight to you when there is an urgent need, because they know the benefits your product brings, and that your product can solve their problem.

When the time is right, you have appropriate pricing and you can discuss your client’s options clearly and assuredly, you will be able to book the business because you have educated your potential client on the benefits of your products or services.

So , in summary, you might have a great product with many bells and whistles, but to sell the product, it’s all about the benefits it brings to the buyer. Work out what’s in it for the buyerand what benefits your product delivers, because at the end of the day, that’s the purpose of your product.

Featured image via Pixabay via Creative Commons CC0

Adrienne McLean
Adrienne McLean is the Founder of The Speakers Practice, which offers Presentation Skills training program for business people, individuals, teenagers and groups. Adrienne is an Internationally Accredited SpeakersTrainingCamp Instructor and is a Distinguished Toastmaster. Adrienne has studied marketing with Michael Port the author of the Top Business and Marketing book – BookYourselfSolid.

Adrienne, with her experience of growing up in a family business, working in the corporate and small business sector plus building her own business, gives an enthusiastic and practical approach to the benefits of presentation skills development, learning to promote yourself and building a successful business. She is a regular presenter, blogger and a contributing author in four recent business publications.

Follow her via Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+

Search Engine Optimisation – or SEO – is always a hot topic because it is so important – it allows your business to be found online with ease. It’s also been a hot topic because in the past, it’s been shrouded in mystery. It’s an area of business people need to be made aware of – if you get it wrong and Google penalises you, the consequences are dire.

In the past, SEO was a challenging game to play; a big industry grew around it which continued to perpetuate the view that if you were going to make it to page one on the search engine results page, you needed an expert who knew how to manage the search engine in the way that no ordinary digital marketer could. This is not the case anymore. Google wants transparency and actively discourages any smoke and mirrors search engine optimisation tactics.

So what is Search Engine Optimisation today?

Here’s a definition – Search Engine Optimisation is a set of techniques applied to your website so that the search engine (usually Google in Australia) recognises your site as relevant to a search query entered by the user. The search results that come from a user entering a search query is called a search engine results page or SERP.

The aim of SEO is to have the links to your pages appear naturally or organically on page one of the SERP. Consumer behaviour has changed, and these days we don’t usually go beyond page one of the search engine’s results pages to find what we’re looking for. If we don’t find what we want on the first page, we simply refine our search query or keywords. The position of the links on the search engine results page is a result of SEO techniques.

Why is Search Engine Optimisation the business of everyone in the business?

SEO and content are today’s dancing partners – the ice cream and jelly of digital marketing. The SEO process starts with keywords, and it’s no longer just the job of the digital marketing team to think about these keywords. Defining keywords helps a business understand what it represents for its customers – what value or solution the business provides to its customers and what business it is really in.

What do I mean by this? Here’s an example. I recently ran through a keyword exercise with a doctor for her general practice. We started with the big headings; womens health; mens health, etc. Then I asked – what do you do in these areas? The answer I got was thorough and technical – a lot of terms that I could not understand. The next question – if your customers were looking for that service, what would they type into a search engine? That’s when we get to the real value, finding the words that your customers would use to find your product or service. Only then can we build out a strategy for SEO and establish a framework that informs website navigation and where the content will go. Would the doctor have thought she would be part of determining the SEO structure for the buinsess? No, she didn’t. Will the GP be doing the SEO? No, she wont be. But as you can see from the example, she is an essential part of its success.

Any content creator in the business also needs to know the keywords for the business and the SEO strategy. In the case of the doctor’s business, that is going to include the receptionists, the practice nurse and the other doctors in the practice, all of whom write some form of content that will most likely be published on the website (as well as used in other formats).

Link Building is a lot like Public Relations

SEO includes ‘on-page’ techniques, using your keywords in the URL, page title, headings, content and images; as well as ‘off-page’ techniques, which is essentially having other sites link to your site. Anchor text are the words or phrases on the site that links to yours containing the hyperlink to your site. These should be your keywords. You can understand that “click here” or “learn more” won’t do a lot for you. Links and anchor text should always make sense to the visitor. This is a way you can assess quality. If a link or anchor text looks weird or out of place, like it doesn’t belong, then it doesn’t.

If your customers were looking for that service, what would they type into a search engine? That’s when we get to the real value, finding the words that your customers would use to find your product or service

Good linking is helped by having active social media profiles and publishing a quality blog that others link to. But it’s also simply a matter of ensuring that businesses and organisations that you do business with have links to your site on theirs. Look to your partners, organisations that you sponsor, your community affiliations. Does that university business school that your CEO just made a speech to have a link along with the info and pic about the event? Does that sports team you support have a number of links to your site? What about the sponsorship you make to the local training awards program, is there a link from their site to yours? You check and if not, you make the phone call or send the email and ask that the link be made and then you check again. If every organisation you partner with in a variety of ways over time included links from their site to yours, your off-page SEO would be doing well.

What can you do about making SEO the business of everyone in the business?

It’s likely that most people in the business, outside of marketing, have little idea of what SEO is, and even if they do, they won’t think that they have anything to do with it.

Here are my top five tips for increasing the focus of everyone in the business on SEO.

It starts with education. How this happens in businesses varies greatly but even the very simple “paper bag lunch” training session will go a long way.
During your training, avoid technicalities and keep it simple. Playing a keyword game is a great place to start. Choose a topic and have everyone come up with three different words or phrases that they would type into a search engine if they were looking for that thing. Run some live tests and show the results.
Demonstrate how other businesses in your sector are using keywords by visiting a few sites. Show page titles and URLs, as well as content, headings and subheadings and images for sites that have good SEO structure and ones that don’t.
Inform everyone what the target keywords are and benchmark your performance for those. After some dedicated keyword -focused SEO work, celebrate your success as you move up the rankings in Google.
Set a quality ‘link’ challenge. How many links can your team generate over a month or two?

What are your tips to encourage your organisation to focus on SEO?

Beth Powell

Beth Powell is the founder of Digital Marketing Club, a coaching and support program for marketers and non-marketers that provides direct answers to your questions about your own digital marketing and gets your roadblocks unstuck. She has become known as the go-to person for clear explanations about how digital marketing works and how businesses can use the various solutions to improve their marketing and grow their business. Beth is a sought after conference speaker and author of the soon to be published book “Drive More Business: A 5 step Guide to Digital Marketing for Auto Dealers”. For more information, email info@digitalmarketingclub.com.au.

The power of using video to boost business amazing. Many businesses are jumping on board to make videos. I’ve been making corporate videos for nearly 25 years and I’m seeing a lot of people making some avoidable mistakes in their rush and excitement of becoming YouTube stars.

Waste thousands

One of the common mistakes for people who are making videos is they rush out and buy expensive video equipment. They fork out thousands for a camera they don’t know how to use. It doesn’t have the functionality they need and they use it once and then leave it sitting it in the corner staring at them – making them feel guilty for the unrequited attention.

I recommend you hire the equipment you need if want to go down that path. Try it first. It will only cost a few hundred dollars for broadcast quality equipment. See what works for you. Learn what you need and what you don’t need. Then if you find yourself using it often you could look into buying something suitable. By this time you will have a better idea of what you need.

If you want to use your own equipment, then start out with your phone. The quality of the cameras on the phones these days are remarkable. With some decent lighting, you can create some useful videos.

Alternatively work with a camera operator who already owns his or her own equipment. They know how to use it, they know about white balance and depth of field and framing and lighting. Ask yourself do you want to be a video business or do you want to add value by doing what you do well?

Look stupid

It’s never been easier to make video content. It’s also never been easier to make videos that do damage to your brand. My advice is don’t release videos that make you look dodgy.

The first mistake people make is poor audio. We can tolerate poor quality vision, but we won’t tolerate poor sound. If you do make one purchase, make sure it is for a microphone. If you choose to dabble with your phone as a camera plug in a lapel microphone. You can pick up a decent one for $50.

When framing your image keep the head at the top of the frame. I often see people centring the subject’s face in the frame. They leave all this empty space above the head. Look at the entire contents of the frame and be aware of what is in it and how it should look.

Be aware of the lighting. You want to make sure the light is in front of the person being filmed and not behind. If you have it lit well, it look can great. If you have the light in the wrong spot, you can look silhouetted like you are on the witness protection scheme – not a great way to build credibility.

Wobbly shots are also not a good look. It is easy to get a tripod or even a little stand for your phone to ensure your shot is steady.

And if you are using your phone please, please hold it in landscape mode. If you hold it vertically you will end up with a thin video and big black bars on either side. That screams amateur to me. It might look good on your mobile phone Facebook feed, but that’s the only time.

Other common mistakes

When thinking of what to talk about, I see businesses wanting to focus on what they do. When meeting with my video clients I explain some harsh realities of business – your audience doesn’t care about you and what you do. They care about how that makes their life better.

You need to quickly relate your service or product to a better outcome for them. Keep asking yourself why does this matter to my viewer. Amateur business video makers can become bogged down explaining their processes and systems. They talk about themselves. In this transitory viewing world, you need to quickly engage your audience and let them know why they should be excited about your offering.

Another common issue is videos that are too long. For promotional videos they need to be under 90 seconds. If you have more to say then make a series of short videos.

So slow down, take a breath and ask for some professional help so that you don’t waste your money or damage your credibility.

What mistakes do you see business owners making with videos?

Geoff Anderson is owner of Sonic Sight, a corporate video production company. He presents on using video in business and is the author the Amazon Bestseller “Shoot Me Now – Making videos to boost business”. To find out more about Geoff and to learn about the 5 Mistakes to avoid when making videos, visit www.sonicsight.com.au or visit www.geoffanderson.com.au

Do you admire those succinct communicators, the ones that find it incredibly easy to leave modestly at the door as they talk about themselves, or the ones that are so passionate about what they do they hypnotise you with positivity? They’re engaging aren’t they?

Communicating is essential in order to attract new clients, as well as retain them. In the world of PR this is called ‘engaging your audience’. Public relations has a very specific role here; and it can carry out that role on many different levels, and with differing degrees of success.

You don’t have to be a motivational speaker, or an exhibitionist, just consider the importance of engaging communication – it helps build solid relationships, creates wider understanding and awareness, and invites open and honest conversations.

Here are three tips to help you create engaging communication from your business and be more engaging in your PR:

1. Be transparent

That means no sales fluff or hyperboles. Just be honest and let others within your organisation; customers, and advocates, learn about what’s going on in your business. Communicate your future plans, growth, investments, successes and achievements. Sharing this information is valuable PR, it helps create an understanding and awareness about who you are and what you do but more importantly it creates trust and loyalty as you form genuine relationships through genuine dialogue.

2. Share positive stories

Everyone loves to hear good news. We like to read it too; so consider how your business can communicate a positive vibe. Do you have a fantastic human interest story just waiting to leap into the public realm? Maybe you’ve achieved something wonderful for charity, maybe a good deed has transformed someone’s life, or maybe your company expansion plans will create masses of local employment opportunities. Communicating positivity in the face of our perpetually negative media can seem like a challenge, but try it, we all like things that make us feel good and secretly the media does too.

3. Find your enthusiasm

Enthusiasm is like a huge smile, once you’ve shared it it will be carried on. Embrace what is good about your business and be enthusiastic about it. I know there’s trepidation here, but ignore those endless rows of people that make it their job to dampen the spirit of enthusiasm. Think about your company values, good service, staff development, great after sales care; and tell everyone about it. Trust me its worth sharing, and once you do others will share for you too.

There you have it, engagement, just share your stories and celebrate communication – you’ll be an engagement expert before you know it.

Colette Lowe is the Founder and owner of Chew PR. Colette has worked in PR for over 15 years. She has seen both sides and worked for consultancy and in-house teams providing her with an insight not many see. Colette will be contributing to the Public Relations section. She is based in Wakefield, England.

photo credit: How to Earn Customer Loyalty By Focusing on Customer Experience via photopin (license)

Whether you are aspiring to create a large or small business, it is essential to build your brand from the onset. Your brand immediately reflects to your potential customers who and what you are about, a form of identity. Therefore, when you put your brand out there, you better have a clear understanding of the market you are targeting, what appeals to them and how to reach them.

When my business partner Fiona Ericcson and I first started our business Sticks & Stones we both agreed that before actively marketing ourselves, we wanted to spend time on developing a strategically defined brand. In an industry such as ours (Landscape Design) we immediately recognised that there were many talented designers out there, but very few had an inviting, complementary website.

Considering we were in an industry of design, we both thought that was very interesting. So, we decided to use this to our advantage and ensure that our website, logo and image was a stand-out; a reflection of our talent and abilities. In return, we have found that clients and other designers in the industry have taken us more seriously. They instantly recognise that what we are offering is a clean, professional and contemporary design that comes from a reputable business. Then we took this brand and our business and proved it.

Below are 6 ways we think are necessary to help build your brand:

1. Define your brand

Before getting too excited, you need to start with the basics, such as defining what your brand is. It is important to review your product or service and understand the customers you will be targeting. Without understanding your market and customer base, you will not be able to connect your business with your target audience.

Sticks & Stones understood that the market we were targeting instantly were home-owners, aged around 30-50 years old and earning a decent salary, as landscape design is a luxury, not a necessity. This meant we needed to make our branding appealing to this target audience. Stylish and professional, but still approachable, is what we decided on. From here, we had a clear understanding of the direction we were heading with our brand.

2. Colour your brand

Something important to consider is the colour of your brand. Once this is chosen, it will be reflected across your website, business cards and logo. Sometimes it can be the difference between someone spending more time on your website, scrolling through your products and services, or leaving instantly.

Most people don’t realise, but colours and combinations can have a strong impact on your reaction. The Sticks & Stones colour scheme is a soft brown and deep soft green. Both of these colours blended well together and were a reflection of the materials we worked with, soil and plants.

3. Create a memorable logo

Following naturally behind your brand colour is the creation of your logo. The logo identifies a business by using a symbol, mark, or icon. It is not necessarily used to describe anything about your business, or what you do, (although sometimes that works well too) but it simply allows your customers to recognize your business. So, it is even more important to make the symbol or icon stand out, so your potential customer can recognize your logo instantly.

4. Develop a tagline

Create a short, captivating statement that encompasses your vision and brand. This allows your customer to understand what you are about and what you represent. At Sticks & Stones we used the statement, “Bringing the outdoors in.” It was a clean, simple and straightforward sentence that provided the potential customer with insight into the industry we are in.

5. Be consistent

Overall, it is very important to be consistent. This relates back to establishing the foundations of your brand. If you have consistency in your colour scheme, brand, the product and service you offer, then your customer will learn to recognise you as a reliable and referable source. Spending time on templates, your website, business cards and any other promotional products will ensure your brand is seamlessly consistent.

Although it feels overwhelming when you are starting out, working through the above process will ensure that you will have a strong and memorable brand identity; one that customers and clients will choose to refer time and time again.

And lastly?

6. Prove it

Now this should be the easy part. You know your business, you know your product. So work hard to provide a good product or service and people will hear about it. Word of mouth is one of the best methods to building a positive brand identity, so get your name out there. Market yourselves, get testimonials and enter industry competitions like we did to build up your profile and get your brand out there.

Fiona and I have the benefit of being female in a male dominated industry. Similar to Sass & Bide, we are recognised and remembered as the female duo in the landscape design industry. This has worked in our favour and we strive to uphold the brand we have created, through ourselves and our work. This is something our competitors cannot offer and as we are new, targeting and utilising our stand out strengths was very important.

Our focus on branding has paid off, as we become a more well known name in the industry. From networking events to joining industry associations, we have been provided opportunities we would not normally have access to. Recently we presented at a Landscape Forum on our business structure which provided us with further networking opportunities and led to additional jobs. We have also entered an industry competition to build a show garden at a major event in our industry – Grand Designs Live. We were successful and are still using the images we captured from the garden today! Spread the word about you and your brand. We were also noted as “Ones to watch” in popular magazine House & Garden’s ‘Women in Design’ special after being put forward by another networking contact. Every opportunity that has been presented to us, we have accepted. In doing so, we have more potential for our brand and name to be mentioned, spoken about and marketed.

Now it’s your turn!

How does your brand stand out from the crowd? Tell us in the comments below!

Julia Thomas is a skilled Landscape Designer and one half of the duo behind Sydney-based landscape design business Sticks & Stones Landscape Design. She was recently featured in House & Garden as ‘Ones to Watch’ in Landscape Design. Julia also writes feature blogs for the online website Garden Drum.