Wanted: Marketing advice on a shoe string for the complete novice #marketing #blogging
Many of the Birds are brilliant at social media, blogging, SEO, marketing etc, and I’ve learned a lot from them. But this is all new to me – I’m learning from scratch. So this blog is my take on what I’ve picked up so far, for those of us who have no clue what RSS means, and wouldn’t know a feed burner if it bit us on the nose.
As a small non-profit in a niche market with no budget, Evenbreak (www.evenbreak.co.uk) needs to find every cheap and effective way it can of getting its name in front of our small target market (in this case, HR Directors of large companies). When I started a training company in 1990 marketing was a real challenge. No computers (I borrowed an electric typewriter from my husband’s business in the evenings and weekends). No internet. No desk top publishing. I had a printer make up some brochures and delivered them on foot around the local trading estates.
The opportunities are very different now.
My aspiration is for John Doe, HR Director of Big Corporate plc to be exposed to Evenbreak through:
- A hard copy letter passed to him by the Chief Executive (he’s more likely to act on a letter passed on by his CEO than a telephone enquiry passed on by his PA – this has been the single most effective marketing activity so far!);
- Reading one or more articles about Evenbreak in the professional journals he reads (e.g. HR Zone, Recruitment International, HR Magazine etc – this costs nothing, but takes a bit of time, persuading editors to let you write an article they are happy to publish);
- Seeing an interview on television about Evenbreak on a local news item about employment (through a press release sent to local BBC and independent television stations resulting in a piece on Midlands Today);
- Hearing a news item about Evenbreak on local radio (ditto above on Radio WM and Bridge Radio);
- Either John following Evenbreak on Twitter, or maybe people he is following retweeting our news;
- Being connected with us on LinkedIn, and accepting an invitation to join the group on Employing Disabled People;
- Perhaps being on the Evenbreak page on Facebook (although this is more likely for candidates than employers);
- One of the above, or a search on google sending John to the Evenbreak website and blog;
- Reading the two blogs a week on the Evenbreak site (mostly by me and with some guest bloggers);
- Reading guest blogs on other sites;
- Buying an e-book on a relevant subject from the site;
- Signing up to the e-bulletin and receiving regular updates, links to useful articles/blogs, some handy tips/hints;
- John attending an event where either I am speaking, or there are Evenbreak leaflets in the delegate packs;
- John attending or hearing about the high profile launch at the House of Commons.
If John comes across us in just four or five of the above, hopefully that will be enough for him to have confidence in trying the service out to see if it works for his company.
Many of these are already in place and the rest are imminent. Most cost nothing but time and imagination. Some will have a cost attached (a direct mailshot, SEO [if it’s done properly – see Nikki], setting up a WordPress blog [see Babs], writing good blogs [see Sarah], writing good e-books [see Suzie], producing marketing materials and paying for a launch event) but the majority are free.
I don’t yet have the budget for paid advertising (which I’m not convinced would be a good investment anyway) or pay per click advertising (which might well be).
What cheap but effective marketing tactics do you use in your businesses and what else could/should I be thinking about?
About JaneHattonJane Hatton helps people with disabilities find a job through an Even Break. If you are an employer who is looking to recruit a talented individual from a Jane, then take a look at how you can here
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12 Responses to Wanted: Marketing advice on a shoe string for the complete novice #marketing #blogging
Revenge: A dish best served cold?
I’m not a nasty person. I’ve never in my life deliberately set out to hurt someone, or cause them pain. But right now, and for the past three or four years, on and off, my thoughts have been filled with fantasies of revenge. Now I have the opportunity, and I can’t decide what to do. [...]
What a coincidence – I’ve just written a blog to go out tomorrow [I hope] about Marketing. I’ll give you a call Jane.
Lynn Tulip recently posted..How do your Career Interests match up?
Twitter: LynnTulip
Hi Jane
I think you’re pretty well on the money with your approach strategy to CEOs/ MDs of Big Corporate Plcs.
BUT the big difference from my background and gut feel would be in the tactics:
I’d phone the CEO/ MD’s number One PA. The big thing here is being authentic – and you are.
I’d appreciate that most of the time she’s up to her eyes and ask for 5 (/10) minutes to outline why I was contacting her (and it normally is a female) and ask her advice for my next step.
In my experience these are, without exception, bright, intelligent women who have the best interests of their boss at heart – woe betide the boss where this isn’t the case
Understanding the ‘hot buttons’ – and the potential pluses (in advance or gleaning the finer points during your coversation with the PA) that your proposal could accord to the ‘big man’ is essential.
This PA is the Gatekeeper of all Gatekeepers: She can keep you out… and she certainly will do that to all lesser mortals… yet she can also open the door to an audition for you…
If your plight is a no hoper the PA will probably tell you so – maybe even why – and you’ll save a lot of time, hoping, ‘maybes’ and ‘what ifs’
If the PA believes you’re in with a hope she’ll advise you on your best approach and follow up/ follow through. And be there to fight your corner when you’re not
I’ve used this approach selectively over the years and love it! You’re great on the phone so I’d also love to hear you’ve had a go at it – and how it works for you!
Linda Mattacks recently posted..Let’s Build A Successful Business!
Twitter: Linda_Mattacks
Linda,
As ever, you’re absolutely on the button. Every organisation has a formal structure, the one written in the works’ manual, and an informal structure that reflects the way the organisation works. A department leader, for example, may well be better placed to compete for scant resources because she’s having an affair with the M.D.’s P.A. who tells her things.
If you’re really serious about getting anywhere with an organisation then far better use the informal organisation, or at least understand it. Do you know anyone who knows anything about the organisation you’re proposing to canvass who will tell you who best to contact?
If all else fails go to the company website and find pages devoted to investor relations. Often this will name board members, and all manner or information not available to regular customers.
Unless you know board members personally always go through their P.A.s, never make general enquiries or you will get sidelined onto someone whose job it is to keep contact from people like you to a minimum.
If you’re serious about getting a foothold in a company isn’t it worth investing some time in it, and similar ventures, and playing a longer game? If you look at the biographies of many who are successful in business you will find that once they decided that they wanted a specific company as a client they spent years ‘stalking’ them.
Stephen
Stephen Bray recently posted..How Misunderstanding Spooky Quantum Physics May Lead To Business Failure?
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Thanks Linda,
Yes, I think you are right – the Chief Exec’s PA is the way forward. Thank you for your comments.
Jane
Twitter: evenbreak
Hey, Jane;
What problem is John trying to solve that you can help him with? If you had five minutes with him, what could you tell him that would alleviate (or promise to alleviate) a problem or stressor HE has?
Are you helping him (or his organization) with a PR problem? A retention problem? A diversity problem? He doesn’t really care about what he can do for YOU yet… so your message has to be about what you can do for him. And I do mean for HIM, ideally. Helping his organization isn’t quite as strong a pitch.
If you can refine your message from the “What’s in it for him” perspective, and get it across in a couple of hundred words at most, you’re ready to address avenues to get to him. But this is the prerequisite, and without it you’ll waste most opportunities that do work to get his attention.
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Hello Karilee,
Yes, I’ve been able to articulate the message in a “what’s in it for the customer” way quite well – it’s just a case of gtting to the right person with that message.
Thank you for your comment, much appreciated.
Jane
Twitter: evenbreak
wow Jane,i just join today your blog and read your introduction i like it ,Thanks ,nice to meet you and really i love birds
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Jane, there seems to be a lot of confusion between ‘marketing’ and ‘marketing communications’ in recent discussions online.
The difference is more obvious the bigger an enterprise gets, when responsibilities are delegated to separate departments and outside agencies but it is still an important distinction for a micro-enterprise to make.
Smaller enterprises invariably have to heap a bundle of management responsibilities onto one person. To draw a parallel in accounting, even a small firm distinguishes between book-keeping (keeping accurate financial records) and management accounts (financial information for decision-making), even if the same person is responsible for both and they can merge into the same activity. So marketing and marketing communications should be seen as distinct activities with different purposes.
Marketing used to be functionally divided into the four ‘P’s — Product; Place; Price; Promotion. What you are talking about in your post is promotion: but before promotion begins, a true marketing approach means that you need to have ensured that your product and price are market-ready and market-acceptable. Small enterprises can rarely afford the luxury of market research or trial launches so it is normally carried out as part of day-to-day operations, using feedback from early adopters..
In any case, many pundits now advocate — in the era of Web 3.0 and social media — using the five ‘E’s — Experience (instead of Product); Everywhere (instead of Place); Exchange (instead of Price); Evangelism (instead of Promotion) and, finally, Enablement — using crowdsourcing, polls, wikis, viral effects, SEO, blogs and social media.
‘Everywhere’ indicates the universal nature of the Web but I suspect there is still a natural limit to Evenbreak’s reach — probably mainland UK? Exchange is the practice of having a pricing model which allows some initial functionality free and gradually charging as additional features are used.
What you describe in you post is Promotion — now better-labelled Evangelism and Enablement. Two commoner names for these (marketing communications) functions are Outbound Marketing Communications and Attraction Marketing Communications (or Inbound or Digital Footprint or any number of terms which online snake oil sellers are trying to make their own).
You may think I am being pedantic in continually using the term Marketing Communications (MC) — and I may be — but the division is useful if it persuades an enterprise to return to the marketing drawing board if some of the fundamentals of a service prove unacceptable to its marketplace through sensitive, two-way MC.
What you have described, very thoroughly, is an Inbound MC Programme, with the exception of the hard copy letter, passed by the Chief Executive, and events. These I would class as Outbound MC — Evangelism.
I have worked for a start-up over the last few weeks and, because he had done his market research quite carefully, I helped him plan both Inbound and Outbound MC Programmes which I am helping him to execute.
Why both? Because he need short-term results and I have facilitated acquiring data on his target individuals at 30p a shot (commercial property landlords in development mode) and using a home-based B2B telemarketer whom we can task, flexibly, at a minimum of two hours at a time.
She sets up appointments and feeds the data into an online CRM system which also links into the email marketing database for a number of follow-up emails according to landlords’ response and resulting position in the sales funnel. Plans for a webinar in the new year are in hand.
We run a modest PPC AdWords Campaign, partly to help us research and optimise our Keyword List.
We are also running an Inbound MC Programme — blog, social media, links, SEO, guest blogs, LinkedIn Q&A, digital PR — but results will take two to three months to come through and, meanwhile, the Outbound MC Programme is getting the sales funnel moving immediately.
We use Paul R Smith’s SOSTAC® Planning System [http://www.prsmith.org/sostac.html] and have created two documents — a Marketing Plan and Marketing Communications Programme — using the SOSTAC template. Rather than written in stone, they are in Google Documents and available to the whole team and continuously amended to take account of marketing intelligence and remarks from telemarketing and data from the CRM system and a Digital PR Dashboard (also in Google Docs as a spreadsheet).
The Dashboard has all the indices necessary to monitor and measure the progress of the MC Programmes and help us decide how much telemarketing or inbound activity to commission each week to meet sales targets.
When referring to your (Inbound MC) tactics, you say “most cost nothing but time and imagination”: time and imagination are in short supply, probably more so than cash. That is why my customers pay me — to supply them. They also pay for dedicated execution which is a key part of creativity. Ideas need to be delivered!
I am a great admirer of your enterprise — in both meanings of the word — and, if I can advise in any way, I would be happy to provide some of that free time you mention.
Jeremy Dent recently posted..Bread of life: recapturing real food from the commercial bread-makers
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Thanks Jeremy for your comment – a lot to think about there. Yes, you are right – I was talking about promotion rather than marketing in its broadest sense.
Twitter: evenbreak
Wow… Your comments could be an article Jeremy, but the explanation that you describe is very helpful.
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Thanks, Clara. I might turn it into a blog.
Jeremy Dent recently posted..Bread of life: recapturing real food from the commercial bread-makers
Twitter: jeremy_dent
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