Marketing tools of the 21st century
Small and medium enterprises have limited marketing budgets. While you are able to launch a brochure or leaflet and a website, costly advertising campaigns on TV, radio and in newspapers might not be within your reach. Nor is it that necessary to use these traditional methods. You also need not make attempts to get to know editors or journalists in the hope that they will write a story about your company.
Social media
A growing number of companies and organisations use social media for business reasons. They reach out to clients and prospective clients, listen to what their clients say and build social capital. New networks are being built on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and value is being offered to clients and others by means of company or organisational blogs and digital newsletters.
Continue to use traditional marketing methods if you can afford them but do so sparingly. If you do know editors by all means use your contacts - but also build your network or networks with social media tools if you are not already actively busy doing so.
This range of Web-based marketing, PR and social media tools place SMEs, non-profits and others in a position of running very effective marketing campaigns - from your PC, laptop or mobile phone. The costs are minimal. The creation of blogs, digital newsletters, of building a presence on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter will cost you nothing - except time and an effort to learn about them and to actually use them.
Visit www.wordpress.com (an open-source product) or access Google's Blogspot through the Google Website at www.google.com and be assured of two super blogging software products.
Listen to a most interesting interview (in podcast/radio format) between Paul Dunay and David Meerman Scott, the author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR by clicking on my delicious link.
I bookmark items on delicious on a narrow range of topics on the Web. Visit delicious to see how this bookmarking site works, if you are not yet familiar with this great service.
New consumer mindset
Consumers are tired of hype, of marketing messages being forced on them by TV, magazines and newspapers. Seth Godin, an influential writer on marketing, points out that these messages basically interrupt the TV programmes which you enjoy viewing. They clutter the pages which you enjoy reading. Many consumers are turning to Google, Yahoo and other search engines as their main sources of information on products and services. Information on any conceivable type of service and product is immediately accessible by entering a few search phrases. Such phrases lead the consumer to a broad range of websites and blogs.
Consumers are also tired of dealing with bland, impersonal companies and with off-hand call centres. Informed, sophisticated consumers are not willing to put up with average products and average services. They seek up-to-date information, interaction, direct communication and honest products and services. They also search for the opinions of other consumers and experts who supply comments on blogs.
It is almost certain that you have used Google for exactly the reasons mentioned. You know what websites and blogs impressed you.
Ensure that quality information about your company's products and services is available on the Web. Are you getting the maximum advantage from Web searches launched about your products and services?
Is your website really informative and worth visiting?
Interact with your clients
SMEs should interact directly with clients and prospective clients. Build your company around products and services which will provide extraordinary value to your clients or customers. Use social media and take your marketing and PR directly to your clients and prospective clients and develop conversations with them. Make them co-creators of your products. Allow them to make inputs and react to their needs and wishes. They will spread the word about you and become your co-marketers.
ABPLAN is able to advise and steer you in appropriate directions - although the application of social media sites is becoming more sophisticated each day.
eZine or a digital newsletter vs. websites
Prospective clients have to find your website and all the forms of social media that you are using at present. Of course, search engine optimisation, link building and pay per click increases the likelihood of being found. But only if your website and other social media sites offer true value will visitors return.
Do not ignore the effectiveness of eZines or digital newsletters. They have one huge advantage over websites namely you can target them to reach the inboxes of specific subscribers, again and again. Will a visitor visit your website again and again?
A main marketing objective would be to obtain names and addresses (or urls) of strangers. When strangers opt-in to your newsletter they become acquaintances who start to get to know you and trust you. It might take a few weeks or months until this marketing process leads to a strategic selling conversation.
A digital newsletter is a most cost-effective form of marketing with which to reach your targeted audiences repeatedly without fail. Your newsletter builds knowledge about you and subscribers start to trust you through your regular contact with them. Out of sight out of mind.
Your single biggest company asset is your subscriber database and a growing database will over time lead to an increasing number of sales.
You might be resistant to the notion of sending out newsletters as you resist receiving a large volume of mail including irrelevant newsletters. The key to growing a subscriber database lies in writing a newsletter of real value which your subscribers appreciate receiving.
I regularly read five content-rich newsletters that appeal to me while deleting the rest except if I "know" the author. I read them as I read my daily paper. It is not always the most exiting thing to do, but I cannot do without them as ever so often they contain nuggets of wisdom or information that I truly appreciate. Often this is information that I put to good use.
Ensure that your newsletter content is valuable and attuned to the needs and problems of your subscribers - and the possibility of being deleted or being unsubscribed will be small.
My Growing Client newsletter
Because of conversations with my clients, the content of my newsletter seems to appeal to a wide range of my clients and other non-client subscribers.
Assist me by letting me know which topics interest you. Join the conversation via my blog which carries the main content of my newsletters. Please leave comments...Growing Clients.
I appreciate the reactions of clients - and of new acquaintances and subscribers who are not necessarily clients, as many are outside South Africa.
Should you wish to receive my newsletter, simply collect a free aticle on 7 Tips on juggling your office and life which includes a bonus of a gratis subscription. Cancel if you do not like it.
If you landed on this page without having read the previous page, please first go to marketing - client-centric as the client value proposition (or what the client values) is the departure point of all marketing.
Go to worth reading for details about The New Rules of Marketing & PR by David Meerman Scott and about Meatball Sundae by Seth Godin. Gain further insights about how marketing has changed because of the Internet.
Last modified: 18-11-2011