Author: Richard Milton

Hello there! My name is Richard Milton and I'm the founder and owner of e-nexus. We are a Bournemouth based consultancy that specialises in Strategic Marketing Planning & Performance Measurement. I regularly blog sharing some of our latest thoughts on strategic marketing and marketing performance. Showing how they can influence and transform your marketing efforts. Please take some time to read some of our blogs and subscribe for future posts.
Bournemouth Chamber sponsors New 2 Business Networking

New2Business Networking sponsored by Bournemouth Chamber

Posted on by Richard Milton

The south coast’s only networking club for new businesses is partnering with the Bournemouth Chamber of Trade & Commerce (BCTC) to take on the ‘challenging’ times ahead.

The BCTC will become official sponsor of New2Business Networking at the Marsham Court Hotel in Bournemouth, from its next meeting on January 23, 2019.

The Marsham Court founded New2Business in January 2015 to provide support for new business owners and trainees of larger businesses.

In the past four years the free to attend, bi-monthly meetings have hosted around 300, new start-ups.

Jane Swift, Business Development Director at the hotel in Russell-Cotes Road, said: “We are thrilled to gain the support and expertise of the BCTC, particularly as we all proceed towards the uncertainties surrounding Brexit.”

She continued: “During the last four years, New2Business has welcomed hundreds of new companies which have reached a certain level but need further help to grow.

“We enable people to share their experiences, ask questions and ask for advice.

“Starting a new business is a big step and connecting with other businesses is key – but it can also be daunting.

“Our members tell us they appreciate the informality of our meetings and the opportunity to share the wisdom of speakers who have already achieved success with their businesses.

“Working with the BCTC and its diverse membership will only enrich what we offer.”

Richard Milton, Executive Director of the BCTC and MD of marketing consultancy e-nexus Ltd, agreed: “This partnership is a perfect fit for both New2Business and the Chamber.

“I myself have attended New2Business as a business owner for over 18 months and have been immensely impressed by everything about it, from its informal atmosphere to its level of attendance and the way it supports its members.

“The BCTC was born over a hundred years ago, but has the same very relevant aim – to support the local business community by providing networking opportunities, the very latest business information, training and development.”

He continued: “The south coast continues to witness encouraging business growth and as Brexit and its implications for business unfold, there will be an even greater need than ever for the BCTC and New2Business. I am excited about the months ahead.”

New2Business Networking meetings are free to attend and feature a speaker, followed by an informal networking session.

How are you measuring your marketing impact?

How much is marketing contributing to the success of your business? Do you know?

Posted on by Richard Milton

Given the availability of data and insight within all organisations, there has never been a better time to measure and regularly monitor the performance and impact of your marketing. Now is the time to identify what works, what could work better and what you should stop to ensure you get the most out of the marketing for your business.

So where to start?

In many cases simply planning ahead and identifying what you want to measure is a great starting point. Then thinking about how you could go about measuring and monitoring the the impact of the activity. Finally, consider what measurement actions and systems you need to put in place to gather the insight and data you need.

Need a place to start?

There are so many readily available systems and processes for you to use when measuring, monitoring and enhancing your marketing impact. Some examples include:

• Adding a web analytics tool e.g. Google Analytics to your website to track and monitor your website performance. Are you reaching the right audience and are they engaging with your site?

• Monitoring the performance of your keywords for your website to ensure your Search Engine performance is optimised. Do you appear high enough in google so that your customers will find you?

• Using an email based system e.g. Mailchimp that allows you to monitor your email open rates, click through rates, unsubscribes etc. Do your subscribers respond to your emails or one type of email campaign compared to another?

• Monitoring your social media demographics and engagement levels. Do your followers match your target audience? Which channel is more effective for brand building vs sales generation? What posts are more effective than other posts e.g. image driven vs video based?

• Conducting Net Promotor Score (NPS) research to understand your customers loyalty to your business. Are they willing to recommend your business to their family and friends?

• Adding UTM tracking codes to your digital advertising, social media activity or email campaigns. How do the different channels drive traffic to your website? Which channel is more effective? How does one advertising media e.g. Google paid ads compared to ads you run for example on Facebook?

• Using a CRM system to record and monitor customer engagement and sales. What approaches generate the most leads and which of these turn into paying customers?

• You can use the same CRM data to explore which customers are the most important to your business? What characteristics do this customers share and how can you find more businesses or individuals who share the same characteristics to help drive forward your business?

At e-nexus we specialise in Strategic Marketing Planning & Performance Measurement. Need some help to work out how best to monitor and measure your marketing then email info@e-nexus.co.uk or visit our website at www.e-nexus.co.uk

About the author

Richard Milton is founder of e-nexus Ltd – a Marketing Consultancy based in Bournemouth specialising in Strategic Marketing Planning and Performance Measurement. He is a career long marketer holding numerous senior marketing positions throughout his 20+ years in the profession.

Describing himself as a marketing strategist, Richard spends his time working with business owners, managers and marketers to help them improve their marketing decisions, investments and impact by connecting data, insight and creativity alongside his strategic experience.

How important are existing customers to your business

How important are existing customers to your business? Do you know?

Posted on by Richard Milton

How important are existing customers to your business? Do you know?

Who doesn’t want a good base of individuals or businesses who are loyal, regular, repeat customers. We all do surely, it makes sound business sense.

But do you know how important existing customers are to you business? Are you confident that you are placing enough emphasis on retaining existing customers compared to attracting new customers? Perhaps now is the time to find out by calculating your Returning vs New Customer Metrics.

These metrics will help you understand the real value of these two groups to your business and enable you, as with any good metric, to make decisions on how much time and money you should put into your marketing for the different groups.

• Start by calculating your Total Number of Customers either at a specific point of time e.g. 1st January or over a point of time e.g. in 2018. Now split these into new customers and repeat customers to see your new customer to repeat customer ratio.

• Next work out the Value of an Average New Customer to your business vs that of a Returning Customer over the lifetime of your relationship. We generally recommend it’s worth also considering the costs you incur with attracting new customers e.g. advertising and retaining existing customers e.g. loyalty incentives. You can now see the costs of generating business and how the business generated between the two groups varies over time. Does that value change over the period a customer stays with you?

• Finally look at calculating the Average Time a Customer Remains Loyal to your business. This is a good indicator of your customers views towards your organisation, how good you are at maintaining existing customer relationships and their likely purchase intentions.

What next?

With this understanding conduct a review of what you do to attract new customers and keep existing customers. Think about the time, money and effort you put into these two groups. Have you got the balance right? Should you for example amend your advertising spend or customer relationship management approaches? Should you consider incentives to either attract new customers or keep existing customers? Perhaps if you discover customers aren’t particularly loyal you should consider loyalty schemes or enhancing the quality of your customer service.

Whatever you do with this knowledge you’ll be in a much stronger position as a business to maximise the benefits from both groups and drive your business forward.

About the author

Richard Milton is founder of e-nexus Ltd – a Marketing Consultancy based in Bournemouth specialising in Strategic Marketing Planning and Performance Measurement. He is a career long marketer, holding numerous senior marketing positions throughout his 20 years in the profession. Describing himself as a marketing strategist, performance and measurement specialist, Richard spends time working with business owners, managers and marketers to help them improve their marketing decisions, investments and impact by harnessing the power of data and insights alongside his strategic experience.

Richard’s biggest passion is to help marketers show the value of their efforts and give them the confidence and skills to be able to share the story with their senior managers. Richard helps organisations understand the importance of measurement and metrics as well as appreciate the breadth of data available to them in todays marketing world.

You can read more from Richard at his measure4success blog at www.measure4success.wordpress.com.  To find out more about e-nexus visit www.e-nexus.co.uk

 

How loyal are your customers?

Posted on by Richard Milton

What do your customers think of your business? Would they recommend you, your products or services to their family and friends? Calculate your Net Promoter Score (NPS) and gauge your customer’s overall satisfaction with your business and their loyalty to your brand.

Net Promoter Score is used by many companies to gauge the loyalty of a firm’s customer relationships and serves as an alternative to traditional customer satisfaction research. What’s more, it’s felt by many that there is a strong correlation between a high Net Promoter Score and company growth. Your NPS can be as low as −100 (everybody is a detractor) or as high as +100 (everybody is a promoter). An NPS that is positive (i.e., higher than zero) is felt to be good, and an NPS of +50 is excellent.

Calculating your Net Promoter Score

To calculate your Net Promoter Score ask your customers, most likely in a simple survey how likely they are to recommend your company to a friend or colleague, using a scale of zero to 10, with 10 being highest. Then work out the percentage of responses that scored your company between seven and 10, then zero and six. Subtract the zero-to-six percentage from the seven-to-10 percentage, and you have your Net Promoter Score.

You can also take the opportunity when surveying your customers to ask some further questions on how and what you can improve to potentially push your NPS even higher.