Tag: web usability

Marketing is so much more than promotion

Posted on by Richard Milton

No matter the size of your business every penny you spend & every hour you commit to your marketing has to count towards you achieving your business goals.

Promotion is an important part in your marketing efforts but ‘effective marketing’, the entire marketing that satisfies the needs of your customers is so much more. You can have a great promotional campaign but if your product or service isn’t wanted or you are charging prices that are above what your target customers will pay then it will struggle to deliver.

 

To have ‘effective marketing’ you need to consider a wider range of factors than just promotion. Much of it isn’t difficult with the result being that it can transform the impact of your marketing. Here are just a few ideas:

• Start with product. Give customers what they need not what you think they need. Think wider than the actual product – consider the other features that surround your product – delivery methods and times, guarantees, installations, refunds, exchange policies – all of which can make your product or service more attractive.

• Speak to your customers. Ask them what they need and want from you. Find out what they think of your product or service and how it can be improved.

• Ask your customers for reviews. If they are liking what you do then encourage them to share with others what they think of your product and to post reviews on-line.

• Regularly monitor your sector and competitors. Consider how tastes are changing or new products are being launched and adapt where necessary.

• Make it easy for people to acquire your product. That maybe how they can find you or buy your product on-line. Make sure your website is mobile responsive and is search engine optimised.

• Develop your team. Ensure that everyone who works for you has great knowledge about your business and offer. Ensure they also have the right attitude & provide the level of service your customers would expect.

• Be responsive to your customers. Ensure you follow up on enquiries quickly – not many buy products or services from a company they have had to chase or have had to wait a long time to respond.

• Deal with customer complaints well. No doubts you have all had customers who haven’t been completely satisfied but how you deal and resolve their compliant will make all the difference to whether they buy from you again or recommend you to others.

• Measure, measure, measure. If you don’t measure your marketing you can’t understand, control or improve it. Use tools such as Google Analytics to see how well your website is working, monitor your email performance or conduct market research to understand what your target audience think about you and your product or service.

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 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.

e-nexus Ltd

Marketing is so much more than promotion

Posted on by Richard Milton

No matter the size of your business every penny you spend & every hour you commit to your marketing has to count towards you achieving your business goals.

Promotion is an important part in your marketing efforts but ‘effective marketing’, the entire marketing that satisfies the needs of your customers is so much more. You can have a great promotional campaign but if your product or service isn’t wanted or you are charging prices that are above what your target customers will pay then it will struggle to deliver.

Print

To have ‘effective marketing’ you need to consider a wider range of factors than just promotion. Much of it isn’t difficult with the result being that it can transform the impact of your marketing. Here are just a few ideas:

• Start with product. Give customers what they need not what you think they need. Think wider than the actual product – consider the other features that surround your product – delivery methods and times, guarantees, installations, refunds, exchange policies – all of which can make your product or service more attractive.

• Speak to your customers. Ask them what they need and want from you. Find out what they think of your product or service and how it can be improved.

• Ask your customers for reviews. If they are liking what you do then encourage them to share with others what they think of your product and to post reviews on-line.

• Regularly monitor your sector and competitors. Consider how tastes are changing or new products are being launched and adapt where necessary.

• Make it easy for people to acquire your product. That maybe how they can find you or buy your product on-line. Make sure your website is mobile responsive and is search engine optimised.

• Develop your team. Ensure that everyone who works for you has great knowledge about your business and offer. Ensure they also have the right attitude & provide the level of service your customers would expect.

• Be responsive to your customers. Ensure you follow up on enquiries quickly – not many buy products or services from a company they have had to chase or have had to wait a long time to respond.

• Deal with customer complaints well. No doubts you have all had customers who haven’t been completely satisfied but how you deal and resolve their compliant will make all the difference to whether they buy from you again or recommend you to others.

• Measure, measure, measure. If you don’t measure your marketing you can’t understand, control or improve it. Use tools such as Google Analytics to see how well your website is working, monitor your email performance or conduct market research to understand what your target audience think about you and your product or service.

 

It’s Spring! Time to prune your website

Posted on by Cress Rolfe

Even if your business website was perfect when it went live, is it designed for growth?

Websites, a bit like gardens, need to be well-kept, pleasing to browse round and well signposted, so that people can get to what they need and see the great stuff you want them to see.

Unfortunately over time websites can become overgrown, especially those who have several members of staff working on them from different areas of the company.

Your website will naturally grow as your staff add content to it – sometimes branching out in all directions! It may become unwieldy and “hard to see the wood from the trees”. Sometimes you need someone with an outside perspective to take a look. To identify what it is you want to push to the front – and what might need a sharp snip at the base.

Or the opposite may be true, your website might be neglected or thirsty due to lack of attention – looking jaded or sparse with nothing blossoming.

The larger the company and its website, the more it needs some special care every now and then.

Here’s a quick sample checklist for a Spring Review:

  • Has your company outgrown its website by a few years?
  • Do you know how many of your staff actually update your website?
  • When was your last blog post or news item – does your website look dated and un-cared for?
  • Do you know how many people use it and which pages they view? Or measure whether your social media activity is actually driving customers to your website?
  • Do you know how many broken links your company website has?
  • Can your web visitors clearly find your most important and topical products, offers, events – or signposts to them – from every page they may land on? Remember although a homepage is designed as the main gateway, very often your visitors will land on other pages from search results. Are they still getting a good picture of your business?
  • Does your main menu at the top of the page still make sense to your customers – or does the structure of your website need changing?

There are of course lots of other points to consider.

But your business website is your global shop-window and you don’t want your customers to feel neglected or tangled up in overgrown, out-dated information.

With 15+ years of experience with large websites, I’m available to give you advice and hands-on help with maintaining and managing your website content. I also design and build websites for local businesses using WordPress.

I’m here (with shears at the ready) so contact me if you need some help making your website look great and work beautifully again.

Read more about my web content services.