Have you decided what marketing processes you need to make your goals happen?

No?  If you haven’t planned, how will you decide at the end of the year if you have achieved what you set out to do?

TOP TIP – the best way to implement marketing successfully is to create a marketing plan. 

Make your objectives SMART.  What is SMART? 

S – make them Specific

M – make them Measurable

A – make them Achievable

R – make them Realistic

T – make them Time bound

In the next blog, we will see what a marketing plan consists of….

Whether you want to retire or grow the business by 10% or perhaps start another business, what will you need in order to achieve your goals?

• Will you need extra resource?  Perhaps admin help or an accountant or a receptionist so your time can be freed up?
• Will you need any marketing resource?  Perhaps someone to write some copy, a designer to rebrand the business, an SEO specialist to revamp your website or perhaps a project manager to manage your next events?
• Will you need to recruit some other people?
• Will you need some investment from a bank or grant?
• Will you need a change of working premises?

One thing is certain, you will need to review your current marketing activities and approach.  Are you targeting the right people with your messaging and are you using the right media to get in front of them?

Finally, have you started writing things down and making notes of what you want to do and achieve?  A marketing plan is great for collating your thoughts, making decisions and keeping your marketing on track.

For help on your Marketing Plan for 2012, just ask us.

As well as the most obvious benefits of being more organised, being more motivated and being more focussed, having a plan allows you to visualise and have aspirations and goals for the future.

If you plan to bring in more sales by implementing marketing campaigns, you end goal or aspiration might be to either sell your business so you can retire or it might be to bring in a partner to continue to grow your business. 

So, what is your long term goal?

Is it to sell your business?

Is it to grow the company?

Is it to launch a new product or service? 

Or is it to employ some staff to allow you to get back to what it is you love?

With today’s uncertain recession, there has never been a better time to plan than now!  According to Business Link, companies that plan to continue marketing throughout this tough time, will be the companies that are still going once we get back to more plentiful times. 

My business goal for 2012 is to grow my business and to get more sales from existing customers as well as drawing in more new customers from the small business world.  So, how am I planning to achieve this aspiration of mine?

I have naturally created a marketing plan for the next 12 months.  For tips on doing this, check out an earlier blog of mine.  Within this plan, I have thought about and planned the launch of new services that the market is asking for in order to bring in more revenue.  Blogging and social networking is going to be a major way that I will be bringing in new business. 

What do things look like for your business today and what do you want things to look like in December 2012?

Good luck …

Pinpoint Marketing would like to take this opportunity to wish all its customers, suppliers, contacts and colleagues a very Merry Christmas and a happy, healthy and prosperous 2012!

Thank you for your support, interest and custom in 2011.

Thank you
Nicole Martin
Managing Director of Pinpoint Marketing Consultancy Ltd.

Here are 12 tips and pieces of advice to bear in mind when you start blogging next year:

1. Blogging helps with SEO rankings and gets your pages indexed more online
2. Blogs can reach different audiences, especially if you write one per target audience e.g. one to clients and one to members/potential members
3. Blogs can help you be seen as educational, helpful and knowledgable
4. Optimise your blogs just like you would your website
5. Write blogs about the subject matter of your keywords
6. Use your blog to make you been as a thought leader for your market and earn trust
7. Think of the problems your customers might face and tackle and solve these problems through your blog content
8. Always have an eye catching title
9. Include a call to action  e.g. what you want the reader to do once they have read the blog like call or email or buy etc
10. Ask customers what they would like to read about
11. Use guest bloggers to liven up content
12. Plan your content ahead of time

Still need more reasons to blog?
Here goes:

• Include social networking “sharing buttons”
• Keep it simple, interesting, use numbers, be newsworthy etc
• Remember to format and spell check
• Don’t forget to promote your blog:
• Link your blog to your website and vice versa 

As with everything else in marketing, if it cannot be measured for or if it success doesn’t come as a result of your activities, then don’t do it.  Measure your blog:

• Measure traffic, like we do currently using Google analytics
• Measure any leads and follow through
• Measure subscriber count
• Track inbound links and watch social media “shares”

Happy blogging in 2012…

The house to house leaflet distribution market is actually growing.  Adding leaflets into newspapers and magazines is also a very competitive market too.  So, you need to make your leaflet stand out from the crowd!

So, how can you make leaflets work for you?

1. The Design – make it attractive and well laid out.  Don’t write too much, but make it compelling and thorough enough.  Remember your branding guidelines.
2. The Copy – make sure you include a key message and a call to action.  A call to action is what you want your customers to do e.g. pick up the phone, order etc.  Always include your branding and contact information.  For more ideas on writing great sales copy, see one of my previous blogs here.
3. Promotion – include a promotion or discount to grab people’s attention and to bring them into your store or onto your website. 
4. Distribution – think carefully about how you are going to distribute the leaflet.  Will you do it yourself, employ someone, use Royal Mail or share distribution with someone else.
5. Targeting – who are you going to distribute your leaflet to?  What postcodes?  What streets?  Make sure the residents of these places are your ideal customers e.g. the right age, gender, family set up, income etc.

Other considerations for your leaflet are the quantities, the legal issues to consider (consider ASA), how you are going to check afterwards that leaflets were delivered and how you are going to check responses.

If you would like any copy writing or design help, you know where to come!

Do you have too much work to do already?

Do you lack experience in planning an event?

Do you have a tiny budget which you think won’t stretch far?

Trying to do everything in house to avoid agency costs?

www.howtohavetheperfectevent.co.uk

Whether you need to find the perfect venue or team building activity, or perhaps a stunning table centrepiece or top notch band, Pinpoint has all the event management answers that you will need, at an amazingly affordable price!
With over 10 years experience in organising events, we are sure to be able to find just what you are looking for …

I have a limited budget, how can I keep costs down? As the recession talk heightens, here are some top tips in keeping an event cost down:

• If your event is intended to be purely social, this is not a taxable benefit according to the Inland Revenue (IR). If you then arrange to have some kind of training or add in some business matters to the agenda, this will be treated differently by the IR.
• Secondly, the Inland Revenue will not seek tax on the relevant benefit arising to each employee where the expenditure is modest. In this context Tax Offices will treat expenditure of up to £75 per head per annum as modest. This per head cost refers to the cost of the function, including VAT and any transport or accommodation provided by employer.
• Will you be offering food at your event, buffets can often be more cost effective than sit-down meals.
• Regarding entertainment, D.J’s are generally cheaper to hire than a band. Using the venue’s in-house/preferred D.J can is also cost effective.
• Hire a coach to take the staff to and from the office to the venue to save on expense claims for mileage and car parking.
• Arrange the function on a night when the hotel or venue is not normally as busy. You are much more likely to negotiate a discount on a week night than on a Friday or Saturday night.
• Cut back on the additional extras such as table centre pieces, flower arrangements and branded/personalised items. You can however make your own centre pieces or print your own menus and table plan.

Who should sit with who? This nearly always causes headaches for companies and individuals alike. There are various ways to decide on the seating plan.

Should we make the bar a free bar? This is a tricky one. Whatever you decide though, as a company or organiser, it is your responsibility to encourage your attendees to drink responsibly.

A lot of the staff are new to the company, how can we break the ice?

The workforce is all different ages, how can we keep them all entertained?

How can we make the event memorable?

Pinpoint Marketing has over 10 years of experience in arranging meetings and events. For more information on how we can help with your events, get in touch by email today.

Filing the card away until you need it is an option, but not a very proactive option. There might not be an immediate connection or an immediate opportunity to work together, which is all the more reason to maintain contact and to keep yourself in the forefront of your contact’s mind. Networking is often about playing the long game.

By adding the contact to your database or address book, you will remember to automatically include the contact in future email, letter or telephone based campaigns. Remember to note on your database where you met them. This will help you analyse all your sources of leads and which ones generate the most revenue, helping you to be cost effective. 

The best option is to follow-up by email or phone within a day or two of the event or meeting. 
Due to networking, Pinpoint’s database has grown by around 90% in a year.  This has increased the audience numbers I can market to expose my message.  More exposure equals more opportunities for business equals profit and growth.

Will following up be seen as pushy? No. Attendees of networking events are there for the same reason as you. They want to meet like-minded business people and to find new customers.

When you do make contact, always give the option to unsubscribe to ensure you comply with data protection and SPAM laws and to be polite. 
By following up you have instantly reminded them of meeting you, you have appeared organised, polite and professional and you will have got their permission to keep their details and liaise with them in the future to hopefully turn them into a lead and then eventually a customer!  This could be the start of a profitable relationship. 

A sin of networking is to promise to follow-up with information or a lead/referral and then not doing this.  Don’t use the scatter gun approach with your cards.  Don’t give your card out to people and then run.  Spend some time with them.  Neither of these things looks good and could be potentially harmful to your reputation.

Happy networking …

As December looms and colleagues, suppliers and customers go into “we will deal with/look at that after Christmas” mode, now is the ideal time to de clutter your desk and make some change.   Make being tidy in the office and being more productive one of your business New Year’s resolutions for 2012.   

If you are fed up with not being able to find things on your desk or if the things you need to do your job are not within easy reach, then it is time for a change a round.  Not only can tidying be therapeutic, but you will find long lost items and set yourself for an industrious work life.  

Here are 10 top tips on how to being tidy at work:

1. Tidy your desk by throwing away unwanted papers, broken pens, out of date calendars etc.
2. Buy a pen pot for your essentials like your pens, calculator, stapler, staples etc.
3. Make sure your desk has sufficient drawer space for essential items like spare paper and spare company stationery etc.  Buy a desk drawer if needed to keep things more organised.
4. Clear space on your desk or a neighbouring desk for the equipment you use a lot like a printer or copier or binder.
5. Buy a bin to sit under your desk.
6. Buy a shredder to help stop old and out of date paperwork lying around.
7. Review your storage and filing areas.  Do they have shelving when you actually use hanging files?  Are the shelves spaced out correctly for your needs?
8. Make the most of unused areas within the office like empty cupboards or unoccupied meeting space.  An unused meeting room could be a new office for a manager for example.
9. Have a move around within the office to help re organise things better.  This change around could be moving people to better suited areas or moving furniture to be better used somewhere else.
10. Ask a professional to help and advice on your office move before you buy or lease any furniture.  A well thought out office move can save you money and time as well as increasing motivation and productivity.  Having a systematic way of working not only helps you find things more easily, but it will help you become less hassled, and it will stop you wasting your precious time. 

Visual neatness is important to create an ambience of calm.  An office space that is pleasing on the eye to you and your colleagues can also create a great first impression to visitors and clients coming into the office. 

If you don’t have a lot of the furniture items you might need like additional cupboard space or storage space, you can change the office layout and borrow furniture or ideally, you can buy the items needed.  Remember you can always buy second hand or sometimes lease it, if budget is an issue.

Here’s to a de cluttered and dynamic 2012.
www.sygnus-uk.com 

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