Marketing on a budget – Free and low cost marketing activities anyone can do

We’ve all been there, whether a Marketing Manager without or little budget or a new start business, you know you need to do some marketing but just can’t spend the money. Don’t get me wrong, i’m not saying that you should never spend money on marketing, in fact the opposite;  a well spent marketing budget can bring its rewards – why else would every major company on the planet have a marketing department? – but sometimes, needs must! So if you’re going to do marketing on a budget at least you can try and do it well. Here are my top tips to low cost and free marketing activities anyone can have a go at!

1. Get Social – on the internet that is! 

The introduction if social media has given everyone the power to market themselves. Done correctly you could soon find this free…yes FREE channel an indispensable marketing resource to you and your business. Depending on your type of business, whether you have a product or service and if you are B2B or B2C – will help you decide what social media platforms are best for you but I recommend; Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn . The other channels have their merits but these are a great place to start.

2. Become your own PR agency 

A little research and putting a few words together isn’t too far beyond most people’s skills – so why not seek out Editors names at your local newspaper or industry magazine and send them your news – keep it interesting though, not everyone may think that your recent purchase of a coffee machine for the office is big news!  And remember PR doesn’t just stand for ‘press release’! you can use other channels like social media and your own website to get your news out there – why rely on publications?

3.  Get out there!

Networking – yes I know, who has time to network?! Well, those people that get business from networking and don’t see it as an extra job to do, but just take it as part of the day job. You only need to do a quick search online or join some local business discussion groups on LinkedIn and you’ll find free and low costs networking events everywhere!!  Why not go that step further and get yourself some free exposure and offer to speak at an event about your industry?

4. Build your data base – don’t buy it! 

Nothing beats a warm lead, don’t you hate it when you get an email or a call from a company you’ve never heard of? Instead of buying an expensive (often out of date) data base why not start collecting your own contacts? At lease you know these people have opted to hear from you.  You could try holding a competition, with an attractive prize; think about what your target market would be interested in – this could help steer the right people to enter, not many OAPs out there will be pulled in by an extreme sports weekend away!

5.  Get listed! 

Whatever your industry there is more than likely lots of websites and directories that will happily list you. Not forgetting good old Google Places for Business too who let you list your business for free!

6. Measure and analyse effectiveness

This costs nothing, except a little time, but knowing whats working and what isn’t can save you both time and more importantly money! Track where your leads and customers are coming from and where they are not. Make sure you have Google Analytics set up on your website, this will allow you to track and monitor all sorts of useful things about your website from how many people visit through to how they get there…and much much much more – did I mention its completely free?!

PR – Doesn’t stand for Press Release

PR – by which I of course mean Public Relations is an age old, tried and tested arm to marketing. The CIPR definition of PR is:

Public relations is about reputation – the result of what you do, what you say and what others say about you.

Public relations is the discipline which looks after reputation, with the aim of earning understanding and support and influencing opinion and behaviour. It is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics.

As effective as it can be and has been, traditional PR can also be a wasted effort for most organisations – if not implemented properly that is!  I still come across individuals and companies who seem to think the PR just means ‘press release’, and of course, in some cases a press release can form part of your public relations strategy, and traditionally it may have been your only form of public relations.

It’s 2012 now and we have the internet so why spend the time and money writing a press release and hoping that some Editor out there decides you are news worthy. Unless you can afford a damn good PR agency, that is!

For a small to medium sized business, with or without a Marketing Department or person, PR is probably on your agenda – if not it certainly should be!  There are lots of ways in which an organisation can help manage it’s reputation and brand perception, such as;

- Public speaking
- Events
- Corporate social responsibility
- Blogs
- Social Media
- Networking
- Sponsorship

Lets face it, many SME’s will seldom have paper and publication worthy news on tap – the charity fun day you organised just isn’t all that interesting to newspapers – not unless you raised a ridiculous amount of money or did something particularly out of the ordinary.  That doesn’t mean that your activity has gone to waste. With the invention of the internet you can now be your own PR guru! You can update your website, post the good news on social media or even write a blog about the day. Whatever you decide to do you are in control of the news getting out there and controlling your brand reputation.

So stop wasting your valuable time writing press releases for every minor event, success and self congratulating news - utilise your online channels to get the message across and put your efforts into growing your business and creating some really good publication worthy news!

Do USP’s still exist?

UPS’s - whether in marketing or sales we hear this term all the time.  We of course mean ‘Unique Selling Points or Propositions’.

We’re asked to identify, portray, advertise, market and sell them…but do real USP’s exist?

Working in highly saturated and established markets it is increasingly difficult to identify truly ’unique’ propositions . Often these so called ‘unique’ propositions are just ‘propositions’ that come part and parcel of your industry, market or product. And every Tom, Dick and Harry (or Thelma, Doreen and Harriet) claim to have them!

New ideas, inventions and concepts benefit greatly from using their USP’s to sell, but how can us ‘the oldies’ get our share of the market?

1. Well firstly – can you create a unique selling point? Provide something unexpected, out of the ordinary and truly added value.  “Think out of the industry box”, surprise your customers.

2. Accept that you simply don’t have a USP and market those plain old SP’s (Selling Points) better – are you doing a good job of selling them currently? could they be better communicated? do your staff live by them? Are they even on your website?…

3. Opt for SP’s you can really prove and hold to.

4. Concentrate and communicate the top 3 SP’s that are most important to your clients and you’re really good at.

5. Don’t under- perform your claims.

“We have friendly and experienced teams here to help” – Doesn’t everyone?!!  

LinkedIn has stopped sharing tweets

Most people should have by now received an email from LinkedIn announcing their decision to stop sharing tweets in your LinkedIn feed. This decision was taken a while ago in response to many users getting bombarded with tweets in their feeds that made little sense (out of context) and sometimes in stereo because you also follow that user. But the turning point was when  Twitter introduced some stricter rules which this form of streaming now contravened.

Personally I very rarely used this automated function, sometimes when I felt it necessary I would #in my tweets to send them to LinkedIn but as a generally rule I never felt the two platforms worked very well together in this way.

It is important to note that you can still share your LinkedIn updates to Twitter though. The screen shot below explains how (if you’ve never used the manual action before), you will still need to sync your accounts and you can also select which Twitter account you want to send your update to. (If you have more than one).

Did you use the this function? How do you feel about LinkedIn taking it away?

More information about my social media training and advice workshops here.

Is Facebook going to start charging business pages to appear in fan’s news feeds?

In short no! There have been rumours spreading across Facebook business page communities that Facebook is going to start charging business pages if they want their updates to show up in fan’s news feeds. I’ve done my research and cannot find any evidence of this happening. Currently Facebook’s revenue comes from sponsored ads and advertising which business pages have access to purchasing. There is also word that they are trialing a ‘Facebook Highlight’ feature in New Zealand that will allow businesses to pay for a status update to appear on MORE fan’s news feeds.

Currently when a fan likes a business page, updates are automatically selected to appear in news feeds. But of course how many times the updates appear and are seen is completely up to the pages owners actions; such as time of day, interest and how that fan has interacted with the page previously.  Of course it’s also worth pointing out that fans can un-select this option!

I think it’s safe to assume that should Facebook decided to start charging for any of its services they would let us know, as they have done with any changes they have made to date.

Top anti-networking mistakes people make using Twitter

A couple of days ago I wrote a blog about ‘The top anti-networking mistakes people make using LinkedIn’ - its seems to have been a bit of a hit so I felt it only right to do one for Twitter!

Twitter is being used by many different people in many different ways. But if you are using it for business or want to start using it for business you need to consider a few things – mainly what people will think when they view your profile and decide whether to follow you or not.

A selection of some of the top anti-networking mistakes I see people making using Twitter

Mistake #1 – You don’t have a photo (you’re just a novice egg), or you have a full length photo and you can’t see your face.  Or even worse you have a photo but its not of you (it is justifiable to use a logo for a larger company profile). Would you speak to someone at a networking event who covered their face?  Twitter users like to follow people or least know that its a person behind the tweets and not just a RSS feed.

Mistake #2 –  You haven’t filled in your profile. Your bio is your opportunity to sell yourself, giving people a reason/benefit to follow you. (Remember; you only have 160 characters to play with so mess around with it until you get it just right). Don’t forget your location! Many people use location as a simple decision maker when choosing who to follow, this will also help increase the quality of followers you get.

Mistake #3 – You follow everyone and anyone. This may seem like a great quick fix to get new followers but it’s not very targeted and you’ll just end up with an irrelevant feed and a load of followers who aren’t really interested in what you have to offer – they probably won’t even live in your country!

Mistake #4 - You have locked your tweets to followers only and people have to request to follow you. This makes you appear closed off and not very social at all!  So why would someone follow you? (You should be checking your Twitter account regularly, so you can filter out spammers and bad apples manually).

Mistake #5 – You use a validation service such as TrueTwit that forces people to validate if they are a real person. Not only does this put an obstacle in the way, they sometimes don’t work with phone apps. This can cost you many followers. As above, you can filter through your followers manually at any point.

Mistake #6 – You don’t tweet and more importantly you don’t engage with others. An RSS feed or tweets with link after link can be quite boring and even worse could identify you as a spammer.

If you would like more info and guidance on how to use Twitter as a passive sales tool you can email me on jagielloconsulting@gmail.com and join a training session near you alternatively email me  or connect on LinkedIn if you have a more bespoke requirement. 

Top anti-networking mistakes people make using LinkedIn

Right so you’ve joined LinkedIn and you’re trying to grow your network because your colleague said its great for doing business. You’ve been on there for a few weeks now and, well you feel a bit lonely because no one seems to want to connect!  There are a number of reasons why this could be here is a pick of my favourites;

Mistake #1  - your profile is not filled in properly (you can read my Top Tips to Get You Started on LinkedIn here)

Mistake #2 – you’re not actually asking people to connect with you! – don’t rely on people connecting with you, you have to get out there too!

Mistake #3 - you have blocked people from seeing you looked at their profile. I often look at my ‘who’s viewed your profile’ list. Daily in fact! if someone has looked at my profile and I am not connected, when I request to connect they’ll be sure to connect because they’ll remember looking at your profile…it’s only polite!

Mistake #4 – only allowing people to connect who know your email address. If you go to a networking event do you only speak to the people who know your name?

Mistake #5 – and this one is a major pet hate of mine – only connecting with people you have already done business with or know personally.  This kind of network cannot allow for new business so don’t be surprised if you’re not getting any new leads from LinkedIn – the rest of us are!  I had someone very recently decline my invitation for this very reason even though we had around 30 connections in common that I knew very well…shame if he had connected he might have seen my  LinkedIn training course.

Click here for information about up and coming training courses.