February 2011 Top 5 Marketing Tips

Below are the top 5 marketing tips for February 2011 – simple tips to help you improve the effectiveness of your marketing.

1. Diverse target markets – first of all it is critical to identify who your target markets are.  There has to be a need for your product or service – but the more diverse the markets you are targeting the less risk you are exposed to.  If 75% of your sales come from the same sector and that sector is negatively affected by the economy or political legislation then the knock on effect to your business could be huge!

2. Share your vision with your staff – too many business owners don’t share  their vision with their staff.  However it is your staff that represent your business and should be exuding your brand values at all times.  Passion in what you are doing is crucial to success – how can your staff get passionate if they are just seeing it as a pay packet? Get them excited and enthusing about the future vision of the business!

3. Benchmark yourself regularly – the market you are in is ever evolving.  Whilst you are standing still consumers are changing, competitors are changing and technology / innovation that could radically change your market is just around the corner.  Regularly check where you sit within the marketplace.  Is it where you want to be?  If not what do you need to do to reposition yourself?

4. Get customer feedback – everyone need to actively look to identify areas where they are underperforming – otherwise how can we improve what we are doing? Regularly (at least every 18 months) carry out a customer survey to give clients the platform to complain and praise.  This is obviously pointless unless you analyse the responses and put improvement measures in place as a result of the findings.  An unhappy customer that never complains will never return!

5. Include a ‘Call to Action’ – too many marketing departments create communications that look great but miss the mark when it comes to the ‘message’ and including a ‘Call to Action’.  Every communication should have an objective – whether it is a sale, to generate an enquiry, for the recipient to do something or to point them to somewhere else for further information.  Make sure you make it obvious!