You think you have the perfect product, customer service levels are high and sales were doing well. Your business was flourishing, but then for some reasons sales slowed, became almost stagnate. But why? You hadn’t changed anything – well there you go! There lies your problem!
It is important to note that many factors could be responsible for the slowing down of sales, the recession often being one of the main causes for many businesses. Consumers are becoming increasingly sceptical and unsure about purchasing goods due to depleting amounts of disposable income and job insecurity. But slow sales aren’t always to be blamed on the recession...
The market place is moving extremely fast, evolving all the time and the world is working 24 hours, 7 days a week. It is essential that your business moves with the times and doesn’t get left behind.
Start by asking yourself these questions:
Is there a market for my product? For some businesses this is their first hurdle. Often entrepreneurs identify a need and seek to create a product or a service that fulfils it, however they sometimes overlook the fact that the market they are serving may not be large enough to make a sustainable business out of.
It is also important to look at your competitors. Are they taking over your market share? If so why? The technical term is competitor analysis, however put basically it is identifying your competitors and establishing what they are doing better (and worse) than you. Ensure you know what makes you different and make this your unique selling point, it is not always something to be looked upon negatively.
Are you marketing my product correctly and to the best of my ability? Are you targeting the correct people? Ensure that your customers know about your product. Even when brands and products are known about it is essential to continually market in order to remain part of the consumers’ repertoire of brands.
For example, Coca Cola is known worldwide and is one of the largest, most successful manufacturers of soft drinks, but they still advertise. Why? Because they want to achieve top of the mind awareness, in a perfect Coca Cola world: Consumer thinks ‘I’m thirsty’ and instantly associates the feeling with how refreshed they would feel after a drink of Coca Cola.
A consumers repertoire of brands shifts and changes for many reasons, some of which are known about such as reference groups, self concepts, how the product solves their problem and others which have no explanation. That is until market researchers are able to mind read...(Say hello to neuromarketing...)
Marketing communications has 4 main functions, it aims to:
- Differentiate
- Remind
- Inform
- Persuade
So give your business a chance and make sure that you: differentiate yourself from competitors, remind consumers of exactly who you are and what you do, inform them of what you can offer and persuade them your company is the one for them!
Article Written by Carli Smith Visit Inferno Designs for more on Company Branding and Company Web Design.
Call to Actions play a vital part on any website. Call to actions point people in the right direction and funnel them into carrying out an action with a desired outcome of some sort.
The actions that you may want to include on your site can vary depending on the service, offer or action you are trying to convey, examples may include:
> Buy Now
> Sign-up Today
> Call us for more
> Read Further Info
> Download Now
> Upgrade Software
> Try for FREE
> 10% Offer Today
An effective Call to Action needs to abide by certain criteria to ensure they not only draw the user to them but ensure that they entice the user to take the necessary action you want them to, for example contacting you or signing up.
Some of the key areas to consider when integrating or planning to integrate Call to Actions are as follows:
Good use of Colour and Font
Make sure that the style of your Call to Action button stands out on the website with good use of colour and font. Choose an opposite colour or one that stands out as well as ensuring that the font you use can be read easily, as the last thing you want when trying to get a succinct message across is to use a font the user can’t read! Obviously never rely entirely on colour, just in case you have people that are colour blind and can’t see the contrast.
Effective Position of Call to Action
Think carefully about where you position your call to action on your website. Ensure it can be seen easily and clearly and is in a position that allows people to see it without hunting for it.
Ensure the Message is Clear
What do you want from the Call to Action? Do you want people to call you? Do you want people to register, join, download, view, read, stop, start, buy, do, don’t, sponsor or write? Just make sure that what ever you want users to do, is clear and concise.
Make it Noticeable and Frequent
For maximum effectiveness make sure that the Call to Action is easy to see, also ensure that you use white space effectively, do not squash it into a corner or hide it with text, be proud to place the Call to Action somewhere on it’s own with plenty of space around it. Also make it frequent, add it to every page so that no matter where users enter your site they can see it.
So there you have it, several key considerations to ensure that your Call to Action does not go to waste and fall by the wayside. Obviously there is one more key factor that we have not mentioned and that is track the success of the Call to Action, put a process or analytics in place to track and understand how well your Call to Action is doing and the positive effect on your business as a result.
Article Written by David Taplin Visit Inferno Designs for more on Search Engine Optimisation and Web Design.
Ooooo the night has finally arrived of the networking event, you have waited for this night for weeks. You have your name badge clipped onto your freshly ironed shirt, your cup of tea or coffee in your hand and you are stood in a room full of people – some of which you have seen before and others you are yet to meet. You have a vague idea of what they do and most people look as nervous as you...
Your friend is at home, no make-up on, wearing tracksuit bottoms and a big t-shirt. Their laptop is in front of them by chance, TV on in the background and they have just ‘networked’ with the head of a worldwide PR agency...
How did that happen?!
Networking has been revolutionised by the Internet. No longer are you required to attend events to mix with a group of people similar to yourself, the Internet has effectively made the world smaller. Online Networking is extremely convenient as you are able to networking with someone on the other side of the world at any time of day, you do it in your own time and your own pace and if you don’t want to speak to anyone – you don’t have to!
Twitter and LinkedIn have opened up the world of work, making it easy to search for people who may be of interest as you are able to search by sector, name and company. People are now more accessible than ever, how else would you be able to engage in correspondence with industry leaders who you might never meet?
Twitter chats are also a popular way to meet with people who share similar interests, for example for PR it would be #commschat.
With online networking you don’t waste time probing them with questions, you can find out exactly who they are, what they do, their current and past positions and sometimes even their relationship status with the click of a mouse.
However it is important that offline networking has its advantages, nothing is as good as a face to face meeting. Seeing someone in the flesh gives you endless advantages, you can assess body language and facial expressions and answers are always in real time. Where has the art of conversation gone? What is wrong with asking people what they do? Spending time with people, asking them questions and expressing an interest can sometimes mean that you forge longer and stronger relationships in the long run. Also it must not be forgotten that meanings can be changed over email or tweets and let’s be honest....just how much information can you put into 140 characters?
Networking is probably one of the easiest ways to market your business and as with most tools in the marketing toolbox it is much more effective when combined with other tools so use a combination of offline and online networking, strike a balance.
Just make sure that when you do it, either online or offline, you remember that you represent the business at all times. However, one of the main advantages with online networking is that there is a delete button...if only we had that in real life! Article Written by Carli Smith
Visit Inferno Designs for more on Company Branding and Company Web Design.
Initially Expeditionary Marketing is not a trek along the Great Wall of China or even a climb to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro. You don’t have to travel to the Amazon and navigate your way through the unknown forests and discover dangerous native tribes. Expeditionary Marketing can all be done from the comfort of your organisation’s HQ, your office or your home...
Society has changed due to many factors, from reductions in the amount of disposable income that your customers have to rising costs of running their homes. Consumers are becoming increasingly media savvy and have been for the past few decades, they are no longer guaranteed to seek information about certain products. No longer can marketers rely on a television advert on a popular channel, a couple of adverts in a generic magazine and a leaflet through a consumers’ front door. New innovative methods are emerging as businesses look for opportunities to approach and target new markets and gain valuable market share.
A new discipline is emerging and it is essential that companies who want to be successful at least acknowledge its existence. Entrepreneurial Marketing is based on 7 key principles:
> Pro-activeness
> Calculated Risk taking
> Innovativeness
> Opportunity focus
> Resource leveraging
> Customer intensity
> Value creation
Expeditionary marketing is one of the tools in the kit of entrepreneurial marketing. It acknowledges that failure might take place, but it is a risk worth taking. It is based on the question of:
Whether your business is there to simply serve customers and create new markets?
Do your marketing efforts follow consumer’s wants and needs or does it lead them in new directions?
If you are still not with it then let me use an example:
The Apple brand is extremely entrepreneurial in its approach to business. They are a brand that are willing to put themselves out there and take risks. Who would have ever thought that the IPod would have made such as impact? It is extremely hard to find a household without an IPod and even if an individual already had an mp3 player they would often purchase an IPod anyway. Just think to yourself, was there a market for a touch screen computer that allowed consumers to play games, view pictures, browse the internet, edit documents and download some pointless applications? No. There wasn’t. Apple didn’t identify a specific audience that needed these benefits, they launched a product and caused enough of a buzz around it through various forms of marketing and PR that consumers were convinced they needed one and it was a given that hardcore Apple Loyalists would purchase one anyway. Clever hey?!
For companies like Apple who are in the fast moving world of technology it is easier to create new products and pose them to consumers as new gadgets are being invented all the time. But could every business benefit from expeditionary market to a certain degree? By looking beyond serving consumers and venturing into the unknown your business might discover something new or tap into a new target audience you never knew you had.
It was said at the beginning of the article that your business wasn’t required to enter the unknown forest of the Amazon, but to a certain extent it is. The world is a big place with many unknowns about it, so go and explore, you never know that native tribe you find might love your product...
Article Written by Carli Smith
Visit Inferno Designs for more on Email Marketing, Company Branding and Web Design.
Rebranding your company can be a daunting thought, especially when things seem to be fine the way they are – why fix something when that’s not broke? But rebranding doesn’t need to be something that you enter with dread it can be a positive thing and carry with it very positive consequences...
There are many reasons that companies may want to rebrand and also reasons that mean they need to:
A common reason for a company considering a rebrand is if the current brand isn’t doing particularly well or as well as it could be. If you have tried everything else a rebrand maybe exactly what you need to refresh your brand and boost staff morale.
Your company has been through a crisis and consumers might have lost faith. A rebrand would be a fantastic way of moving on from such an incident. However it would be naive to think that by simply changing your name and logo you can shake off any responsibility, a rebrand should be part of an overall crisis management strategy. After all imagine if BP changed their name and denied all knowledge of that oil spill...
If there have been changes in the market your company might be out of touch. A rebrand would bring your company up to date and allow it run alongside consumers and competitors in this fast moving market place. If you want to diversify into a new market area or reposition in an existing one a rebrand might be helpful in aiding this transition as your existing brand image might not be transferable into new areas.
However company’s mustn’t forget the importance of existing brand equity, if your company has customers there must be something they value about your existing brand and it would be a mistake to ignore this. Plus many think that ‘rebranding’ is changing the name of the business, using a different logo, ordering some new branded pens and updating the look of the website. Admittedly these tasks are included in a rebrand but staff are also involved so ensure that they reflect the values and changes of the new brand image you are trying to project.
In such a challenging business environment you need to stand out so if you identify the need or the want to rebrand take the plunge...it’s not as scary as you think and the benefits could be great!
Article Written by Carli Smith
Visit Inferno Designs for more on Company Branding and Company Web Design.
It’s Links to and from your website have been the foundations upon which search engines have identified and ranked the popularity of all websites for years. The idea being that links count as ‘votes’ for your site.
It should be a combination of quality and quantity of links, however it is best not to sacrifice the quality for quantity as the quality of the site that the ‘vote’ or link comes from plays a key factor in the improvement of your site in the search engine rankings, due to the respect that the search engine has for that sites ‘vote’.
The respect that a search engine such as Google has for a website can be identified at a high level by the PR or Page Rank a website has. Page Rank comes from a multitude of criteria found in algorithms used by Google and other Search Engines and is a rating out of 10 (10 being the best and highest quality site out there).
Having said this there are very few with a 9 or 10 Page Rank these are reserved for very few such as Google.com itself. At time of writing there are only approximately 20 Page Ranked 10 Websites in the world, including Facebook.com, whitehouse.gov and w3.org.
Link Building is known as off-site website optimization, any good quality and effective Search Engine Optimisation Campaign should also consist of on-site optimisation which refers to content, meta data, internal links as well as several other key areas - all of which will be covered in future blog articles.
Off-site Website Optimisation consists of more than just Link Building, although Link Building is a key part of it and is actually a key part of Search Engine Optimisation in general.
There are a multitude of link building websites and directories that you can either be free or that you pay for. Usually if you are prepared to have a reciprocal link to the directory of link building website, or pay a fee, then your site will be looked at and accepted more quickly.
So although the design and construction of Websites, how people use and interact with websites have changed the principles and importance of Link Building within an effective Search Engine Optimisation campaign remains the same, for the time being…
Article Written by David Taplin
Visit Inferno Designs for more on Web Design, Search Engine Optimisation.
