The Top Ten Myths of Marketing – guest blogger

I spend a lot of my working day educating business owners about the importance of marketing and why it should never take a back seat in any business. What I come across a lot is the perception of what marketing is. So I thought I would dispel a few myths and get us all singing from the same hymn sheet!

1. Marketing is just advertising and sales: Although advertising and sales are integral to any marketing plan, they don’t stand alone. In reality, marketing is educating your target market about your products and services and why they should choose you over your competition. Obviously the aim for any business is to achieve a sale, but there’s a lot that goes on within the buying process to get to that point. In my opinion marketing is everything you do as a business which affects the customer.
2. Great marketing works instantly: Although marketing can shorten a sales cycle and some tactics can produce instant results, great marketing is about repetition – being there when your customer is ready to buy. Just because you are ready to sell doesn’t mean your customer is ready to purchase! Marketing is an investment and like all good investments it takes time.
3. Lower prices encourage more people to buy: I meet many business owners, especially start-ups, who automatically drop their price to enter the market. Lower prices work as part of a short-term campaign i.e. trialling of a new product/service, but ultimately competing on cost is very difficult to sustain. Look at the value you are offering to your customer and price accordingly. This is where knowing your customers really well comes into play!
4. Offering a broad range of products & services leads to more sales: This is where you can fall foul of being a ‘jack of all trades’. Too many options can confuse buyers. There is nothing wrong is targeting a niche market and being a specialist in your field. So take a look at how you can segment your market and which segments can provide a sustainable income, then focus on these.
5. Email marketing is no longer effective due to spam: I still use email marketing a lot as part of my activity.  Identify what you want to achieve and why email marketing is the right tool to use then ensure you write your email to generate maximum impact. Afterall, people want information and email is a great way to get your message out there – just make sure your recipients have opted-in!
6. Online marketing is all you need: I come across this a lot. Many small businesses owners have run with online because of its cost-effectiveness, but offline activity still has an important part to play in any marketing strategy. Integrating both on and offline marketing is what generates the best results for most businesses. So keep hold of your business card, branded pen and leaflet and support this with your website, email and video campaigns.
7. Messages need to change often to keep things fresh:I’m sorry, but consistency and repetition is a marketer’s best friend. You may be bored of your message, but your audience won’t be. It’s around now that your message is starting to sink in, so stick with it and only change it if there is a valid business reason.
8. Advertising sells products: Continuous advertising builds brand awareness and can generates leads, but it very rarely leads to a conversion without involving another form of marketing. You need to attract prospects then educate them all via regular contact with your business. This then develops the trust required to convert the lead into a sale.
9. Partnerships & alliances are for larger companies: I recommend these types of partnerships to start-ups and SMEs, because these are the businesses which in reality can’t do it all. Having partners you can trust to offer a service or product you can’t, helps your customer get what they need whilst increasing your resources, exposure and client base. Package this up and you can offer your clients more value for their money.
10. Marketing is expensive: Whether you agree with me or not, good effective marketing should not cost you a fortune. The reason many of you will believe marketing is expensive is, because you a) don’t have a marketing plan in place so are unable to determine if what you are doing is the right thing b) don’t have any measures in place to evaluate your activity c) just doing little bits of marketing without knowing why, d) putting all your money into advertising. I always start with a budget of zero and take it from there…and so can you.

Jean Atkinson of Eden Marketing is a Chartered Marketer with over 16 years’ experience in marketing. Eden Marketing provides marketing workshops and marketing support to businesses of all sizes. www.training-marketing.co.uk

Thanks, But I’ve Got A Website

This may be the case. And I’m glad to see you’re making the right strides in having an online presence for your business. You’ve got the business idea, you offer a brilliant service or products and you’ve realised that online marketing is a superb resource for reaching a huge potential customer base. You’ve had your HR Manager’s graphic design student son or daughter to knock you up a basic site with your company logo, contact details and a brief outline of what you do, from their bedroom. And that’s it…the enquiries should come flying in thick and fast, right? And all it’s cost you is a crate of beer.

It is rare for most SME’s to think they have the necessary budget to invest in a strong website or marketing in general for that matter. We are all aware that large businesses and organisations are conducting business on a scale that we can only dream about. (Although one day, the Happy Bunch are all convinced that Mr Saatchi and co will be quaking in their boots when Happy Creative is famous for global campaigns..!) However, what we do know better than most at this current moment in time is the small business.

We understand that small business owners are striving to survive and grow during these incredibly tough times and we know how hard it can be. As with our clients, we depend in some respects on potential clients finding our website, liking what they see, and getting in touch to see how we can help them. Because of our understanding of this, we take our clients’ goals and needs very seriously, and know that they are entrusting us with something extremely important when they come to us for website design and development.

It is a common misconception amongst decision makers when thinking about setting up a website that you will simply put up a site and that’s it. Imagine it in this respect: A shop owner does not build up their store, stock it full of their products and then leave it at that, never to re-stock the shelves. Having your business online, whether it is solely an internet company, or a ‘shop window’ that is purely informational, a website needs to be in a constant state of development in order to have a chance of climbing up the search engines. This can be achieved by uploading regular and fresh content, adding news or blog articles that are industry related, new resources for your customers and interesting features such as Social Media updates to make your website useful to visitors. Therefore, your site should technically always be maintained, which means you need a quality web designer to ensure that this will be possible from the outset.

So, we go back to my original point – why shouldn’t you just have a ‘build it yourself’ or ‘off the shelf’ website?

To put it simply, the main reason is search engine rankings. These basic websites are ok if your aim is to simply have an online presence to outline your company if a user types in your exact URL. Anything other than that and it’s a complete waste of time. There are countless programmes and ways of creating these websites and they are cheap as chips (although having bought a chippy tea the other night, even chips aren’t that cheap anymore!). Anyway, the point is that these sites act like they are cheap. They are mass-produced, and therefore you end up with a site that not only doesn’t fit your needs, but which has also not been created to meet the needs of varying customers or the search engines. Without the search engines, you will inevitably not create the traffic you need which leads to a lack of genuine enquiries.

And this is where the problems get even worse. Website owners then look to SEO or PPC support, and end up paying three or four times the amount of the original website PER MONTH to try and encourage higher search engine rankings.

At Happy Creative, we hear about this a lot of from potential new clients, and more often than not, will have to recommend scrapping the template site and starting afresh with a bespoke site, custom built for the exact needs of your small business.

However, there are also an incredible amount of small businesses out there that have little or no web presence whatsoever, which, as a digital marketer, I find astonishing. I can’t recommend enough starting the ball rolling by creating an online platform for your business, and making sure you get it right from the start. Whatever your business is, you should be spending your time working on that business.  Investing in quality marketing, rather than trying to save on it by doing it yourself is proven to be better and much more cost-effective in the long run. Don’t be tempted by ‘build it yourself’ websites when it comes to something as important as your online presence.

If you’re reading as far as this, then thank you for bearing with me on this. Taking all of the above into consideration, our best advice for SME’s is to at least meet with a proven web design and/or marketing agency to discuss the options available to you, before you simply pay for a website that ‘looks ok and has your details on it’.

For a reasonable investment, you will end up with a professional, appealing, custom-built website that has been tailored specifically for both your business as well as your customers, and will also be designed and built to cater for up-to-date SEO protocols. And if a Content Management System (CMS) is the route that would work best for your business, you will be able to keep your website regularly updated with content, news, announcements, products and social media, and therefore not have to rely on a web designer to make changes for you at additional costs.

Creating websites and digital marketing for small businesses without a doubt requires a completely different approach than designing for large organisations. At Happy, our process involves face to face meetings with our client, discussing the requirements, talking through the brief and creating a piece of online work that really works in terms of getting results on your bottom line. All things considered, the internet is growing at a frightening rate, and whatever your business, you will find yourself competing with countless numbers of other websites all offering virtually the same thing. Feeling lost in the crowd should not be the sense you get from your website; rather it should be what it does for your customers that makes it shine out amongst a sea of others.

As with everything we do, our digital clients are Happy ones, and we love the recommendations we get.  We hope that we get the chance to discuss any website queries you may have, and possibly have the opportunity of helping your business grow, so one day you might be as big as you imagined.

Simon Brooke is a Director at Happy Creative, a full service marketing agency based in Blackpool, Lancashire. To learn more or contact us, please email simon@happy-creative.co.uk , Tweet @happy_creative or call 01253 446933. www.happy-creative.co.uk

Web funding available for Lancashire Companies

Happy is pleased to announce that funding is available for digital projects for  Lancashire based companies that meet the correct criteria.

50% match funding  (up to £5,000) is available on eligible activities.  

The funding is available for a range of projects including:  

• Web/ Website development, E-Business/E-Commerce websites, software development/apps, mobile computing, networking, systems integration  

Also, the funding can be used for:

• Product development: intellectual property, prototyping, manufacturing, licensing
• Process innovation: enhanced working methods, supply chain improvements, implementation of new machinery and supporting systems.

The funding is available for Lancashire based SME’s that meet the funding criteria.

 Contact hello@happy-creative.co.uk , phone 01253 446 933 or  tweet us @happy_creative for more information.

Simon Brooke is a Director at Happy Creative, a full service marketing agency based in Blackpool, Lancashire. To learn more or contact Simon, please email simon@happy-creative.co.uk , Tweet @Happy_Creative or call 01253 446933. www.happy-creative.co.uk

Love Up Logo

Whether you’ve been completely spoiled already today, got some amazing plans for tonight or even woken up to the usual empty doormat, Happy Creative has the perfect Valentine’s Day game that everyone can get involved in!

It’s called ‘Love Up Logo’ and it’s just a bit of fun for this romantic of all days.

All you need to do is use the Happy logo in a ‘loving’ way and show it to us.

You could take a photo on your phone of a logo that you’ve positioned within a lovely bunch of flowers?

How about scribbling a poem on a letterhead or invoice containing our logo?

You might even want to give our logo a little kiss and take a photo?

Whatever you decide to do, please send us in your efforts and we’ll post them up on Twitter, on our blog, Facebook and we might even put a couple of the best ones on our website.

It’s not just for our lovely clients, friends or suppliers, all of the Happies have had their own turn at ‘Loving Up Our Logo’.

See what you think of our efforts below:

Here’s Happy Emma’s lovely take on our compliment slip!

Here’s my effort – how cute is his cupid drawing?! Definitely an old romantic, me…

Happy Marilia has gone for a very Happy theme with her sunshine inspired logo:

Happy James’ had a go – you can tell who our Creative Director is can’t you?!

Happy Tom is our designer – a bit of a cheeky effort, but still very loved up!

Happy Debbie’s idea is very Blackpool inspired – a very nice take on it, Deb!

And finally, Happy Mike has showed his artistic side – very nice Mr Emmett!

You can be as creative as you like with this – the more weird and wonderful the better! And the ones with the most loving thought behind it will be kept permanently on our website! Don’t worry though, we’ll Tweet every single entry we get, as well as posting it on our Facebook wall.

If you don’t already follow us, you can join us on Facebook by clicking here  or Twitter here .

You can send us your entries either by emailing them to hello@happy-creative.co.uk (use subject line ‘Love Up Logo’), you could tweet them to us, or post them up on our Facebook wall. It’s up to you!

In case you haven’t got anything with our logo on, we’ve attached an image of it below. Feel free to print it off, cut it out, draw on it, Photoshop it, kiss it, but most of all…love it!

Happy Valentine’s Day! We can’t wait to see your ideas!

The Happy Bunch.