Marketing Basics: Save money on your marketing

Use joint ventures to cut your marketing budget in half and double your list…

Small businesses are always looking for ways to save money – especially right now. Joint venture marketing is a perfect way to do this. You share the costs and you share the list.

And it’s EASY!

So in this installment of the Marketing Basics: 17 Ways to Generate Leads for your Business, I am going to give you some ideas on how you can generate leads for your business while keeping your costs down using joint venture marketing.

Identify your target market

Understanding and knowing who your target market is, will help you identify other businesses that you can enter into a joint venture with. Normally you won’t want to do joint marketing with a competitor of yours, unless you are teaming up to offer and wider range of services and products and double your capacity.

However, the usual approach is to find a business, that is not a competitor, but who has the same or similar target market as you. For example, if you run a sportswear clothing shop then you may have the same target market as a fitness or sports provider such as a leisure centre, a gym or a personal trainer. Or if you run a Virtual Assistant business then you may have the same target market as a small business accountant or independent stationery supplier.

So you can see that by understanding your target market you can identify other business that will see value in working with you.

Understand how you will both benefit

This is the bit where you have to work out what’s in it for your joint venture partner – before you approach them. Because they are going to be looking to gain from the partnership too. Start with looking at what you want to get out of it:

** Access to a list that is larger than yours

** Share costs

** Widen your target market if they are not exactly the same

** Expand what you can offer to your client

Chances are your potential partner will want pretty much the same things. Work out how you are both going to get them. For example, if you have a large list but only one product to offer, the benefit to your JV partner is they get access to a large list and you perhaps get a commission on all products sold to list as well as building credibility with your list by being able to offer them products they may not have come across before.

Another example of joint venture marketing, on a very simple level, is to produce a piece of marketing collateral. You share the costs of production, printing and delivery – and you share the benefits.

What do you want?

Before you start approaching potential partners and coming up with lots of exciting ideas, take a little time to write down what you are hoping to achieve from partnering up but more importantly what you expect to gain out of each activity. Not “access to a larger list’ but more quantifiable than that. You want to get 10 new customers into your shop or you want to grow your subscriber list.

Knowing what you goals are will help you decide on the best activity to achieve them. E.g. if you want to get 10 more customers into your shop in the next fortnight then offer a time-sensitive deal they can’t refuse. If you want to grow your subscriber list then offer your partner’s list a gift or bonus simply for going to your website and signing up to yours. Then you can continue to market to them and develop your own business relationship with them.

In other words: Your goals define your actions.

Making it work

This is the fun bit! Coming up with the ideas. You know your target market, you have identified and approached other businesses (usually serving the same geographical area as you) that share that target market or similar and you know what you and your potential partners expect to get out of working together.

Now you need the ideas. 1… 2… 3…

1. Identify the needs, wants and desires of your target markets – what do they get out of buying from you. I.e. WHAT’S IN IT FOR THEM?

2. Set out what you both want to achieve from the activity.

3. Come up with exciting and fun ideas that will fulfill numbers 1 and 2.

Ok it’s fun, but not always that easy and sometimes this is where you need the help of a marketing professional. One of the things I do for my clients is come up with creative and exciting ideas as to how they can market themselves. But to get you started (if you don’t want to talk to me…), here are some activities that lend themselves really well to joint venture marketing:

* Events, workshops, teleseminars

* Leaflet drops, adverts, competitions

* Seasonal promotions, referral schemes and discounts

* Bonuses, giveaways, guest blog posts or newsletter articles

If you want to know more about joint venture marketing or want to talk to me about helping you put a JV plan together from scratch then email me or give me a call on 0845 272 3539 or email me on alex@justtoobusy.co.uk.

Citroën Volta à Torre Eiffel

No ano que comemora 90 anos, a marca de automóveis francesa Citroën volta a fazer uma ação na Torre Eifel, que também celebra uma data especial, seus 120 anos. Durante os anos de 1925 e 1934 a empresa colocou o seu nome na torre mais famosa do mundo.

Logo da Citroën na Torre Eiffel - 1925/ 1934

Desta vez a empresa fez parceria com a SETE (Société d’exploitation de la Tour Eiffel). Só que ao invés de colocar o logo da empresa de novo na torre, a Citroën instalou uma iluminação especial com as cores da empresa – Vermelho e Branco. A ação ocorre em conjunto com o lançamento do novo C3 na Europa. Segundo o blog Brainstorm9, que usou informações do blog Quietglove, a ação foi decepcionante. De acordo com ambos, não era possível determinar que aquilo era um evento patrocinado pela marca de automóveis criada por André Citroën. Para contornar o problema, a empresa recorreu a vídeos online e releases.

Vista da nova iluminação da Torre Eiffel em um C3 da Citroën

Mais aqui e aqui

Movistar recompensa a sus clientes por la publicidad

Movistar comenzó a recompensar a sus clientes por escuchar cuñas publicitarias, a través de una iniciativa dirigida a los clientes de prepago, que no ha sido publicitada más allá de su página web.

Bajo el nombre de llamadas esponsorizadas, esta iniciativa pretende ofrecer el primer minuto gratis de las llamadas a móviles de la compañía a cambio de escuchar una cuña de entre 8 y 15 segundos, aunque la marca advierte que sólo se hará efectiva si hay anunciantes interesados en el segmento en cuestión.

Movistar advirtió que si el usuario no escucha la cuña en su totalidad o decide saltársela presionando asterisco, los descuentos prometidos no se harán efectivos y recalcó que este servicio cumple con las promesas realizadas en el congreso sobre telefonía móvil de Barcelona.

Más información: Marketingdirecto.com

Simplicity, Relevancy & Customer Service

Having just graded your online promotional assignments, I thought that the following articles were timely, as they provide some concepts for you to consider as you start thinking about your final project.

• The story of Zappos is a great example of how important customer service is to a brand.  His keynote at Pubcon, which tells the Zappos story, is covered by Outspoken Media in an entertaining post.
• Conversely, this week’s recall of higher end strollers by MacLaren is an example on the opposite spectrum.
• Besides thinking about what differentiates your company and products from the competition, it’s important that you also consider how relevant you are to your customer.  Without that consideration, you’ll be marketing in a vacuum.
• Apparently the consumer market is moving towards simplicity, whether it’s ice cream or pet food.  While this article focuses on food products, it can apply to other products.  Is your client creating needless complications in the marketing process (including pricing)?
• While it’s not always considered part of the marketing strategy, product design (including packaging) is important.  Fast Company’s slideshow on 12 cool product packaging designs might inspire you.

planning for the future

Planning is the process of identifying the most efficient and effective ways for brands to share the things they want with the people that matter to them most.

Until recently, that has translated into identifying the most compelling ‘big brand ideas’, and then broadcasting them to apparently homogeneous audiences through conventional mass-media.

However, this approach no longer delivers the results we need.

Contrary to the laments of the media industry, this is not because attention has become more scarce; indeed, people actually have more free time now than they used to.

The real issue is that people have more opportunities to participate in a wider variety of activities, and unsurprisingly, they are choosing to focus their attention on those activities which offer them the greatest rewards.

In place of some of the time they used to spend ‘fire gazing’ – escaping the boredom and drudgery of everyday life – people are increasingly harnessing their cognitive surplus to learn and grow.

This more varied behaviour means that ‘audiences’ are increasingly dispersed: fewer people are doing the same thing at the same time, and mass-media are increasingly less ‘mass’ as a result.

However, this actually presents more opportunities than it does problems.

Rather than simply interrupting people’s escapism, we now have greater scope to get involved and make their lives better.

But, in order to achieve this, we need to rethink our approach to brand communications.

We need to move away from planning that centres on people’s ‘media habits’, and focus instead on the things that people are trying to achieve through those habits.

In other words, we need to ask why people do what they do, not just what they do.

Once we understand people’s motivations, we’ll find it much easier to find more relevant roles for our brands:

If people want passive entertainment, how can we help with that?

If they want to learn something new, what role can we play?

If they have a challenge, how can we help them solve it?

Brand communications can evolve into a means to deliver actual value, rather than simply a means to promote other forms of value delivery.

The benefit offered can be as simple as passive entertainment, but interactive experiences, education, and even corporate social responsibility (CSR) hold even greater potential.

In line with this evolving quest for people’s hearts and minds, planning’s role needs to evolve too, becoming

The process of identifying the most relevant and engaging times and places to deliver specific brand benefits, and the most efficient and effective ways to deliver those benefits in that context.

Over the next few days, I’ll share some ideas that can help make that future a reality.

You Gotta Save Money to Make Money

We’ve all heard the statement “You got to spend money to make money” but in this economy I think the opposite is true for small businesses.  Before I get any further, lets get one thing clear. I’m not saying small businesses need to cut marketing spend. Some may argue, this is the best time to increase marketing budgets (if one can afford to). If increasing marketing spend is not an option, then small businesses need to get better data, and make better decisions about where to spend money.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past two years, you should already know that the yellow pages, and most print adverts are a complete waste.  As always, there are exceptions… attorneys, for example, still do well in the yellow pages.  If you can find a targeted print ad, you may be able to drive incremental volume. For example, a local wedding feature in the newspaper or regional magazine may drive business to a local bridal shop.

Below are my suggestions for low cost e-marketing options. All of these could be managed in-house if you have the skills.

Work existing relationships. Email marketing is great for this due to its low cost, and availability of campaign data to measure effectiveness.  Don’t be scared to ask for repeat business or referrals. You’ll be surprised how people may respond to a well crafted offer.  For self-managed email campaigns, I’ve used Constant Contact and MailChimp.  I prefer MailChimp simply because their site is cooler, and feels less corporate. If you don’t feel you have the time, or the skills, don’t hesitate to call a local marketing company for help. Expect costs to be $0.02-$0.06/email depending on the design and email list size.

Work existing relationships(2). Social media is the epitome of working existing relationships. Through your network of friends, colleagues, and customers, you can develop an online community that is engaged in your brand and goes out of their way to tell others.  However… a big however… developing this online community is not for the faint of heart. It takes a huge investment in time, a little know-how, and some trial and error to get it done right.  There are many social media networks, so figure out which networks are right for your business before jumping in head first.

Facebook ads. Its super-easy to set up paid ads on Facebook and the targeting is outstanding. You can focus on your key demographic, and narrow the demographic further by targeting keywords located in an individual’s profile. You set your budget, so it doesn’t matter if you want to spend $10/day or $100/day.  The campaign data available is  top-notch, so refining the ad campaign is pretty easy.

Pay for ads on targeted websites. Advertising on smaller sites is usually pretty affordable. This is a little tricky, but try to find a site that focuses on your target demographic and see what advertising opportunities exist. If you don’t have graphic design skills, or have a graphic designer on standby, don’t hesitate to contact a local one to make your display ad pop.

Kundenservice: Warum sich Unternehmen auf eine neue Diskurskultur mit der Facebook-Generation einstellen müssen

An einem offenen Umgang mit dem Kunden, auch und insbesondere in Problemsituationen, führt in der Social Media-Welt kein Weg vorbei, so das Plädoyer des After Sales-Spezialisten Peter Weilmuenster, Vorstandschef von Bitronic in Frankfurt am Main. „Die Gespräche des Marktes finden auch ohne Einwirkung der Unternehmen im Internet statt. Jeder muss sich diesem kritischen Diskurs stellen, ob er will oder nicht“, erklärt Weilmuenster.

Sehr viele Konsumenten würden sich vor einer Kaufentscheidung über Suchmaschinen informieren, wo sie vermehrt Gruppendiskussionen aus Foren und sozialen Netzwerken finden, so Björn Behrendt, Geschäftsführer von www.service-community.net: „Insofern rate ich Unternehmen sogar, Kundendialoge auf der eigenen Unternehmenswebsite stattfinden zu lassen, sich der Kritik zu stellen und die durch Nutzer generierten Inhalte für die Suchmaschinenoptimierung und für ein durch Offenheit und Ehrlichkeit gekennzeichnetes Firmenimage zu nutzen“, empfiehlt der Internetexperte, der am 6. Oktober beim Nürnberger Fachkongress Voice Days plus zum Thema „Service für die Facebook-Generation“ seine Positionen vertreten hat (Diskussionsrunde mit Andreas Rebetzky von Bizerba und Thomas Dehler von Value5. Moderation: Ranga Yogeshwar, Wissenschaftsjournalist). Die Audio-Aufzeichnung der Diskussionsrunde kann man hier abrufen.

Wie Unternehmen die Social Media-Kanäle einsetzen können, skizziert Blogger Klaus Eck: Den Kundenservice mit Get Satisfaction online verbessern.

Mein Resümee zu den diesjährigen Voice Days plus kann man sich hier anschauen.