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Archive for the 'Sales & Marketing' Category

Connecting offline with online marketing

Published by Corrina on 12 August, 2010 in Sales & Marketing • 0 Comments
Connecting offline with online marketing
Connect offline with online marketing to maintain or create consumer interest and increase sales.
People go online for more information on products or services – even when purchasing offline
An iProspect survey of 2,300 individuals found that 67 per cent were driven to search for more information online following exposure to offline marketing. The top three channels driving users online were television ads, word of mouth, and magazine or newspaper ads. iProspect hypothesise that people go online to ‘seek validation’ of offline marketing messages. And an eMarketer survey found that 63 per cent of respondents go online to research products or services before purchase. These findings suggest that companies without a strong online presence may lose valuable consumer interest. iProspect’s study also suggests that businesses marketing solely online may miss opportunities to create online traffic using offline marketing.
Companies that do not sell online might think that driving people onto the internet will result in losing sales to web retailers – but this may not be the case. Studies from BIGResearch and TMP Marketing both found that over three-quarters of respondents who research products and services online follow up with offline actions including in-store purchase. This ‘research online, buy offline’ behaviour shows that offline businesses can compete with web retailers – if they provide the information consumers are looking for.
What information are your audiences looking for?
Basic product or service detail may exist on your website, but could you expand on this with resources that answer common queries – such as FAQs, environmental credentials, or customer reviews? To support offline marketing, could you create news items or web resources that provide further details on campaigns? Or social networks could provide ways for new and existing customers to discuss products or services, allowing people to both obtain information and become more confident in your credibility.
Make it easier for people to connect with online information
As iProspect’s survey found, offline marketing drives online search. And in a business i article last year, search expert Ed Foster said: “Search is a barometer of other noise you make in the market”, pointing out that offline marketing can increase search activity. Search engine optimisation or search advertising could therefore allow people to more easily connect with your online information.
Simple offline steps could help people to easily find your online presence, such as ensuring your home page and social network links are on general marketing literature, and linking campaigns to specific ‘more info’ web pages. The use of ‘friendly urls’ such as ‘example.com/summerspecial’ could make such links more presentable on printed materials, and more memorable to the consumer.
Create online traffic using offline campaigns
Offline marketing can drive online interest. Businesses engaged solely in online marketing could therefore create new offline campaigns designed to create online traffic. Campaigns could highlight the valuable online information on offer, and perhaps offer incentives to get involved. For example, you could – via direct mail, ads or PR – invite people to your Facebook page which provides information and special offers, or encourage participation in online product or service feedback discussions. Finding ways to encourage customers to share experiences with friends could also spur online interest.
Facilitate ‘research online, buy offline’ behaviour
Providing relevant online information fulfils the research needs of consumers. But, for companies that do not sell online, it’s important to then bring people back into the offline world. For instance, emphasising the benefits of offline purchase, such as try-before-you-buy, and providing call-to-actions, such as callbacks, online appointments, in-store reservations or vouchers, could convert online interest into offline purchase. What steps could you provide to make offline purchase easier and more beneficial?
The value in connecting offline and online
The internet is an important resource for consumers seeking information on products and services. People are often driven online in response to offline marketing, or other influences such as word of mouth. But they may ultimately return offline to purchase. Proactively providing the right information, and helping people to connect with it, could therefore help to both create and maintain interest in your products or services, thereby increasing sales – online or off.

Connect offline with online marketing to maintain or create consumer interest and increase sales.

People go online for more information on products or services – even when purchasing offline

An iProspect survey of 2,300 individuals found that 67 per cent were driven to search for more information online following exposure to offline marketing. The top three channels driving users online were television ads, word of mouth, and magazine or newspaper ads. iProspect hypothesise that people go online to ‘seek validation’ of offline marketing messages. And an eMarketer survey found that 63 per cent of respondents go online to research products or services before purchase. These findings suggest that companies without a strong online presence may lose valuable consumer interest. iProspect’s study also suggests that businesses marketing solely online may miss opportunities to create online traffic using offline marketing.

Companies that do not sell online might think that driving people onto the internet will result in losing sales to web retailers – but this may not be the case. Studies from BIGResearch and TMP Marketing both found that over three-quarters of respondents who research products and services online follow up with offline actions including in-store purchase. This ‘research online, buy offline’ behaviour shows that offline businesses can compete with web retailers – if they provide the information consumers are looking for.

What information are your audiences looking for?

Basic product or service detail may exist on your website, but could you expand on this with resources that answer common queries – such as FAQs, environmental credentials, or customer reviews? To support offline marketing, could you create news items or web resources that provide further details on campaigns? Or social networks could provide ways for new and existing customers to discuss products or services, allowing people to both obtain information and become more confident in your credibility.

Make it easier for people to connect with online information

As iProspect’s survey found, offline marketing drives online search. And in a business i article last year, search expert Ed Foster said: “Search is a barometer of other noise you make in the market”, pointing out that offline marketing can increase search activity. Search engine optimisation or search advertising could therefore allow people to more easily connect with your online information.

Simple offline steps could help people to easily find your online presence, such as ensuring your home page and social network links are on general marketing literature, and linking campaigns to specific ‘more info’ web pages. The use of ‘friendly urls’ such as ‘example.com/summerspecial’ could make such links more presentable on printed materials, and more memorable to the consumer.

Create online traffic using offline campaigns

Offline marketing can drive online interest. Businesses engaged solely in online marketing could therefore create new offline campaigns designed to create online traffic. Campaigns could highlight the valuable online information on offer, and perhaps offer incentives to get involved. For example, you could – via direct mail, ads or PR – invite people to your Facebook page which provides information and special offers, or encourage participation in online product or service feedback discussions. Finding ways to encourage customers to share experiences with friends could also spur online interest.

Facilitate ‘research online, buy offline’ behaviour

Providing relevant online information fulfils the research needs of consumers. But, for companies that do not sell online, it’s important to then bring people back into the offline world. For instance, emphasising the benefits of offline purchase, such as try-before-you-buy, and providing call-to-actions, such as callbacks, online appointments, in-store reservations or vouchers, could convert online interest into offline purchase. What steps could you provide to make offline purchase easier and more beneficial?

The value in connecting offline and online

The internet is an important resource for consumers seeking information on products and services. People are often driven online in response to offline marketing, or other influences such as word of mouth. But they may ultimately return offline to purchase. Proactively providing the right information, and helping people to connect with it, could therefore help to both create and maintain interest in your products or services, thereby increasing sales – online or off.

Guide – Create your marketing strategy

Sales innovation

Published by Business Link on 7 June, 2010 in Creativity & Innovation and Sales & Marketing • 0 Comments
Sales innovation
Three ways and three steps: using customer knowledge, fresh thinking and new ideas to sell more.
Sales innovation can create customer value and business success. By tapping into salespeople’s customer insights and experiences, businesses can conjure up innovative ideas for improving sales processes and sales messages, and creating fresh sales tactics and approaches.
Think different
Salespeople know about customers; about their attitudes, likes, dislikes, wants and needs. So why not use this knowledge to inspire fresh thinking and innovative new ideas? Sales innovation could inspire improvements in three key areas:
Sales processes. Improve sales processes for the benefit of both business efficiency and the customer. Could you make things easier for salespeople? For example, by providing mobile access to customer data, product information or stock levels. Or could you simplify customer processes in ways that improve customer value? For example, by simplifying customer interactions, pricing options or order processes.
Sales messages. Salespeople have unique customer insights and experiences which could help to create or improve sales and marketing messages and adapt them for different customer types or groups. Good communication and collaboration between sales and marketing – to brainstorm and implement innovative ideas – could lead to more practical and relevant sales messages and a stronger sales voice.
Sales approaches. Could you conjure up creative, clever, engaging and witty ways to get your foot in the door and win the hearts and minds of individual prospects or customer groups? Ingenuity grabs attention, so novel approaches could get customers or even the media talking about your business. By learning more about potential customers’ wants and needs, and by understanding how they think, you could formulate unique, exciting and personalised sales tactics and approaches.
Three steps to sales innovation
Customer knowledge. Get inside the minds of existing and potential customers; understand their attitudes, instincts, perceptions, wants and needs. Get together and share insights with marketing, salespeople and other customer-facing employees. Also analyse customer data for insights. Let this knowledge inspire and feed the ideas generation process.
Creative ideas generation. Brainstorm ideas – individually or in groups – on how to improve sales processes, messages, tactics and approaches – and how to solve sales challenges or problems. When brainstorming: don’t evaluate ideas immediately as this may dissuade people from contributing; think realistic and practical, but also open up to more imaginative or unorthodox ideas.
Innovation. Assess and develop good and viable ideas. Prioritise safe quick-wins, but don’t overlook those good-but-risky ideas; valuable innovations sometimes result from taking risks. Seek management and employee buy-in for your ideas so that they have the support they need to become successful innovations. For less surefire ideas experiment with test programmes before wider roll-out.
So why not take time out to think differently and innovate? Get to know your customers and key prospects, review your sales processes, messages and approaches, and brainstorm new ideas.

Three ways and three steps: using customer knowledge, fresh thinking and new ideas to sell more.

Sales innovation can create customer value and business success. By tapping into salespeople’s customer insights and experiences, businesses can conjure up innovative ideas for improving sales processes and sales messages, and creating fresh sales tactics and approaches.

Think different

Salespeople know about customers; about their attitudes, likes, dislikes, wants and needs. So why not use this knowledge to inspire fresh thinking and innovative new ideas? Sales innovation could inspire improvements in three key areas:

Sales processes. Improve sales processes for the benefit of both business efficiency and the customer. Could you make things easier for salespeople? For example, by providing mobile access to customer data, product information or stock levels. Or could you simplify customer processes in ways that improve customer value? For example, by simplifying customer interactions, pricing options or order processes.

Sales messages. Salespeople have unique customer insights and experiences which could help to create or improve sales and marketing messages and adapt them for different customer types or groups. Good communication and collaboration between sales and marketing – to brainstorm and implement innovative ideas – could lead to more practical and relevant sales messages and a stronger sales voice.

Sales approaches. Could you conjure up creative, clever, engaging and witty ways to get your foot in the door and win the hearts and minds of individual prospects or customer groups? Ingenuity grabs attention, so novel approaches could get customers or even the media talking about your business. By learning more about potential customers’ wants and needs, and by understanding how they think, you could formulate unique, exciting and personalised sales tactics and approaches.

Three steps to sales innovation

Customer knowledge. Get inside the minds of existing and potential customers; understand their attitudes, instincts, perceptions, wants and needs. Get together and share insights with marketing, salespeople and other customer-facing employees. Also analyse customer data for insights. Let this knowledge inspire and feed the ideas generation process.

Creative ideas generation. Brainstorm ideas – individually or in groups – on how to improve sales processes, messages, tactics and approaches – and how to solve sales challenges or problems. When brainstorming: don’t evaluate ideas immediately as this may dissuade people from contributing; think realistic and practical, but also open up to more imaginative or unorthodox ideas.

Innovation. Assess and develop good and viable ideas. Prioritise safe quick-wins, but don’t overlook those good-but-risky ideas; valuable innovations sometimes result from taking risks. Seek management and employee buy-in for your ideas so that they have the support they need to become successful innovations. For less surefire ideas experiment with test programmes before wider roll-out.

So why not take time out to think differently and innovate? Get to know your customers and key prospects, review your sales processes, messages and approaches, and brainstorm new ideas.

Use innovation to grow your business

Sales tips

Published by Corrina on 10 March, 2010 in Sales & Marketing and Top Tips • 0 Comments Tags: .

Tips to help improve your sales approach, get more and better leads, and increase sales.

Know your customer value proposition

What value – what unique benefits – does your business and its products or services provide? Ensuring salespeople articulate this message clearly can create stronger links with consumers who would most value your offerings – which means more sales. Summarising your value proposition into a concise ‘elevator pitch’ can also help when spreading the message to employees and consumers.

Create a sales document

Put your value proposition into a document alongside key information such as company history, vision, values, what you do and for whom, what makes you unique and better than the competition. Be brief but include anything that adds credibility. Doing so could aid planning, help to define key sales messages, and become the basis of marketing materials such as brochures or flyers to give to potential customers.

Have a plan

What are your sales goals and priorities? Are your sales forecasts realistic? Which consumer groups represent your best targets? What are your key sales messages? What are your sales opportunities or threats? What are your key sales tactics? How could you work to improve your overall sales approach?

Manage leads

Good lead management focusses on both quantity and quality of leads. Do you know which customer groups generate the most leads that end in sales? Or which sales approaches bring the highest value customers? Keep an analytical eye on leads; it helps to know how many leads you need to reach targets, and which sources of leads return the most sales – or the most valuable sales.

Use a system

Online customer relationship management systems can be useful and cost-effective for both individual salespeople and big sales teams. Beyond the basics such as storing contact data and sales interactions, they offer tools for tracking and managing leads throughout the sales process, and analysing sales and customer data over time. Such systems can also be integrated with productivity software such as MS Outlook or Google Apps, or accessed via smartphones. (Examples: Salesforce, Zoho, Dynamics).

Rethink sales approaches

Review how you generate leads and sales and rethink the options. Which approaches deliver the most or least sales? Which approaches are you missing? Example approaches: lead generation via advertising, direct marketing, flyers, email or online marketing, telesales, discount promotions, referral or word-of-mouth schemes with existing customers, exhibitions or networking events, creative selling.

Encourage word-of-mouth

Customers who recommend you to others are invaluable sales drivers because people tend to trust friends or colleagues more than businesses they have never used. It can happen organically by selling quality products or services and treating customers well. Or you can encourage it by asking customers to tell friends, offering incentives to do so, or providing easier ways to share, such as via online social networks. But remember: word-of-mouth belongs to the consumer – encourage but don’t try to control.

Offer free samples

In an economy where consumers are reluctant to open their wallets to new companies, free samples or test drives could represent a strong sales generator. It’s a softer alternative to the hard sell, and it could persuade new customers to switch from competitors. Many products and services can be tried in some way before purchase, so explore if and how it could work for your business.

Listen to customers

Sometimes sales are achieved not through marketing messages and value propositions but through the simple act of listening to customers and linking their individual needs with the value you can offer. Well thought out sales messages are important, but don’t forget the value of listening. See Are you listening?

More information – Identify and sell more to your most valuable customers

Customer care

Published by Corrina on 18 February, 2010 in Sales & Marketing, Strategy & Operations and Top Tips • 0 Comments

Five tips for improving customer care, satisfaction and loyalty.

1. Remember why it’s important

Taking good care of customers improves customer satisfaction and loyalty, and increases the chances of customers recommending your products or services to others.

It’s an important part of relationship marketing, which focuses on getting and keeping customers through a combination of marketing, quality, and customer service. Building relationships also helps to minimise costs, because retaining customers is usually cheaper than acquiring new ones.

2. Identify high value customers

Which individual customers, or customer groups, give you the greatest financial return – when considering the costs associated with acquiring, managing and servicing them?

Answering this question allows you to focus time and resources into keeping your highest value customers happy. It also guides the acquisition of new customers which fit this high-value profile.

3. Establish feedback mechanisms

Conduct surveys, questioning customers on factors such as product or service quality, response times, staff knowledge and attitude, complaint handling, and overall satisfaction. Surveys that remain consistent are useful for tracking performance over time. To maximise participation: keep things simple, offer options to respond online, and consider offering incentives.

Other feedback methods include: comment cards or “tell us how we are doing” links on email footers or websites; insights from customer-facing employees; talking to customers individually or in focus groups;  courtesy calls; dialogue via social networks or online forums.

Make feedback a two-way process: thank customers for their participation; respond to dissatisfied customers and resolve their complaints; openly explain to customers how you are trying to improve.

4. Establish customer service metrics

Identifying high value customers, and obtaining customer feedback, allows you to define key customer service metrics which you should both maintain and improve upon.

For instance, you may learn that high value customers are generally satisfied, but unhappy with how your people respond when things go wrong. Such a weakness represents an opportunity to react to customer feedback and improve in future.

5. Train your employees

Employees may need support and training to improve on the customer service issues identified. Review customer feedback and performance metrics, and use these insights to develop a training plan which plugs the gaps in your customer service.

More info - Manage your customer care guide

Location-based digital marketing

Published by Corrina on 18 February, 2010 in IT & eBusiness and Sales & Marketing • 0 Comments

Put your business on the map and connect with local consumers – it’s easier than you might think.

For a while now online advertisers have been able to determine a user’s location and deliver location-based ads. But their methods have not always been capable of providing precise location data. People then began to use ‘location-aware’ mobile devices in greater numbers, and things got interesting for location-based advertisers. Many modern mobile phones can pinpoint their location to the nearest few metres, which means businesses can now deliver highly targeted marketing messages to local consumers.

Let’s say a restaurant promotes itself through a major search engine. Nearby users searching locally for places to eat would be shown the restaurant’s ad more prominently than establishments which are further away. Users might also search using an online map, and find contact details, directions, and information on any special offers. The business benefits by connecting with local consumers, and the consumer obtains tangible benefits too; benefits that traditional forms of online advertising can fail to offer.

And that’s just the beginning. Imagine the restaurant anticipates a quiet spell and wants to drum up custom. It creates an online voucher and ‘pushes’ it out to nearby consumers via a mobile application that people use to find local discount deals, or an application that provides local restaurant listings and user-generated reviews. Again, both the business and the consumer benefits from the connection.

Location-based services are emerging at great pace, developed by search engines, mobile advertising firms, and software makers, that all see the huge unmet potential of ‘location’. And because many such services mix advertising with useful content and user benefits, the location-based model seems to offer value to both businesses and consumers.

If you wish to interact with local consumers, an easy but valuable first step is ensuring your business is ‘on the map’ with search engines that provide location-based services. Search for your business using their local search or map services. If your business is listed you can update its profile, otherwise you can create a new one. Typically such listings include basic company information, but some let you create an online presence which includes features such as user reviews and discount vouchers. Search engine data is often used to power third-party services, which means your business may also benefit from appearing on other tools and applications that aim to connect businesses and consumers.

You can also create local ad campaigns with search engines, or specialist mobile advertising providers, which distribute ads to numerous places, from search results to mobile applications used by consumers. Even some social networks are beginning to offer local ads.

Because new location services, technologies, and mobile applications are emerging all the time, it’s useful to keep an eye on developments in order to spot new opportunities. One way of doing this is to monitor developments using news search services such as Google News or Bing News. Here are some key phrases to search for: location-based services; location-based advertising; location-based apps. Also search for location-based services and applications which may be relevant to your own market sector, and explore how your business could get involved.

Location-based services offer both current and future opportunities. If you see location as important to your business: make it a key part of your digital marketing strategy; get to grips with the basics that you can do now; and keep an eye on new developments as things move forward.

More info – Choosing the right adveristing media tool