Need Help from a Marketing Agency? Look for a Customer Focused Company

When hiring a consumer focused marketing agency you need to ensure that the agency meets your business needs. Not every agency operates on a consumer focused philosophy, so it's important that if a consumer focused philosophy governs your main marketing objectives that the agency you choose understands how to implement consumer focused strategies. Customer focused marketing can be a struggle. It's not easy to plan and implement strategies that appeal to your customer base without extensive research on company and client demographics. Interviewing Agencies Before you choose a marketing agency, you should set up an interview and talk to the lead marketing manager to ensure that their agency meets your needs. If you feel that personalities don't mesh or that your vision differs from what they want to do, keep looking until you find a place that makes you feel confident about letting them handle your marketing. Questions to Ask Let's say you've narrowed the hiring pool down to two agencies. Now is the time to ask pertinent questions to make sure you choose the right agency. Find out how the agency plans on conducting research to learn about your client demographic. Will they send out questionnaires, take a survey of current clients, look at your competitors' client base, and perform general research on consumer behaviour? Are there any business models they use to help them determine the best marketing methods for your company? How often will you need to meet with them in order to discuss the effectiveness of current marketing campaigns? Once you have asked all of your questions, it's time to hire the right one. Working with an Agency Hiring the right agency is just the first step. You need to make sure that they continue to fulfill any promises that they made in the interview. You also want to make sure that they communicate with you about the effectiveness of your campaigns and let you know if they plan on making any major changes. Working with a marketing agency can really help promote your business as long as you work well with the firm that you choose.

Tips for Online but Local Marketing

Attracting people to your website is good. Marketing is an essential part of achieving online success. But if you’re not marketing to the right people, your efforts will be for naught. Here are some tips to help you target your local market with your marketing efforts: 1. Long Tail Keywords Use long tail keywords in your search engine optimisation campaigns. These phrases refer to local places and niche specialties in many cases and can help you target your local demographic, rather than fight with the much larger competition base trying to rank for short tail keywords. A good example of this is to try to rank for Cheshire pizza parlour, rather than pizza or UK marketing consultancy firm rather than “marketing”. As your competition narrows, your target customer / prospect has more of a chance of finding the thing they seek. 2. Know Your Competition Understanding who you’re up against in the world of online marketing can help you be more appealing to your target market. If you’re a restaurant, you can try to appeal to your local area and try to appear to your biggest competitor’s clients as well. Understanding what your competition may not do well could help you surpass them. 3. Local Directories Getting listed in local directories does several things for you. It helps people browsing local directories find you and it helps search engines connect the dots between your geographical area, your business niche, and your target customers. Directory submissions, particularly when targeted by local geographical area and by niche, can help you improve targeted traffic levels and organic SEO. 4. Lead Capture Local marketing should be about more than waving at your website visitors when they arrive. Try to capture those leads through permission marketing techniques or via a sales pipeline with autoresponder software, for instance. Not only can you work on turning visitors into real customers but if they’re local, this could help you with local referrals as well. There are many things you can do to slowly increase your market share in your area! 5. Social Marketing Social marketing is great for local businesses. They can find people to follow based on geographical area, advertise to their customers, use data mining techniques to learn more about their audience, niche, and competition, and use it to build their brand and strengthen their relationships. If you’re not using social marketing tools such as Twitter and Facebook, you could be missing out! Local marketing techniques can help you grow your business substantially. And if you need help there are consultants who could provide you with a customised strategy.

Half a Dozen Things a Small Business Consultant Could Do for Your Business

You want to succeed in business, especially online. All entrepreneurs who are paying attention to the potential that exists on the internet do. Is it worthwhile to invest in a small business consultant who will help you? Read on for five areas you might hire a consultancy firm to help you succeed in: #1 SEO Search engine optimisation is vital for any business wanting to succeed online. A consultant can help you learn what search engines are looking for when they categorise companies for highly searched terms. You could quickly move ahead of your competition in terms of search engine rankings and this equates to targeted traffic landing on your website. In many cases, that traffic is ready to make a buying decision and your position being ahead of competition could help you get that sale. #2 Process Improvements Another area many consultants are well versed in is in streamlining processes. A skilled consultant has a wealth of business experience that puts him or her in a position to help you see areas where you could reduce redundancies via process automation. Very often an outside source can see areas for improvement and you could see results in a matter of weeks. Process improvement doesn't even need to be extensive to make a difference. You might be surprised with advice given by an experienced professional. Sometimes a few minor tweaks can make a major difference. #3 Missed Opportunities Business owners who run their business like a well-oiled machine may not see potential growth opportunities. They often get caught up in the existing setup. A small business consultant may see quite a few areas that you could delve into. Whether this is in new areas, complimentary products, or getting more business from existing customers, it can all equate to more profit for you. A great part of a growth strategy is to expand on your existing customer base and strengths and a consultancy firm can show you how to do that. #4 Competitive Analyses Analysing competition is something that can help you make wise business decisions. You may not know how easy it can be to actually do this --- especially with the internet. A consultancy firm can help you do this in a way that helps you gather market intelligence that will enable you to forge ahead and win more market share as well as prevent competition from wooing your customers to their side because they do things better than you do. Competitive analysis is essential in the 21st century! #5 Lead Generation Generating new business via leads is a great way to expand. Website visitors, for example, can be turned into a lead. Every single person who visits your website is a potential customer and you can be taught how to take maximum advantage of that. #6 Customer Retention Do you know why some customers jump ship and find someone else to do business with? Your small business consultant can help you market more effectively to new customers but he or she can also help you retain loyalty of your existing customers through relationship management techniques that can help substantially. However you run your business today and however you plan to grow in the future, you can get coaching, business advice and mentoring to help you reach the next level of success. A trustworthy advisor could make a huge difference. Why do it alone when a specialist could help you achieve your goals faster without costing you more time that you don't have. The results could provide a huge return on investment.

Look for a Business Marketing Professional to Help with your SWOT Analysis

Hire a business marketing professional to help perform a SWOT analysis on your business. This analysis can help your business move forward. Whilst your current business team can do it, hiring a business marketing professional to help conduct your SWOT analysis is beneficial. An impartial party reviewing your business to determine your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) can provide a clear, unbiased view of your current performance as well as future prospects. Self-Study Bring in your supervisors, directors or other top people to get a vision of the big picture first. Get their perspective as well as those of key customers and even major vendors. Brainstorm key issues that your business and the marketplace face. Encourage everyone to make comments and suggestions without worrying about any judgment. Observations may include strengths and potential growth opportunities as well as weaknesses and failures. Evaluate all the significant issues that crop up during the brainstorming session and outline potential action plans to address them. Your hired business marketing professional is in the best position to help with the plan of action as they will best know the marketplace and know how to capitalise on strengths and opportunities and minimise weaknesses and failures. Strengths and Weaknesses Strengths are often the easiest to identify and may include a strong financial position, excellent personnel and management, a solid marketing plan and cost-effective production. Weaknesses are often the considered the elephant in the room. You know you have them but don’t want to acknowledge them. However, with the right SWOT analysis, you can tackle those weaknesses and turn them into strengths and opportunities. Weaknesses may appear as insufficient liquid cash to use for expansion of a new product line or poor management and personnel. The products may be outdated or customer service and after-sales service may be ineffective. Poor production schedules and outdated equipment could be contributing factors. Opportunities and Threats Threats are often easy to spot and must be prepared for. It could be in the form of a key employee that leaves for the competition – with full knowledge of your business practices. Price increases from vendors, rate hikes in rent, legislative changes, market recessions and more contribute to potential threats too. Identified opportunities can mean a boost of business for you. Perhaps it is the failure of a competitor’s product line or the addition of a new sales distribution outlet. A new customer base and innovative technologies that lower production costs are additional opportunities. Every business – large and small – should perform a SWOT analysis on occasion to maintain their competitive edge. Once the analysis is performed, a clear plan of action can be put into play. With the help of a business marketing professional who is knowledgeable about the marketplace, your business can take advantage of those opportunities and minimize its weaknesses to avoid failure.