Ideal Marketing Company Blog

Marketing Seminars – Keeping Customers Happy

31. The golden rule – do unto others as you would have done to you.  If you stick by this rule when it comes to customers, you won’t go too far wrong.   

32. Speed stuns.  It is said that in restaurants, the speed and quality of waiter service is rated as more important than the food.  That’s quite interesting if you consider why people go to a restaurant!  The speed of your response will make a big difference to the experience and opinions of your customers.  If you can solve problems swiftly, you will win over any customers and win new friends.

33. Take responsibility.  Things will go wrong in life – have you noticed?  Most suppliers and most of your competitors will blame everybody and anybody instead of themselves, but because you take responsibility when something goes wrong, you will tell the customer the words they want to hear.  “I will take complete responsibility for sorting this out.  Let me look into it, find out exactly what the situation is and I’ll get back to you with an answer by X o’clock”  And even if you don’t know everything you hoped you would by that time, call them back when you said you would.  Would you like to deal with a company that says that when things go wrong? I know I would!

For more marketing ideas come to our next free marketing seminar on February 9^th  Hothorpe Hall, near Leicestershire – see the seminars page for full details.

The offer

What do you want to say? Why are you contacting these people in the first place?  You should always have a reason for writing to people.  Is it something new that they can have?  Is it a special offer or a reduced price, a new item in stock for a limited time?  Whatever it is, the offer is probably the most important area.  If you get the offer right then you are off to the best start.

Make your offer as eye catching and imaginative possible.  Make it time sensitive and difficult to say no to. Make it believable and above all make it easy to understand. To assess this, show your letter to a stranger: they should be able to say what you are telling them about in about 5 records if you are to have a chance of winning over people with your direct mail letter. 

This material comes from one one of the Marketing Mentor Marketing Seminars.

During a useful marketing mentoring session this morning we discussed theimportance of using testimonials. These really are one of the most effective low cost ways to cement your reputation.  Hayn from Gaia sent in some examples for discussion and although we talked about how they could be fine tuned, they are both goodexamplesofwhy testimonials work well.

Energy Saving at Work – Automotive Industry

Alcon is one of the world’s foremost manufacturers of performance and motor sport brake and clutch systems; supplying and winning in F1, WRC, NASCAR, Indy Car, Touring Cars and GT racing, as well as engineering extreme solutions for several leading performance road car manufacturers.

Eager to control peak consumption and reduce their environmental impact with ISO14001, Alcon use the Gaia monitoring system to keep track on electricity usage. With 48 consumption reads taken per day, the data available at www.savegaia.net and alerts set up should consumption hit a set limit, Alcon have their energy under control.

Operations Manager David Fuller said ‘We at Alcon are keen to show our commitment to good environmental best practice. Using Gaia we can visibly see our energy consumption enabling us to drive down usage and save money at the same time.’

www.alcon.co.uk

Energy Saving at Work – Power Resistor Manufacturer

Cressall Resistors is the world’s foremost resistor manufacturer based on Evington Valley Road, in Leicester.Cressall Resistors has 100 years experience in producing power resistors for use in the electro-technical market. With design and manufacturing facilities within the UK, Cressall supply both standard and custom designed resistors for any application from a few watts up to several megawatts and for operation at any voltage. Cressall are committed to total quality and have a Quality Management System approved to ISO 9001:2000.

In June 2008 Cressall, subscribed to the Gaia system to monitor and control their energy consumption. By identifying higher out of hours consumption during night shift operations they identified savings of 280 KWH units per night (£500 a month). Bill Urwin Quality Manager said ‘Using Gaia we have generated a positive financial payback in weeks which can be secured for the long term through the continual monitoring and alarm settings provided by the Gaia system’

Do you have a testimonial gathering programme in place?  if not set one up orspeak to your marketing company andget them to start work on it straight away! Hope you fould that marketing mentoring session of help. Thanks again to Haydn for his input.

Alastair Campbell from the Ideal Marketing Company delighted to be named as ‘best community business’

A local marketing firm from Market Harborough has been awarded the Community Business of the Year Award this week. Alastair Campbell, who is MD of The Ideal Marketing Company based in Coventry Road, was nominated for the award by clients. Over the past 12 months he has worked on the campaign to bring a cinema to Market Harborough, helped run the publicity for the town’s Arts Fresco event and also runs regular marketing seminars at Hothope Hall which are free to local businesses.

Six other local companies were put forward for the award which was organised by online business directory The Best of Market Harborough. Local business owners and clients were then invited to vote for the business that they considered most deserving of the award, with Alastair’s company The Ideal Marketing Company, taking over 50% of the votes.

Alastair was delighted to be presented with the award at the Angel Hotel on Wednesday evening at the Harborough Chamber of Commerce meeting. “It’s always nice to receive recognition for what you do, however, the greatest reward as far as I’m concerned would be if the plan for a cinema for the town actually succeeds, and the good that would do for the local economy,” he comments.

Alastair’s free bi-monthly marketing seminars for local businesses run at Hothorpe Hall in Theddingworth – the next one takes place on the evening of November 18th and is free to attend.  Reserve a place by e-mailing seminar@idealmarketingcompany.com or vist www.themarketingmentor.co.uk

Thanks to all the people who were able to attend the lunchtime seminar I spoke at today at The Angel Hotel in Market Harborough.  It was organised to promote a local networking group and about 10 people from the group were present including Mark Spikings from www.stillmagic.co.uk who took some great pictures of the event.

I covered the 9 level for marketing Success and the topic seemed to go down well and provoked some interesting debates.  It’s pretty clear to me that whilst the ecconomy is not looking too rosy (!) small business owners are fairly confident that they have a lot of control over how well their businesses will do over the coming months.

I have decided that my next seminar is going to be on the subject of marketing during difficult times and will follow the theme of my new tips booklet ’12 proven marketing idea to help your business weather the ecconomic storm’ See www.themarketingmentor.co.uk to claim a free tips booklet on this subject.

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Thank you to everybody who attended the marketing seminar i was asked to present in London yesterday.  It was on the theme of ’9 Steps to Succesfult Marketing’ a theme that I developed earlier in the year and have now developed into a full presentation.  The groups that I have presented to to seem to feel that it’s a useful framework and gives them a way to take a broader look at their marketing. 

On this occasion the event planners had the foresite to ask the people attending what are the main areas of marketing that you’d like help with.  This meant that I was able to spend more time on the bits that most of them said they want covered,  I like the idea of doing this and will suggest to – where possible – to other event planners.

A couple of things were notable for me about the presentation.  First of all the people who were there, were all friends of one person – Dennis Preston from Anagram (www.anagramonline.co.uk) He invited them so that they could connect with one another and as a way of growing each other’s network. I think that this is a great idea and on the train home I was thinking about whether I could do somthing similar myself. 

Secondly, the people were themselves lovely.  Perhaps because Dennis was careful to take a great deal of care about who he selected to make sure that there was a good mix of skills and common interests, I’m not sure.  But I got the feeling that even if I hadn’t given my presentation it would have been a great success. They would have quite happily talked amongst themselves for the morning! I also gave everybody who attended a copy of my new tips booklet 12 Proven Marketing Ideas to help your Business Weather the Ecconomic Storm – also available at www.themarketingmentor.co.uk

Finally the building itself – The National Liberal Club is a great venue to hold an event.  It had a homely splendour about it, it that isn’t too much of a contradiction.  Located in Whithall Place overlooking the Thames, it was a wonderful old building – the sort that you walk past and wonder what it’s like inside.  Well now I have had the pleasure of going inside and seeing for myself.  

One of the many joys of running marketing talks, marketing seminars and marketing workshops is that often you get to see the most interesting places that you wouldn’t normally go.

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The advertising world is often accused of creating it’s own type of reality that has little to do with everyday life.  Of course it can create great TV, but the best advertising is rooted in people’s everyday problems.  If you take the time to understand what problems are affecting your prospects and then work out a way that your product can REALLY solve them, then your advert and your product is likley to be a success – if you can attract their attention.

And of course that is the problem.  Getting people’s attenion is getting harder all the time – hense the need for a the attention grabbing reality we see so often in advertising.

Nobody would ever the accuse James Bond movies of going for ‘reality’ yet that have made plenty of money over the years.

Have a look at the trailer for the latest at http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-gb&vid=3e1ccfe0-654d-4c6f-9b72-3835db18eb77 and compare it with the reality of the situation if you know Mr Bond - as seen by Mitchell and Webb tinyurl.com/6nan8r.

There are still a fe places left at my next free marketing seminar taking place at Hothorpe Hall, near Market Harborough, Leicestershire on Wednesday 17th of September.  Reserve your place by calling 01858 44 55 43 and I hope to see you there.

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Direct mail summary

Keep it focused. Don’t try to cover too many points in your letter. Focus on one central benefit and perhaps a secondary one. You don’t want to confuse your audience with too many things to think about.

Think like the customer / prospect. Forget about your company as such and think about what you can do to help people and their businesses.

Don’t get bitter, get better. Even following all of these rules, you can’t guarantee that everything will go right every time. And even a great response can probably be bettered. Take time to reflect on what could be done better and how you can improve each aspect to fine tune your letters and generate a more fruitful result next time.

Some other direct mail ideas that work well

Create interest by being topical. By using a headline from a newspaper (quoting the publication and date) you can show just how up to date your product or offer is. It also makes it clear that your message is based on ‘facts’ rather than being made up by you to sell things.

It takes seven meaningful points of contact to make the average sale, yet most people give up on direct mail after one letter. Better to create a list of 100 companies that you REALLY want to work with and mail them regularly than to mail a hundred different companies every week.

As part of your regular mailing campaign, send cuttings (about you or relevant stories) to your contact to show that you understand the industry and how it works. Mixed in with regular direct mail letters, this can be very effective.

Timing is (almost everything). The day your letter arrives has an effect, as does the time of year you send it. Send your letter so that it arrives on a Tuesday. For other matters think about the time of year that people are most likely to reply. For example, when mailing schools, September seems to be the best month.

Stamp rather than frank. It looks less industrial and is almost always more cost effective.

Follow up with e-mail or a phone call. This area is covered later in the series, but a good direct mail letter that is followed up by phone within a week of being sent out will generate a far higher response rate for you.

3D Mailers and novelties can work IF they are very carefully targeted; the more personal or suited to the contact the better. For example, a personalised calendar can work well and even if it is expensive, it can prove to be a good investment in the long term if you bear in mind the lifetime value of a customer.

Qualify your data. It’s a pain, but worth calling people on a mailing list prior to writing to them. Make sure that the name you have is up to date and is the right person to contact otherwise you might as well save your stamp. Writing to somebody who isn’t there anymore or isn’t in a position to buy from you is rarely going to end well.

Test, test and test again. If you think you have a good product and there is a market for it, then direct mail should work for you – it’s just a question of finding the key to unlocking the door, so keep testing out different headlines, offers, lists etc. You’ll find one that works for you in the end – it might just take a few attempts to get it right. Remember that when you are testing, check out one thing at a time.

The format

There are many different ideas about how long a direct mail letter should be. One school of thought says that the more you tell, the more you sell. Whilst I understand this point, I haven’t found it to be true. However, the most effective length and style of direct mail letter I have worked on is no longer than a single sheet of A4.

The mailer is divided into a single page letter, (on headed paper) a response form that can be posted or faxed, plus a further letter or sheet with quotes from satisfied customers. This three part mailer generates a higher response rate than any other and has more words and certainly more substance to it than a single page. Test it out for yourself and see which variation works best for you.