More details are included on my just giving page if you are inclined to show your support http://www.justgiving.com/Alastair-Campbell1

Thank you

The economies of the world are littered with the skeletons of industries which decided to sell to customers what they produced, rather than what the customer wanted. Many companies will develop products which they think are interesting without ever asking for customer feedback. Names and products aren’t tested before being launched into the market. While it isn’t always possible to gauge public reaction accurately, it is always a good idea to respond to public wishes. Trends can be set for people to follow, but it is usually a good idea to measure the mood of the public and ask direct questions to see what people are likely to demand in the future.

One of the easiest ways to do that is to monitor what is currently selling well and what is selling badly. Remember that consumers can be fickle: people will tend to buy what they want and leave what they don’t. It is much easier to swim with the tide than against it. If you want to make your sales team’s job an easier one, find out what the public wants and get them to sell that – rather than trying to sell simply what you are currently producing.

For more tips and advice on how to grow your business contact us to discuss a free 1 hour consultation with The Ideal Marketing Company.

Make people ‘seek you out’ rather than feel sold to

In an age when we feel sold to all the time, people like to receive an expert opinion.  If you are some kind of expert in your specialist area, you can make regular and legitimate comments on ongoing issues. Contributing articles, creating surveys or even producing your own tips booklets or CDs all help to position you as a go-to expert within your field.

We have all had projects that have not been as successful as we had hoped – whether it is a new product or launching your services to a new market. But do you know why these projects failed when you worked so hard?

Take a look at the following suggestions and use them as a checklist for your next project.

Not knowing the result you want to achieve

Mark Twain said he could teach anyone how to get what they want; he just couldn’t find anyone who truly knew what they wanted. Many people don’t know what it is they really want to achieve and will focus all their energy on what they don’t want instead. If you’re not achieving the success you desire, it’s often because your objectives are not clearly defined. Your goals need to be written, specific and measurable. When you talk to others about your ambitions, they should be able to understand them quickly.

A lack of clarity

You can be focused on your goal, but if you don’t stay focused, if you take on too much, if you fill your life with busy things or operate inconsistently, you are likely to fail. Focus creates power- a light bulb will illuminate a room, but a laser will punch a hole through a wall.  Some people say you can achieve everything you want, but that’s not true. With the right focus, you can achieve far more than you could imagine.

No motivation

We often overlook motivation; reasons come first and answers come second. If you have strong enough reasons (why) you can accomplish anything you desire (the how). If you want unusual results, then you will require an unusual amount of passion. When your why is strong enough, the how will come. This burning desire will sustain you when the challenges and obstacles come your way.

Obstacles getting in the way

All too often we’re distracted by other things. Your email box will fill up, you’ll get distracted by Facebook and people will pop into your office to ask you things. We become distracted by these outside factors and ones of our own choosing. You start one goal or project and then start chasing after another. You start working on a dozen things and end up completing none of them.  Sound familiar? Focus and discipline is needed here- so make a pact to prioritise no more than 5 (non-conflicting) tasks at any one time.

Lack of belief

Are you capable of achieving something special?  Little old you? Extraordinary things are achieved by so many ordinary people who apply themselves. However, you need to believe in yourself and in the goal setting process. A shortage of belief causes many people to give up or to never begin in the first place. In many cases, it causes them to take shortcuts that sabotage their success. Why shouldn’t you be successful? There is no reason unless you ignore the principles of success.

Not knowing enough

A worthy goal usually requires learning new things. Perhaps you’re not sure what it is you need to learn in order to get where you want to go. Don’t let a lack of knowledge keep you from starting.  We are fortunate that there is so much information on the internet that we can access for free and we can also use it to source the right books, CDs and reports. Enhancing your skills is a lifelong investment that will pay you big dividends. If you wait until you know it all, you’ll never begin. Start from where you are and build the bridge as you walk on it.

Not enough money

Most people think this is the number one reason why they haven’t achieved their dreams. They think that if they just had more money then they would be successful. But it’s rarely a money problem—it’s usually an idea problem. With good ideas and a tenacious spirit, you can get the funding you need.

Low energy

In order to have the energy and stamina to succeed, we need to take care of our bodies. Get enough sleep at night; eat a healthy diet and get regular exercise. You wouldn’t expect a badly run factory to achieve full production – think of your body in the same way. If we don’t look after ourselves, we’ll be unable to produce at optimum levels.

Support network

Everyone needs help and support. You don’t need to go it alone. Too many people fail because they weren’t willing to ask for help or didn’t know where to turn in order to get it. Bring in talent and resources from others to bridge your skills / knowledge gaps. Join a networking group and align yourself with organisations that can help you succeed.

Think about how you want your company to develop and plan accordingly. While it is rare to know exactly where a business will end up, you should have a clear idea about areas where it will work, the type of service you wish to offer and how the structure of the business will be built.

Some businesses are built around a single powerful idea such as ‘a car on every driveway in America’, which is how Henry Ford saw the Ford Motor Company. This simple and singular vision in the early days of the company drove everything that he created. It was about improving production techniques and making cars cheaply enough so that they could be enjoyed by the majority of the population.

His strong vision was enough to drive his business and the entire car manufacturing industry forward. Every great business usually starts with a simple idea and a strong vision to drive it forward. So decide now where you would like your company to go.

Are you looking for it to sell your company in 10 years or to pass it on to your family one day? What sort of turnover are you looking for? Which markets do you want to operate in? Be clear from the beginning – but of course be flexible when opportunities arise. Trees grow in one direction, but they are flexible enough to bend with the wind. Stay flexible so you are able to make the most of relevant opportunities – and turn down those which are ultimately going to take you further away from your final destination.

For more advice from The Ideal Marketing Company on how to grow your business with a free 1 hour consultation contact us 

 Be remembered for the right reasons

By planning a careful PR campaign, you can make sure that your company is seen to be innovative, thoughtful, caring or whatever else you want it to be. This long term, big picture PR must be based on truth otherwise it will almost certainly backfire, so be careful what claims you make for your business. 

Ideas on how to grow your business and ideas on how to fund them

Do you feel that your current sales & marketing efforts aren’t getting you the results you want?  Would you like to learn about low cost ways of generating more enquiries and strategies for converting more leads into sales?  If so, here are details about a brand new marketing seminar that we are running on June 12^th.  It’s free to attend, and I’ll be covering powerful ideas that have helped our clients gain TV coverage, win new business and achieve sustained growth even during difficult times.

The FREE marketing seminar is designed to help busy business owners.

Generate more enquiries

Convert more sales

Keep customers for longer

Areas covered include:

How to get more out of social media, PR, direct mail, website optimisation, e-mail marketing, branding, brochures, prospecting and even how to manage your day better to create more time for marketing.

During a packed 99 minutes you’ll learn about all of these topics. But as well as covering how to market your company we will be discussing how you may be able to fund your marketing through R & D tax credits.  In fact we’ve helped 3 local companies recently towards claiming over £200,000 in tax credits.  The criteria doesn’t apply to every company but over 40% of businesses that are eligible to claim R & D tax credits don’t.  You might be one of them.  In which case you could be eligible to make a claim dating back 3 years’ worth £ thousands. It will cost nothing to find out more and if successful, you’ll have more than enough to put in place some powerful marketing ideas to grow your business over the coming years.

There are a limited number of places available for this event and only 2 places available per organisation. Call 018585 44 55 43 to find out more or to reserve your place today.

When: Tuesday 12th June – from 5pm till 7pm

Where: The Arc Business Centre, Lubenham Hill, Market Harborough.

How much: Free to attend, but there will be a collection for Cancer Research during the interval

Feedback from previous attendees to Ideal Marketing Company seminars

 “Alastair has a real talent for innovative marketing. His insight and experience make for a winning combination and, for me at least, he makes his area of expertise very approachable.”

Jonathan Staples, J Motion Ltd

“Alastair was the trainer on a marketing course I attended last week which I thoroughly enjoyed. I came away with a list of actions and energised to get going with my 2012 Marketing Plan. Thank you, Alastair, just what I needed.”

Karen Silk, Capital International

“Lots of ideas delivered in a simple, straight to the point format. Informative and easy to understand, I’m eager to implement them into everyday working life!”

Julie Bradley, Hush Puppies UK

“Gives an insight into what can be achieved through successful marketing – thoroughly informative and definitely worthwhile.”

Sally Partridge, Bettinson’s Kitchens

“Inspirational. I can’t wait to get back and get on with implementing them.

Chris Davies, CDA Training

“Some very simple, easy and cheap ideas to implement to improve my business.”

Susan Ensor-Keen,  Montessori Day Nursery

“An excellent event – packed with practical marketing ideas to develop your business.”

Eloise Shelton, Vanilla Recruitment

“I would like to recommend the marketing services Alastair provides to any type of business or organisation. Alastair is very personable and provides practical and worthwhile solutions for a given budget. He is creative and a very useful person to connect to. I would highly recommend him if you want to rethink your marketing!”

Brian Dunning, Hothorpe Hall

Not able to attend on June 12^th or not able to wait that long?   You can contact us to claim a free 1 hour marketing ideas consultation or to register your interest in R & D funding.   Call 01858 44 55 43 to find out more.

Marketing ideas for recruitment agencies

Marketing a recruitment agency

Are you looking for ways of marketing a recruitment agency? The days when a mixture of hitting the phones and networking was the only to promote your recruitment company are long gone. But what alternatives are other companies using to win new clients? Alastair Campbell from the Ideal Marketing Company explains the three key areas that every recruitment consultancy should now be looking into.

Some say that selling and marketing is purely a numbers game. It’s a question of getting out there and speaking to as many people as possible, but I’m not so sure. Think of it like this. If you wanted to make a hole in a wall, would you run up and hit it as hard as you could? You’d knock yourself out; then when you regained consciousness you’d walk back 20 feet and run at the wall again. You could do this all day, but would you really make much impression on the wall? I’d suggest that you’d end up in a worse state by the end of the day than you were at the start.

What if there was a better way of knocking a hole in the wall, or perhaps better still, finding a way to walk around it?

I’d suggest that a way of getting around the wall is to focus on three essential areas of marketing:

Attention

Conversion

Retention

The problem is that, if we put all our new business focus on any one of these (and ignore the others), then the results are likely to be patchy at best. So here are a few ideas for some specific marketing in each area – and how to apply them.

Gaining people’s attention

You can’t sell to somebody until you have their attention. You need to interrupt people’s thought pattern with your message before you can explain the service you offer. Few people walk around thinking ‘I need to speak to a recruitment company’. But they might be walking around thinking ‘it’s a nightmare trying to fill this vacancy?’ or ‘how do I find the people with the skills that I need to interview?’ If this is the ‘itch’ that people have then you can come up with ways of helping them to ‘scratch their itch’. One of the best ways to do this is to create an information rich product with a compelling headline / title. Consider some of the following:

A free report on how much time/money it costs companies to hire the wrong person.

A free tips booklet showing job seekers how to improve their CV.

A free e-book with salary survey for particular job roles / industry sectors

A simple 10 step guide on best practice interview questions

A short video which shows the process used to match candidates to job roles.

In each case, you are creating a valuable, but low cost product that is of great interest to a targeted group of people. Most people are not interested in how recruitment companies match candidates to roles, but if they are faced with a large pile of CV’s and are struggling to pick just a handful to interview, then the video you are offering is certainly going to be of interest.

Any of these guides (and hundreds of variations thereof) will get the attention of the people you want to speak to, when you want to speak to them.

Once you’ve prepared the guide(s) you now have a reason to speak to people, call them, write to them and e-mail them. You also have something to post on your blog, tweet about and post on your LinkedIn or Facebook pages. Each time there is something in the news about the subject, you have another reason to repeat the message with a new topical twist.

Converting the curious

Getting people’s attention is the hard part. However, even when you have a prospect in front of you, it’s easy to let them slip away. High pressure sales techniques are almost certain to do more harm than good, so here are a few ideas to gently give confidence in your services if you are meeting clients at your offices.

Make the meeting room comfortable, uncluttered and professional. Messy files piled high, a bulging in-tray or a constantly ringing phone give the impression that their work won’t be given the priority it deserves.

What proof do you have of your previous successes? The evidence doesn’t need to be strong enough to stand up in court, but four areas are particularly helpful.

Awards, accreditations, qualifications – any certificates, awards, photos of prizes being handed over all help to add credibility to your professional status.

Media coverage – have you been featured in the press commenting on unemployment figures, helping community causes or perhaps winning some of the above mentioned awards? If so, why not highlight this press coverage in a cuttings book on the table? A second copy of this book could be used in your reception area.

Case studies – For many companies, hiring a recruitment company may seem like a waste of money. Why should they pay someone else to do something that they believe they could do themselves? What you need to do, is show them why they need you and how you can in fact save them time and money. Show them results that you achieved from other clients. A collection of case studies could include problem such as new factory opens with limited qualified staff or an experienced employee leaves a company. Show them how by using your services those companies were able find a full team for the factory or an ideal replacement who brought a new wealth of experience to the company. You might not always need to go into precise details, or even name names, but 300 – 500 words that explain the results you were able to achieve with past clients can be a significant reassurance to an initially reluctant prospect.

Testimonials – similar to case studies, but usually much shorter and written word for word by happy clients. Testimonials are an endorsement of what you’ve done. The best way to get a client to say something about what you have done is to ask them – either in person, in an individual e-mail or as part of a survey. One client of ours received about 3 letters a year without asking, but over 60 a year when his clients were prompted gently – quite a significant improvement.

In all cases, these subtle messages are there to reassure and reinforce your words and deeds.

Another simple way to help the conversion process is simply to keep your word. If you say that you’ll send a letter the next day, do it. If you say you will call at 3pm, make sure you do so – or if you don’t have the answer, still call and explain why you haven’t got the information and when you will have it.

The better the relationship you can build and the more confidence and trust you create, the more likely you are to leave the meeting with a new client.

Retaining the business

Some clients may be ‘one offs’ such as a smaller company that had expanded their business for the first time or a company that needed a particular specialist and used you as this is an industry you specialise in. In these cases the reason they are not using you is that they do not have a high staff turnover.

A gentle, perhaps annual reminder that you are still there; still thinking about them, is always a good idea to stimulate memories and subtly keep you at the back of their mind. It’s also why regular publicity in the local press is a good idea to remind people that you are doing interesting / helpful things in the community.

For job seekers their need for you in dependent on their own employment situation and your focus here should be on education and support. Providing them with advice such as tips booklets or perhaps CV clinics where you can offer practical assistance to help them get the job they want.

If it’s hard to win new clients in the first place, the good news is that it’s relatively easy to retain them. Your job is really to keep clients updated on the full range of services that you could offer them, and explain how your services rather than cost them money, can in many cases actually save them money – and find them the Ideal candidate at the same time.

Some further thoughts on marketing a recruitment agency

The three stages of marketing hold true for most industries, but they are certainly true for those in the recruitment industry. By splitting your activity into the holy trinity of marketing: attention, conversion and retention; you can be sure that you are making the most of your marketing spend.

However, in 2012, you may need to go a little further. We are living in a world of information overload, where the under 20s are just as likely to learn about the latest news stories on Twitter or Facebook as they are from the TV news. Tomorrow’s newspaper is an age away for many. With hundreds of e-mails pouring in every day, and a hundred demands on our time – where are your communications going to sit with prospects and clients?

Most will be ignored of course (and this has always been the case), but now more than ever we need to create messages that are ‘remarkable’. Standing out from the crowd is the only way to get noticed today and so, even doing all the right things is not always enough. Creating a strong benefit led message, creating a brand around it and presenting it in a way that people will notice and remember should be central to your strategy. If you can’t cut through all the other messages, then you won’t get far.

Ultimately, effective marketing is far more than a firm handshake over a chilled glass of Chardonnay at a Holiday Inn networking event. If you are to succeed and thrive in today’s competitive economic climate, it must be a central and ongoing part of your business growth plans.

Alastair Campbell is MD of The Ideal Marketing Company author of ‘The Marketing Launchpad,’ and is running a 1 day marketing course for recruitment companies through Recruitment Matters in London on May 15th and July 16th see Marketing a Recruitment Agency for more details.

In my view, growing a business takes place in one of four ways:

1. Attraction – attracting new customers
2. Conversion – converting those interested prospects
3. Retention – retaining your customers for longer
4. Extension – extending the relationship with your customers so that some of them will become ambassadors for your company.

If you are able to achieve all four in your business, it could take off rapidly and grow at a rate that you dictate yourself.

For more information or advice from The Ideal Marketing Company on how to grow your business contact us for a free 1 hour consultation. 

Sell the sizzle, not the sausage. Don’t tell them everything about the product/company. Don’t give them too much information so that they don’t need to pick the phone and call you. Give them enough to get their interest, make them intrigued and then leave them wanting more. Better to leave a person wanting to meet you again than praying to God that you leave them alone. Keep it short, sharp and interesting. 

“No one ever won a chess game by betting on each move. Sometimes you have to move backward to get a step forward.” Amar Gopal Bose

If you have enjoyed out 12 reasons ‘why marketing fails’ check our website for more marketing tips.