Getting the message across
Do you know what message you want to say about yourself, your product and your business? If you do not, how can your customers know? But knowing the message is not the end of the story. You have to decide who to send it to and how you are going to do it. If your message is not received loud and clear, your customers will not understand why they should buy from you or what it is they are getting. If they do not know the reason for buying, there will be no sales; if they have the wrong reason for buying, there will be dissatisfaction.
If you do not manage to communicate effectively the benefits of your product or service, your business will fail. The message, and getting it across, is crucial. Broadly, marketing is all about getting your message across. But marketing can be a very expensive habit if it is undirected, too ethereal and without a clear purpose. Small businesses need to market, but more and more the marketing should be focused on generating direct responses, on building communications with your target group of customers rather than broad-brush image generation.
What is in this chapter?
This chapter focuses on how you can get potential customers to be responsive to your business message: to soften them up until you can close the sale. It covers:
The message: who, what, how?
Who is the message to?
If you do not know what your target market is, you really do not deserve to succeed. You need this information at your fingertips from a very early stage of planning your business (see Chapter 3, ‘Who will buy?’). Defining the target market necessitates sorting out its characteristics: the number, the location, the spending power and the class structure (if consumer).
Knowledge of the target market is needed to help to refine the message and select the most useful way of communicating it to that particular group.
What is your message?
You need to work out what message you want to send to customers. The two main constituents of your message are:
- The long-term reputation you want to build for your product or business. This can be things such as good quality, reliability, quick service and good value. There is more about reputation in Chapter 11, ‘Names and brands’.
- The specific message you want to get across now. This simply may be part of building your reputation, as above. Or it could be that you want to describe your product, giving customers information to make a buying decision. Or it could be some specific offer you have available. Or it could be an item of good news about your business. The list is endless.
How to send the message
There are numerous ways of trying to get across your message to your target market. The trick is to select the most cost-effective way of reaching your group. The cost of communication should be measured by what you have to spend to reach each potential customer or, if possible, by the number of sales leads each pound spent generates. Obviously, any cost-conscious small business has to look at the total figure too. But it would not make good sense to plump for a way of sending the message on the grounds that the overall cost is least, if few customers are reached. What matters is how many possible buyers receive the message compared with the total expense. Very broadly, you can communicate with your customers by:
- Writing the message: this includes e-mail, web sites, press releases, direct mail, advertising, blogs and materials such as brochures.
- Speaking the message: this includes telephone selling, carrying out demonstrations, attending exhibitions and face-to-face selling.
- Implying the message: this does not give any specific details but gives an impression about your business or product. For example, the quality and look of your web site, a business gift or a van sign send an implied message to anyone who sees them. You should recognise that all ways of communicating the message, such as selling and advertising, also include an element of this. An advertisement does not simply have a picture and some words describing a benefit; the whole adds up to more than this, or it should. It should build up the general impression you want to give.
Your web site
Setting up a web site is a key step in starting a new business, and an effective web presence is a vital marketing tool (p. 126). The main challenge is to make sure that enough people want to visit your web site. Customers will only come if:
- they know your web site exists;
- your web site is interesting;
- your web site offers a convenient way of purchasing your products and services.
Promoting your web site
The first priority is to get your web site recognised by search engines. These are sifting software programs that give a list of sites of interest whenever a customer types in a keyword or phrase. Normally when someone is browsing they will not go further than the first page of a search engine output. This means that the brief information they read about your site must be relevant and punchy enough to persuade them to click through. Your web site must then deliver something relevant if they are not to click away and try somewhere else.
Search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo! are the primary method of navigation for most Internet users. These sophisticated software programs provide targeted traffic and act as the virtual roadways that allow people looking for what you offer to find you. If your web site has been poorly designed and cannot be found by search engines or your content cannot be put into their databases, you will miss out on a potentially huge online market.
The words that users type into a search engine carry extraordinary value, and it is essential that your web site has been designed to appear as high up in the search result rankings as possible. This is known as search engine optimisation (SEO). There are useful guides and tips at www.moz.com. They include details of some of the tools available online that can help you check how your web site appears to a search engine and how popular different keywords are. SEO techniques are evolving and changing all the time. Rather than trying to master it yourself, you might prefer to hire an SEO firm to do the job for you (p. 214).
Your content strategy
When a search engine finds your web site, the entry will include the title of your site (called the title tag, which appears on the web browser tag above your web page) and a brief description (usually the meta-description, which is some special text you write that does not actually appear on your web site but gives a pithy description of it). These two items essentially become the advertisement for your business that appears in the search engine listing, so, like all advertising, they need to be immediately relevant and engaging. They should also contain the keywords that will attract the most hits.
However good your SEO, potential customers will be quickly antagonised if your web site does not easily and efficiently deliver the information or services that they were expecting. It is essential that you design your web site with this in mind. The key points to consider include:
- Visitors to the site don’t want to waste time: usually they have come for information. Illustrations and graphics can make your web site more attractive, but do not over-elaborate, because if they can’t find what they want they will quickly lose interest and go elsewhere.
- Enable visitors to enter your web site easily: don’t block them by requiring them to register first. It is normally better to encourage them to register at a later point by offering some form of inducement such as an informative e-mail newsletter or special offers. This would allow you to gather valuable information about your site visitors, including their e-mail addresses so that you can contact them later (see overleaf).
- Offer something genuine: to be of any value to potential and existing customers, your web site needs to offer a real service and be differentiated from the competition.
- How to pay: if you want customers to be able to buy your goods or services through your web site, you will need to think about how to receive the payments. Specialist companies can help you to design secure links for accepting payments direct or to link up with third parties who can handle the payment side of things for you (p. 153).
One way to bring your web site to life and make it constantly current and topical is to include a blog (web log). This is a publicly accessible journal where you can share your news, views and experiences with visitors to your web site. A good blog should be a natural extension to your business, albeit with a touch more personality. It should support your business and marketing strategies, which means that you need a clear identity and to come up with a snappy title and interesting description to convince visitors that they want to read it. Some of the key ingredients of a successful blog are:
- clear, good-quality information;
- personality;
- relevant content and key words to support SEO;
- controversy, questions and debate to encourage people to respond by posting comments of their own.
A good blog will help to attract more visitors to your web site and will ensure that they keep returning to read your latest posts. When it is done well it can help you to get your message across to a wide potential audience. The main downside is that it can require a great deal of time and effort to keep it updated so you need to factor this in. It can also have a negative impact if people are not sufficiently enthused to post comments of their own as this can give the impression that no one has bothered to read it.
E-mail marketing
If you have a list of e-mail subscribers, collected according to all the rules, an e-mail marketing campaign can be a cost-effective way of increasing sales and brand awareness. The other main points to consider are:
- A marketing e-mail can be created in hours yet reach a wide targeted audience in minutes, thereby allowing you to respond to a topical situation and to get the message out to your customers straightaway.
- It is much simpler to track e-mails so that you know which ones were received, which addresses are no longer active and which recipients no longer want to receive your e-mails in the future. It is also easier to know how many people responded positively and to identify who they are.
- Clickable links in your e-mail can make it simple for the recipients to learn more about your products and services or take advantage of your offers.
- The main downside is that a lot of people do not always appreciate marketing e-mails, and this may damage your reputation if you overdo it. You must always allow people to opt out.
- Your e-mails may be intercepted by spam filters and not reach your intended audience.
A marketing e-mail will succeed only if it has effective content. This should begin with an appropriate subject line (the line that recipients see when it arrives in their inbox), which needs to be sufficiently engaging to tempt people to click on it and open the e-mail. The message should start with a brief summary of the information so that the recipients can quickly gauge whether it is of any interest or not.
The main body of the text should be clearly laid out in succinct paragraphs, with the most important points at the top. These should be drafted in an appropriate style but in such a way that it encourages the readers to continue into the main features and benefits of the product or service that you are marketing. You should also consider whether or not to include pictures. These can have a big impact but can slow the process of downloading and reading the e-mail. It should end with a clear call for action such as ‘Click here for more information’, or ‘Click here to buy’.
One of the main advantages of e-mail marketing is that you can quickly contact lots of different people, but this can also be a weakness as you need to have the resources in place to deal with the large volume of communications that can ensue. Many businesses get round the problem by using an autoresponder. This is a piece of software that can be used to automatically send and respond to e-mails without any human intervention. An autoresponder enables you to compose standardised e-mails that you want to send out to your customers, such as instructions after they have purchased a product or news about product releases. You can then specify when you want the e-mails sent out and to whom.
An auto-responder system is an easy and efficient way to get information to your customers and may be the only feasible solution if you are trying to achieve a high volume of sales. It might be inappropriate if you are in a low-volume, high-margin business that relies on the personal touch. There are several popular autoresponder services that you can use, and they also provide software that will help you to compose your e-mails.
When you send out a large number of standardised marketing e-mails, there is a risk that they may get caught in a spam filter so that your message never gets through. According to ReturnPath, a company specialising in analysis of e-mail data, you can expect 10 to 20 per cent of your e-mails to get lost in this way. Spam is an unsolicited e-mail sent to a list of people. It has become such a major problem that legitimate e-mails typically have to pass through several spam filters before they reach their intended destination.
A spam filter is a piece of software that looks at a long list of criteria to decide whether or not your e-mail is spam. If it is judged to be spam, it will be blocked. The best way to stop this happening is to avoid using certain phrases in your e-mails (an autoresponder service will often allow you to test your e-mail before you send it). The main pitfalls to avoid include:
- talking about lots of money;
- describing some sort of breakthrough;
- including a money-back guarantee;
- using spam phrases like ‘Click here!’ or ‘Once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!’;
- including lots of exclamation marks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Advertising
What can you expect advertising to do for you? Sell more. Unfortunately, it does not seem to work quite like this. The direct link between spending money on advertising and generating more sales is sometimes difficult to establish; the linkage is there, but measurement can be fraught with problems. General advertising is an investment decision, as are all the other ways of trying to get your message across. Spend money now in the hope of more sales later; but the outcome and the return are not certain.
Your advertising strategy should aim to move the potential customers from ignorance about your product to purchasing it. It should:
- get attention for your product;
- help them to understand the product or service;
- get them to believe in the benefits;
- establish a desire for the product;
- generate action;
- improve the reputation and general impression of the product.
You should not expect one particular form of advertising carried out at one particular time to achieve all this. To expect it might be counterproductive if it leads you to cram too many objectives into one small piece of advertising. Your strategy should be to use a mix of different forms to achieve these aims over a long period of time.
If you can sell as much as you want by personal contact, or through your website, do not waste money on advertisements. With large-value items sold to a few buyers, spending more on direct selling might be a better use of money.
Generating a direct response
The type of general corporate advertising that large blue-chip companies sometimes indulge in is not an option for small businesses. You need to focus on how you can generate a response from the reader because you want details of that reader in your database of potential customers. Here are some ideas for generating response:
- use eye-catching headlines;
- offer some incentive for people to contact you, such as a sample copy or version of the product;
- offer a discount.
Advertising online
Every business is different, and the advertising that works for one may not work for another. The good thing about online advertising is that you can usually start small and then gradually expand your budget if you are satisfied with the results. It is also far easier to monitor and assess how effective it is, because when someone clicks on a link to your web site you know exactly where they have come from. This is not usually the case if a consumer sees your brochure or leaflet and ends up buying something.
There are numerous ways of advertising your business online. Some are simple and straightforward, whereas others may require assistance. The main point to remember is that there is a huge marketplace of potential customers waiting for you on the World Wide Web. Some of the main options are the following.
1. Google AdWords
Google AdWords is the dominant player in online advertising. The adverts appear as text ads in the search results along the top and right-hand side of the page whenever someone enters a relevant word or phrase in the Google search engine. AdWords uses a technique known as ‘search-based marketing’ whereby Google pairs the search query from the user to the keywords that you have associated with your advertisement. You pay only if a user clicks on your advert and is taken to your web site.
Google uses an auction-based Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising system whereby each advertiser sets the maximum amount they are willing to pay for each click they receive from their advertisement. As an advertiser, you compete in a real-time auction every time a keyword triggers your advert and this determines how much you have to pay to have it displayed. To control your costs you can set a maximum amount and a maximum daily budget so that you don’t pay more than you want to. Some of the main points to consider are:
- AdWords is one of the only forms of advertising where the consumer is actually trying to find what you are offering, which makes it seem less of an intrusion and more likely to produce a successful result.
- It can be a good option if you are just starting to advertise online as you have full control over your budget and can start small then expand if your results justify it.
- You can edit your adverts and display them in a variety of different formats, to the extent that you can target specific languages and locations. For example, a small local business can ensure that its advert appears only to people searching within a certain radius of its premises.
- It can be complicated to set up properly and can be very expensive if you don’t know what you are doing. There are services that will manage your AdWords campaign for you in return for a fee.
2. Advertise on other people’s web sites
Google has partnered with thousands of other web sites and essentially has rented advertising space. This is known as display advertising and it allows you to create different types of adverts (text, image, interactive and video) and then place them on the relevant participating web sites. Alternatively, you could contact the web sites yourself and advertise according to their terms and conditions. Some of the main points to consider are:
- Display advertising is not as exact a match as search advertising, but potentially it lets you reach a much wider audience and in a more visually appealing way.
- As it is not as tightly targeted, the costs are usually a bit lower.
- If you are not getting enough clicks with your search adverts, it can help you to broaden your advertising in a way that enables you to retain control of your budget.
- Internet users often find adverts irritating and turn them off, so unless you pay based on the number of clicks on your link you may find that your advert is not seen by the number of people that you expect.
3. Bing Ads
Bing Ads is the Microsoft version of Google AdWords and, although it has a much smaller share of the search engine market, it can still help you to reach a wide audience. There is a lot less competition for advertising so the costs tend to be lower, and there is also the option of using display advertising.
Bing Ads is cheaper than AdWords but less likely to yield the same results.
4. Directory listings
There are lots of different online directories. These include: general directories with no specific target audience; niche directories, which are aimed at a specific industry; and location-based directories that serve a particular town or city. Many are free, although those that may help your business to rank higher in the search engine results are more likely to charge a fee. The points to consider include:
- a directory can help to increase awareness of your business;
- normally you can include a link to your web site, thereby generating additional traffic;
- many are free;
- be cautious if you have to pay, as many directories are not worth it. The main exception would be if there’s an industry-specific association with your business, as this is likely to produce better results.
Other advertising
If you run a locally based business, local advertising might be appropriate and there may be numerous opportunities – for example, sponsoring the printing of raffle tickets for a local school or charity in return for your ad on the back of all tickets, or special features in your local newspapers.
It’s also possible these days still to place ads in magazines and newspapers and the cost of doing so can now be quite competitive. Choosing the right place to put your advertisement is crucial. To be cost-effective, the ad must be placed where it reaches the biggest possible section of your potential customers. The journal or paper must be read by the people or businesses you want to talk to and by people at the right level in the organisations or in the right class grouping in the population.
Keeping it legal
The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 impose a blanket legal ban on unfair commercial practices and also outlaw 31 specific practices. The regulations are very wide-ranging and apply to your advertising as well as other marketing and selling practices. For example, your ads should not give false or deceptive messages, or fake credentials or endorsements, omit important information, use scare tactics or guilt, confuse advertising with editorial and so on. Contravening the regulations can result in disruptive investigations, prosecution and fines. It is important to familiarise yourself with these regulations – see the guidance on the web site of the Competition & Markets Authority (CMA)*, which has taken over many of the functions of the Office of Fair Trading.
There are also a number of important voluntary codes that apply to advertising. The most important of these is the UK Code of Non-broadcast Advertising, Sales Promotion and Direct Marketing published and enforced by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA)*. As well as a general requirement for all advertisements and promotions to be ‘legal, decent, honest and truthful’, the codes contain sections dealing with specific areas, such as health products, financial products, children and tobacco. The ASA also regulates online marketing messages (whether paid for or not).
If you are involved in particular types of business, such as providing credit, your advertisements may also be subject to legal requirements, for example under the Consumer Credit Act 2006. The sale of and advice about many financial products, including investments, mortgages and insurance, are subject to advertising and promotion rules set by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)*.
If you plan to target your customers with direct mailshots (email or paper), consider joining the Direct Marketing Association (DMA)*. Its members are required to comply with a code of practice. You must also comply with the regulations on distance or online selling and unfair trading. Among other things, these require you to give customers all the relevant information they need and to fulfil orders within 30 days. Your customers have a statutory right to cancel an order and receive a refund within 14 days of receipt. Further details are available from the CMA. See also www.gov.uk/online-and-distance-selling-for-businesses, which will be relevant if you sell goods online, by mail order, by phone, or by text message.
Using social media
Social media are web sites, such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, where people build relationships, exchange information and chat, and in the process create content. With social media, content is created by the dialogue between everyone taking part and no single person or firm controls it. On the plus side, if people like your firm or product, they will pass that information on, so that reaching some people directly means your message may then be cascaded to many others. Key steps in making good use of social media include, for example, the following:
- Decide who you are trying to reach and identify the social media sites most relevant to you. For example, if you are selling to retail customers, Facebook and Twitter may be good places to start, whereas if you are selling to businesses LinkedIn might be more suitable. Create accounts with the sites that you think will work for you – this is typically free.
- Identify and join groups on those sites that are relevant to your product or service. Expect to be ignored or rebuffed if you now simply plug your product. This is a social medium. Just as you would not launch into a sales pitch at a dinner party, it is not etiquette to do so here. But what you can do is to engage in dialogue with the other users in the group by, for example, asking and answering questions, passing on handy tips and highlighting interesting news and information. In the process, you can introduce your company and products and include a link to your web site.
- Create content that can be used on your web site and easily reversioned to appear on social media sites. For example, you might consider having a blog on your web site (p. 134) with short posts that can be reproduced on Facebook or snippets of news (140 characters at most) that can be reused on Twitter.
- Consider content and offers that you could place on social media sites to encourage traffic to your web site: for example, referring to free guides or podcasts available on your web site, or a prize draw for people who click through.
Once your product is established, you might consider setting up a fan page on Facebook, where customers can exchange comments relevant to your product or company and where you can provide information and answers direct to customers. But do not expect much traffic to a fan page if you are only just starting out.
You can get some free information on optimising your use of social media web sites (for example, from www.seop.com/social-media-marketing), but you may want to engage a specialist firm to help you create and implement your online marketing strategy (see p. 212).
Social media is important because it can help you to generate more sales by:
- bringing your business to life so that it is constantly current and topical;
- giving you greater credibility through third-party endorsements where other people talk about you and rate you;
- providing the sort of content that helps to put you higher up the search engine rankings;
- conveying your expertise to your customers;
- helping you find and build business relationships with new people who you would otherwise never meet or be introduced to.
The main social media networks
There are a number of major social networks and, if used in the right way, they can all help to promote you and your business and ultimately lead to higher sales. The main ones to consider are the following.
1. Facebook
Facebook allows you to sign up by opening an account and entering details such as your name, age and location. It is best known for its personal side that enables friends and colleagues to keep in contact with each other, but it can also be used by businesses. A Facebook page for your business is a bit like your web site, but you need to design it to be more informal and encourage two-way conversations. The idea is to talk to people in order to build relationships that could benefit your business. A business can use Facebook to:
- build brand awareness by engaging directly with its customers;
- move up the search engine rankings by increasing its online visibility;
- network and build relationships;
- promote an event;
- manage its reputation by responding to positive and negative feedback;
- recruit people;
- advertise.
2. Twitter
Twitter is another type of social networking site called a microblog. It allows you to set up a free account with a short biography and then post short messages (up to a maximum of 140 characters) known as tweets from your smartphone, tablet or computer. The idea is to build up a community where people are interested in what you have to say and will ‘follow’ you. Before starting, it is important to decide what you are going to tweet about. For a business this could include: industry reports, new product releases, buying tips or special offers. There are no hard-and-fast rules about how often to tweet, although once a week is usually the absolute minimum. A business can use Twitter to:
- provide a promotional platform;
- build brand awareness by engaging directly with customers;
- network and build relationships;
- manage its reputation by responding to positive and negative feedback;
- advertise.
3. LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a social networking site for professionals and business people. It allows you to set up a profile that contains information about your education, experience and where you have worked, as well as keywords for your business. Once you have done that, you can link to people you know by e-mailing invitations that ask them to connect to your profile. This is a powerful feature because it allows you to see all their contacts. For example, if you know 20 people and they each know 20 people, you can immediately connect to a network of 400 people who all have something in common. A business can use LinkedIn to:
- increase brand awareness;
- network and build relationships;
- attract new business from people who see your profile;
- recruit;
- advertise.
4. Pinterest
Pinterest acts like an online pinboard where the content is driven entirely by visuals. When you share something on the web site (it has to include an image or video), the bookmark is known as a pin, and when you share someone else’s pin it’s called a repin. Pins can be grouped together by topic on various boards, with each one mimicking a real-life pinboard. Users can click ‘like’ or ‘repin’ on a photo, and they can also comment and embed pins on web sites. In essence, it is a social platform that allows consumers to promote products and services free of charge. A business might use it to:
- create new links and leads to its web site;
- increase traffic to its web site (the evidence suggests that this is better-quality traffic than from other social media sites, resulting in higher additional revenue).
5. Google+
Google+ is another social platform that allows you to create a page for your business much like a Facebook page. The added bonus is that when it is set up properly, it will appear on the right-hand side of Google searches for your business name. This increases your visibility in the search results, making it more likely that people will click through to your web site. A business might use it to:
- increase the odds of getting highly targeted visitors to its web site from a Google search;
- achieve more targeted sharing for its customers (if you post something about a new product that you sell, your customers have the ability to share it with their friends who are interested in that particular area).
Managing feedback
A good social media strategy will increase awareness of your company and brand, as those who like your business will endorse it and spread the word amongst their friends and contacts. This can be a powerful force and help you to add new online customers who would otherwise have remained out of reach. There are lots of ways that users can register their feedback on a social media network. One of the best-known examples is the ‘Like’ button on Facebook, but they each offer a similar facility.
There are also numerous review web sites that allow people to post comments about a product or service that they have bought. These are often viewed as a trusted and independent source of advice for those thinking of buying the same item. For example, whenever someone buys anything on Amazon, they have the opportunity to write a customer review. This is then displayed under the product details.
If you are planning to use the Amazon Marketplace to sell your products (p. 155), you need to be aware of this vital source of information and how it could affect your sales. Another example is TripAdvisor, which enables people to prov When you are starting your business, or if it is a very small one, it is more than likely that you yourself will be selling. If you have not p ide comments about hotels and restaurants that they have visited. If you run a guesthouse, restaurant or B&B, you need to monitor the feedback that your customers are providing, as good reviews act as a strong endorsement that will encourage others to visit.
The ultimate example of this is viral marketing, whereby a witty advert captures the imagination and is spread organically across the social media networks as people pass it on to their friends. One of the most successful viral videos was the ‘crazy frog’, an animated video of a frog pretending to ride a motorbike. This was used to create a business that sold ringtones and mini-movies, as well as two crazy frog albums. It is very difficult to know if a viral advert will succeed, but it might be worth a try if you can think of an idea that could really take off.
The main problem with social media (other than the time it takes) is that not all the feedback given will be positive. As a small business you need to have a plan for how you will deal with the negative comments as, if left unchecked, they could have a damaging impact on your reputation and limit your potential to grow. The key starting point is to monitor your feedback so that you can identify the problem and take appropriate steps to deal with it. Some general points to consider are:
- Monitoring negative feedback may provide important information about who is posting the comments. It could be a deliberate attempt to discredit your business by an unscrupulous competitor or disgruntled customer.
- Negative comments may indicate that you have a bad audience for your product. Having a large number of uninterested people following you can be a liability. Make sure that your visitors want the information you provide and are appropriate for your business.
- Constructive criticism can be valuable. If you respond positively and deal with the problem, you can turn your critics into brand advocates. These may become your strongest supporters.
- If social media is an important part of your business and you have no experience in this area, you might want to consider using a social media management agency to help you get it right.
Public relations
This can be a low-cost method of getting across a message to the marketplace, although it can be time-consuming. The basic aim is to get information or news about your business into the online blogs of respected bloggers, such as national journalists or a mention in a newspaper or magazine. Increasingly, too, you might consider how social media, such as Facebook and ‘tweeting’, could spread news of your product or service ‘virally’. See ‘Using social media’ below. If you can achieve this, such items are seen as very credible and ‘true’, in a way that advertising is not, because readers place greater trust in the objectivity of journalists and other consumers.
The main ways of achieving this use of the press are to:
- Issue press releases when there is a news item. You will have to write this yourself, or pay someone else to do it. If you do the latter, you are losing one of the benefits of public relations, which is its low cost.
- Get to know the editor, blogger or journalist: in this way, if you have a story, you could ring your contact before issuing a press release, to see if they would be interested because it is ‘exclusive’. This may well be a more successful way of publicising your story than issuing press releases.
- Try writing suitable small articles: for example for trade or technical papers, and sending them in.
To write a press release yourself, keep to the facts, brief and salient. The length of the press release should be as short as possible and summarise all that you want to say in the first paragraph, as this may be all there is room for in the journal. Somewhere in the press release, put your name and telephone number, where editors and journalists can speak to you.
If there is a good quote that you can include from yourself or the person in your business responsible for this item, this can be an excellent way of lightening the copy and making it more readable. If there is any other personal or human angle that might appeal to the public, do not forget to introduce that. Do not be too optimistic about the chances of getting your press release in – hundreds will be sent each week.
Press releases stand a better chance of publication if there is a photograph attached. It can be a good investment to have some interesting photos of you and the business, which can be appended to the release.
Brochures, leaflets, flyers and data sheets
Online brochures can be relatively cheap, and there is no need to make them glossy or over-complicated. You can use a brochure to describe your product as well as drawing attention to the benefits. But while you need to be careful not to make it too general, you also need to avoid filling a brochure with a mass of technical details. If the only recipients are going to be highly technical people, consider online leaflets or data sheets.
Summary
- To communicate your message about your product’s benefits, you need to know who you want to talk to, what your message is and the best way of getting your message across.
- Setting up a web site is a key step in starting a new business, and an effective web presence is a vital marketing tool.
- An e-mail marketing campaign can be a cost-effective way of increasing sales and brand awareness.
- Digital advertising can create attention, inform, remind, prompt sales and improve the image of your product.
- Online advertising is a cost-effective way of targeting the large number of people who use the Internet to buy goods and services.
- Social media helps to promote you and your business and ultimately lead to higher sales.