Marketing your product or service can be an expensive exercise and sometimes it is temping to do things cheaply. Buy a computer package and create the newsletters yourself, make your own brochures to save on a graphic designer or ask a family friend to put the website together instead of a web developer. A perfectly rational solution in theory. However, when potential clients and consumers see your home made production they won’t be so forgiving. Marketing collateral that looks home made, gets treated as cheap and nasty and your brand is judged negatively. If you really want to succeed with your brand and catch people’s eye – make sure it’s for the right reason and budget accordingly to invest in professionals for your marketing materials and collateral. Generally, there are areas not to skimp in your marketing swag. These include: • Brochures • Stationery • Website • Flyers • Promotions • Generally, any external communication between your business and an existing or potential customer Similarly, all the marketing materials should look consistent. Your logo, colours, slogan should be the same on every marketing communication. There should be no variation in the images or text and there should never be any fuzziness in your logo. Your logo particularly, should always present clean and sharp. Whether you mean to or not, a lack of consistency in your marketing not only reeks of an amateur but looks sloppy and gives the impression of a lack of care. So how do you afford to hire a professional marketer and a graphic designer? The simple answer is choosing to budget. Any business wishing to get ahead with its marketing should be budgeting between seven and ten percent of sales. If you break it down into monthly goals you will find it is easy to achieve and the difference of professionally presented materials will really make a difference to the perception of your brand in the market place. Using a professional marketer will make a real difference to your brand, image and overall public perception. Say goodbye to those competitors who are still creating home made materials; you are already ahead of them. Say hello to new opportunities; you are presenting professional marketing of your brand; product and/or service now and people will sit up and listen and take you seriously. MKTG did a rebranding project for a payroll solutions business in 2007. Prior to professional marketing influence, they had sporadic marketing attempts, several versions of a company logo, a home made newsletter (waffle and recipes on the back) and a non engaging website. After a ‘MKTG Marketing Makeover’, all of the collateral was branded consistently, a new logo created, new suite of marketing tools, new brochures and sales materials and amazing new website. So what were the results? The company was rebranded and repositioned in the industry. It was now in the top three for Australian payroll outsourcing and competing with the industry big guns; instead of the bottom three (where they previously were perceived and floundering with the small fish). Their competitors were shocked (and then they started to change their marketing to compete), potential clients contacted the newly rebranded company and asked for quotes and invited the company to tender. The website (which had previously averaged 4000 visitors a year) had over 10,000 visitors in the first three months of rebranding and now average 3000 visitors to the site per month – plus the new website has become a lead generator, totally free and enquiries straight into the company inbox. All fully track able, all fully accountable. To view the references and/or contact this client regarding the success of the rebranding and general marketing management, please visit our company website where you can view our clients, case studies and contact details. www.mktg.com.au So the next time you think about just doing your ‘home made’ marketing yourself, just dont! Stop. Now think about the impression you are creating. What do you want your materials say about your company and brand? What impression do you really want to give? Top tips for your business marketing success: • Create a marketing budget • Engage a professional marketer • Never use any more home made marketing materials again! • In case the point was not clear enough, never do any more home made marketing!

Everyone’s got a website these days don’t they? The general consensus for Australian business big and small is ‘you gotta have a website’. Well actually what you should be asking is why? Why do I need a website and what is it going to do for me? Long before any website is created, a business needs to know why they want a website and what they hope to achieve by having their own slice of dot com. Just because people say you need one or you get one because everyone else has one, websites need to be prepared with planning, structure and purpose. And the reasons for having websites differs from business to business. For example, Tom’s Fruit Shop might have one so consumers can order fruit online for delivery and Sally’s Beauty Resort might have one to view her range of services and download some promotional offers. Both Tom and Sally have vastly different businesses and their websites reflect the different needs of the browsing clients. If Tom’s clients couldn’t order online and could only browse his fruit it would be pointless. Hence, the need to recognise why you want a website and what you hope to gain from having it. Just as in the example, websites are created for different purposes. Is your website designed to maximise your online goals? Do you know what your website currently does for your business or what it really could do? Is it time to reassess your online business goals? Every website needs to serve a purpose of some description. These can be a mixture of:

• Creating awareness
• Shopping cart or online ordering
• Information
• Communication
• Marketing and promotion

Could your website be working harder for your business? If you are selling online, do you have links to preferred partners (affiliate marketing)? Incentives? Downloadable vouchers that customers can use in store? If your website is purely information driven, is the information accurate and up to date? Do you change your website or give people a reason to return? A functioning website should be an ongoing marketing tool for your business. Presented in the most beneficial way for your consumers (remember each business can have a different target audience), your website can be one of the most cost effective and track able marketing vehicles available. Once you determine what the internet can do for your business you can start to harness its possibilities and market online to your advantage. Your business can then ramp up from a simple web presence to become another stream of leads and revenue. Further information can be found by Googling ‘online marketing’ or by contacting a specialist online marketing consultant. Website secrets for business success:

• Keep content fresh, accurate and up to date
• Track your website visitors and their patterns
• Incentivise with offers and invitations
• Make sure all your links and email contacts actually work

Remember why you created a website for your business and make it work for you.

Just what does marketing and popular schoolgirls have in common? Everything. Everyone wants to be like them, do fun things with them, act like them and be in the ‘in crowd’. Wanting to be in marketing and wanting to be the most popular girl can be virtually interchangeable. Seriously, marketing is a fundamental business element that can really add value to a company’s success. With the right marketing strategy, a plan that encourages a mixed media focus, a budget and the right person seated in the marketing chair, marketing can be the difference between ho hum results and genuine success. Hence, this is where the problems begin. Just as most of us are not cut out to be the popular girl, many people are not cut out for the reality of marketing. Not everyone can be good at marketing and getting the wrong person can have devastating effects on your brand. Many people fail to understand that marketing isn’t about going to lunches and being the office ‘favourite’. Go to any company and you can just hear the way the people in Accounts hiss about the marketing staff, ‘there they go again, out to lunch’. Marketing just seems to be all parties, parties, parties and in reality that is not the case. Another ‘mythconception’ is that marketing is about ordering magnets, taking out ads in newspapers, spending money on tee shirts and caps or organising drinks and nibbles events. This is not marketing. It doesn’t even scratch the surface of the real marketing function. Marketing is about strategy, planning, research, products, brand management, communications, campaigns, collateral and above all, results and accountability. Despite how it may appear to some, engineering successful marketing is not easy and it isn’t about how pretty you are. Another reason for marketing’s popularity is mainly due to other business functions being so dry and boring. At the Careers Fair does the most popular girl want to be an accountant? A secretary? Noooo. Why? Because it’s boring. And remember, marketing is just so fun, fun, fun! The problem is we can’t all be in the marketing department, aside there being no room, other functions need doing – like sales. Without any sales there would be no marketing and no business at all in reality. Just as the majority of us need to accept we won’t ever be the most popular girl in school, we need to accept our business skill set limitations. It’s best to realise and accept that we might not be so good at marketing, but we are great at sales and capitalise on that. Instead, look for a professional marketer who IS great at marketing and can really make a difference to your business. Marketing outsourcing and consulting is a growing trend both here and overseas and it makes sense to use a skilled, experienced professional to build and manage your brand. And just like realising you won’t be the most popular girl in school, you get over it and spend your time capitalising a business strength you are good at – and usually succeed 