So – if we are to “out market” the competition it makes sense to consider “what is Marketing?” – indeed I often get asked something similar. Although just as often people struggling to understand will tell me their own limited idea couched as ” well of course Marketing is …….” usually followed by “telesales”, “e-marketing”, “advertising”, “promotion”, “content marketing”, “sales promotion”, – now of course “social media” and even on one occassion “constantly repeating the corporate message ” or otherwise some similar quite specific technique that they have picked up from the marketeers toolbox.
Perhaps because I came into Marketing in the early 70′s when Marketing was developing as a philosophy of business I see all of these aspects and more as part of Marketing. A good definition I have heard is that “Marketing is everything that a company does that does not involve personal contact with the customer.”
However for me I would say that Marketing is an approach that encompasses everything a company does based on an understanding of the market and how the company can best opperate within the market.
So that far from leaving Sales people out in the cold I would say that Sales is part of Marketing and even the way that corporate finances are derived form part of the corporate Marketing philosophy. So promotion and sales and finance can be seen simply as ways of working to achieve the company’s overall marketing objectives.
This approach enables one to balance all the company resources, inputs and outgoings, so as to optimise performance – connecting the marketplace to financial results.
To Grandiose for an SME? Well little acorns and all that – we can start by considering where to put promotional spend – into a new product that has already had a lot of effort behind it or into re-enlivening a moribund cash cow?
Would your resources be better in stock or an exhibition? Staff morale or a new machine? Interest on a loan or investing in enquiries? Which will enable you to best surf the waves of the Marketplace and to optimise your financial results long term?
So to Out Market the Competition we first have to think differently – about how to connect our resources with our markets. This is not always possible within a small very pressured environment and in my experience industrial SMEs are run by either from an engineering or a sales perspective – which generally brings a specific focus and timescale – a Marketing approach tends to be wider and longer term – this added perspective can be extremely advantageous in developing a strategy to take a company forward over the long term. It focuses on growth in good times and out-marketing the competition in the down times. You may not need a marketing dept full time but you are likely to need access to one.
As a first step to “out Market the competition” contact us at ID-Marketing
I am often amused by people’s fascination with getting themselves on page one of organic searches – as an agency we have never tried to achieve this – rather it has beeen a pleasant and surprising side effect of what we consider as “just doing the job right”.
To the point where we have clients with from 100 to over 200 keyword searches that we check 3 monthly and find them on page 1 of organic searches for anything from 50 to 100 of them. It is quite a buzz to put in an industry relevant search term and find our client on page one 5 times - the client is pleased too!
There seems to be confusion over what is important and what we are trying to achieve – yes it is great to get your own website high up the listings – but there are a number of other considerations:
1. 3rd party listings gained through PR, Content Marketing and Social Media will get listed much more easily and more quickly because the directories and journals are more valued than a single manufacturers site – and their listing for you will still take people to you. Such listings will also keep out your competition. We frequently find our clients listings appearing on page 1 a number of times eg 3, 4 or 5 times for a single search string. These listings seem to get picked up very quickly and to stay relevant for many months.
2. Your blog is likely to get higher value than your website if you are keeping it active – not only does a blog get picked up quickly it can be quite a stable listing.
3. Your website can get up the listings supported by the value accrued from your total activity and traffic. Once there it is usually quite stable if you maintain your online activity.
I have heard a lot recently about the value of adding video to your website home page – as you know I have been keen on clients using video for at least a couple of years – for its intrinsic value as a good way to get information across – although as you see we don’t have it – but some really useful videos are in the pipeline as soon as I can face the camera!
Now it seems Google has caught up and I found this this blog piece http://blogs.forrester.com/interactive_marketing/2009/01/the-easiest-way.html which gives SEO figures to show you have about a 50 times better chance of your website getting to page 1 with a video than without.
That’s the sort of odds I like:^)
Interesting too that the “advanced” SEO he talks about are exactly the sort of things we are doing all the time!
Following the success of our early 2011 program of seminars, registrations are invited at www.id-marketing.co.uk/free-seminar-registration for a free seminar on 23rd September on the subject of “Industrial PR and Social Media Marketing”. We are delighted that these free seminars are proving so successful for the delegates, since all seem to go away with a much better insight into the roles of PR and Social Media in the industrial marketplace – which is very different from the mainstream perception – and since we are an active and experienced company we are passing on what we actually do and what we know works – not just a theoretical training.
The seminar will cover the basics of Industrial PR and how to do it for yourself – press relations vs. public relations, keywords, directories, printed and internet media, press releases, features, building a database, web profiling, with “hands on” exercises. Other topics will be Marketing for Industrial SMEs – building a cost effective Promotional Pyramid – blogs, newsletters, website SEO, video, advertising, exhibitions and social media – with a guest Social Media Manager from our associate Lesley Whiteman Social Media Agency.
We believe that PR is cheaper and more effective than ever, PR is the cheapest promotion a company will ever do and that based on a solid foundation of PR a company can build the other major elements of online marketing, content marketing, social media, exhibitions and advertising into a worthwhile long-term investment that will protect a company through the downs and leverage growth in the ups of the economic cycle.
One day free PR seminars are planned for September and October 2011 at a quiet relaxing venue near our offices in Bedfordshire, with complementary networking lunch and free car parking. To register for the September seminar please go to www.id-marketing.co.uk/free-seminar-registration
PR integrates – a company PR program is at its best when used in an integrated way with other promotional activities. It is really a question of getting the balance right:
- without PR no balance
- with only PR no balance
- with PR, website, newsletters, advertising etc then a balance can be achieved that meets the information needs of potential customers and existing customers while enabling the client company to focus on its core business of supply. It is simply a matter of recognising that information transfer via its marketing activities forms a vital part of any customer service package.
See our free downloads.
I am intrigued that we all are specialists in our own field and so can easily fall into the trap of bringing in other specialists without knowing what they need in order to do their best work for us. Have you ever dealt with builders, architects, consultants etc etc? So it is worth considering how to get the best out of your P.R. agency.
So, here are my suggestions:
- have a senior sales/marketing/engineering person deal with them
- give them lots of material to work with. This need not be new, but will need to be interesting to your target audience, perhaps applications or a new angle. Nowadays, two pieces per month is normal.
- Provide briefing material on products, services, applications, technologies, in the form of data sheets, brochures, web page addresses, downloads, telephone or meeting discussions.
- Don’t bother to write or re-write yourself. Save yourself the time by simply checking drafts for accuracy and corrections of “message”.
- Keep them up to date with your target audience.
For more useful information you can download our Top Tips guides here.
I have heard the term “Content Marketing” recently from a few people such as website designers and so on and since it seemed so simple (and also so much what we have done for the past 20 years in our PR service) I sort of ignored it as fluff terminology for the blindingly obvious. So I was intrigued to hear it again from a more respected source and traced it back via some of those internet gurus – only to find that it makes perfect sense and is apparently the latest “buzz” in marketing circles. A good start is at: www.junta42.com/resources/what-is-content-marketing.aspx which provides the following definition:
“Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action”.
The key I think is in the “creating and distributing relevant and valuable content” with the emphasis on “valuable”. So – don’t present rubbish to your prospective/customers or they will soon ignore you. Nonetheless I stand by my 1st conclusion – it is blindingly obvious – and it is what we do, in what I call PR! – so I’m glad we are up to date ( possibly even 20 years ahead of the trend ) and will forthwith change my terminology to call ourselves a “Content Marketing Agency”.
My guess – still there, we’re doing it. In short, when times are hard we switch from turnover growth to growing market share. That may well mean 10% or even 20% down on last year is a good result – achieved by running hard to stand still. However, if it results in greater market share then as we climb out of this recession we can expect to see the benefits of our hard work. One thing’s for sure, if we wait until we see the upturn then it will be too late to join in. The results will come from what we are doing now. So, let’s be happy that web traffic/enquiries are high – they represent business waiting to happen.
Doing the job properly – at the end of the day the whole industrial PR process – with or without search engines – is about getting genuine information to places where it can reach serious potential users/buyers. These are willing buyers – if they don’t buy then their business will not exist, but they must buy knowledgeably. Do that job right and it is worth doing from everybody’s perspective.
Search engines in their own way are only trying to facilitate the same process – so we are all working toward the same end – there is no need to try to manipulate the search engines – do the job properly and they will put an enquirer together with the information they are seeking. Although it does help to be able to think like a customer and to set up ones information and it’s distribution to fit that enquiry process i.e. understand the information that is important to a customer, how they may go about finding it, what form they may find it easiest to digest and how to make their life easy in progressing their enquiry. This is not “rocket science” but it does require a measure of knowledge, understanding, skill, experience, flexibility, balance and judgment – sound like any PR agency you know?
I guess we have all been interested in understanding how useful print media is these days – now that “bingo cards ” are effectively gone and so much seems to focus around the internet media and website traffic. Certainly I have been interested to understand this in terms of developing the effectiveness of our press release programs and of our advice to clients regarding their advertising. So I thought you may be interested in the following note which I made for myself, based on recent conversations with respected industrial publishers:
“Interaction between printed and web based media i.e. where a publisher runs both a printed and an online publication with the same title – a “twinned” publication , is a much neglected but very important area, although with little in the way of quantitative evidence. However recent anecdotal information based on publishers reported statistics suggest that in this situation the issue of the printed journal can give rise to as much as a third of the web traffic to it’s twin online site and so by extension, for a third of the enquiries. This is an important consideration since it suggests that a “twinned” printed journal can be as successful at generating interest as it’s twin website alone, ( if one allows for direct phone calls and website visits together with the 1/3rd traffic generated through the publishers sister site).”I am encouraged therefore to believe that our efforts in printed media continue to be as worthwhile as they are in the internet media and am pleased to have found some external evidence to throw light on the real world process involved.
