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How direct marketing can help you

MarketingFile - Email marketing simplified

Obtaining new clients is essential to the success of any business. Direct marketing gives you the opportunity to target the most relevant audience for your products or services. Because it has the ability to send targeted niche campaigns it is more cost-effective than other forms of advertising as you only invest in contacting just those people you want to communicate with.

MarketingFile have been working with business for the last 15 years supplying high quality direct marketing data for clients’ campaigns, we therefore understand the benefits it can bring to businesses looking to communicate with their client base.

Three key benefits of direct marketing:

It is more responsive. The message can be tailored precisely for each target group and each contact can be followed up individually. Personalised messages have become popular over the last 5 years, this can be by using the respondents name or, more effectively, using their shopping or lifestyle habits.

It is measurable. The response rate from each campaign is easily measured. Whether you use direct mail, email or SMS each channel can be measured easily for its response rate. Use promotional codes or referrer ID’s to identify what channel new customers come from.

It is controllable. You decide exactly how many businesses or consumers to contact at a time. You can send mail, email or SMS to as many or as little as you need for your campaign. Sending niche campaigns is suggested as the most viable method for direct marketing, as long as you have the correct targeting.

How to use direct marketing effectively

The success of a direct marketing campaign depends upon a number of factors;

The suitability and relevance of the product or service to the target group
The quality, accuracy and relevance of the list of prospects used
The attractiveness of the offer
The creativity of the approach
Timing and other factors

You should consider the product or service you wish to promote, the type of audience for which it is most suited and then select your list based on a wide range of options. When targeting businesses these areas include, industry type, turnover, size of company, job function etc. When targeting consumers these include area, income, age, marital status, home ownership, investment potential, interests and lifestyle attributes.

The quality of the list is the single most important success factor in a DM campaign. The more thought put into its selection, the more accurate the targeting will be and the more responsive the campaign. The prospect must understand how they will benefit from what is being offered and the message should close with a clear “call to action” (e.g. complete the enclosed form, phone a number, visit a web-site etc).

Prospects should be targeted in manageable quantities. If the campaign is too large it carries the risk of the response being too great to cope with. A smaller campaign may be easier to handle and responses can be followed up more efficiently and professionally.

Speak to our team on 0845 345 7755 to see how your business can use direct marketing to both existing customers and prospects!

Tips on buying prospect data

MarketingFile - Marketing strategy week 2: Market Analysis

Buying a prospect marketing list for the first time, or even if it’s not your first purchase, can be a daunting task. We’ve compiled a few hints and tips of what to look out for and questions to ask to help you purchase prospect data.

What sort of response should I expect?

Many factors will affect your response rate, including the list used, the offer, the creative work, the copy, the timing of the mailing and so on.

The Direct Mail Information Service (DMIS) publishes figures on response rates to different campaigns on its web-site. However many of these campaigns will have been done by large marketing departments using top advertising agencies and copywriters. Rather than spending your entire budget on a large campaign that delivers a poor response, it is best to test your campaign first on a smaller quantity.

What is a reasonable level of gone-aways?

Some level of undeliverable addresses or gone-aways is inevitable. People and companies move or die and even the most up-to-date list will contain some inaccuracies. Your list supplier should make you aware of their policy for the reimbursement of goneaways. The DMA code of practice states that acceptable levels are 3% on a responder list and 6% on a compiled list.

After you have used the list

You must return any gone-aways to the list-owner. This enables the list to be updated and may entitle you to a refund if gone-aways have exceeded the warranty level. Ensure that any further use of the list is allowable under the terms of the licence.

Buying a list

Consider the following types of list when buying prospect data:

Questions to ask when purchasing data

What is the source of the data? Is it liable?
Is the list appropriate given your product / service and target market?
What is the frequency of updating? When was it last updated?
How selective is the list? Does it allow you to accurately target your best prospects?
What is the cost of the list? Are there any hidden or additional costs over and above the base price?
Does it contain email address, telephone / fax numbers if required?
Have addresses, telephone and fax numbers been checked against the most recent Preference Service lists?
Does the list owner require that the list is only handled by a registered fulfilment house or can you do this yourself?
Is there a minimum quantity or value?
How long will it take to be delivered?
What is the policy relating to gone-aways?
Does the allowed usage of the data fit your requirement (i.e. single-use, multiple-use)?

Cleaning your lists and databases

It is your responsibility to ensure that you do not contact people who have indicated that they do not wish to hear from you. In the UK, your list must therefore be cleaned against the various opt-out files;

The Telephone Preference Service (TPS & CTPS) is a list containing numbers of individuals: i.e. consumers, sole traders and (except in Scotland) partnerships, and businesses who must not be called unsolicited.
The Fax Preference Service (FPS) list contains the numbers of companies that must not be faxed. Individuals (as defined for TPS) must never be faxed unsolicited.
The Mailing Preference Service (MPS) list contains the details of consumers that should not be mailed. This is an industry guideline rather than a legal requirement.
The file is updated every 3 months.

The “grace period” between someone registering with the TPS/FPS and it being an offence to call them (punishable by a fine of up to £5000) is only 28 days. You should bear this in mind when deciding the number of names to purchase on a telemarketing list.

In addition it is good practice and commercial sense to clean your lists against the lists of people who have either moved or died. It is very distressing for the bereaved to receive mail or calls for a deceased relative. Consumer lists should therefore be cleaned against one of the commercially available lists of people who have died.

Finally, the deliverability of a mailing depends on the accuracy of the addresses.

Royal Mail’s Postcode Address File (PAF) is the definitive database of every deliverable address in the UK. It can be used to correct partial or inaccurate addresses in your list or database.

MarketingFile offers a range of online list-cleaning services, including TPS, FPS, MPS and PAF to help you maximise your deliverability and remain within UK direct marketing laws and guidelines, take a look here. Get your free quote and get in touch with our team on 0845 345 7755.

Sourcing your prospect marketing list

There are thousands of lists on the market. Traditionally, lists have been obtained either direct from the list owner, from a list manager or from a list broker. You should allow a few days to a few weeks to obtain the data from these traditional sources and you will probably be obliged to purchase a minimum value of data: £500 to £1,000 is not unusual.

Because of the increasing demand for smaller lists for niche markets and localised campaigns, and because rapid delivery is becoming more important, lists are now also being sold online.

Elsewhere on the Internet, you can obtain details on specific lists (in the form of a data-sheet) on list owners’, managers’ and brokers’ web-sites. In some cases you can obtain rough counts, but very few web-sites allow you to actually purchase and download the data.

What is the difference between... A list broker, a list owner and a list manager?

List owner: the person or organisation with proprietary rights in the list.
List manager: a person or organisation appointed by a list owner to market or sell its lists
List broker: a person or organisation that works on behalf of the purchaser of the list.

Where do lists come from and how are they compiled?

There are several different types of lists available. They are created in a variety of ways and come from a number of different sources.

Business lists

Compiled / researched lists: originate as publicly available information (e.g. Companies House data) and are further researched by the list owner.
Publisher lists: contain readers of magazines / books / publications. They may be subscribers or controlled circulation
Mail order buyers / enquirers: These are buyers of products by mail order or from a newspaper advertisement.
Exhibition attendees: people who have filled in registration cards at exhibitions. The card tends to hold a varying amount of information about the individual but interest level in the subject area is known to be high.

Consumer lists

Compiled lists: names of individuals taken from publicly available sources. Examples are professional registers or shareholder files.
Geo-demographic lists: are based on Electoral Roll data overlaid with census data, credit data and household classifications. Some information may be imputed by statistical means. These lists can supply large quantities of data in small geographic areas.
Lifestyle lists: are built from questionnaire information. Consumers give details of their homes, family composition, finances and interests. Typically the surveys collect up to 2,500 separate pieces of information about an individual. These are therefore the most highly selective lists.
Affinity / transaction & response based lists: are compiled as a result of a purchase, subscription, response or enquiry by a consumer, indicating an active interest in that product / service area.

How much does a list cost and are there any hidden charges?

The actual price of each list varies but the pricing principles tend to stay the same for traditional list owners, managers and brokers. There is usually a base rental per 1000 records (usually expressed as £x/000): this can range from £50/000: £500/000, plus any of the following;

Selection £x/000 per selection made: e.g. £10 for each of age, income
Email address and other additional data items cost £x/000
Delivery / Format charge: depending on whether you want an email, cd
Additional costs of Mailsort, keycoding and flagging

MarketingFile are unique within the market as we can be categorised as brokers, however we differ as we hold all of our list owner data in-house. Giving us instant and direct access to all of our marketing lists, meaning we are able to run data counts and send prospect lists immediately.

If you have any queries about sourcing your prospect marketing list please call our team on 0845 345 7755. We will be pleased to assist you in any way we can.

Get to know your customers

MarketingFile - Marketing Strategy and Data

How well do you know your customers?

An important question for any business or marketer. Building a relationship with your customers is similar to a personal relationship, it’s the small details that make a strong connection. So how can you find out these intimate details about your shoppers?

Analytics and customer insights

Seems simple right? So how can you turn this new found awareness of your customers in to increased sales? First of all you have to understand the analytics and decide what information you are looking for. If you find this out then you have the ability to send targeted and specific messages to them, delivering a superior experience.

There is also an added benefit to knowing your customers – finding more of them. Once you have your customers’ demographics, lifestyle habits, financial situation and anything else important to selling your product or service, these selections can be replicated across prospect data lists. Introducing your business to new prospects will expand your customer database, therefore increasing sales and revenue but also giving your marketing team more data to work with for analysing.

Data, data and more data

Coming from a background in data for the last 15 years, MarketingFile have seen the advancements in not only the data itself but how it is used. Our own clients, from a wide range of industries, are being smart when using both customer and prospect data. We’ve also recognised the development from our list owners on how the data is collected. A wider variety of channels are being used to gather data and therefore we are all gaining more insight into prospect customers.

One of our list owners, Emailmovers, has recently started to accumulate their data through social media channels. They source their data from over 60 different sources, collected from social media apps, which provides powerful social-demographic data. Using this data clients are able to determine a consumers’ interest in brands, actors, TV shows, products etc. This allows businesses to intelligently segment the prospect list to identify people who are more likely to be interested in their product or service.

How to analyse your shoppers

Analytics needs to stretch further than the typical segmentation for your business to identify more about its customers. Gaining insight into their shopping and lifestyle habits is always a good start, but then focusing on building this to gain a fuller picture about them and their motive behind purchasing will provide key information on how to target them with specific messages. Finding out why your customers have just bought your latest product will indicate what marketing messages to use to attract more shoppers. This can be done through market research, using two way communication channels to ask them why they just purchased what they did.

The key to successful analytics is firstly the data you use, it has to be relevant and accurate, and the second aspect is how you interpret this data to understand your market. If your business wants to analyse and segment their customer database our Touchpoint system allows you to do this in a few easy steps, find out more about Touchpoint here

The secrets to good email marketing

If you’re deciding to send an email campaign for the first time you may have read many blogs, guides, reports or articles on how to make the most of your email campaign. From our experience there is no “right” or “wrong” way when using email marketing. There are definitely some basic rules to follow, which we have covered in our previous blogs, however we’ve compiled three secrets to email marketing which will hopefully make your next campaign a bit easier to execute.

Subject Lines

Since email marketing began in the 90’s there has been heaps of research carried out around the world on subject lines. How long should it be, what words shouldn’t it contain, should it be personalised? We’ve even written blogs on this subject and carried out our own research to see what works. You may have found when reading all this research there are contradicting findings and opinions. So we’ve mentioned it before, and we are again, the most effective way to find the “best” subject line for your campaign is TEST.

Use A/B split testing to decide what subject line works best for that particular campaign. Your results will change each time depending on the audience you are sending it to and the campaign itself. Keep in mind when writing your next subject lines (plural as you should be testing!) it should quickly and easily tell the reader the benefit of opening your email.

Above or below the fold

This doesn’t just apply to email marketing, but most digital platforms where the user has to scroll to read more. Again, past research has always told us marketers to put our call to action above the fold, making sure it’s the first thing they see. This is not necessarily the best way to optimise your click through rates.

The key here is to make your content engaging and interesting to the reader. People who are interested in what they are reading will keep going, even if it means scrolling down the email. This will also give you better quality leads clicking on your email. So by putting your call to action below the fold and include engaging content, you are more likely to receive higher converting leads.

Multiple Emails

You may have just sent out your first email campaign which included engaging content, a good subject line, to an audience perfect for your product or service, but haven’t had any clicks?

As experienced email marketers we know prospects may not take an invested interest in your email the first time you send it. It can take a further two or three times before you fully get their attention. For this reason we suggest sending a series of linked emails to tell the reader of an up and coming offer. Then use subsequent email reminders telling them when the offer is going out of date. Even send an email after the “offer date” has expired with a small extension just for them.

Don’t give up at the first hurdle, ensure your next email campaign comprises of a small series of emails to entice the reader and get them to engage at some point with you. This also relates back to the subject line, test different creatives and content to maximise your campaigns effectiveness.

Why not get in touch?

Find out more about our email broadcasting service through our Touchpoint system by calling our team on 0845 345 7755 or click here to ready more!

Improve your direct mail

Market testing has gone on to prove that ‘targeting’ and the ‘offer’ in a marketing piece are the key elements of a campaign’s success. However, it is still important to give your promotional material a professional and business look.

Your advert or flyer is your ‘shop window’ to the reader, at that point in time. Yet, in so many cases, promotional pieces can look thrown together and disjointed. Short of going to an advertising agency or a graphic design studio, what can you do to lift the quality of your promotional material?

Make the headline dominant

Given that you will sweat hard and long to write your headline, make sure it’s the first thing to capture the reader’s eyes. And make sure you have a headline that sells. Just putting the product name at the top is not a headline!

Observe 'reader gravity'

Many promotional pieces are a mismatch of different sized type and unrelated panels of information. Things that make it tough for the reader to follow the message.

As you know, the reader will only give you a fleeting opportunity to make an impression, after that, it’s into the bin. We were taught to read left to right, top to bottom. Follow that ‘rule’ in your layout and you’ll lift readership. It doesn’t mean you can’t use creativity, but use it wisely.

Avoid over-use of ALL CAPS

Upper case is considered an effective way to emphasise a point. However, it is tiring and unnatural on the eye if used in excess. Likewise, avoid using oversized type just to fill up the spaces. Oversized type is just like shouting at your reader something you’d hardly do face to face.

Limit yourself to 2 font families

To give your piece a unified and professional look, we recommend that you limit the number of fonts you use. It is best to use one font family (preferably a strong one) for your headlines and another font family for the body copy. A font family is all the related styles that come with the font, and usually include bold, italic, and bold italic.

Body copy

Avoid sans serif typefaces in a heavy body of copy. They are harder to read than serif typefaces. Never smaller than 7pt. Outside of headlines and subheads, rarely would you go bigger than 14pt. Also, it’s safer to use black ink for body copy, and keep other colours for borders, screens and headlines.

White space

Don’t be afraid of white space. Don’t think that you must fill the whole piece with text or illustrations. White space can actually be as much of an element in the design as copy or pictures, and should be considered in the same light.

Study other adverts and mailers for ideas on balance

Some ads are too balanced! Their rigid symmetry makes them blend into the page or become a piece of ‘art’, while other ‘less professional’ ads stand out. A careful use of asymmetry can catch the eye. Incidentally, just making a border heavier than all the surrounding ads won’t guarantee readership. It is the headline and illustration that earn the attention of the reader.

Make your story unfold as the brochure unfolds

A high majority of promotional pieces are just flat flyers. Yet, with a little time sitting down with a blank ‘dummy’ to rough out headlines and illustrations, you can often discover some interesting ways to make your story unfold in a way that grabs the reader with the front cover ‘headline’, then ‘invites’ them to keep delving further and further until your whole message is told and you’ve asked for the order.

Make sure they can contact you

You will be amazed at the amount of marketing pieces that do not include contact details some just include a web address, assuming that everyone will visit that for additional contact information. Wrong! Always ensure your telephone number is included, not oversized but legible and differentiated from the fax number. In addition include your street address (unless you don’t want customers showing up at your doorstep.)

Don’t be afraid to spend a little

False economy creeps in when printing costs are being discussed. Printers often steer clients away from ‘expensive’ paper stocks, and from extra colours in the print run. You should weigh up your decision in terms of the extra sales that a better quality promotional piece can bring, against the ‘cost’ of having a cheaper brochure ‘down sell’ your business.

For a free quote for your next direct mail campaign contact our team on 0845 345 7755

Improve your response rate

A huge number of factors affect the response rate to your campaign. This tip-sheet is designed to make you aware of the main factors and give you some ideas for how to improve the response of your next campaign.

The list

The quality of the list is the single most important factor affecting response rate. Also consider that people who are not inundated with offers are more likely to respond so you may increase response by using lists that are less frequently used, or by targeting so as to avoid the inundated.

The offer

If the product or service you are promoting is lacking the basic features expected or your price is too noncompetitive, your response will inevitably be poor. Assuming these fundamentals are OK, you may consider the following to help to boost response;

Offer a free sample or trial to enable your prospects to experience your product or service
Offer an incentive. Be careful with the economics here. Ideally link the incentive to purchase rather than simple response. The gift itself should be relevant to your target audience, or failing that, of universal relevance.
Offer a discount or special price. Again be careful with the economics. A 20% discount may increase response to cover its cost but a 30% discount fails to pull the extra response needed. Experiment with different ways of describing the discount – “buy one get one free” usually works better than, “2 for the price of 1”, “half price”, “50% off”.
Always set a limited time to respond if providing an incentive, discount etc. This encourages the recipient to actually respond rather than putting it aside until later – and stick to it!

The Mail-piece

Try not sacrifice clarity and response generation in favour of cutting edge creative genius. Relevant photographs increase response more than drawings or diagrams. Keep your mail piece to the point, you need to explain the benefits of your product or service but not ramble on, include testimonials and try to answer the reader’s questions.

Use a strong headline (repeat this on the envelope if possible) and make use of headings, sub-headings, indents and bullet points as most people will scan the piece before they read it properly. Use plain English and short sentences. Don’t crowd the page – leave plenty of white space. This all makes your mail-piece easier to read and increases response. Consider using an easy to read font such as a serif font. Research suggests this is more likely to be read and remembered.

Personalisation of the mail-piece can improve response dramatically. However personalisation is not simply scattering the prospect’s name throughout the mail-piece. It is tailoring the text of the offer to the recipient and demonstrating the benefits to them personally. Thus a short piece promoting events local to the recipient will generate a better response than a huge tome covering all events nationally.

If you are mailing to a named individual, make sure you get the name right, but do not be afraid to mail without a name (or without a salutation if it cannot be derived). “Dear Reader” is acceptable – or better, replace the salutation completely with a bold heading. Some business mailers claim to improve response by not mailing to a name at all, preferring to mail to a job title, which can be exactly the person you seek to reach e.g. The Network Security Manager.

Timing

Obvious really – make sure you time your mailing to drop at a time when your prospect is most likely to buy. For business mailings try to avoid times when your prospect is likely to be away or manically busy (e.g. industry trade fairs). There is some evidence that business mailings arriving mid-week are more responsive than those arriving on a Monday or Friday. This is particularly true for email campaigns.

Many believe that consumer mailings are more likely to be read thoroughly at weekends. Many mailers avoid the holiday period altogether but a growing number have realised that not everyone is away at the same time and that those that are at home are more likely to read a mailing when there is less on the doormat

Follow-up

Very important. To increase your response rate consider contacting each prospect more than once – and at least quarterly. Increasing the frequency normally increases the response rate and many direct marketers now prefer to contact prospects monthly. Consider following up your mailing with a telephone call. Particularly in business to business, a follow-up telephone call 3-4 days after the mailing has landed can significantly increase your response. A call-mail-call pattern can produce even greater results.

The response mechanism

The simple rule is to make it as easy as possible to respond. Different people will prefer to respond in different ways so make sure you offer all the options (mail, fax, telephone, email, web-site). Do as much of the work as possible for the prospect. If you provide a reply card, fill in the prospect’s details – this can increase response by up to 15%. Always repeat the main points of the offer on the reply-card – people may just keep the reply-card and wonder later what it was about. Repeating the offer may just get it sent back to you.

Consider paying the costs of response. Use reply-paid postage (you only pay for the replies that are actually mailed). Use a free-call or local-rate telephone number. If your prospect must pay the full call charge, use a non-geographic number to avoid the “not local – too distant” argument. Always tell your prospects how much (or how little) the call will cost – many people confuse 0945 (local rate) with 0898 (premium rate) and will assume the worst.

Test, Measure, Improve

If you are considering a large volume mailing, do a test-run initially to a smaller number to ensure the response is acceptable. You may even try two or more different lists, letters or offers to see which works best (make sure you can tell from the responses which campaign they came from).

Beware of mailing to very small volumes as you may get a very low or zero response and conclude (wrongly) that the campaign does not work when the same campaign sent to 1000 or more would deliver more statistically significant (and acceptable) results.

Direct marketing is part science, part art. You will not get everything right first time. You will need to refine your campaign over time to maximise your response. The crucial thing is to measure the response from each campaign and learn from the experience, thereby improving your response rate over time.

For more information and for your free data count, get in touch with our team on 0845 345 7755.

Make telemarketing work for your business

Telemarketing can be a dark horse in terms of ways to market your business. However, telemarketing can be a successful sales and marketing tool for your company.

Be prepared

There’s nothing worse than having a complete blank and a prolonged pause while you desperately try to think of something to say to your waiting customer. Before you start calling customers, make notes on things to talk about, and questions to ask that might reveal to them a need for your services. Once you’ve been doing telemarketing for a while you will also come to learn some of the objections you will come up against, such as “I’m not interested”, “I don’t have the money”, or “it’s not convenient to talk now” – arm yourself with positive responses to these negative objections that will move the sale forward.

What do you want from this call?

Is your objective to create awareness, generate a lead, or make a sale there and then? If your aim is to make a sale, we would also suggest having secondary goals, e.g. obtaining their email address to send them more information, arranging to speak to them another time, or finding out another contact it would be worth you speaking to. Smaller more achievable targets will help to keep spirits raised.

A good time to call

You need to think about who your prospects are and when they will be most receptive to your call. You need to analyse your target group a little closer to realise the right time to call this particular group. Don’t forget, if it’s inconvenient for them to take your call now, ask them when would be best to call back.

The most important 10 seconds

The first 10-15 seconds of your call are the most important – this is when you need to capture the recipient’s interest and keep them on the line. Consumers will tend to make their minds up after just three or four sentences from you – so make them count. Open with a friendly “Hello, how are you?” don’t jump straight in with a sales pitch or you’ll put them off immediately. Also make sure they are the key decision maker!

In layman’s terms?

Don’t confuse your customers with overly technical terms that only make sense to you because they’re thrown about your office every day – keep things plain and simple as customers won’t waste their time trying to understand.

Be natural

We can’t think of anything worse than being talked at by someone who is obviously reading from a script, and one they’re clearly bored with reading. Smile when you talk to customers and they will hear it in your voice. Remember to listen to your customers and have an actual conversation with them; they are people and not daily targets.

Have confidence

If you believe in your product or service and that it’s right for your customer, then they will also have confidence in it. Remember not to take a bad call personally, there could be several reasons why it went wrong. Stay calm and never argue – the customer is always right. All you can do is be as helpful and informative as possible – this would probably be a good time to arrange to call them another time or offer to send over an information pack.

Call logs

Keep a record of all your calls and make brief notes on how the conversations went and any dates to call back. With this information you can learn which approach you use is most successful and improve on it. You will also have at your fingertips helpful reminders for the next time you talk to a particular customer – you may talk to hundreds of customers in one day but they all want to feel unique and remembered, it won’t help your sale if you don’t remember who they are or the last conversation you had with them.

Take some of the work out of the call

It’s a good idea to send introductory or follow-up letters, product fliers or other marketing materials in conjunction with your telemarketing. This will help raise both brand awareness and a relationship between you and your prospects, as well as giving them something to refer back to after your call.

Get in touch with our team to find out more about our telemarketing prospect data and run your free count to find prospects for your next direct marketing campaign on 0845 345 7755.

Marketing Strategy week 4: Measurement and Control

We are now on our final week of our marketing strategy tips focusing on the part of the strategy which normally is forgotten, the measurement and control of the project.

Get Control

Once you have planned, discussed, implemented and managed your strategy you need to know if it’s achieved your original objective. To do this effectively using a Gantt chart at the beginning of the project will help keep your plan on track.

However, don’t feel like you have to stick to the plan 100%. Your business environment can change, internally and externally. Therefore your strategy needs to take this into account with contingency plans ready if certain situations occur, i.e. a competitor releases a similar product a month before you’re launch date, or your head of sales goes on maternity leave – your business should have plans in place to manage these changes effectively.

We’ve included an example of a Gantt chart below, each task will be given a time frame it has to be completed by and include slack time (amount of time a task can go on for before effecting other tasks). Planning in this way gives a visual display of how long each task will take, because of this it is sometimes useful to write your Gantt chart whilst producing your marketing plan to give yourself realistic time frames.

Measure Results

At the end of your project your shareholders or board of directors (or even for your own sanity) will want to know if you achieved what you set out to do. To do this you need to measure how well your marketing plan was implemented and to what level did it achieve its goals.

Your measurement will depend on your objectives, for example increasing website traffic can be measured by volume of traffic, page views, time on site, bounce rate etc. Or to increase social media engagement can be measured by reach, participation and number of followers.

Document your results in an easy to read format so everyone involved understands the final outcome of the strategy. Don’t forget to produce a formal report to indicate the project has come to an end which should be distributed among all teams involved and shareholders/board members.

A final note...

We hope your business will find our four weeks’ of strategy blogs useful for your next marketing project. If you would like more information or hints and tips please call our team on 0845 345 7755. Plus why not get in touch for your free data count to find prospects for your next direct marketing campaign.

The Marketing Plan: Week 3

MarketingFile - Key questions for your multi-channel marketing

We are now in our third week of marketing strategy tips focusing on the marketing plan. So far you would have completed your market analysis, understanding your current situation, and have a clear idea who your customers are. The next step is to write and execute your marketing strategy to achieve your overall goal.

Below we have outlined the basic marketing plan template, however you can make yours as detailed as you require. Some businesses can find an in-depth marketing plan doesn’t suit their needs as it can take too long for all the relevant departments or teams to read to understand what the plan of action is. Therefore, it can be useful to have a brief plan outlining the key points indicating which team is responsible for a particular section, within each part a more detailed plan can be delivered.

If the marketing strategy includes different departments or teams remember to keep communication open, clear and flowing in all directions. Ensuring each department involved in the marketing strategy is informed of how the overall strategy is progressing is important for everyone to be aware of.

So below the important sections to include in your strategy:

Executive summary

A 300-500 word summary of the whole marketing plan, gives direction to the reader

Audit

This you have already carried out through your customer and market analysis

Objectives

You may already know your objectives and key goal so here you need to document them (keep to the SMART acronym!)

Marketing strategy

Overview of your chosen strategy, there are many to choose from; growth, introduction or innovation to name a few.

Marketing plan

Here is when the famous 7P’s in marketing come into their own, each one has to be considered to implement a successful strategy.

Product

Do you have a product or service which fulfils a client’s needs?

Price

What pricing strategy suits your market and product, skimming, premium, penetration?

Place

Also known as distribution, how are you going to get your product or service to your customers? Do you have an online or offline presence?

Promotion

How are you going to communicate your offer to your audience? Are you going to use a multi-channel approach with digital and direct marketing?

People

Consider everyone who is involved in this strategy and will come in contact with your customers, they will have an influence in their purchasing decisions, so make sure they are well trained, motivated and have the right attitude.

Processes

Ensure your processes which involve the customer are running smoothly at all times and have contingency plans in place. Make sure customers can get in touch with you, your purchasing process is easy to use and give them a positive experience!

Physical Evidence

Are you service based? Everything tangible in your business needs to be portrayed in the manner that reflects your service. Give your customers a good reason to you over competitors.

Don’t feel as though your marketing plan has to be 100% accurate, the best marketing plans are fluid and can change with the internal and external environment.

Next week will be looking at the final stage in your marketing strategy which is measurement and control, focusing on once your plan is underway how do you keep it on track to achieve your original goal.

If you have any questions please contact our team on 0845 345 7755

Category: Blog