Top Tips for Marketing your Business – from Helen Oldfield of Miracle Marketing

What’s marketing?

All venerable marketing books advise that you start your marketing with the 4Ps. The

Marketing Mix. They are very important. But they are not everything… There is a

The answer to these questions give you your defining purpose – or Unique Selling Proposition (USP). But USP is one of the many alarming marketing terms. Put simply, get clear on what you are passionate about. This is your identity. Apple is definite – we provide a lifestyle (nothing about technology). They’ve got it nailed.

The real miracle to Purpose is having answers that ‘feel right’ to you. You can then sense check this with the reality of your business and market – in other words the other 4Ps. It is the combination of emotional insight and intellectual rigour that makes marketing work. When you feel really good about your purpose then, and only then, can you move onto Product, Price, Place and Promotion.

Product

Realistically you will most likely have a product or service in place. The key here is ensuring your product is tailored to customer needs – from the packaging to the way it is promoted. Business owners often fall into the trap of making the product they want to sell, rather than designing and presenting things in the way a customer would like. The customer is your market.

You can only sell what someone will want to specifically buy. So, ask, observe and talk with your customers about their needs and desires. You can do this through face-­‐to-­‐face conversations, online polls, observing how people interact with your website and checking out the latest trends in your area of expertise.

So if you’re running a training company and want to deliver more into say the private sector, you’ll need to be clear about what your product has that the HR or Development department would want. Work on understanding the difference you training will make to the business and people in it – then articulate this clearly in all that you do.

Price

There’s a sweet spot for price. Too high and you won’t shift your product even if it is amazing, too low and you’ll be working until your 80. Most organisations try and charge the highest price they ‘can get away with’. But this doesn’t really work. In reality there’s a curve between the highest and the lowest point you can charge for your service.

And don’t just set a price based on production costs plus a margin. Pricing is a powerful tool to achieve your goals – decide what you are trying to achieve and what message you’re giving out by setting your price at a certain level. There are several key lenses to look through when considering price:

• Competitors – what are they charging?
• Margin – how much to deliver your product?
• Brand – what place are you establishing in the market?
• Affordability – what’s the time/cost involved in consuming your service

• Miracle – what’s your special factor + could it influence price There is a sweet spot for pricing. You’ll know it when you find it.

Price promotions are also useful when starting out. You can develop different pricing offers such as price bundling (buy one and get a second half price), psychological pricing (buy by xxx for a special discount), value pricing (basic model vs gold standard option). It pays to think creatively when it comes to pricing.

Place

The place element of the marketing mix is about defining how and where your product is being sold. In the era of the internet, Paypal and smart phones people neither need to go anyplace to satisfy a want nor are they limited to a few places to satisfy them. Your marketing aim here is to know how your target market prefers to buy, how to be there and be ubiquitous, in order to guarantee convenience. With the rise of Internet and hybrid models of purchasing, place is becoming less relevant. Convenience is vital – ease of buying, finding your product and finding information about it are key. Technical ease is the name of the game.

Promotion

Promotion is the part of the marketing mix that many people consider to be ‘real marketing’ but this is really the end result of all your hard work in defining products to satisfy customer needs and pricing it accordingly. Once you are at the promotions stage there are a heap of areas you can work in. The main ones are direct contact (email, events, mailouts), advertising (websites, events, media), PR and brand (media, voice, design) and partnerships/sponsorship.

But there’s a catch: traditional promotional marketing is not delivering results the way it did a decade ago. And the stats back this up:

• Over 200 million consumers do not want to be contacted for unsolicited advertising messages
• Only 14% of people watch TV ads without skipping
• 91% of email users have unsubscribed from ad messages from a companythey previously opted forWith traditional marketing, you send your message, be it via direct mail or advert, out to people that you are not sure whether they want your product. But today’s consumers are more sophisticated and well informed bunch. So we need a more intelligent, insightful way to engage them. While promotional marketing is pushed out and can be seen as ‘manipulative’, communication is ‘cooperative’ and works with the customer to create a dialogue.Yes the new king of marketing is communications. This is where content comes into play – you create informative, interesting copy around your area of expertise. With this you target your marketing messages in a clever way to a well-­‐defined audience that has expressed an interest (either through a website sign up or previous clients). With this you are much more likely to have a positive response.