Marketing and communications

Your marketing activity should usually look to achieve one of the following objectives:             

• Increase purchasing by existing customers, either of products they already buy or additional ones from your range.
• Sell to new customers.
• Sell new products to both new and existing customers.
• Aim to retain your existing customers, if profitable, and avoid spending on sales and marketing to gain new ones.

Selecting one or all of these will then enable you to focus your marketing activities and generate a return on investment.             

A strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis looks at both the internal and external factors of your business which will affect to its success.             

If you find it hard to assess it alone, ask your industry peers, staff and contacts for their thoughts too.             

Start by listing your businesses strengths and weaknesses. Things to consider may include the skills and flexibility of your workforce, your production facilities, product quality, relationships with clients, online following or customer database and the strength of your brand. List a top 3 for each and consider how you can best leverage your strengths and mitigate your weaknesses to achieve your goals and get through this time.             

Look externally at any opportunities and threats which will also affect your marketing plans. These inlcude a crisis, but other factors to consider include customer demand, competitor activity, consumer trends, legislative factors and changes to technology. Seek to take advantage of opportunities and work around threats.             

Understanding the market allows you to target promising market segments that suit your strengths. Consider:             

• who are users of products like yours and how do they purchase these products?
• what your users value most in products like yours?
• how they choose between different suppliers and what unique selling points you offer?
• how you reach these customers?
• how big the market is, whether it is expanding or declining, and what the key trends are?
• what your competition is doing?
• what else impacts your business environment, such as legislation or new technology?
• which customers are likely to generate the most sales and profit?
• why potential customers buy from you – and from your competitors?

Find out which products or parts of your business are the most profitable. Make sure you know the cost of all activity as some may turn out to be loss making.             

Review any previous marketing initiatives to identify what works.             

• Most businesses need to do this at least once every 90 days to maintain awareness. This excludes the actual sales process and routine communication.
• Keep asking your customers for feedback on your performance and on any new developments in the marketplace – including their own news.
• Ask them for ideas to improve your products and your customer service.

• With your best and potential customers, you might want regular contact via email, phone or in person.
• Keep in touch with all of your customers through email marketing.

• Customers whose new budgets start in April may plan the budget the previous October, so approach them before then.

• Explore which communications and campaigns you can target to which market segments, who is responsible for implementation, fulfilment and measuring the results against your budget.

Before you can develop your brand identity, you will have to understand what the core values of your business are, what your business mission is and how you differ from the competition.             

You must also be sure that what you want to tell your customers about your business and your offer matches what your target customer segments want and what you actually deliver.             

It’s no use developing a premium brand if your target market just wants value for money. A brand based on friendly service will not survive long if your staff are unhelpful.             

This is where your name and logo come to the fore. Good brand design gives you a consistent image that will enable people to recognise you immediately. Trade marking can help ensure that your distinctive brand image is protected against competitors.             

Your brand marketing must connect to and emphasise your brand values across everything you do.             

If you sell a range of products, you’ll need to ensure that they all fit together within a brand strategy that makes sense. If you’re a luxury goods firm and you decide to produce a cheaper range, it would be wise to develop a separate brand identity so you don’t deter established customers. While you can stretch your brand to take advantage of new opportunities, it will be damaged if you fail to maintain a consistent focus on your core brand values.             

Whilst you and your business may at times be under significant stress, think of the opportunities you have to support your communities and grow your brand value in an entirely different way.             

Consumers will remember what you do for your community and how you look after your staff.              

Think about what you can do, however small, to support your community. If you have production capacity could this be used to support organisations like the NHS or charities.             

You could donate products and rewards or offer expertise and skills to help others. Even the smallest good deeds can make a difference.             

A customer engagement strategy enables business to maximise the opportunities to interact with customers beyond transactions and build lasting relationships.             

Key questions to ask when setting your customer engagement strategy include:             

• why a customer would choose to shop with you over a competitor, especially if price or product was removed from the equation
• how your brand make your customers feel
• how you have made customers feel when they have interacted with your business

Plan your customer engagement strategy

1. Define your customer journey map – Know who your customers are and where they come from in terms of what is driving them to your brand (advertising, word of mouth, social media).
2. Identify all touchpoints and how each performs – How your customers interact with you helps identify customer engagement platforms and potential opportunities. Offer a personalised service – This demonstrates that you put each customer and their personal needs first, helping you build individual relationships with them.
3. Observe their behaviour – Analytics from your website and online marketing help better understand and fulfil your customers’ requirements. Look at the bounce rate on your website to identify improvements and review the experience of customers who do not make repeat purchases.
4. Take regular customer feedback – Regular customer satisfaction surveys help you understand customer expectations. Send a short inquiry to churned customers. Find out what went wrong and seek to fix it.

A positive customer journey map could look like:             

It’s important to review each touchpoint and find ways to improve any areas where customer may be dropping off.             

For example, if your website order process is too complex this may deter customers. Even if most of your touchpoints deliver excellent service, it could only take one to turn off a customer.             

Engaging with audiences on social media is essential to developing a loyal following.             

It’s not about selling, your content should support them and provide learning and feelgood to their newsfeeds.             

Start by defining who you want to target, in order to focus your marketing efforts – remember you can’t engage with everyone.              

Getting to know your audience is key, once you know what they like and respond to on social media, you’ll be able to create content which they connect and engage with.              

Start by looking at your industry peers to get a feel for what’s popular and search relevant hashtags each week. For example, if you’re a cafe, search out hashtags like #brunch to see what’s current.             

Instagram and Twitter are simple and effective ways to be heard and a Facebook business page is also easy to set up.             

Blogging, if done well, is also a powerful way to engage with your audience, but the content must be meaningful, digestible and most importantly, relevant to them. Keep it brief and aim to educate and inspire your readers.              

The key to building your business on social media is to provide genuine value to your audience and share your expertise. Normal advertising and hard selling will only put people off, so you need to create content that your audience will find useful and relevant.             

Tell them something they didn’t know. Show them something they’ve not seen before. Give them tips, insight and advice. Or even something that just makes them laugh. People like to see video, hear podcasts and read useful articles, so don’t be afraid to try different types of media. Think about the kind of content you’d appreciate seeing if you were your own follower, and start there.             

Managing messages across multiple channels can feel overwhelming, so it’s important to create a content calendar. This will enable you to plan your messages in advance and ensure you’re sharing different types of messaging.             

You can create a calendar using a free online tool like Trello or Microsoft Excel, ensuring you include all your messages, plus any relevant hashtags and images.             

Consider the time of day you aim to post, early mornings are great to capture business audiences and evenings and weekends to engage with consumers.             

Social media doesn’t need to be labour intensive. Once you’ve set some time aside to write your content and prepare any videos or images, you can also schedule your Facebook posts in advance and use an app like Tweetdeck to schedule your Twitter posts.             

As with any marketing activity, it’s important to measure the success of any social media marketing, even if it’s free.             

Take a look at your analytics to gauge the content that’s popular, who your audience is and how your following is growing. You may be surprised at the findings and can then use them to finesse your content and drive greater engagement and visibility.             

Decide what you want to achieve from your video and plan accordingly. Remember, videos should be made to benefit your audience. Aim to educate, entertain or inspire them.             

Don’t talk about yourself too much, however tempting, it’s about your audience not you, so keep your purpose in mind. If you’re new to speaking via videos, practice what you’re going to say and film a few tests so that you’re comfortable in front of the camera.             

Your setting may depend on the nature of your video, but if you don’t have a simple setting to film in such as a tidy office, kitchen or dressing room, film in front of a neutral wall or hang a plain sheet if you don’t have one. Stand a few feet away from it to avoid casting shadows and remove any clutter to avoid any distractions. Avoid any sound distractions too, background noises like the wind or birds will be picked up on your recording.             

Audiences are overwhelmed with video content on their social feeds and often scroll on from videos. If you want to keep their attention, keep it punchy and let them know at the start how long it’s going to last.             

The best performing videos on Instagram usually last around 25 seconds so try and aim for this but if you’re filming a more detailed how-to video or a tutorial it’s fine to be longer. Just use a time lapse feature where relevant and keep it flowing.             

Natural light is one of the best light sources to film in, but morning or evening is best as the light is softer then. Midday light coming from directly overhead can cast harsh shadows so if you’re filming outdoors at this time, find a shady spot for softer lighting.             

If you’re filming indoors, choose a room with lots of natural light or add additional sources such as lamps, but avoid overhead lighting.             

If after practising you still feel a bit nervous, start by smiling so you instantly feel and appear relaxed and avoid crossing your arms. If you’re prone to fidgeting hold something in your hands and remember to speak more slowly than usual, as you’ll naturally speed up without realising it.             

Use flash cards off camera to prompt your wording if needed but don’t focus on them too much as it needs to appear natural and not too scripted.             

By using a tripod or by placing your phone/camera on a steady surface. Try not to hold it as you will naturally shake. If you need to switch angles, film separate shots and avoid moving the camera during filming. If your finished film is a little shaky, you can stabilize it when editing.             

That way, you won’t need to remember long scripts and if you don’t like something, you won’t need to reshoot the whole thing.             

It means that your videos will be more inclusive and people viewing in silent mode can still enjoy the experience.              

There are lots of good video editing apps around, with iMovie being particularly popular for iPhone and FilmoraGo for Android. Whichever one you use, ensure you understand and maximise its capabilities.             

Editing doesn’t have to be complicated, just ensure you use noise cancelling, cut out any awkward pauses, tweak the lighting if needed and add in any background music if relevant.             

Use your website and social media channels to tell your brand story and showcase the people and the faces behind your business. Perhaps you could film ‘behind the scenes’ videos of your team at work or create a timeline of your brand story from your very first business idea to the current day. Customers love hearing a story and knowing that the money they spend is going to real people and staying within their local economies.             

Collaborate with your neighbours and support your local community if you can. This doesn’t have to involve spending money or making donations, perhaps you could join your local neighbourhood group, take the time to get to know other business owners or support any local community initiatives. As a business owner, remember that you also have business experience and expertise and if you can find the time to share this, there will always be benefits.&             

If you’ve made the switch to selling online, you may feel a little detached from customers you previously served face to face. Don’t worry, you can easily personalise your service and if you see every order as more than a transaction and the chance to maintain relationships with your customers, you’ll be able to do just that.             

If you issue any template-based communications, such as order confirmation emails, make sure they’re personalised to your customer. Make ensure your packaging is branded in some way so that your customers recognise your brand. This doesn’t have to cost a lot, some indie businesses use brown paper and ink stamp to highlight their branding. When shipping, you could include a hand-written note or card, telling the story of your business and that particular product. For example: “Rachel lovingly handmade this bath bomb, in Leeds, West Yorkshire on 25 June 2020. We hope you love it as much as we do.”             

If you sell online, analyse your sales data to understand who your customers are and what they’re buying. You can then tailor your service and communications to your different customer groups. For example, you might have VIP customers who enjoy sale previews and bespoke offers or you can contact customers who’ve bought a certain product to let them know of other items they may like. Do this in a personal manner so that customers feel valued and appreciated as individuals.             

As an independent business owner, you’ve probably poured a whole lot of hours, effort and money into your business.             

When you face challenges as a business it can often be tempting to have a moan or a rant on social media, after all, it’s personal and often valid. Before you type that tweet or share that story, take a breath and think about what you want to achieve. While you should always be honest with your customers, try to keep your content positive and all about your customers. It will help make them want to keep coming back to visit you and your business.