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Consider this; we all see approx 3000 marketing impressions every day.  It takes approximately nine marketing impressions (phone call, email, letter, flyers etc) before a potential customer feels comfortable with a company or product. Only one-in-three impressions actually gets through due to firewalls, wrong addresses and so on! That means that your efforts must be multiplied threefold. You need to make 27 marketing impressions to keep on target!

Marketing seems to take a back seat with so many companies because the salespeople are supposed to perform and produce the results through their own efforts. An advert here or there, which never amounts to much, cannot be considered marketing at all. Often marketing activities are inadequate and inconsistent. In some cases they can be nonexistent.

Even though there are many websites, books and articles available regarding marketing it can be a daunting prospect to have to create interest through the written word. Many of us are uncomfortable at the thought of producing eye-catching literature to promote our business, and so reinventing ourselves as a graphic designer!

In the 80s it was altogether easier; employ some sales people, give them some leaflets to hand out when they were cold calling and when they were back in the office, get them on the phones. Now, the world has changed. For example the TPS (Telephone Preference Service) restricts cold calls to companies who have registered with them; direct mail produces diminishing returns and then of course there is the internet, email and any other form of electronic communication to think about.

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Simply owning a small space on an ISP’s web server is not sufficient to compete. Some believe that spending £’000s on a website is all that’s needed, pretty much like “build it and they will come”, but it doesn’t work that way. Spending money on a website without ensuring that the whole electronic marketing structure is being worked on, is a waste of time, effort and money.

For example, if you spent £5,000 on magazine advertising, i.e. £1,000 on five adverts over five months, and placed the adverts in a vertical market publication that you decided to target with your product, the results and response could be significant. The magazine is read by your desired readership, they see you each month for five months and your product meets their needs – great!

If you spent £5,000 on a website, with all the latest software to make your business stand out on the screen, unless someone looks at your site by typing in your exact name or clicks on your link from a search page of another site, no one will ever look at your website – ever! It would be the same as paying for magazine advertising and dumping the magazines before they were delivered.

But cheer up, it’s not all doom and gloom - the next few chapters will illustrate how some fundamental, yet simple activities can help build your brand, put you on the right track to get the most from being on-line, and make your sales team extremely happy.

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If you consider that advertising in the public eye can be astronomically expensive then you, along with most other business owners will shy away from putting effort into marketing simply because of the misapprehension that it will be expensive. As we hope you will have gathered, our objective is to help you make money, not waste it. Whether you choose to act on this information for your company as a whole or if you choose to pass this information on to your salespeople and suggest that they build up their own status within their sales territories, is entirely up to you. In either case marketing is crucial to the success of your business.

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It is accepted by all business owners that making money is not always as easy as it looks. Therefore the objective for any type of marketing is first to build trust by creating value and second to show your prospective customers that there is a pretty good chance that you will do a good job for them. It makes sense that the trust must be there first before they spend any money with you.

Running a business without marketing and promotion is said to be like winking at a girl in the dark; you know what you're doing but she hasn’t got the slightest notion of what you're up to.

Who have you targeted in the past?

Before you begin, it would be helpful if you review your previous efforts and activities. Obviously, you will not need to do this if you have not attempted any form of marketing in the past, however if you have, it is useful to use the previous results as a means test.

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Who are your customers?

Compile a list of all of your existing customers from A-Z. Ensure that you have every last detail about these companies as follows:

• Company name
• Address
• Post Code
• Managing Director’s Name
• Sales Director’s Name
• Finance Director’s Name
• Web address
• E-Mail Addresses
• Exact business description, including SIC ‘standard industry code’
• Specific details of the product and or services provided to the company.
• Relevant personal details such as birthdays, all family details, useful in the consumer market.
• Financial details, such as turnover, number of staff, date the company formed, any subsidiary companies and any other company related history.
• Letters of reference and all letters of commendation. It is important to revisit your existing customers and ask them to write a short letter on their letterhead extolling the virtues of your company. These letters will be used later, when promoting your business to new companies.

The objective is to build up a comprehensive Customer Profile database of information upon which to filter and identify possible matches with new businesses.

Establish any common business types. Establish who is your ideal customer and why. Explore who they are, what they are, how old they are and more importantly why you want to do business with them. It is imperative that you are crystal clear who you want your customer to be and to make plans to attract them.

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Database Creation

There are many resources available to obtain information on companies, such as business specialists Dun & Bradstreet. It is possible to obtain extensive information provided on a spreadsheet, typically in a .CSV file.

To determine which information is required, you can either create a list of company types that match your existing customers or you can approach this completely fresh and simply choose the company types that you would like to supply to. Obviously, this will relate to the type of products you sell.

The structure of information that is provided, per thousand, is as follows; company name, address, postcode, telephone number and SIC code. Further details are available at an additional cost per 1000 records such as specific names of the managing director, financial director, sales director and so on. E-mail addresses are extra as well as the number of staff and specific financial details such as turnover, net profitability, and so on.

Depending on what you sell, it can save a great deal of time by obtaining additional information, such as the number of staff, as it immediately provides an indication of company size and potential budget availability.

Whilst companies like Dun & Bradstreet have minimum quantities which are in the region of 3000 names, as a rule of thumb it is suggested that the 300 records are allocated per salesperson.

Assuming that you have a product such as Microsoft Outlook or a CRM package, the information from Dun & Bradstreet can be easily imported into the software and the relevant fields.

Each salesman will have been allocated a territory and therefore it will be up to the salesman to clean the database and ensure that all the relevant data is complete. If appropriate you may choose to employ the services of a telesales team to clean up the data.

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Where should you start?

In reality, the list of marketing collateral can be endless, for example mailshots, flyers, newsletters, printed pens and any assortment of promotional information or material you can think of.

However, before this is explained in detail, detailed below is a list of recommended marketing activities that can be undertaken.

These are as follows:

• Monthly or regular newsletters
• Send Four Letters (details in Options - Paper)
• E-mail
• Flyers
• Website
• Banner Advertising
• Page Impressions
• Google Ad Words
• Press Releases, Yahoo News
• eZine articles
• Vertical Market Magazine Advertising
• Networking Events
• Public Speaking Engagements
• Seminars
• Radio Advertising
• Recipriocal Business
• Complimentary Businesses
• Create a timetable

One of the biggest mistakes companies make when attempting to establish a marketing campaign is that it always begins with great intentions, but unfortunately, over time, it loses momentum, because nobody is driving it.

Getting management or staff to carry out these tasks can be awkward, simply because, if you do not have dedicated individuals undertaking the work then an excuse can be made for information not being completed on time. In order to avoid this, the most sensible option is to create a nine-month marketing plan.