It’s the World Cup, England are playing Algeria tonight and the time is right for World Cup Marketing offers and slants on what you do.

Here’s an innovative, relative and unique piece of marketing that just dropped into my inbox.

It’s an email from a recruitment firm:

“Dear Sean

Let the England Team pay your invoices today!!

Place your permanent vacancies today (18.6.10) and however many goals England score tonight (England v Algeria) we will deduct £100.00 from your fees!

1 goal – deduct £100.00
2 goals – deduct £200.00
And so on…..

If you want to place temp bookings – we will knock £0.10p per hour per goal off the hourly charge rate for the duration of your booking!

Place your vacancies by calling David Stew or Dawn Lawson on 02476 230800 or email

david.stew@irweb.co.uk  or dawn.lawson@irweb.co.uk 

With the exception of the above deductions usual terms of business for fee structure and rebate period will apply.

Interaction Recruitment – supporting you and the England team!!

Regards
Dawn Lawson
Branch Manager”

I’ve left Dawn’s email address and contact details on there because I want to promote this to you guys too.

Well done Dawn, a very effective piece of marketing.

Sean

Sean McPheat

Marketing Consultant – Sales Expert - Motivational Speaker

Here’s a great piece of free publicity and marketing.

20 year old student Nathan Wybur made a lasagne to look like Engalnd World Cup Boss Fabio Capello.

Now he might not have done this on purpose to get free publicity but he certainly got it!

To get free publicity you need to have an angle that the press, social media sites and people pick up on.

With this example the story was:

TOPICAL – everyone’s talking about the world cup at the moment!

UNUSUAL – whoever makes a lasagne to look like someone’s face!

CELEBRITY – ……and the face was that of Fabio Capello – Englands manager! So that’s a double whammy!

LIKEABLE - Nathan’s just a down to earth, 20 year old student

VIRAL FACTOR – people are talking about it

Add all of those 5 factors together and you’ve got a great story.

So what can you do along these lines for your business?

Sometimes the best ideas are very simple, topical and unusual. The press pick up on the them and then you’ve just created yourself a whole load of free publicity!

Thanks again

Sean

Sean McPheat

Marketing Consultant – Motivational Speaker - Internet Marketing Consultant

I’m often asked to work with small businesses to help with their marketing.

The thing is, marketing need not be expensive as long as you know what you’re doing and for the small business I recommend that you try out different marketing mixes and test, test, test until you nail a marketing approach that works best for your business.

No matter what any “marketing guru” may say, no one really knows how effective a marketing campaign will be until you’ve tried.

The first thing you need to do is work out what budget you want to play with. And it is to play with.

You need to go into this with the mindset that you’re going to use this money to see what works and what doesn’t. You’ll then modify, refine and test some more until you nail it.

So many small businesses start with a budget, they implement some ideas and then because they do not get an immediate return they just bin what they were doing when all it took was just a couple of changes and bingo! A winning formula.

So your mindset is really important when going into this.

So you’ve got a budget. Now you need to work out what to spend it on.

If I were you I would really get to grips and understand everything there is to know about your prospects and clients first. Who are they? How do they make ther buying decisions? Where do they “hang out” on the internet or otherwise?

Armed with this you will be better informed as to where to advertise, what campaigns to run and how to split your marketing spend. 

Then select some marketing approaches and do everything that you can to measure the response that you get. Direct marketing works best for small businesses rather than just brand awareness so bear that in mind when conducting pay per click campaigns, direct mail and when running adverts.

Then it’s a case of testing, measuring and tweaking. There’s lots of advice on this site but my biggest piece of advice is to just do something! And then modify what you’re doing as you go.

Happy marketing

Sean

Sean McPheat

Marketing Consultant – Motivational Speaker - Internet Marketing Consultant