Sales & Marketing Authority, Bestselling Author & Business Motivational Speaker

It’s hard to believe, but 2012 will be upon us within 3 days. This is a perfect opportunity look at the direction of your business, where you’ve been in 2011, and where you want to be in 2012.

The best way to do this is with an end-of-year marketing analysis and report. Don’t worry, you’re not giving the report to anyone other than yourself!

Identify Three Successes

It’s always easier to take criticism when you start with the positives. To this end, identify 3 things that’s you’ve done successfully with your marketing this year. And I don’t just mean that you should say “I worked harder this year.” Look for:

• Measurable improvements over 2010 (click-through rates, ROI on campaigns, etc.).
• Successful new campaigns implemented.
• Higher sales volume, new clients won, or costs lowered.

Look for the things that you did best in 2011. Now, the key is to identify what you did to achieve your greatest successes in 2011, and then try to repeat them for 2012.

Identify Three Failures

This can be a lot more difficult than identifying the three successes. Look for things that you did, which didn’t work out as well as you had hoped, or actions that you didn’t take, which would have been good in hindsight. Consider:

• Moves that you didn’t make, or delayed on (making your site mobile-friendly, kick-starting your social media campaign).
• Clients that you lost, or more importantly, existing client relationships that you let stagnate.
• Unsuccessful marketing moves (failed campaigns, ill-advised advertisements).

It’s always said that a mistake is an opportunity to learn. So don’t just dwell on your mistakes from the past year. The purpose of identifying them is so that you can make sure you don’t repeat them.

Identify Where you Want to Be Next Year

This is the most important part of the analysis. Taking your successes and your failures from the past year, identify where you want to be at this time next year. Put these in concrete terms, and make a plan for how you’re going to get there.

So rather than telling yourself that you want to have a considerable social media presence, tell yourself that by this time next year you’ll have 500 fans on your Facebook page, 5,000 followers on Twitter, and at least 5 highly-rated videos on YouTube.

Happy New Year, and make sure that 2012 is your most productive year ever!

Happy marketing!

Sean

Sean McPheat

Marketing Consultant – Sales Expert - Motivational Speaker

So you’ve been working hard all year to increase your social media efforts and maintain a solid online presence for you and your company, and you’re now at a stage where you want your social media interaction to run automatically and become an on-going and long-term activity.

So, what can you do to give your social media strategy longevity in 2012? Here are a few tips to help you consolidate your social media activity for the New Year and beyond.

1. Stop saturating and build your brand

Once you have really got to grips with using social media as a business tool it is very easy to overdo your efforts and start to saturate your social media platforms with lots of content, from each department of your company, and for each separate product or service that you offer. Whilst you might think this gives you a broader reach and a better web presence, you are probably just confusing your followers by making it too overwhelming to receive all the content you are putting out there.

So instead of saturating your social media platforms, start branding all of your company’s departments and products or services under one main name. You can still keep separate accounts for marketing, management, sales etc but ensure you only have one contact from each department and include the company name in all of their usernames. This will help to consolidate and group together your team and products under your main company brand.

2. Post for the platform, not for your own benefit

Each social media platform is different. The way your followers use Facebook in comparison to the way they use Twitter is different, and the reasons some of your audience chooses to interact with you on LinkedIn rather than on Flickr will be different as well – they are looking for different content and are expecting different interaction with you depending on which platform they are using.

You probably already know how to use each of the platforms for your own benefit, but use 2012 to really tune in to what your followers want from you on each platform.  If they’re friends with you on Facebook then they probably want to see a more personal side of you, if they are following you on Twitter then they probably expect regular and consistent updates about your new content and if they have connected with you on LinkedIn they are clearly looking to engage with you in a more professional way.

Consider what each platform is used for and research the way people on the site interact and then tailor your involvement to these conforms – you’ll be amazed at the results.

3. Schedule your posting in advance

It’s always good to think about what you’re going to say before you say it, and the same rule applies with posting. Is what you’re posting really relevant? Will it be of interest to anyone? I would hope it would be otherwise why would you be producing it – but it doesn’t hurt to ask the question every now and again!

Scheduling posts in advance also stops you from overwhelming your followers with massive amounts of content, or ignoring them completely due to the fact you’ve had no time to create anything that day. If you schedule a weekly or daily plan for what you will be posting about and what content you will be distributing on which platform, you will soon find you have a nice on-going structure for each site making the whole process much more automated and easy to follow.

A great way to schedule social media sharing is to draw up an editorial planner at the start of each month, which gives you a chance to plan the bulk in advance and then add in more topical updates at times when you have less scheduled content going out. This will give your followers enough to keep them interested and ensure you don’t overwhelm them with information and scare them off.

The best advice I can give you for 2012 is to reassess where your social media campaign is at currently and where you would like it to be by this time next year – then simply put actions to your words and make it happen. Ask yourself these questions:  If you were a follower of your company on each platform, what opinion would you have of them? Are you getting what you hoped you would from engaging with them in this way? And is there more they could do to keep your attention? Then make 2012 the year you give your social media plan real depth and long term value.

Happy marketing!

Sean

Sean McPheat

Marketing Consultant – Sales Expert – Motivational Speaker

With Remembrance Day come and gone for another year, it was fantastic to hear that this year’s Poppy Appeal had set a target of raising £40 million for our service men and women who are currently serving abroad, as well as for the veterans of past conflicts and their families.

Last year the appeal raised £36 million but this year organisers are hoping to smash this record by applying some very modern techniques to help boost the Poppy Appeal tradition.

To mark the 90^th anniversary of the Poppy Appeal, the charity has moved full throttle into the modern age of online interaction and are hoping to appeal to younger generations through their involvement with social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube.

The Royal British Legion, who are behind the Poppy Appeal, have this year decided to enhance their traditional campaign of selling poppies in places such as big shopping centres and on the streets of our towns and cities, by moving online into the virtual world in an attempt to raise more money and awareness for the cause than ever before.

Supporters can now purchase their poppies online by logging on to the RBL’s interactive forum “Shoulder To Shoulder”, uploading a photo of themselves to the site, purchasing a virtual poppy to pin to their picture and adding a special message to their image. This option seems to have really appealed to the public, as the site has had nearly 18,500 pictures uploaded of people with their virtual poppies to date .

The public can now purchase downloadable Poppy Appeal wallpapers for their computers and add support buttons to their websites which link back to the RBL Poppy Appeal homepage. 

The RBL has also taken their Poppy Appeal into the realm of social media and now have a Facebook page, a Twitter feed and a Youtube channel where supporters can gain to-the-minute updates on the campaign and share and contribute with each other in this online space. The campaign is even fronted by a virtual blogger called Poppy, who is the face of the appeal online and posts regular blog articles to the “Legion Live” forum for supporters to read, share and contribute to. 

With over 11,300 Facebook likes, nearly 12,000 Twitter followers and well over 520,000 views of their videos on Youtube it seems like the campaign has taken on a whole new lease of life. Although official figures for the total amount raised by this year’s Poppy Appeal have yet to be confirmed, it is obvious to see what a huge impact this first outreach via social media and other online platforms has made to the campaign.

It’s great to see such a well-established and long-serving organisation as the RBL looking to more modern and interactive methods to engage with the public and help raise awareness and funds for their cause. Personally, I feel this really shows just how important and influential social media interaction can be when you want to get your message out there and ensure that it is heard on a massive scale. The internet and social media is the way forward, so ensure that you are not missing out on its benefits when it comes to your business’ next big campaign.  

(Image by Paul Simpson)

Happy marketing!

Sean

Sean McPheat

Marketing Consultant – Sales Expert - Motivational Speaker

Advertising and marketing are all about getting the word out about your product, but if you do not engage customers, they can actually hurt your business.  Instead of attracting customers, a poorly thought out campaign can alienate your target demographic.  If you have not been experiencing the returns you expect with your marketing strategies, it may be time to revamp your message.  A message should engage, amuse and/or inform customers.  Evaluate your current message and make sure that it is not focused on your company and products, but instead on the benefits to the customer.

Evaluate Current Efforts

The first step to evaluating your message is to look at the numbers that are currently being driven by your marketing campaign.  If the sales you are realising aren’t even covering the cost of the campaign, then obviously something is wrong with your slant.  You need to start thinking about your marketing message, and ways to improve it to improve your bottom line.

Engage with Customer-Centric Advertising

Your message needs to be engaging.  This means that it grabs attention and convinces people to take the requested action.  This process is referred to as conversion.  The goal of marketing is to improve conversion numbers and ultimately increase sales.  An engaging campaign focuses on customer wants and needs rather than the company.  By equating company products with home and family, many companies have experienced incredible success with advertising.  Consider a Hallmark commercial, which tugs on the heart strings.  The combination of a heart warming message and a product meant to make family feel special is the formula that Hallmark has used successfully for decades.

Laughter Sells, Find the Joke

Amusing potential customers is another way to get them to listen to your product information with an open mind.  Look at the traditional Budweiser commercials featuring singing frogs or the Mayhem commercials put out by All State Insurance Company.  The singing frogs amused and made a completely ridiculous statement about beer, while the mayhem commercials tackle incredible hardship with an amusing slant.  Watching a horrible car accident is not amusing, but the mayhem take on the causes of accidents encourages people to find the humour in the situation and take preventative action.

If your marketing does not take advantage of the opportunity to show customers why they should switch to your company, then they are not as effective as they should be.  Make sure that all of your advertising puts the customer first, to ensure that you get the maximum opportunity to improve conversion rates.

Happy marketing!

Sean

Sean McPheat

Marketing Consultant – Sales Expert - Motivational Speaker