Benefit #1: Measurable Marketing and return on investment

Marketing is one of the hardest business functions to measure. It usually is measured on how visible you company is. But whether your company is visible and whether the visibility has increased sales are two very different points.

When you hire an outsourced marketing company, the company should be offering a report somehow. For most companies your in-house marketing manager is very rarely asked to demonstrate their performance. I think if you had to ask, you would be surprised.

Benefit #2: We cost less

The next benefit is easier to explain, money, money, money. A high level, experienced marketing manager (and I’m not talking about the 29 year old who sits and orders business cards) should cost a company (depending on size) anywhere from 35k per month to 150k per month.

An outsourced marketing company can charge 15k per month for the same service that an entire marketing department has been giving a company.

Benefit # 3 Consistently creative marketing

The next benefit may seem less important, but in this industry should be very important. Subjectivity.

Someone that works in house for a company will become too subjective and battle to see the bigger picture. This means a type of tunnel vision replaces the creativity that should be flowing.

This subjectivity will not be experienced by your outsourced marketing partner, not only is it their jobs to stay on top of the marketing in your business, but in order to grow their own, they are forced to investigate and research the new trends in the industry

At first I could not understand it, but now, after having what you could call, an interesting experience with one of these companies I understand their pain.

The new rule:  Designers do not do work for start up companies unless well-known and credible investors back them.

So why the new rule?

1.     Start ups rarely understand what they are going for; Quirky yet professional. Funky yet functional. All and none of this make sense. So a designer takes on work with a brief that includes every adjective the client has spewed at them.

2.     They do not understand how designers bill clients; we do not design until you are happy with it, no matter how much we tell you that. Lets face it we would all be out of business.  You get three-logo option, and if you like none, we do another three of the six one need to be chosen in order to begin revert. Bottom line, no one in this universe knows what vision you have, not even you. Just because you don’t like the work it does not mean the time that has been spent on your work is free. You pay. And the process begins again.

3.     Don’t do anyone a favor. New business owners often feel as thought he world owes them something. “No, I will not design a logo at a quarter of the price and still have you not pay for it. “

The bottom line is, designers have a hard time understanding the vision their clients have. So we often try and guide new business as to what the best way forward is, always to our detriment.

It can be equivocated to meeting a new person and trying to buy them lunch without knowing whether they have special dietary requirements.

I now understand the new design requirements, and salute those companies who wish to save their reputations rather than take on work they know a client will never be happy with.

As of today I am instituting this policy. No longer will I starve for an extra buck.

They are all right and all wrong. The tools we use to market our products remain just as important whether traditional or new age. What has changed, what should change, is the bottom line of your marketing strategy.

Traditionally companies would send out mass mail and expect it to issue large return on investments. In the new way of marketing that direct mail needs to have another purpose, and it is not to gain clients or increase sales. It should be to drive people to a place where your company can provides enough information for those people to decide whether your product/service is valuable.

A perfect example: I had just finished designing a website, when the client called me up and said she was about to have an interview on a radio station. I scrambled to installed Google Analytics, so that we could measure the amount of traffic through the website.

The beauty of new age marketing is that using your tools properly will attract viable leads. We had 46 Unique visits to that website within an hour of the broadcast.

Each visitor viewed approximately seven pages of the site. Most people will say 46 people is not many. The difference here is those 46 people were viable leads. So instead of having 1000 people of whom 20 are viable leads your marketing has targeted exactly the right customer, no need to spend more money marketing to find out which of the 1000 are viable leads-That is your return on investment.

Leads that have made the effort to navigate to your website are clients who have saved you a buck. Instead of looking for clients, your clients will find you.

Your job as a marketer is to insure that they can find you, and that the information you supply them can guide their decisions by being honest and transparent.

Bottom line: Have a great website, have it SEO optimized, write interesting important content, change that content regularly. And use ALL other marketing effort to direct your traffic to that website.

Before I started BlackSheep Marketing I had proposed and drawn up strategies for four new clients, all of which have subsequently signed contracts with my old company.

I thought that being the front man and coming up with the strategies would have secured a good enough relationship with those clients for them to follow me into my new venture. I was wrong.

What I did not anticipate was an old client phoning me up the minute he had heard about my new venture. I did not propose to this client, but I ran the account and built a fantastic relationship with them.

This client has a worldwide team of experts that run their campaigns for them internationally. And the team is very close knit. In my years working on this account I became apart of that family.

I understand that business is business; no one has learnt those lessons as well as I have this year. I have also learnt another lesson, building true relationships with your clients and taking the time to get to know the team that support big brand is essential.

I have missed working on this account. It was my first client that I worked on as an account executive. I look forward to building on that relationship. And learning from the previous mistakes that were made.

To my client, “Salute!”

To impress upon you, when I say huge, I mean billion rand companies. The first company I came across, that was in this situation, made me question my very strong beliefs in marketing and the return on investment that it can fetch for these companies.

I then realized something, these companies, and I speak from my experience, always had something to hide.

An old friend once told me: “Companies market for three reasons, vanity, profit and to stay out of jail.”

The bigger picture here is, some companies don’t market to stay out of jail. Some companies understand the risks of parading their company’s success to people and putting their company’s shady dealings in the spotlight.

As a marketer what do you do in this situation? My best advice is stay away. There are many marketing companies who will take the paycheck (often close to that of what the auditor is being paid). And try and act as though they have seen and heard no evil, and the paycheck covers the “speak no evil” part I guess.

I was told never to preach about ethics once, but I think my moral ground is clear on this one, although the shiny paycheck seems great, marketing a company that is not shady is difficult enough, for political reasons, I mean.

So while you thought you would get great marketing advice for marketing these companies, my opinion is let your conscience be your guide. And stay away from any Enron type businesses. You are the first person who will be approached when the proverbial dung hits the fan.

At this point you should have a website (or you have decided you need one)
The general life of a website is as follows:
• Website is designed
• Content is generated
• Website sits stagnant (if your website has not been updated in one month, your website should be considered stagnant)

In order to avoid the stagnation of your website the first step to creating a website should be a strategy. A website strategy allows for you to determine:

1. What is the purpose of your website:

Goal
The purpose of your website should be aligned with the goal of your marketing strategy. For some it may be to define themselves as experts within their industries. For others it may be to establish credibility.

2. In order to reach your goal you will need to design a message that can be communicated throughout the website:

Message
Whether you are on the about page of your website, or the contact us page. Your message must be evident.

3. Who are you speaking to?

Target Audience
Establish who your target audience is. Are you speaking to clients? Potential clients?

4. How are you going to say it?

Tools
What are the best ways to speak to your target audiences. Some of the online marketing tools are:

• Social networks, Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites.
• Google Adwords
• Search engine optimization
• Call to action
• Blogs
• Webinars
• Video blogs

Once you have establish what you want to say, who you want to say it to and how you will say it. You then need to be able to measure the effectiveness of the campaign you have rolled out.

Tips to staying relevant

A website is judged by how relevant the content on the website is. These are tips to staying relevant online:

Segmentation

Separate your subscribers by people who have bought your services, or product, from those who have not. This will allow you to direct your messages at the correct audience.

Consistency

This is the key to staying relevant to your subscribers. If you suddenly disappear, or worse, you never send anything beyond the welcome letter, they’ll forget you exist. Then, when you finally do send something, they’ll unsubscribe because they will think you are spamming them.

Keep it fresh

New content is what keeps you, your company and your website relevant. What is relevant now, will not relevant next week. So update your content as often as possible.

So remember the next time you freshen up your website, or start one from scratch, your website is not skin deep. The beauty of design is not the most important element.