Marketing Tips

Marketing Consultants

If you are in the process of looking for a marketing consultant there are many things you need to think about. The first thing to do is to make a list of your expectations for your marketing consultant. What responsibilities and tasks do you see the consultant doing? Some basic things to consider are the areas of marketing you are specifically targeting. Do you need overall market planning expertise, traditional market channel expertise, internet marketing expertise, seo or social marketing experience? If you are a small or start up business you probably need a consultant who is experienced with all aspects of marketing or who has a team that can handle all aspects of marketing for you. If you are a large concern you may be looking for a specialist to handle only social marketing or on the other end of the spectrum a consultant to advise your marketing group at the highest level overseeing the big picture strategic market planning. Whatever your situation you will want to write down those qualities and skills you consider to be the most important for the person you select to be successful in the position.

How do find qualified marketing consultants? You can approach this in a variety of ways. You can do an internet search-sites like linked in can be very useful when looking for marketing consultants, use an employment agency to help narrow the field for interviews or you can speak with others who have used consultants and see what names surface. You will probably end up with more possibilities than you want to interview so the next step is to cull your list of potential consultants. To do this it is useful to request a resume, a portfolio of a candidates previous work and references.

Once you have narrowed down your list I recommend you interview your final candidates. Prepare your interview questions in advance. There are some basic questions you should include when interviewing for a marketing consultant.

You will want to know how long the consultant has worked in the field of marketing. Ask what areas of marketing the consultant considers to be his/her strongest area(s) of expertise and experience. If web development, SEO, internet or social marketing will be one their responsibilities ask if the consultant follows Google webmaster guidelines. You want a consultant who is completely familiar with Google’s webmaster guidelines for design and content, technical and quality guidelines. These are the norm. The quality guidelines are extremely important because Google outlines some of the illicit practices in this document that may result in heavy penalties to a site or a site being removed entirely from the Google index if your consultant is unaware or does not follow Google webmaster guidelines. If you have not requested a portfolio previously you should ask for examples of previous work the consultant has done that relates to the type of work you want them to do. If you will be using a blend of traditional and internet marketing make sure to ask about their experience and skill with more traditional forms of marketing including print, radio, TV etc.

For internet marketing pose open ended questions that allow your interviewee to talk about their process, SEO approaches, ethics etc. Sometimes what a person doesn’t say is more important that what they do say. Listen for attitudes regarding unethical or questionable SEO tactics. If the person fails to discuss it at all ask directly. Be cautious of anyone who is unwilling to provide full disclosure about their techniques or attitudes towards unethical practices. A good question might be what SEO techniques can result in having your website removed from search engine results? Explore their experience and approaches to social media marketing. You should hear a good consultant talk about building a profile online and focusing on relevancy. Any additional advertising should be closely linked or tied in to the community you build on line and your own social profile.

A consultant should be able to talk about the kinds of results they can deliver as well as the time frame. Be wary of anyone who promises really quick results (days or weeks) as opposed to months and years. Generally it takes at least several months to see any real change in results.

Another area to explore is your consultant’s overall market strategy planning skills. Ask about how they set goals and how they choose specific marketing strategies to use. You should also ask them how they go about defining success for the client. You should listen for answers that clearly articulate a SMART goal planning approach underpinned by clear action steps and marketing strategies that are aligned directly to the actions and goals that have been developed. You also want to hear a consultant talk about the importance of setting goals that can be measured as well as various measurements they have used in previous projects to define success.

If you take your time and layout a thorough interview strategy that addresses all areas of marketing and you check references, referrals and actual results of previous projects you will be able to find a great consultant that can move your company to the next level.

Marketing Theory: Positioning Your Online Business

At present, the secret about making an online or home-based business successful is no longer as well kept as it was years back. If you are one of those people who are minimally informed about the different effective business formulas, then you better catch up now in order to enjoy the numerous benefits that others are already experiencing by going online.

There are different ways for an online business to be unique – from small pricing, packaging, and service differences to noticeable differences in features and benefits with other competitors. But whatever the case may be, you business’ sense of uniqueness has to be tested in relation to the other products and services that your prospect buyers are currently using (such as the things that your business wishes to replace with its own offers and packages). Differences between products are not really that much of a deal unless they are significant enough to the customer such that in influences his or her purchasing decision.

There are some cases when there might be only little or no difference at all between your products and services and that of your competitors. And if there are differences, they may be very difficult to pinpoint as to exactly what (think Coke and Pepsi). In that case, it is up to you to create the defining differences.

Differentiation is the process of collecting the differences in features and benefits of your products versus the products of your competitors. The key here is to identify how important these differences are in the eyes of the buyer. For a positioning strategy to be greatly successful there should be a clear communication of the important differences between products.

Positioning is the process of adding a brand value to that collection of differences in the minds of your prospect customers. In simpler terms, you must be able to solve the problem of how to communicate that meaningful difference about your business idea to the people who are most interested in buying it.

Creating and communicating to your target buyer the meaningful differences in your product and service in contrast to that of your competitors is influenced by the packaging, pricing, features and benefits, product design, colors, advertising and promotion mediums, public relation events, and even the spokespersons that you invite. All these things should work together in order to promote a consistent image of your product or service in the market. You should be able to position yourself in such a way that your prospect clients and customers will have no room to consider your competitors and their products and services.

Proper positioning of your product and services can be considered as solving the different marketing problems brought about by the Four Ps of Marketing, namely:

• Product
• Price
• Promotion or Advertising
• Place (or distribution)
as well as the Four Cs, which are:
• Company Definition
• Competitor’s Identification
• Consumer Target Definition
• Channels (of distribution)

To summarize everything, you can say that positioning is what you do to the mind of your prospect.

5 Things to Look Out for Before Building a Company Website

So you have decided that it is time for your business to finally have its own website, but where do you start? How should you go about it? Is having a “.com” enough? Listed below are 5 things that you should know before building a company website.

1. Know the purpose of your website.

This is the first and the most important aspect of your website that you should think about before contacting a web designer. You will first need to identify what you want the website to achieve. Is it geared towards selling products? Is it to advertise your services? Or do you want it to be just a venue for potential customers to gather information?
2. Decide if you need a content management system (CMS).

You will need a rough idea of how often should you update your website, depending on your website’s purpose. If you think that your website does not need regular updating, it would be more affordable if the people who made the site will be the ones who will do the updating, saving you time.

If you plan on changing your website frequently (adding new products, updating newsfeeds and so on), then you should have a content management system. A CMS will let you easily add and edit information on your site without needing technical knowledge.

3. Choose who will host the website.

In choosing the company to host the website, consider the following first:

• Web space – how big do you want your website to be? How many pages do you have? You will need a package that will reasonably address these needs.

• Bandwidth – make sure you have ample bandwidth; companies who offer unlimited bandwidth are recommended.

• Reliability and speed of access – a web host should not only be reliable, it should also have a guaranteed uptime.

• Technical support – make sure that the web hosting company that you choose provides a 24/7 technical support because problems can come anytime.

• Location – it is better to have your target audience and your web hosting company in the same area. Like for example, if your target audience is in UK, your server should also be hosted in UK.

• Features – most web hosting companies offer fully loaded control panels these days. It will allow you to control your server easily for activities like setting up email accounts, etc.

4. Choose an appropriate domain name.

This is probably one of the most important steps when creating your business website. Choosing an appropriate domain name is very crucial in making or breaking your online presence. Your domain name is considered as your online identity and will represent your website and your business as a whole.

5. Have a corporate identity.

If your company has already established a brand, it should logically be incorporated in your website. Make sure that you web designer understands how you want your company to present itself through the site – like the color schemes, the theme, the overall layout, the labels and titles, and so on.