Marketing
Advice and thoughts on markeitn strategies and tactics
Why market in a tight economy?
This article was written by Ed Hatton for Entrepreneur Magazine (South African edition), as the My Mentor column published in September 2016 and is posted here by their kind permission
Times are tough, sales are down, is marketing the best way to spend scarce cash?
The economy is limping along and lower sales means having to save costs. The marketing budget is a tempting target for cuts. Developing the company and product brands is a long term investment, and it is difficult to show returns on expenditure. Even lead generating marketing has a time lag between spending marketing funds and bringing in cash from sales. Cost cutting is usually driven by accountants who may have little understanding of customer needs or branding.
Should you cut marketing expenditure? Only as a last resort to ensure survival and then for a defined time, otherwise emphatically no. There are better ways to cut costs. See the July 2016 My Mentor column in Entrepreneur “Cutting Costs”
There is plenty of evidence to suggest that cutting marketing spend in a recession is a seriously bad idea. A Wall Street Journal study of the last recession showed that companies which cut back on marketing lost sales and market share, while those that held their marketing increased profits compared to those which reduced marketing. Repeated studies going as far back as the Great Depression have shown the same results. Savings you make from reduced marketing may be more than wiped out by lower sales. You need every sale and every customer you can get in these times. Some studies have shown that it even pays to increase marketing in bad times. Recessions can be a great time to go on the offensive, to grab customers and market share from competitors. Continue reading
Channel choices
This article was written by Ed Hatton for Entrepreneur Magazine (South African edition), as the My Mentor column published in June 2016 and is posted here by their kind permission
Which channel will achieve the best returns for your business?
You face many choices of how best to get your products and services sold. The most common channels include a field or counter direct sales force, various models of reseller from freelance agents to sub distributors with their own resellers. E-Commerce is becoming a significant channel and self-service in stores has been around for years. Inbound and outbound telesales offers very wide reach; exhibition and catalogue sales work in many sectors like spare parts and curios. Then there are many mixed models; telemarketing followed up by salespeople is one example. For some the best or only channel may be defined by the product. High end cars need a network of showrooms and salespeople so branches or resellers are required, but music is distributed primarily over the internet. For most entrepreneurs making the right choice is difficult and may come with some risk; many companies stay with traditional methods even if that is not the best model for them.
Generally there is a trade-off between cost and control so if you want tight control be prepared to pay for it. Continue reading
How important is your brand?
This article was written by Ed Hatton for Entrepreneur Magazine (South African edition), as the My Mentor column published in May 2016 and is posted here by their kind permission
What does brand really mean to SMEs?
Brands and branding have become the focus of much marketing attention and some hype. Hands up all who recognise all or most of these brands: PrivateProperty™; Sorbet™; Rocking the Daisies™; Turrito Networks™; GetSmarter™; The Creative Counsel™; MiX Telematics™ and Paycorp™? These are all highly successful fast growing businesses which have featured as success stories in Entrepreneur in the past twelve months. Their chosen markets must have valued their brand for them to have achieved such remarkable successes, and yet they are far from household names. So just how important is your brand to your entrepreneurial business? Who should be familiar with it? What values should it portray?
Back to basics
A brand derives from the brand mark burned on livestock to mark ownership. Technically it is a trademark for a company or product, but in the modern sense it is the value which consumers place on the advantages or qualities of the person, company or product. There are many definitions of brand and branding and this adds to the confusion about what to do about branding your business and products. This is a good one: “Brand is the image people have of your company or product. It’s who people think you are.” Anne Handley with CC Chapman. Continue reading
Customer base or new business?
This article was written by Ed Hatton for Entrepreneur Magazine (South African edition), as the My Mentor column published in November 2015 and is posted here by their kind permission
How should you deploy limited resources for best returns?
Entrepreneurs know that they do not have unlimited sales and marketing resources. You face the question of how to get the maximum output from what you have. Should your energies be directed at more sales to customers, or more customers? Is it wise to split your resources between these?
A partial answer can be found in the nature of the business. If you sell things that customers buy very seldom like flooring or wedding facilities, your effort should go towards positioning your brand as one to consider and delivering beyond expectations to grow word-of-mouth and referral business. Similarly if your product set is applicable only to a small total market and you are the major supplier you want to ensure that all customers use as much as possible of your product range.
In cases where you offer highly differentiated products or have a unique market focus your priority should be new business before imitators become a problem. Where you have a ‘me too’ product set, very similar to that of your competitors your first priority should be to ensure loyalty of your customers and differentiate by excellent service.
Some new business is essential. Customer attrition will come through closures, relocation and competitive attack. Costs will increase and without new business you will have to cover this increase with price hikes, which make you less competitive. Continue reading
The power of focus
This article was written by Ed Hatton for Entrepreneur Magazine (South African edition), as the My Mentor column published in October 2015 and is posted here by their kind permission
Concentrate your resources on the target to improve performance
It seems logical to spread your net as wide as possible, to develop all available sales opportunities and markets if you want to grow. This makes sense if you are the dominant player in the market with an abundance of resources, one who can afford to waste resources on loss making sales simply to deny them to competitors. For everyone else it is a bad idea. Military strategist von Clausewitz wrote “Where absolute superiority is not obtainable, you must produce a relative one at the decisive point by making skilful use of what you have”, echoing the much earlier Sun Tzu maxim of concentrating your forces where the enemy is weak.
This military strategy applies equally to business. If you concentrate your resources and focus on a particular target, you gain many advantages: Sales costs reduce, sales become easier through customer referrals. Salespeople become expert in the area and competitors recognise your expertise and go elsewhere, so your strike rate increases. Customer support and administration costs fall and service levels increase. Your company becomes the go to company in that market.
Alternative choices
By contrast trying to hit everything that moves is costly; implementation and procurement complexity increases, as does the risk of cancelled sales. Your people become frustrated because they continually need to learn new industries and seldom re-use their expertise. Poor customer service is frequently an outcome and you lose the power of relevant reference customers. Continue reading
The unique product or service
This article was written by Ed Hatton for Entrepreneur Magazine (South African edition), as the My Mentor column published in June 2015 and is posted here by their kind permission
Does unique mean it will make millions for you?
You have created an innovation; congratulations. It may be a unique product, a brand new service, a new way of distributing things, a unique business model or a combination of these – but will it fly? Hopefully it will be a success and reward you, but just because it is unique is no guarantee of commercial success. The great innovations are generally those where potential customers immediately see the value, and perceive the value to be higher than the cost. Think of prepaid airtime which opened cell phone use to those who could not afford a contract.
Innovations which struggle to get off the ground are often those where the entrepreneur is passionate about it and believes potential customers should share his or her passion. This is a good way to learn that even great and creative products must be sold. Many wonderful innovations have never been launched or failed when they were introduced.
Preparing to launch
Ask yourself: Is this innovation is in response to a real market need, does the market recognise this need or are they not aware of it yet. If you are in the second category be prepared to spend a lot of time and money convincing people they really have this need.
There are two key requirements for a successful launch of a unique product; reasonable certainty that customers will buy at the proposed price and sufficient money to develop and market the innovation. Please do not ignore the marketing costs. Commercial failure of many innovations stemmed from entrepreneurs who spent all their money on perfecting the product and had nothing left to tell the market about it. Marketing innovations is expensive; the market must be convinced that the innovation works, is cost effective and gives advantages over old ways of doing things. Do not underestimate marketing costs. Continue reading
Word of Mouth
The importance of getting people talking about your company
This article was published as the Sanlam Business Tips for Business Owners December 2014 edition. This publication is a great resource for entrepreneurs, well worth subscribing.
People telling others about their positive experiences with your company sends a far more powerful marketing message than any advertisement. Word of mouth is credible, personal and admiring. The best advertising cannot match that. Word of mouth is also free, so it is a great marketing medium and deserves more attention that it normally gets.
You cannot simply ask people to talk about your company. Larger organisations use ‘brand ambassadors’ to promote their products. The audience knows the brand ambassador is being paid to promote the products, so the message lacks credibility, it is not true word of mouth. Few of us will tell others about a reasonably good experience with a supplier, unless we are asked for a recommendation. How then can your company use this valuable marketing tool?
Good example
The best example I know comes from many years ago when I routinely bought lunch at a deli called The Shop Around the Corner in downtown Johannesburg. Their pizza slices came from large round pizzas, roughly cut into segments, and every time I bought one the counter hand would carefully select the biggest one on the tray for me. That felt great! I soon realised that every customer got the biggest available slice. When the slices ran low a fresh pizza was cut and the slices added; the process of serving the biggest slice first continued. I talked to many people about how wonderful their service was and I am sure many others did too I am still talking about it almost thirty years later. Total cost of this exercise – one pizza slice each lunchtime. The Shop Around the Corner is still there, through all the changes in central Johannesburg, under the same ownership. With that great customer service, good food and smart marketing I am not surprised. Learn from them. Continue reading
Marketing on a tiny budget
This article was written by Ed Hatton, the Start Up Coach for Entrepreneur Magazine (South African edition), as the My Mentor column published in November 2013 and is posted here by their kind permission
You have to tell potential customers what you offer – even with no money
It is almost a caricature. A new business is launched. The entrepreneur has used all the available funds to perfect products. There is no marketing and consequently no customers and all the technologically wonderful products remain unsold. The world does not beat a path to the door of the person who has the better mousetrap; it continues to buy whatever it has done in the past.
The message is clear – you have to tell people who could buy from you that you exist and why they should consider you. You can do this with little or no money for marketing promotions, but there are some rules.
The first one is to realise that with limited funds you needs to reach the people likely to buy from you as efficiently as possible; you cannot afford to market to people who will never be your customers. It is amazing that this simple piece of logic is so often ignored. Identify who your most likely customers are, and then to figure out the best way to get a marketing message to them with as little wastage as possible.
The right media
Another rule is that you have to use the right media. It does not make sense to advertise wedding dresses by flyers in business post boxes. Instead you must be on the internet – unless you can afford to be at bridal exhibitions or to advertise in specialist magazines. Find out which information sources are used by your target market and then use the most cost effective ones. A useful cost saver is to form an alliance with a non-competitive supplier to the target market. The allies agree to share exhibition or other marketing costs, but they also introduce each other to their customers.
Barter is an ancient and honourable way of saving cost – you print my brochure and I will plan your conference for example. Community service by you and your staff can attract the attention and goodwill of community minded businesses and individuals and it is free. Continue reading
Why should they buy?
This article was written by Ed Hatton, the Start Up Coach for the South African edition of Entrepreneur magazine, as the My Mentor column published in July 2013 and is posted here by their kind permission
What makes your business the supplier of choice for your customers?
I occasionally ask groups of entrepreneurs why they think their customers buy from them. After an awkward silence some in the group will give answers about product uniqueness, price advantage or better location, or easily copied ones like good quality and better service. At least some entrepreneurs in the group will really not know.
Entrepreneurs who do not know why customers buy take a huge risk of customers drifting away for unknown reasons. The question is even more important for start ups. Anyone who plans to open a business and does not identify clear reasons why customers would buy risks opening a business which will make no sales.
Why customers buy
There is a huge body of research about buyer motivations which is good to study. In my view the most important business differentiators are uniqueness or competitiveness
Uniqueness may mean innovative products or services, but can also be the uniqueness of the business principal. Products like trousers, perfumes, sporting equipment and coffee bars have thrived from being driven by a famous sports or entertainment star. For the average entrepreneur who is not famous or an inventor there are still options to be unique. Businesses which use a unique pricing model will rent when others sell, offer last minute sales at incredible discounts, or develop other pricing innovations. They will not simply sell at lower prices. Continue reading
How do I get started?
Image: www.freeimages.co.uk
You have the idea, but what are the steps needed to turn the idea into a business
I meet and communicate with many people who have an idea that they think can be turned into a payable business but do not know where to start, and many such ideas never become enterprises, which means no new economic boost or jobs, and we need both to take the focus from large organisations and ever increasing government bureaucracies.
So here are a few steps to convert ideas to enterprises.
Who will buy it?
Without sales there is no business and yet too many start ups have only an optimistic guess at sales income. To reduce the risk of early failure the target market has to be clearly identified, it has to have the disposable income to buy the product or service and it has to be one that the new business can communicate with and sell to.
Break that sentence down into its components and you will see the need for a whole lot of research, thinking and planning. The advantage of doing this is it is easier and less expensive to communicate the values of a product to a tightly defined market and much easier to attract them to the ‘storefront’ – whether that is an actual store, an internet site or a salesperson. Continue reading
What is the right price?
This article was written by Ed Hatton for the column the Start up Coach and published by the South African edition of Entrepreneur magazine in October 2012 and is posted here by their kind permission.
Focusing on pricing will pay dividends to start up entrepreneurs
Challenge
This entrepreneur asks where he can find help in setting prices for advertising space on digital displays and which procedures he should to follow before deciding on the right prices.
Response
Setting the most appropriate price is important but not easy to do. It needs at least as much attention as any of the other ’4Ps’ of marketing. Start up entrepreneurs traditionally spend most of their effort on product development, put time and thought into marketing promotions and sales channels and not enough time and effort on pricing. Price is important in almost every buying decision so it can be as crucial as the product features in securing the sale. Continue reading
The risk of innovation
This article was written by Ed Hatton for the column the Start up Coach and published by the South African edition of Entrepreneur magazine in July 2012 and is posted here by their kind permission.
How to turn an idea into a business without someone stealing and using it
Challenge
This entrepreneur has a business idea, which he believes will be profitable. He is not sure who to talk to or how to go about starting up a business based on his idea. He asks if it is possible to secure a patent or other protection to prevent others from taking his idea.
Response
This is a common situation for many would be entrepreneurs with a great business idea. To develop the idea service providers and funders must be approached and this brings a risk of someone using the idea.
Intellectual property protection through patents, designs or copyright may provide some of the answer, but are not always applicable. For instance a patent applies to something that can be represented by a drawing, model or prototype. It must be new and involve an inventive step. Patents do not apply to computer programs and the presentation of information. Copyright covers written or artistic works and images, but not the ideas underlying them. A legal action against a patent infringer is likely to cost hundreds of thousands of Rand, and could take years to complete. Continue reading
Getting started
This article was written by Ed Hatton for the column the Start up Coach and published by the South African edition of Entrepreneur magazine in August 2012 and is posted here by their kind permission.
Turning an idea into a viable business is not as difficult as it seems
Challenge
This entrepreneur has a business idea which he thinks will make a viable business, but is unsure of how to go about commercialising the idea. He asks how to execute this transition.
Response
Many people have a business idea. Very few ideas actually turn into commercially viable businesses. This is sad when our country so desperately needs all the new businesses possible to address the terrible unemployment situation. A part of the reason for this failure is highlighted by this month’s challenge; many potential entrepreneurs do not know which steps must be taken to commercialise an idea.
The first step is the business model, including the source of income. This entrepreneur will provide a service to a tightly defined market, and make his money from fees. In other enterprises the income could be commission on sales, sponsorship of an activity, rentals, royalties or from advertising income. The source of products for resale and other necessary services must also be identified. Continue reading
Marketing in the digital world
This article was written by Ed Hatton for the column the Start up Coach and published by the South African edition of Entrepreneur magazine in May 2012 and is posted here by their kind permission.
Getting a response from initial e-mails is a challenge
Challenge
This entrepreneur started a company to market advertising for digital publications and mobiles. Like most start-ups he has a challenge in making initial sales, and he has identified a weakness in his initial e-mails to generate interest. For instance his e-mails promoting a new product for organisations sending electronic statements has produced no response. He asks what he should include in the e-mail.
Response
This entrepreneur actually faces two challenges: He needs to attract attention from potential customers who do not know his business or his products. To do this he has tried using e-mail as an inexpensive way to communicate his offer, but has been unsuccessful. His second challenge is that he is promoting advertising in the digital world, so his digital communications have to be arresting and effective, he cannot use traditional media to market his products.
E-mail is incredibly efficient at sending messages but this has brought about the major problems of e-mail overload and spam. As a result defences against unwanted mail have been built. Many of this entrepreneur’s e-mails will never be read, victims of spam filters or the delete button. If they are read, it will be a quick scan, so messages which don’t immediately attract attention will be ignored. Continue reading
Penetrating the market
This article was written by Ed Hatton for the column the Start up Coach and published by the South African edition of Entrepreneur magazine in April 2012 and is posted here by their kind permission.
Start ups in small towns need excellent marketing strategies
Challenge
This entrepreneur plans to start an event business that will offer wedding and party planning and a catering service offering African gourmet meals with a twist. He requests advice on marketing and penetrating the limited market in his small town. As an unknown young black entrepreneur he has concerns about succeeding in marketing to a predominantly white and older community.
Response
The first step is market and competition evaluation, to determine if there is enough market, and whether his business could win against established competitors. If either of these are negative then the entrepreneur needs to answer totally different questions.
Assuming this has been done and the market is available, then there is a mix of good and scary news. The good is that he is thinking of how to be different. The idea of gourmet African meals is exactly the sort of unique selling proposition that great businesses are made of. The scary part is that any market is really hard to penetrate. What is usually in the target’s mind on first approach is something like:
- I don’t know you, I don’t know your business and I don’t know why I should talk to you;
- I have never heard of your products, and I am not sure why they should interest me;
- I have existing suppliers and I am generally happy with them;
- Now what was it you wanted to sell me? Continue reading
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