Top tips for any entrepreneur launching a new business - part 2

In part two of this blog we discuss some further tactics on launching your new business.

1.      Invest in a professional looking website

Building a website is likely to be the biggest initial spend for your new business but it’s essential to portray authority in what could potentially be a crowded marketplace. Once you have your website don’t just let it sit in the background. Regular blogs will attract visitors and help establish you as a thought leader in your space.

2.      Put aces in places

Not just for marketing but running a successful business you need to understand the importance of bringing in skills that you may not necessarily have. Whether that’s finding a bookkeeper or marketing specialist when you run your own business you aren’t expected to be an expert in every field. Decide on the help you require and budget for it accordingly.

3.      Work on your social presence

You don’t need to be on every platform but finding the correct social media for your target audience is a must. We’ve talked before about the different platforms and demographics relating to this. Understanding the correct one for your audience is a must but also ensuring you are posting regular content to engage with your potential customer.

4.      Invest in paid ads

Whether this is on social or through google investing in ads will provide you with the all important quick win. If budgets aren’t massive that doesn’t mean that PPC is a right off. Think outside of the box with your bidding tactics looking at things such as time of day or specific keywords.

5.      Capture data

There are ways to retarget visitors to your website but a much simpler technique is to collate data from visitors to your website. A simple sign-up form offering a discount if your potential customer makes a purchase is a far simpler way of building your database and exposure to interested parties.

6.      Word of mouth

If you’re running a business your existing customers are your best marketing tool. Encourage them to share your product or service. If they’ve had a positive experience, they’ll be happy to share it with friends and family.

7.      Don’t forget your PR

Whether you’re looking at celebrity endorsements, linking up with a local charity or putting your own spin on a national news story. Having a solid PR strategy will give your new business a much needed boost and will save money on expensive advertising campaigns.

We hope you’ve found some useful nuggets in our latest blog and are excited about the journey of your new business. If you’d like to talk to Icon about your promoting your new venture or anything else, feel free to get in touch kiesha@iconmarketingcomunications.co.uk 07979940526.

How marketing can help your business survive the Coronavirus

When news first reached us of a flu-like virus affecting residents in Wuhan, China I’ll be the first to admit that it didn’t immediately ring alarm bells. Fast-forward several weeks and the World Health Organisation have labelled it a ‘pandemic’. It feels more like something from a Hollywood blockbuster than real life.

You only need to see the empty shelves in most supermarkets to understand that at least some of the UK population are in a state of panic. Companies who can, are taking their employees out of the office environment and are allowing them to work from home. Some businesses where this is not feasible have made the difficult decision to close their doors for the foreseeable future.

Source: The Rex Facebook Page

But what does it all mean for your business? And how can you survive?

Typically, in times of financial crisis businesses cutback on their marketing activities however in this situation I think the opposite should be true. In this blog I will talk about some of the possible opportunities for your business and how to survive the Coronavirus outbreak.

1.      Be where your customers are

Whether your customers are self-isolating or working from home. There has never being a more important time to improve your digital offering. Is your website up-to-date? Are you effectively utilising social media? Have you communicated with your customers via email or text? We’re in uncertain times and this is a great opportunity to solidify brand loyalty by communicating effectively with your customers and providing reassurance.

2.      Turn a negative into a positive

The National Trust announced this week that they will be removing pay barriers from all their National Trust parks and Gardens. I’m not suggesting that you need to go to such great lengths but positive PR during this uncertain time could get you in front of a whole new audience. Smaller initiatives such as reaching out to the elderly and at-risk groups in your community could have a positive impact for your brand. Sainsbury’s and other retailers are offering to open their stores for the first hour exclusively to these two at risk groups. What steps could you take as a business to help the most vulnerable in society?

3.      Strength in numbers  

Now more than ever is a time to unite with other businesses who may be suffering. Manchester hospitality leaders have unified this week by launching the ‘pay it forward’ scheme to help support local restaurants and bars through the Coronavirus pandemic. The scheme encourages people to purchase discounted vouchers at participating restaurants during the run up to Easter which can be redeemed from May onwards. And for the added feelgood factor for each voucher purchased a charitable donation of £1 is also made to Hospitality Action. So, speak to your competitors and look at ways you can work together.

4.      And finally, don’t panic

This is an unprecedented situation and with so much uncertainty surrounding Coronavirus and its economical impact we must ‘keep calm and carry on’. The government have announced several measures to support businesses through this difficult time including £330bn in loans and £20bn in other aid. It’s important to remain positive and instil your consumers with confidence.

If you’re feeling concerned about the effects of Covid-19 on your business or are looking at ways to improve your digital presence why not give Kiesha at Icon Marketing Communications a call for an informal chat on 07979 940526.

Why you should hire a Marketing Consultant

This month we have a guest blog by the super talented Lindsey Milner. Lindsey has several years experience working for some of the largest media houses in the industry. Take a read of her blog ‘Why you should hire a Marketing Consultant below…

Time is money. Two heads are better than one. Jack of all trades, master of none. 

If you own your own business, these phrases probably pop into your mind most days?

Often a business is set up to pursue a passion. Unfortunately, the reality is less hours are spent on the ‘passion’ and more on marketing tasks like:  

Why isn’t my website getting more visitors?

What’s the quickest route to increased sales? 

Who really is my target audience?

If you can relate, then here are our top 3 reasons why hiring a Marketing Consultant will be the best decision you make this year:

Fact 1: Marketing Consultant’s will understand and care for your business as much as you do.

Let’s say you’ve set up a vegan food delivery service.

Your background is in nutrition and you have decades of skill and experience at creating exemplary vegan cuisine.

Even if your Marketing Consultant hasn’t worked on an identical proposition before, their background, skill and experience is in making exemplary, water-tight and profitable strategic business plans.

Within a couple of months of working together, they will establish:

·        Who and where are your target customers?

·        How and when do they want to be targeted?

·        How often you should send marketing messages to them, when and in what format?

·        Which platforms should you spend time and investment on?

·        How to generate a return on investment (ROI) on any of your marketing activities.

The same way vegan food is your calling, improving the profitability and efficiency of your business via marketing is theirs.

Fact 2: Hiring a Consultant won’t be ‘expensive’. It will generate a return.

There’s nothing like the thought of losing money to strike fear into the most rational of folks. However, let’s flip this fear on its head.

If you need to grow your business ASAP, you’ll soon learn you have to pay to some extent, to do that.

Whether it’s spending on advertising or improving your digital platforms via SEO, CRO or content creation, there will always be a cost even if it’s just your time.

If you don’t have experience in these fields, I can guarantee that trying to fudge it yourself, no matter how many hours you spend on You Tube tutorials, you won’t get the outcome you desire.

You could advertise at the wrong time of year, to the wrong customer.

You could be optimizing clicks to your website rather than conversions.

It could all amount to a poor performing quarter in both financial and development terms.

A Marketing Consultant can guarantee as little waste of your pennies as possible AND increase your business growth within the shortest time possible.

They’re the experts and do this day in, day out, with qualifications to boot.

“Then I bet their rates are expensive” I hear you cry?

As with anything in life, you get what you pay for.

However, the brilliant thing about a Freelance Marketing Consultant is that they’ll work with you to find out your primary objectives, then calculate back exactly how many hours a month they need to hit those objectives for you.

It maybe you only need five to ten hours a month? Or two days a month. Or a month’s work to get you off the ground so to speak.

Whatever you need, they can give you: with no other overheads and a promise they’ll put everything in place to get the returns you seek, with as little waste as possible.

Fact 3: They have a deeper understanding of digital marketing than you do.

In today’s digital world, the job of a marketeer is as broad and diverse as you can get.

Outside of the traditional marketing techniques like branding, advertising, PR, events, and generating new business, today we also specialise in:

1.      Website creation and maintenance

2.      Search Engine Optimisation

3.      Conversion Rate Optimisation

4.      Social media

5.      Content creation

6.      Copy Writing

Digital and its users move fast.

Staying on top of trends and techniques to get all of these marketing tactics spot on, is a full-time job in itself.

With the best will in the world, you can google “How do I improve my website search ranking” and take a few punitive steps towards it. But you won’t get the results you desire any time soon.

A Freelance Consultant can put all of this in place for you and teach you a few tricks of their trade.

 All of the phrases we began with are true.

As a business owner, it’s imperative you put your business in the hands of experts.

This time next year, we can’t promise you’ll be a millionaire.

But we can promise you’ll have built a brand and awareness of said brand, increased sales and have a solid understanding of the next steps to work towards your ever-evolving business via sensible targets and objectives.

And if you want to work with Marketing Consultants that really, really care, get in touch with Icon today. We are here whenever and however you need us.

Good Customer Service

Not so long ago I spent 4 years working for the late Tim Bacon the founder of Living Ventures a group of restaurants and bars including Gusto and the Living Room. I learnt a great deal, his Core Manual is one of his greatest legacies almost biblical!

In it Tim teaches you how to give excellent customer service and at the root of his teaching is that the customer is always right. Many people couldn’t understand why a degree educated person would want to work in a restaurant with the long unsociable hours and relatively low pay. I never explained to customers that I was a Business Development Manager and that there was much more going on behind the scenes, they just viewed me as a host (well what’s in a name?). Those 4 years taught me so much about providing good service, dealing with difficult customers (sometimes drunk) as well as creating a welcoming environment. A fellow hospitality worker once said that ‘hospitality should be made a national service’. I really couldn’t agree more.

Unfortunately, this has made my expectations very high and I find it quite frustrating when I don’t receive the same good customer service from other business to consumer enterprises it’s not hard to get it right just put yourself in the shoes of the person you’re dealing with and ask yourself what would you expect? In many other countries i.e. America hospitality is viewed as a career whereas over here many view it as a stop gap.

If I have to call a business and get good customer service I’m actually amazed. Almost shocked if I get through directly to the person I need to speak to. Lansinoh are one such business I needed some replacement valves for my breast pump the lady who answered the call was able to deal with my query straightaway without having to pass me to another department. It made me think it doesn’t matter what communication method you use as long as you do it well. I recently had to speak to a large business who provide a wide range of electrical items let’s just say their name began with Sam and ended in ung. I was appalled by how poor their customer service was. Firstly, the line was very poor so it was difficult to hear them, they took me through their troubleshooting (basically) switch it off and on. When this didn’t resolve the issue they put me on hold for roughly 15 minutes until eventually my call was dropped. I called back only to have to go through the same process again and once again was put on hold for a further 10 minutes whilst the individual reviewed my notes. Finally, they deducted that my equipment (a sound bar) was faulty. I had called about the same issue a year ago and was made to feel quite foolish because my husband had removed the battery (I hadn’t checked before I called). On this occasion I was transferred to the supervisor who asked me over and over again if my problem was resolved, even though they knew it wasn’t.

As a parent you’re told to ‘praise good behaviour and ignore bad behaviour’ (not entirely sure which guru came up with this theory). I don’t agree with this theory. I do agree with praising good behaviour something I do loud and proud however, but bad behaviour should also be acknowledged. We shouldn’t insult the intelligence of our children by assuming they can’t understand right from wrong and this is why they should be punished. In the world of consumerism people don’t follow this rule (I’m as guilty as the next person). Giving feedback to a company is the only way to help them improve. Posting a negative review can be very damaging for a small businesses. So back to the electronics company there is an email address on their site where you can directly contact the CEO of the company surely he would care about the poor customer service I received? But I’ve received no response as of yet. I also tweeted their official twitter handle yet again no response.

You can be sympathetic to small companies not having the resource to be across all communication channels but a global business should be able to provide brilliant customer service. I am a big Gin fan and for Christmas I received a beautifully packaged bottle of Gin from the Gin Parlour with complementary bottles of tonic and beer matts it was a real treat. On their website they state in their FAQs

“WHY DON’T YOU HAVE A TELEPHONE NUMBER?

We are a small, 2.5 person, online company. We made the decision not to have a public phone number and instead embrace the various online methods of communication - email, live chat, Twitter and Facebook - because these enable us to provide a better, more reliable, level of customer service. We could put a phone number up but 9 times out of 10 you would have to leave a message for us to get back in touch with you. In our experience that frustrates people even more.

We know that some people see a phone number as a sign of a company’s validity and will not want to shop with us however we have been independently verified by our website security certificate provider and our independent review provider.”

This is a prime example of smart communications, you don’t need to be across every method of communication to give good customer service just pick a few and ensure you do them well.

kiesha@iconmarketingcommunications.co.uk 07979940526

Credit: Jonathan Farber

The Birth of Icon Marketing Communications

As my first blog I thought the best place to start would be to talk about how and why I set up my own marketing communications consultancy.

I went to University in Leeds and studied a degree in Media, Communication and Cultural studies. It was quite a diverse course where we learnt about the practical side of media as well as theory. We did work placements in related industries I chose PR (I really wanted to do a placement at a radio station), but communication is communication. At Uni we were taught to analyse things and look for the hidden meaning in things. Such as the stereotypical roles used in Disney films like the jive talking smoking crows in Dumbo. There are many subtle messages in mainstream media like the constant barrage of negative programming such as ‘Benefits Britain: Life on the Dole’. ‘EastEnders’ depiction of Stacey’s battle with post-partum psychosis or even the late George Michael's lyrics in his hit tune Faith.  We can learn a lot from the media we consume both positive and negative.

Having spent several years working in marketing/advertising/business development and radio change was on the horizon when I fell pregnant with my first son Nico. During my maternity leave I threw myself into various projects not to mention Mums & Tots groups. But if I’m honest they weren’t my cup of tea and believe me there was always plenty of tea! The only class I felt was useful was Tiny Talk a baby sign language class. Where babies learn useful signs to communicate with their parents before they can speak. I remember going round the circle when we were asked how many signs our babies had done and my answer was always none (but who’s to say the other Mums were telling the truth?). Many months later and even now Nico does various signs for me and has even learnt more.

Anyway the maternity leave went by quickly and it was time to take on the dreaded commute on the M60 to Salford Quays. I knew it would be tough (husband often works abroad) but I wanted to keep my independence and small income once nursery fees where paid. The world of media and particular social media is constantly evolving so if you take time out for too long it’s a major setback. It was becoming challenging taking on the commute and with no work from home option available I regrettably handed in my notice. With the encouragement of my husband I decided to set up my own marketing communications consultancy. Thankfully since setting up I have learnt so much including how to build websites.

Working as a sole trader is a tough slog; finding new business, getting expensive contracts written up, paying for office space and dealing with late payers. A survey by the Federation of Small Business in March 2015 found that 43 per cent of firms have waited over 90 days beyond the agreed payment date before they got the money they were owed. Is it any wonder that so many small businesses fail?

The hardest thing of all was coming up with a name it took me long enough to agree on a name for my children this was going to be just as challenging. After weeks of shortlisting I finally settled on ‘Icon Marketing Communications’, Icon being an anagram of Nico.

Icon Marketing Communications is designed to help businesses just like mine, people with an idea that just needs promoting to the outside world to attract customers. If you’d like to discuss your marketing requirements, please feel free to get in touch kiesha@iconmarketingcommunications.co.uk or 07979940526