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Marketing a business involves a wide range of activities and skills.  While many companies turn to professional consultants for help, it often pays to keep the marketing of your business in-house.  An in house marketing director can become involved in a practice more fully, and create more tailored opportunities.  That said, consultants can forge an ongoing relationship with a business which can benefit all involved.  Ideally, a combination of in-house staff and external experts should be responsible for marketing activities.

Creating a Marketing Plan

Whether or not you choose to outsource your marketing activities, you’ll want to create your own in-house marketing plan.  Your marketing plan outlines company priorities for development.  In it, you define your target markets and ways to reach them, while considering your current status, market share and brand identity.   It’s often useful to research attitudes among employees, and get everyone involved in the brand identity process. 

When creating a marketing plan, you should take the following things into consideration:

Your brand: What is your brand?  Why do people buy your services?  Who is where you want to be in your industry?  What do you admire about their brand?

Promotional activities: What kind of things can be done to promote your business?  These could include – community events, advertising, press releases, editorial coverage, trade shows, direct marketing, corporate entertainment, brochures, websites, exhibitions, parties, tours of buildings etc.  The possibilities for promotion are virtually unlimited, so long as each activity is correctly announced and promoted.

Costs: What is the cost of each potential activity in terms of time and money?  Is the cost worth the potential exposure that the practice will gain?  Is there anything else to be gained from the activity (i.e. professional development, community engagement)? 

Budget: What is your overall marketing budget?   It is important to budget correctly for marketing, and to accept that the money spent may not always show direct profit results, at least in the short term.

Timescales: How long will it take to deliver the activities as planned?  Are they linked to project timescales? 

Gaining Exposure

Businesses operate in an extremely competitive marketplace, and any chance to promote a business is welcomed.  There are many ways to get your business noticed and to stand out from the crowd.  Perhaps you have been recognised by Investors in People or another good practice award scheme.  Involvement with local schools or education programmes provides networking and promotional opportunities.   Does your business operate a training and development framework with a recent success story?  Have you recent published your environmental policy? Many business achievements, especially those which benefit the local community, are publicity worthy items.   Make sure that whoever is responsible for issuing press releases and public information is aware of business policies and operations and kept up to date about achievements and awards.

Images

Try to obtain professional quality photography for promotional purposes.  If you are holding an event, get a photographer.  You may be able to get cost effective photography from a student – try advertising at local colleges.

Be realistic

Use your head and advertise in a targeted and realistic way.  Putting time and resources into untargeted advertising or promotional is expensive.  Assess your target market and find a way to reach them.

Be honest

Don’t pretend that you can provide services or products that you can’t, or that you have achieved things in business that you haven’t.

Be prepared

Advertising or promotion is a way of getting your business noticed, and hopefully you will see more business because of it.  Make sure that you have the resources to deal with any increased interest in your business, and be prepared to handle any adverse comment or contact professionally and impersonally.

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