What is Experiential Marketing? 4 Simple Techniques to Implement it!

We often hear or read about experiential marketing in the business press. So, what is it and what is it all about?

What is Experiential Marketing?

Experiential marketing is a way of marketing in which the customer/consumer is made to experience the product rather than just seeing and hearing; includes as many other human senses as possible. It essentially involves the promotion of your business and brand in a way that allows both customers and prospects to connect and interact with you and have memorable experiences. Based upon such brand-related encounters, your customers may or may not accept your product or service offering.

4 Simple Techniques to Implement Experiential Marketing:

The success of an experiential marketing initiative depends upon the quality and impact of the techniques you incorporate into your campaigns in order to attract attention. Developments in the mobile world, social networking, and content marketing have ensured that the business environment today is set for experiential techniques.

1. Ensure that the marketing strategy is brand-related

There is no point in running a campaign if prospects are unable to identify your brand. The way in which you promote your brand should communicate that it impacts the lives of your target audience positively. They must be able to relate with your products or services in order for them to accept your brand.

2. Connect with customers digitally

You can reach out to your existing and potential customers via connected devices such as smartphones and tablets. In order to do this effectively, you will have to create content marketing and social media campaigns based upon the interests of your prospects. Focus on the things they are interested in, or that are important for them.

3. Build brand association

Do not forget emotional relevance. By using experiential marketing campaigns, you want buyers to gradually become connected emotionally to your brand and this is what will ultimately secure their loyalty. If they like your brand, what it represents and how it makes them feel, they will take proactive measures to gather purchase-related information. Ensure that your experiential campaign creates a customer experience that becomes synonymous with your brand in a positive way.

4. Be newsworthy

Make your business newsworthy in order to increase its reach and visibility among your target market. Experiential campaigns can do this very well, provided you implement the right strategies. When your existing customers cannot stop talking about the quality of your products or services, they will essentially be ambassadors for your brand.

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How to Build Long-Term Business Relationships? 6 Important Tips!

Building up healthy business relationships will help you to meet more people with new, innovative ideas, create a reputation for your business and ultimately boost your sales. Whatever kind of business you are in, developing better business relationships with customers, suppliers, vendors, clients, contacts and more takes time.

Here are 6 useful tips for building better relationships.

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1. List out Objectives:

Plan your objective on what you want to achieve from a particular business relationship. Do you want to meet up with a likely client, vendor, supplier, referral or candidate? Setting objectives will help you to better determine which relationships are worthwhile spending time and resources in.

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2. Be Ready to Present yourself:

Be broad-minded and have a professional approach. Though it is common, just a reiteration: have your business cards handy. Be prepared to briefly explain what your business is about using a short “elevator pitch” to attract support for your product or project. Follow business meetings ethics.

3. Be Part of Local Business Associations:

Join relevant organisations/associations. There might a handful, if not plenty, of Organisations, Associations and Chambers available to help/network businesses around. Join hands with local charities which can help you to start making contacts. Start your Networking by attending meetings. Share your Business Card & don't forget to get their cards as well. Best way to follow up is through LinkedIn or other professional networking platforms.

4. Make use of the Technology

As said above, use the technology to get in touch and extend your relationship online and long-term. CRM systems, social media and other technological methods will help you in keeping track of and in touch with your business contacts. Share your business information with them directly from time to time to their email address or through their social media profiles.

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5. Connect Offline

Though you build an online relationship, it is as important to connect with them personally. That way you can build proper business relationships. For this and all the methods, you need to put in some time and effort in meeting face to face. Schedule casual meetings like a dinner or an official one at their premises. 

6. Win-Win Situation

It is important to have mutual benefits when it comes to business relationships, especially if it has to last long. Give as much or more than what you get from the relationship. Try to extend your helping hands whenever possible that will create a good will.

Try these methods and set a target for yourself, say 10-15 new contacts every month on top of getting in touch with existing contacts, and try to achieve it. 

Let us know how it worked! If you need any help, feel free to contact us.

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5 Tips to make your Negotiation Skills Better!

In our day-to-day lives, we often face situations where we should negotiate with other people for various reasons. It might be a personal or business, internal like salary or external like selling negotiation, or a discussion to find an answer to a question. When we negotiate, we hope and thrive to result the negotiation in a positive outcome especially working for us.

Here are 5 important tips to help yourself improve your negotiation skills.

Listening

Listening is very important in any communication, be it business or personal. Especially if it relevant to business, it is very important that you listen to the other party. Comprehend the information or message they are trying to convey. More importantly don't interrupt unless you find it extremely necessary. If you listen, they might just answer almost all of your questions for you.

   

Seek Answers by Asking Questions:

Being smart,  you need to know how and when to ask questions and they need to be relevant to the topic of the discussion. Understand all the required background details related to the discussion, beforehand if possible. Infer what the party, you are talking to, has to say and i you have any doubts, verify them with the party so that there are no misunderstandings.

Asking questions is the one of the most straightforward way of encouraging active participation.

Do Some Research

As mentioned above, before the scheduled time of negotiation, get relevant and required information that you can present in order to validate your negotiations. Numbers speaks better than words. Present the required statistics for your negotiation. For business negotiations, research on all the details about the company, learn about the factors surrounding their offer and, if possible, affirm the information you have got relating to their business proposal.

 

Be Patient

Don’t think that after the first meeting everything will be confirmed and you will reach a final decision. If you or the other person are still undetermined, then you have to schedule another meeting so that both of you can discuss over the considered information from the first meeting. By now, you will have more information and idea about how it will go. Being patient is the key here.

 

Understand the Other Party

Don't be narrow-minded. Learn to understand the situation from the other party’s perspective. You should also prepare to walk away if you think a successful negotiation is not possible. Stop the deal if necessary so that the other party can see that you have a strong will and are serious about the negotiation. This can often put you in a stronger position as the other side will have to ask you to resume negotiations if they wish to carry on working towards an agreement.

Good communication skills, open-mindedness and preparation are some of the most important factors in securing a positive outcome from a negotiation.

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4 Important Elements to measure your Online Marketing Success!

Businesses often wonder if their online marketing is successful.  Here are a few metrics which may help your business measure online marketing success.

1. New Business and Increased Revenue

This is the ultimate sign of a successful marketing campaign. While driving traffic to your site, gaining relevant social media followers and building your base of inbound leads are all steps in the right direction, the main goal is to grow your firm. When you see an increase in new business and revenue from leads which originated online, it’s a safe bet that your online marketing is successful. However, if you aren’t gaining new business opportunities as a result of your marketing efforts, it might be time to re-evaluate. For instance, if you notice an increase in the amount of traffic to your website, but not a higher number of inbound leads, it might be time for a website redesign. Why? Bounced traffic is an indicator that your homepage lacks clarity and/or engaging conversions. Or, if your content is frequently being read and downloaded, but your prospects aren’t taking the next step, you might want to re-evaluate your calls-to-action.

2. Followers and Shares

Before beginning a new marketing campaign, take a moment to track your existing number of followers across each of the social media platforms currently employed. With this knowledge, you will be able to assess the degree to which your latest marketing efforts have increased the firm’s visibility. It is also helpful to know the average number of shares your content generates, as this will tell you which types of content generate the most interest.

3. Website Traffic

A primary goal of online marketing is to drive traffic to your website. It is therefore essential to know what your traffic numbers are prior to any campaign. If your website begins to see more traffic after the initiation of a campaign, this is a good indicator that your marketing efforts are working. Monitor the sources of your inbound traffic to identify the sites or pieces of content that are bringing in the most traffic, and use this information to plan future campaigns.

4. Inbound Leads

The actions your prospects take in reaction to your marketing efforts are one of the best ways to measure your success. When more people reach out to your firm for consultations or fill out contact forms, it’s a sign of a successful campaign. If your list of prospects and influencers is growing, your marketing is doing its job. All of your online activity—from the content you produce, to your social media interactions—should work towards driving more prospects and influencers to reach out to your firm and show interest in your services. Your prospects might show interest by simply sharing their contact information or signing up for a webinar, or they might ask for an appointment to see one of your sales people.

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Using The ‘Moving Parade’ To Grow!

Most business owners give up too soon. What I mean by this is that they may put a large amount of effort into creating a list of potential clients, devising a mailing (or e-mail, etc.) and mailing a marketing piece to that list.

Their investment in time and money can be considerable. No doubt you’ve done something in the past like this?

Don’t get me wrong—all this should be applauded. Getting something out there is infinitely better than doing nothing (something we constantly remind our clients about). But it’s a flawed plan.

Why?

Because selling any product or service is all about timing. Just because someone isn’t interested in buying your products or services today, it doesn’t mean they aren’t going to be interested tomorrow.

That is, in essence, what The Moving Parade is all about. Let me explain this further…

Let’s say that at the moment you’re really happy with your car. You’ve got no intention of changing it. Therefore, every advert, every mailing or any contact you have with a car dealer or car manufacturer is wasted on you.

Letters go in the bin without a second thought. You pick up your newspaper when the adverts come on TV. You simply aren’t interested. And nothing will prompt you at this stage to even consider changing your car.

However, three months later your circumstances have changed. You need to do more travelling, and so you decide it’s time to look for a more suitable car.

Now every mailing, advert, or communication to do with cars is instantly given attention by you. You’re ‘in the market’ for a new car and you develop an insatiable appetite to find out as much as you can about the cars which would suit you best.

This happens every single day when people are buying products and services.

The problem, though, is we don’t know WHEN their circumstances are going to change.

Therefore, if you don’t keep in touch regularly with your prospective customers, you’ll never get ‘lucky’ with the timing – because people move in and out of the market, depending on changing circumstances.

The Moving Parade Diagram.

By keeping in contact at least once a month, the chances that you will hit the prospect at the right time are increased tenfold. You will get ‘LUCKY’!

Plus, if your marketing pieces are memorable in the first place (remember, your marketing always has to stand out—DON’T BE BORING) it’s not inconceivable that a large proportion of your recipients will keep your material for a rainy day (when their circumstances change). The more material they keep for future reference—the better.

It doesn’t get any easier than this, does it? No one said growing a business was easy. But by adhering to just a few key principles, The Moving Parade being one of them (and others we discuss in this newsletter), your continued pursuit of greater success is assured.

But back to The Moving Parade...

 What can you send each month that will engage with the recipient (even if they’re not ready to move suppliers)?

Well, your monthly printed newsletter, of course.

A printed newsletter is, without question, one of the best tools in your marketing arsenal (this is why we created this newsletter!). But it takes time to create. For example, ‘The Business Builder’ takes us a couple of days to write (sometimes longer). It may take 3 or 4 days to write an 8-page newsletter.

But writing and mailing your own monthly newsletter (it is important you mail it and DON’T e-mail it) is one of the keys to your success. Not only can it be engaging, so readership is high, it also takes advantage of The Moving Parade. And, with low printing costs, you’ll be surprised how cheap it can be to produce an 8-page newsletter!

Do this one thing and your sales and profits will increase. Do NOT take this lightly. Taking advantage of The Moving Parade is one of the simplest yet most rewarding marketing strategies you can apply to your business, and one we recommend all our clients take advantage of.

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Focus On Customer Frustrations & Your Profits Will Take Care Of Themselves!

We recently returned from a week’s holiday in Turkey. I love spending time away with the family—these days it’s the only real quality time we get together. Plus, it gives me time to catch up on reading. I often read what I consider to be  ‘classics’ again and again. One of those books is  ‘Broken Windows, Broken Business’ by Michael Levine. I read it again in Turkey.

The book focuses on the principle that neglecting ‘small’ problems ultimately ends in anarchy. It was a principle founded by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling in 1982 and put into practice by mayor Rudy Giuliani in 1993. He basically cleaned up New York with his tough stance and zero tolerance on the ‘small’ crimes such as graffiti and prostitution. The results are well documented and now New York is a transformed city (I actually haven’t been to New York for over 20 years, but I’m returning there on business in a couple of days’ time). The philosophy is that even if there’s just one broken window in an area, if that window isn’t repaired quickly, people will assume no one cares and this leads to more broken windows and so on. Within a relatively short period of time a once-peaceful, clean and smart neighbourhood can be ruined. 

This is what happened to New York in the 70s, 80s and early 90s. Now it’s a wonderful city and it’s booming.

So Michael Levine’s book takes this same philosophy and applies it to the business world. I agree with it 100%.

You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to recognise that many businesses fail or don’t reach the heights they could because they don’t focus on the small problems, irritations and frustrations (broken windows) of their clients or customers. Thing is, if the owners aren’t bothered, this permeates throughout the organisation (more broken windows) and ultimately the customer goes elsewhere.

You know this is true just from your own experiences. The key is to  make  sure  that   whenever  you spot a broken window, it’s fixed. And fixed immediately.

That shows your whole philosophy and approach to any broken window and again it will permeate throughout your business.

The hotel we stayed at in Turkey is a fine example of ‘fixing’ the broken windows.

Here’s two great but very simple examples of how the Voyage Belek Golf & Spa has fixed two very common broken windows…

Let me begin by saying we are very fortunate that we can holiday in fine hotels.

The Voyage Belek is one of them but this is the first time I’ve stayed at any family hotel that has taken note of and fixed a couple of common frustrations (broken windows) that virtually every family must encounter often.

First, around all the pool areas they have an abundance of sun loungers and parasols.  This is a big hotel. But there are more sun loungers and parasols than guests.

Joy. 

No more getting up at silly o’clock to ‘reserve’ parasols and loungers (there are 5 of us, so making sure we’re all together is an important part of our holiday—we don’t want to be walking too far to throw mum in the pool!).

And whilst getting a parasol is not as important to us now (my children are aged 17, 14 and 11), we do want one between us. Again, no hassle at any time of the day.

So by taking away this key frustration, the hotel have completely extinguished a big problem that virtually every average, good, very good and excellent hotel faces every single day.

There are no losers, just winners all round!

Second, they give you as many pool towels as you want. They don’t count them out and don’t count them in. You don’t need ‘towel passes’ or anything like that. You can change them at any time of the day and you can change them as often as you want.

What a breath of fresh air this is. Once again the hotel has taken away another key frustration and benefitted accordingly.

The lesson is insightful.

It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, you can easily replicate the ‘broken window’ philosophy! What broken windows can you fix in your business right now that will have a similar effect?

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Beginning the Marketing Journey!

Marketing plays a key part in business development. Are you a small business venturing into marketing for the first time, here are some simple tips on what do you do and how do you do it?

First of all, remember the golden rule – “If nobody knows who you are, what you do and the how they could benefit from your product or service, the phone will never ring and you will fail to win new business”. 

Know your market

You need to identify who your potential customers are. Do your research, identify the socio-economic groups who are likely to need your product or service. Now educate them – aim to demonstrate to your potential customers what your product / service offering is, the benefits to them of purchasing from you and let them know how to get in contact with you should they wish to do business.

Avoid copying others

Learning from your competitors is one thing. “Me-too” marketing is another. Simply copying your competitors will not win new business for you. Instead, observe what is working for your competitors and tweak the strategy in order to develop a new marketing message which is unique to you and your business and differentiates you from the competition.

If in doubt, ask for help

Many business people will spend time, energy and lots of money doing the wrong thing and getting poor results before deciding to buy in a little help. Be honest with yourself, if you don’t have the expertise in-house, commit a little bit of budget to getting advice from a marketing agency or consultant.

Invest in marketing materials

Decide what marketing materials are most appropriate for your business. Do you need a website, business cards and brochures? Ask yourself, how do your customers find out about you and your competitors. If the answer is “online”, then you need a website. If the answer is “through referrals” then you need to embed yourself into the local business community by joining local interest groups, the chamber of commerce, etc.

Communicate

As per the golden rule – you need to make sure that people know who you are, what you do and what the benefits of purchasing your products or services are to them. Write articles for the local and online press, start an email marketing campaign, host seminars on industry topics and start communicating with your customers. If you are offering the right product or service and people know where to find you and that you are knowledgeable, the sales will come.

Please contact us if you need any help(back to point 3) or like to discuss any of the issues, please feel free to comment below or contact us at 020 89310165

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