Marketing plans have evolved

Many years ago marketing was reasonably straight forward and simple.  You would decide on your company’s objectives and create a marketing plan designed to achieve your goals.  Once the marketing plan was finalised that would be the company’s main focus of direction for the next few years.

Now day’s managers need to be more diverse when it comes to planning marketing strategies.  Yes managers and business owners still need to set clear objectives for their business but a marketing plan needs to be flexible so it can be adapted as new marketing practices are discovered.

It is common for businesses to have more than one marketing plan to help cope with multiple marketing channels.  For example you could have a traditional marketing plan, digital marketing plan and a social media marketing plan.

DLM Marketing plan

When DLM Marketing provide marketing strategies for clients we normally integrate all forms of marketing into the single marketing plan. The key to good marketing is well put together and achievable business objectives.  When you are deciding on what you want to achieve its best to set your target within range.  DLM Marketing has come up with these five points you should use as a guide when considering you goals and objectives.

• Keep each goal clear and simple.
  

  Download your free DIY marketing plan template and guide now!

• Be specific.
• Be realistic.
• Don’t be afraid to push yourself and think big.
• Make sure that your goals are in sync with your mission.

Gather all the information you need. Effective marketing strategies depends on a complete and accurate understanding of your market, your customers, your financial situation, and your business environment.

If you don’t have a current plan it is something you should consider.  You can download a DIY marketing plan template for free from us or we can provide you with a price to do it for you.

Start-up businesses

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, more than 60 percent of small businesses fail within the first three years of starting up.  It is a daunting exercise going into business,  there are many reasons why a business might fail. One reason a lot of start-up businesses is poor marketing. It is important to get your marketing and branding strategy organised before you start trading.  With the internet most new business owners will attempt to market themselves.  They might use a simple drag and drop website builder, create a small social media network and maybe get some flyers printed out. Which is all good but most drag and drop website builders will limit what you can do. Particularly if you do not have knowledge of back end coding.  The site is also going to lack some very important SEO essentials.

Professional marketing advice

Regardless on what product or service your business offers you should seek advice and guidance from a professional marketing company for the following points:

• Business plan
• Market research
• Marketing plan (FREE DIY TEMPLATE)
• Branding strategy
• Marketing mix

We have put together several articles that can help you if you wish to do your own marketing.

The advantages of a professional marketing company

• Seeking help from a professional marketing company will save you time and your business will benefit. By hiring a professional marketing company you will get to concentrate on the product or service you are offering while the marketing company is building your brand.
• You get access to a range of professionals. A professional marketing company is not made up of one person they normally comprise of digital designers, copywriters, web developers etc.
• Professional marketing companies already have the latest software used to produce essential marketing material.  The cost of purchasing and learning software packages would exceed the costs of hiring a professional marketing company.
• Outsourcing to a professional marketing company means you will receive an outside perspective. One of the scariest things a business can say is, “We’ve always done it that way.” That phrase leads to surefire stagnation if not complete decay.

The question, isn’t if you can afford an experienced marketing company, but rather how much are you costing yourself in time, money and lost opportunity by trying to do your own marketing.

SEO Sharks – Don’t become a victim

What you should know before hiring a SEO manager

Be wary of SEO firms and web consultants or agencies that send you emails out of the blue.

Reserve the same scepticism for unsolicited email about search engines as you do for “burn fat at night” diet pills or requests to help transfer funds from deposed dictators.

No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.

Beware of Rogue SEO experts that claim to guarantee rankings, claim a “special relationship” with Google, or advertise a “priority submit” to Google. There is no priority submit for Google. In fact, the only way to submit a site to Google directly is through the Add URL page or by submitting a Sitemap and you can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever.

Be careful if a company is secretive or won’t clearly explain what they intend to do.

Ask for explanations if something is unclear. A rogue SEO expert creates deceptive or misleading content on your behalf, such as doorway pages or “throwaway” domains, your site could be removed entirely from Google’s index. Ultimately, you are responsible for the actions of any companies you hire, so it’s best to be sure you know exactly how they intend to “help” you. If an SEO has FTP access to your server, they should be willing to explain all the changes they are making to your site.

You should never have to link to an SEO.

Avoid SEOs that talk about the power of “free-for-all” links, link popularity schemes, or submitting your site to thousands of search engines. These are typically useless exercises that don’t affect your ranking in the results of the major search engines — at least, not in a way you would likely consider to be positive.

What are some other things to look out for?

There are a few warning signs that you may be dealing with a rogue SEO service. It’s far from a comprehensive list, so if you have any doubts, you should trust your instincts. By all means, feel free to walk away if the SEO provider:

• owns shadow domains
• puts links to their other clients on doorway pages
• offers to sell keywords in the address bar
• doesn’t distinguish between actual search results and ads that appear on search results pages
• guarantees ranking, but only on obscure, long keyword phrases you would get anyway
• operates with multiple aliases or falsified WHOIS info
• gets traffic from “fake” search engines or spyware
• has had domains removed from Google’s index or is not itself listed in Google