Monday, October 31, 2011

Keeping in touch with customers


With so much focus on the company web site and social media it is easy to forget to keep in touch with customers when they are not actively thinking about buying new products. Company newsletters can help keep customers and prospects informed about your products, and maintain ‘top of the mind’ awareness for your brand. 

A  company newsletter can be mailed to both ‘external’ and ‘internal’ customers. Internal customers include members of your team in non-customer facing roles, manufacture for example, as well as people in field sales and the distribution chain.

Even with the immediacy of the Internet, there is still a place for printed communication where readers can review the contents at a more convenient time. Not only should the design look professional, but the layout should make reading easy and include good quality photographs to gain attention and help break up the text. The content also needs to be relevant to the reader and add to their knowledge and experience of your business. A newsletter can also present interesting and noteworthy projects by explaining how challenges were solved, how your products were used and provide the endorsement of your customers. It can be a useful vehicle to help educate your readership about new developments, by giving background information, or to explain how to get the best use from your products. Newsletters can of course showcase new products and remind customers of the virtues of existing ones. Featuring company employees, explaining their role and contribution will help present the human face of your business and remind customers that they are dealing with a team. By including ‘useful’ articles you can also create higher retention value for the newsletter and well- produced versions have been used as reference sources. You can develop relationships with your readers by introducing response inducive elements ranging from a letters page to competitions and of course encourage readers to recommend others.

Above all you control the content. You are not subject to editorial selection as in the case of the trade press, which has limited space and needs to maintain impartiality. Frequency is another important consideration. A few issues a year sent out regularly are better than an initial flurry then big gaps between issues as the time commitment and need for genuine news content becomes a challenge you cannot sustain.

Monday, October 24, 2011

Media advertising

The term advertising is often confused with the whole marketing process itself. 


Our use of the word is confined to ‘paid for’ media space. In business-to-business communication this is mainly the trade press and portal web sites, but advertising media also embraces radio, cinema, television, bus sides and bill boards. A rather lengthy and convoluted definition of advertising is "the persuasive force that utilises mass communications to make changes in customer attitudes, behaviour and actions towards products and services in a direction favourable to the advertiser."


 Advertising is cost effective in reaching large groups of customers and potential customers with a shared defined profile, hence the proliferation of special interest and industry specific magazines that can deliver an audience relevant to the needs of the advertiser. Media selection must therefore seek to match your target audience and readership profiles. Advertising’s key aims are to progress the target audience through a series of stages:-

  • creating awareness of the product
  • turning previous unawareness of the product, into awareness 
  • establishing a comprehension of the proposition and the benefits it offers 
  • a conviction that the product is both relevant and of benefit 
  • finally a ‘call to action’ to convert the prospect into a potential customer. 



As individuals we are subjected to hundreds of advertising messages each day, so to arrest attention the advertisement has to stand out from the others. This may be by use of compelling images, headlines or a combination of both, that stops the browser just long enough to take in the proposition. The fly fishing analogy has been used to explain the process of first being seen and attracting attention, then swiftly driving the point home. Once ‘hooked’ a few telling words must explain the benefits of the proposition succinctly, then offer a ‘call to action’ where the prospect can find more detail. Today typically a web site or QR code and the ‘call to action’ could be incentivised by the promise of a useful or attractive offer to enhance response rates. 


Advertising is a key marketing tool, to raise awareness, build brand recognition and communicate a simple or top-level message, but needs repetition to ensure that message is seen and acted upon. Other communication means such as PR and direct marketing will be called into play for a fully integrated campaign. 

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Marketing for engineering, scientific and technical b-2-b companies


For every Apple, Google, GE and Microsoft there are thousands and thousands of small businesses trading with other small businesses in the engineering, scientific and technical sector that need to market their products to a global audience on a small budget.

It is a big ask for a small business with small budgets to do this successfully which is one reason why we set up Technical Marketing Ltd to help companies like this to succeed. Common to successful engineering projects and successful marketing is the importance of planning and testing first. Our technical marketing philosophy helps engineer marketing solutions that support and aid delivery of company objectives. Starting at the beginning of the planning process is the marketing plan. Very few companies actually seem to have one any more than they have a formal business plan. There is too often the impression conveyed that the only marketing plan is to repeat last year's pattern of expenditure - usually the last several years - which makes it difficult to find budget for new concepts. All at a time when marketing is rapidly evolving. The usual reason given for not having a formal marketing plan is lack of time. But what is the point in spending money without knowing why or having any benchmark to measure whether it is successful? We recommend not only reviewing the marketing plan at least annually, but also setting the budget that will help deliver the results and company objectives. 

Technical marketing brings the same engineering methodology and thinking to marketing - introducing staffing structures, building the team, setting objectives through the marketing plan, formalising budgets, introducing financial controls, defining schedules and setting specifications for creative projects. Too often companies launch into building a web site, designing a brochure, booking an exhibition stand or commissioning an advertisement without first deciding on what they need to achieve. Design led agencies naturally play to their strengths - a flare for creative and compelling designs - and wow clients with exciting images. Arguably engineering marketing, or as we call it technical marketing, lacks some of that wow factor, but what we have discovered is that clients recognise the benefits that our approach can bring to the bottom line. We supply the rationale. And with the increasing importance of the Internet in marketing, a technical competence and comprehension of what works online too.  Of course there is a need for professional creativity, but it requires purpose and direction - in short planning, organisation, discipline and control. So engineering marketing solutions works - our clients testify to that.

So do the marketing techniques employed by giant companies too woo consumers work for the less glamorous world of business-to-business marketing, where budgets are considerably less? The answer is that the general principles of marketing still apply – the challenge is how they are applied. People buying business products and services are also consumers who experience the world of consumer marketing every day, but in their professional capacity will be less influenced by emotional appeals. When buying or specifying b-2-b products the process is not characterized by a spontaneous desire for instant gratification. It is a process of evaluation and consideration which may be quite lengthy. But what might ultimately differentiate one similar product from another is the reputation of the brand of the supplier. Although price will always be important, quality, reliability, technology, availability, post sales support and many other factors may figure in the final purchase decision. Building that reputation for a brand is where marketing performs a vital role in creating an environment where purchasers will ultimately demonstrate a preference for one product over another.

Marketing should not be confused with sales. It is far more to do with planning for the future, with strategy to keep ahead of fast moving trends, the routes to market, and the means of promotion and delivery that provide the essential environment in which selling can be successful. When marketing technical products, there are many facets to the marketing role. Technical marketing will typically embrace new product development, marketing communications and protection of intellectual property. Instead of the emotional appeal of consumer marketing we recognize that in the marketing space we address of industrial, engineering, scientific, technical and entertainment technology products, we are more typically engaged with engineers. Accordingly we have introduced an engineering approach to marketing. Engineering brings discipline to marketing, a discipline much needed in controlling the flights of fancy of the creative media types in getting the i's dotted and t's crossed, keeping feet firmly on the ground and keeping sight of the purpose of marketing a product - not in winning design awards. And if bringing engineering into marketing might seem a strange notion, unless marketing is properly controlled and brought in on budget then it will be a disaster. Engineering projects are as much about planning, adherence to schedules and budgets as they are about technology. In fact engineers are increasingly being employed in some surprising areas including many types of management consulting even in the financial sector. 

Planning needs to be followed by effective implementation. This is an important part of our client involvement – working as part of the team to actually implement the plan at an operational level. By working in partnership with our clients, changing circumstances can be easily accommodated in the plan. We bring experience in a range of marketing disciplines from traditional to evolving online techniques and can handle some or all of these to an agreed plan. The mix will differ according to each client’s own specific needs and resources. Most of our clients now regard Technical Marketing Ltd as part of their team thanks to long standing business relationships.

If you market technical products and think your business could benefit from working with us then get in touch. If you are just interested in what we do then sign up for our e-mail newsletter or just follow us on Twitter or any of the other options offered on the web site. We are here to help businesses succeed.

Wednesday, October 05, 2011

Has social media ruined marketing?

Social media continues to divide marketing opinion. Rather than treat social media as another marketing tool, the antagonists are tending to focus on the all or nothing approach. In short throw out the old ways and bring in the new.

One important rule of traditional marketing was not to rush into new media opportunities which at one time was more likely to be a new publication. The thing then was to wait until all the hype of the new title launch had quietened down, then see how the readership - your target customers - had taken to it. Quite often new publications failed to build a readership and make it to the point where they had a certified circulation. Social media is easier to experiment with to see how it works and although some are free to use, resource will still be required to create content whether text, images or video, even if that resource is time of in-house staff.

Some voices are arguing that display advertising in the media is now wasted money, unlike AdWords and the like that provide a great heap of data that can be traced. Recently QR codes have suddenly been seized upon as a means of linking to a landing page via a smart phone or iPad and reviving the flagging medium. One journal has even decided to launch a QR directory with great fanfare.

Countering the call to switch to traditional media one article provocatively pointed out that prior to social media companies conducted a monologue with their customers, but now small businesses can compete on a level playing field. Bigger companies that could spend more on space and compelling creative concepts find social media has evened that out as they have to conform to a fixed format.

The best approach is to review the overall marketing mix and try to be in the media and places where your customers go. The challenge now is discovering just where that is.