Is your marketing working for you?

Do you find yourself having to invest more time each week looking for sales? 

When you take a well earned break, do your sales fall off? 

Then your marketing is probably not working for you.

The desire not to be left out, to keep up with the latest trends and technology, has meant many businesses are leaping into high-end advertising and marketing, without the preparation or grounding in the basics that support these techniques. Having invested a significant amount of effort in developing an online and social media presence, many businesses have forgotten about the basic building blocks that should be supporting and building their brand.

Business who have the courage to admit that their current marketing is not working for them, need to focus on the basics, their 5W’s. These basics have always worked, they still driving the content of all major advertising and marketing campaigns, no matter the platform they run on. 

Many marketing Guru’s hold up the large multi-nationals as the example to follow, highlighting some of the strategies and tactic's that they have used. Yes, these tactics have been proven to work, in big companies. Companies that have a major investment in the trained and experienced staff to make it work. Much of this advice is not exactly relevant to SME’s as they have neither the budgets, the experience nor the staff to run similar campaigns. 

Smaller businesses need a different way of thinking about advertising and marketing. They must make sure they are relevant and connect with their audience in an authentic way. They need to take a longer term strategy, building a self sustaining campaign that does not need to micromanaged to keep it relevant.  Think ahead, what other events are going on to which you can link your advertising? Let them do the promotional work and place your ad's within their material. To many SME's miss out on these fantastic opportunities to promote their business because they have to think and plan months, or even years ahead. Get this right and you can send more time on your business doing the things you set out to do, not working for your business as an unqualified, unpaid advertising sales and marketing manger.

Gavin Bryan-Tansley Owner Vid-FX+

Business to business networking

Networking! Geese do it…
Ok it is a bit of a stretch but it makes a better photograph than a room full of people in suits!

Business to business networking is often looked upon as so difficult that many businesses refuse to even try!

The classic business persons response to networking prompted a short series of videos we made for 4Networking a few years back. Featuring Colin McKeand, of Nutri-Tox, giving advice on networking for businesses. Although technologically aged, the advice in these videos holds true today. This is well worth the time to view these videos and to review them from time to time to keep your essential networking skills honed to perfection.

Networking Part-1

Networking is one of the hardest skills for the business person to master. Colin helps you understand what you need to do to become and effective networker.

Networking Part-2

The second part of Colin McKeand's talk on networking at 4Networking Fife. 'How to introduce yourself and your business.'

Networking Part-3

Colin Mckeand concludes his talk on networking. 'How to make your networking effective by following up.'

-Gavin Bryan-Tansley Owner Vid-FX+

We can't all be experts.

We can't all be experts at everything. 

Learn how to subcontract tasks to specialist providers. Where you could spend weeks learning about some new technique without serious damage to your business. There is no way you can compete with someone who have made an area of study their own speciality. Why not save time and use their acquired knowledge to boost your business, while you concentrate on doing what you do best.

- Gavin Bryan-Tansley Owner Vid-FX+

Stop measuring and start mattering

Not everything can be quantified, yet some humans have a compulsion to measure, categorise, order and file. Sometimes this becomes so extreme that it becomes the only criteria that matters. 

Advertising metrics started as a measure that the ad agencies could quantify (ROI, 'Return On Investment' requires access to financial records not always available to an agency).  Metrics were by and large a simple measurement of how many people have been exposed to your adverts. Today we can say, you have so many hits, click throughs, views, likes, followers , etc. 

Yet now these 'metrics' have become the be all and end all of advertising to some. Their sole target is to acquire move views, likes and followers, than their perceived rivals. This has exploded to such an extent that there is now a lucrative market in the buying and selling of these figures, totally distorting and destroying the validity of any figures that might be produced.

What is all to often overlooked in the one single measure that counts, money. Is your turn over up, down, or does it remain the same? While there are various forms of advertising to build brand awareness, associate your name with a product or service, new product introduction, special offers and so forth. The one single aim of all these is to persuade customers to buy from you. 

Recently we made an advert that was shown only once to a restricted audience. That advert won a major contract for our client. Another series of ad's convinced a customer to purchase from a local business, turning them from a struggling small business into an international exporter. Yet in terms of the metrics both of these ad's would have been judged abject failures.

So the message here is, "what can't be measured often matters more than what can". Stop focusing on the numbers and focus on the people who make the buying decisions. Your advertising should serve a purpose and not be just another business a task to measured on a graph.

Gavin Bryan-Tansley Owner Vid-FX+

Social Media Advertising (UK) Law

Advertising practice in the UK.

An official publication on the 6th of June 2013 reminded businesses that the Code of Advertising Practice covers all social media, not just TV commercials.

The committee of advertising practice reported that in 2012 they dealt with 8,368 cases in social media alone, more than another media. This is expected to grow as the public are becoming evermore aware that false or misleading advertising online is governed by the same laws as more 'traditional' media.

It is also suggested that sponsorship and adverting messages be clearly defined. For example on Twitter use hash tags such as #spon or #ad.

In March 2011 the laws governing advertising were extended to apply to a companies’ own websites and any other third party space they control, such as social networks and email. This includes such things as testimonials, user generated content and posts by third parties.

This means that if you are accepting or inviting testimonials and comments. You are expected to monitor and moderate these to ensure that they themselves do not breach the advertising rules. This is because these responses then become part of your advertising.

Complex and bewildering?

Thats why we have companies that specialise in advertising. Your video production company, nor your photographers, designers or other media producers, are not concerned about this aspect, it is not their job, it is yours. It is not them who will be fined and it will not be their reputation that is damaged.

As every company is recommended to have a lawyer, an accountant and other professional support to keep them on the right side of the law. Every company should have their own advertising agency. Ultimately it is your responsibility to be sure that you and your staff know what you can and cannot say. Professional consultancy fee's are not desperately expensive. They are in fact quite cheap when compared to what it may cost if you are caught using false, misleading or illegal advertising.

At this point we usually come to the question, "Who's going to notice?" Beaware that it takes only one complaint to launch an investigation. A complaint can come form a member of the public, a disgruntled customer or a business rival. Adverts have been removed for just one complaint out of millions of views, if the CAP hold that the complaint is justified.

With modern technology anyone can make an advert. With the proliferation of media production companies they could even be a very good advert. But if it does not comply with the code of advertising practice and various other laws, acts and regulations, it is ultimately a futile and costly exercise.

Gavin Bryan-Tansley Owner Vid-FX+

The Best Advert?

Advertising does not have to plug a product or service, simply sponsoring a message, can be more powerful in promoting a brand than a direct advert.

Budweiser's Supper Bowl XLVIII Commercial promotes pet adoption.

Watch it here: Budweiser Commercial 2014

Of course there are the haters repeating the usual nonsense form a century ago. But even then it does show that the massage has got through, people are watching and encouraging other people to watch. Spreading the message further that it would normally have reached. Making the advert viral and exposing it to a wider audience than the advertisers hoped for, spreading the message and building the brand.

One day when a member of this extended audience reaches for the beer in the supermarket they will put Budweiser in their trolley. If they decide to get a pet they will think of adopting. At this point the advert has achieved its aim. As I look at it this ad has had over 45 million views on YouTube alone. Estimates put the TV figures at over 100 million. If only one in 10,000 responds that is little short of half a million, would anyone like to then guess how many puppies find new homes? Or how many additional sales Budweiser makes over the next year?

Lets put it this way Forbes magazine estimates that this years crop of Super bowl adverts cost between $3.5 million for a 30 second slot in game time and about 1.5 million dollars to make. These figures have increase year on year since 2003. The companies advertising are not spending this vast sum without a reasonable expectation of a return on their investment. With a typical range of return on investment on a TV ad broadcast in this time slot, being around 170% to 300% I'll let you do the maths. I will tell you this no one invests that sort of money if they are not expecting to get their investment back and more!

Of course, multi million pound advertising campaigns are out of the reach of most businesses. Yet the return on investment of a properly produced and managed advertising campaign can be as great or greater with a much smaller investment. The key is to...

Ah, well, that's where I start earning my living ;-)

- Gavin Bryan-Tansley Owner Vid-FX+

'Hypnosis' in Advertising

"Advertising is criticised on the ground that it can manipulate consumers to follow the will of the advertiser. The weight of evidence denies this ability. Instead, evidence supports the position that advertising, to be successful, must understand or anticipate basic human needs and wants and interpret available goods and services in terms of their want-satisfying abilities. This is the very opposite of manipulation."

- Charles H. Sandage, Some Institutional Aspects of Advertising, 1972.

Do you really think that adverts can hypnotise people into buying things that they do not want?

During my research into quotes on advertising, I found that the bulk of comments written against advertising, were written in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This was before the rules and regulations were placed upon advertisers to ensure that all advertising is 'legal,  decent, honest and truthful'. Yet despite all evidence to the contrary they still remain a popular myth.

I don't doubt that many of my clients would wish that I could wave a magic wand and make everyone buy from their businesses. Unfortunately this form of magic does not exist. What we do have, is many years of experience, study, research and testing, leading to an understanding of the market. Ideally we would be called in at the conception of a product or service to carryout market research and test marketing. We would advise on the demand for the product, the design, packaging and presentation. Sadly all to often, we are only consulted when a business is already failing. Sometimes we can pull it around, but miracles are not something we can guarantee to deliver.

Having established that we are neither magicians nor miracle workers. We can say that we do have knowledge and experience that would not be available to you should you try and do it yourselves. Please keep in mind that if you are not using an advertising agency, your more successful competitors probably are. The time you spend trying to understand our business is time that you are not spending on your business. Get it right and advertising can more than pay for itself. Get it wrong? Well, that is a subject that nightmares are made of. 

Back to the title, Hypnosis in advertising, or 'using the techniques of hypnosis and linguistic programming in advertising'. As you will have seen in the quote above, these techniques have long since been discredited. To ease public feeling on the subject they have also been banned under the ruling against the use of subliminal advertising. 

So don't take the risk of using discredited and illegal practices, just pick up the phone and talk to someone who has made this area of business their speciality and who can guide you in making you advertising and marketing really work.

Gavin Bryan-Tansley Owner Vid-FX+