A lot of companies have slogans just for the sake of having one. A slogan which a company doesn’t follow or believe in is useless. People forget how useful slogans can be. They can be used to describe your product or service in one sentence, to tell people what sets you apart, to show them how you can help them.

A slogan should be a companies mantra. Something short and vague but easy to follow through every facet of your business from promotion to staff attitude.

I am currently working with Young’s Auctioneers who are an auctioneer & estate agent based in Ranelagh, Dublin 6. The company’s slogan was “Make the right move with Young’s Auctioneers”. The slogan is fine from a customer point of view telling them to make the right move. The problem is they are telling the customer to choose them. This is very one sided and shows no work or involvement from Young’s point of view. Also the fact that the company name is included does not help as most people are not interested in the name of your company. They want you to be interested in them. Young’s are a very experienced busy company who have a team of long standing staff ready to help people. The customer deals with one person from start to finish to make thing smoother and hassle free. The fact that they came to me to design their new website shows that they care about their image and how the customer views them. These selling points can never be tied into the old slogan.

The new slogan I created was much simpler and back to basics. It is now “Making you feel at home”. This is not just about helping someone find a home that feels good. This is about the company attitude. The long term staff, the one person dealing with a customer. These things are all done to make people feel at ease or at home. Buying a property is difficult and scary for a lot of people. They are putting a lot of trust in the estate agent. Whether making an enquiry to Young’s on the phone, by email or in person the first goal is to make people feel at home. The new slogan shows the company attitude and why people should use them and also that the customer is the sole focus.

It is fine not having a slogan but if you do have one make sure it is one that works for you and helps your business.

wrote by Dave: HiddenDepth.ie

Digital Marketing School is a free online video resource for anyone who has an interest in the world of digital marketing, from a beginners level, right up to seasoned professionals.

The aim is to help people with some of the basics, put some meaning behind the buzzwords, and give a broad understanding to newcomers of what is possible in the world of digital marketing

The school also looks at more advanced areas, new evolutions in technology, and where the digital marketing industry is going in the coming years.

Each month, they have a guest speaker from the industry, discussing a digital marketing campaign that really captured their imagination.

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http://www.digitalmarketingschool.com/
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As the list of marketing options grows to include social networking, email marketing and whisper campaigns, small- and medium-size businesses must have a solid marketing strategy.

But the truth is that more than half of new businesses don’t bother. A recent survey found that 58.9 per cent of small-business owners don’t prepare an annual marketing strategy or attempt to identify the benefit and cost of marketing. This could be why the failure rate of small businesses is so high in the first year.

The director of Marketing News, Mary Brennan is not surprised by the research.

“A lot of businesses don’t put much thought into a marketing plan and as a result, it’s often done ad hoc,” she says.

“Businesses need to realise that marketing isn’t an expense but a legitimate business-building activity.”

But a lot of small businesses don’t know how to develop a marketing strategy.

“Often they will try a marketing technique based on their own ideas or what may seem like a bargain only to realise it only reached a small percentage of their target market, by which time their budget is blown,” she says.

The classic first step for Irish businesses is something like a leaflet drop or taking an ad out in the local paper. Often this course of action is taken in the absence of any other ideas!

A marketing plan should look at how a business will promote itself to its target audience, usually over a 12-month period.
Brennan says a marketing plan should include a detailed budget and examine the best ways to promote the business.

“You want [it] to take in analysis of your competitors and to have specific goals,” she says.

“It also needs to break down how much you’ve set aside for marketing, how you’re going to spend it, look at who your target audience is and how you tackle internal and external communications.”

A marketing plan for a small business might be only a few pages long but larger businesses often require a more-detailed plan.

The plan needs to be revisited monthly – or, at the very least, quarterly, Brennan says.

Business owners can write their own plan or if they have no experience in Marketing should contact an expert, even having a chat with one or two marketing companies will give you new ideas and an insight into how professionals appraoch marketing. You may not end up hiring anyone but I guarantee you will pick up some valuable tips along the way.

“We found that companies are either too busy to stop and write a marketing strategy or simply don’t place enough value on having a plan in place,” according to Brennan.

Like other key aspects of developping a successful business your marketing activity must be relevant and effective. If marketing is an area of weakness for you find a solution / person to manage it. You may have the best product or service in the world but unless the right people (your target market) know about it you are dead in the water. Do not ignore marketing your business and if your efforts to date have not been succesful it means one of two things …your idea sucks or you are no good at marketing…so which is it?