Do you think that you are not creative? Do you think that only artists and designers are creative? The fact is that we all start out being creative - does anyone know a 5 year old that's not creative and doesn't have a great imagination. Sadly we lose it along the way, it's deadened by well intentioned parents who fear that we'll be dreamers and by a society that discourages people from asking too many questions.
For most people (and companies), creativity remains an abstract notion: Yes they'd like to have more of it, but they're not sure how to get it, or what to do with it once they have it. Well step right this way, we're going to get creative.
What is Creativity? It's simply the art of making people think in a different way. How simple is that.
Brilliant marketing is about creating momentum, giving people a sense of change, at the most basic level it changes the minds of your customers. Does your website have the power to change the minds of your customers?
Brilliant Tip: Always listen to your inner voice - trust it and believe in it
Why is Creativity Important? Because it is there to facilitate and drive change and is vital if you want to market brilliantly:
* Get noticed
* Change opinion
* Strengthen opinion
* Provoke action
How can you get in the creative zone?
1. Creative identity - think about how you introduce yourself the safe way or the dramatic way. Which one is best?(....and it's not the first one). Does your website have the WOW factor immediately?
2. Choose creativity -Think about a product, any product, it could be your product or a product that you really like. On a pad write down as many different marketing ideas that might increase sales on the web, be really wacky, totally mad and do not think about the outcome. Then spend some time picking the best ones, that you think have promise. This exercise is designed to get your creative juices flowing not to produce a great marketing campaign. It's designed to answer the question "Can you create stuff?" - bet the answers yes, it doesn't matter if it's not great stuff yet, it's just stuff for now - greatness comes later and the more you produce ideas - in general - the better they will get.
3. Fast forward creativity - This is maybe the most creative thing you can do. Get a series of people together, not just people - your consumers, people who would use your product or you would like to use your products. Have a conversation with them, maybe over a beer or a glass of wine, find out all about them, find out what they like, now they think, why would they buy your product, why wouldn't they buy your product, what would make them buy more of it?
Brilliant Tip: You will never be brilliant at marketing unless you really get to know your consumers. It's about what they want, not about what you want.
Example of being creative - Planting the seeds of success:
THE PROBLEM: OM Scott, a retailer of seeds and lawn care products wanted to sell more. Sadly their products although good were no better than their competitors. So they needed to differentiate themselves.
THE STRATEGY: They went to their customer and asked them what problems did they have with lawn care. The main problem was customers being able to plant seeds in a controlled way and spread the seeds around for better coverage. Scott decided they needed to help their customers solve this problem.
They came up with the Scott Spreader a device that spread seeds equally along the ground and could be adjusted to control the flow of seeds.
THE OUTCOME: OM Scott made millions and the company became the market leader in their field.
THE LESSON: They did this by looking at what they wanted to achieve (more sales) but then shifted their view to that of their customer. By solving their customers problem they also solved their own. They were creative and looked outside the box.
Image what would have happened had they not spoken to their customers to find out the problems they wanted solving - win customers by solving their problems, if you do this on their first visit to your website they will be engaged and come back for more.
Ask yourself these questions:
Have I considered what my customers need on my website?
Have I asked them what they would like to see on my website?
Do I know what their concerns are, can I address these concerns through my website?
What problems do they have in relation to my business?
Can I help them solve these problems, how can I make things easier for them?
How to be Creative:
Be aware of your customers problems.
Focus on how these can be solved.
Brainstorm lots of possible solutions.
Consider how these can relate to your business.
Other examples of being creative:
Prius put solar panels in their car roofs. Why? Because they found out that a lot of their owners liked to have a snooze in their car at lunchtime and wanted the air-con on but didn't want to leave their engine running. Brilliant.
Pret a Porter at the Berkley Hotel discovered that ladies who lunched wanted to stay and have tea but cucumber sandwiches were soooo not it. So they created designer fashion biscuits, inviting designers to contribute to the shape and colour of their own range. Brilliant.
M&S realised that the really big problem with men's trousers was that their change always fell out of their pocket, so they came up with a range of 'coin catcher' trousers which have pockets that are designed to stop your change from falling out. Brilliant.
Let me know how you get on being creative and brilliant, I'd love to hear from you or just post a comment.
Next time:
Have you got the right stuff to be a brilliant marketer?
Strengths that you need to have.
Right/Left brain - which side are you on?
Feel the buzz.
How to be outstanding and how to put it all together.
What do David Bowie and Madonna have in common?
Brainstorming - how to do it properly.
Thursday 25 March 2010
Thursday 18 March 2010
Does your website work? Here's how you can become brilliant at marketing your website.
"If you build it, they will come" does not apply to Web sites. Marketing your Web site is as important if not more important as designing it . An easy question to ask but a hard question to answer about your website is:- DOES MY WEBSITE WORK FOR MY BUSINESS?
Most companies have a website, but very few of them use their website to their fullest potential. What is the fullest potential? - Brilliance.
Most people think they are too busy to even try and be brilliant at marketing, but if we need to be more creative we have to find the time. They think they don't have the skills to market their business or website, but it's not about skill, it's a mindset thing. All you need to do is find ways of maximising the stimuli to create brilliance. By creating brilliance you will gain the attention of all your distracted and over stimulated consumers.
Working out how to get your target market to do and think something they otherwise wouldn't have thought about or done is simple and brilliant, how do you do this? By looking at your website through your customers' eyes, As the saying goes, if you want to understand a Red Indian, spend a day walking in their moccasins. Always make sure that you have answered the question, What's in it for my customer?
The trouble is it's often hard to distance yourself, we get totally pre-occupied with the product (i.e. the feature). We often forget that our customers are far more interested in the benefits - people buy benefits and not features. Work out how you can demonstrate those benefits through your website and you're winning all the way to the bank.
Typically I see a lot of websites that don't work. The owners think that they do work, in fact they are usually extremely proud of their website, they like the way it looks, they like the way it sounds and they like what it has to say about their business. The trouble is they are not buying their products or services, their customers are and their prospects and these are the people who are important. Your customers are the people who need to like your website and understand it's message. If I asked you "How's your website working for your business?" would you know the answer? Would it surprise you to know that 95% of people would not know the answer to that question.
Marketing a website has never been more important because business has never been so competitive, especially now in these uncertain economic times, but it's a task that's so often overlooked, forgotten or just too big to take on, especially if you're a small business or working alone.
Over the next few weeks I'm going to be posting some articles about how to be brilliant at marketing a website. It's not about employing someone to market your website. It's not about how much money it will take to market a website. It's not about a theory. It's about giving you the tools so that you can learn how to be brilliant, why internet marketing is changing and most of all about understanding your customers and how consumers use the internet.
If you'd like to receive email updates when I post these articles, just let me know by emailing me at michelle@yourwebstar.co.uk and as every if you need any advice, call me - it's free to chat.
Telephone: 01625 821072
Most companies have a website, but very few of them use their website to their fullest potential. What is the fullest potential? - Brilliance.
Most people think they are too busy to even try and be brilliant at marketing, but if we need to be more creative we have to find the time. They think they don't have the skills to market their business or website, but it's not about skill, it's a mindset thing. All you need to do is find ways of maximising the stimuli to create brilliance. By creating brilliance you will gain the attention of all your distracted and over stimulated consumers.
Working out how to get your target market to do and think something they otherwise wouldn't have thought about or done is simple and brilliant, how do you do this? By looking at your website through your customers' eyes, As the saying goes, if you want to understand a Red Indian, spend a day walking in their moccasins. Always make sure that you have answered the question, What's in it for my customer?
The trouble is it's often hard to distance yourself, we get totally pre-occupied with the product (i.e. the feature). We often forget that our customers are far more interested in the benefits - people buy benefits and not features. Work out how you can demonstrate those benefits through your website and you're winning all the way to the bank.
Typically I see a lot of websites that don't work. The owners think that they do work, in fact they are usually extremely proud of their website, they like the way it looks, they like the way it sounds and they like what it has to say about their business. The trouble is they are not buying their products or services, their customers are and their prospects and these are the people who are important. Your customers are the people who need to like your website and understand it's message. If I asked you "How's your website working for your business?" would you know the answer? Would it surprise you to know that 95% of people would not know the answer to that question.
Marketing a website has never been more important because business has never been so competitive, especially now in these uncertain economic times, but it's a task that's so often overlooked, forgotten or just too big to take on, especially if you're a small business or working alone.
Over the next few weeks I'm going to be posting some articles about how to be brilliant at marketing a website. It's not about employing someone to market your website. It's not about how much money it will take to market a website. It's not about a theory. It's about giving you the tools so that you can learn how to be brilliant, why internet marketing is changing and most of all about understanding your customers and how consumers use the internet.
If you'd like to receive email updates when I post these articles, just let me know by emailing me at michelle@yourwebstar.co.uk and as every if you need any advice, call me - it's free to chat.
Telephone: 01625 821072
Thursday 4 March 2010
Email Marketing - Is it worth the trouble?
A business can't afford to ignore the internet- it offers up so many opportunities for free or very cheap marketing as well as many advantages over traditional forms of marketing that you'd be a fool not to consider it as a marketing tool.
But more so than ever before, business have to watch their costs and climbing your way up through the recession means that marketing budgets are going to be even more tightly squeezed than ever. So here's how you can reach a wider audience with your messages for very little money, though that's not to say it won't take some time and careful planning.
If you have a message that you want to communicate or products that you would like to promote then think about direct marketing through email. Email marketing continues to bring the best results for the least amount of investment. It has been proven to be easier to drive consumers from your email campaign to a purchase, because they can simply click on a link and be taken straight to a purchase online or to your website.
Offering exclusive deals for email customers can really catch people's eye and often they will forward these emails onto friends which means you reach even more potential customers. Eye catching designs can make all the difference and this is where we can really help. We can design you templates that are guaranteed to catch the attention of your email prospects.
To give you some idea of the power of these emails here is a real case scenario:
We designed an email template for a business who sell Prom Dresses. They sent their email out to 356 people, they offered them a discount on dresses if they purchased a dress by Feb 28th 2010 (within a month of sending the email. They achieved a 38% opening rate which meant in real numbers that 135 people opened the email. 25% of those people clicked on a link to the website which means that 33 people visited their website. 18 people called the shop and made appointments to view dresses. In addition they received over 20 phone calls from people whose friends had forwarded the email to them. In total this resulted in sales of £3,560. The cost to send the emails was less than £40.00
We can provide an easy system to send out emails to customers and clients in a regular basis starting at £10.00 delivery charge and 2pence per email. As always with any marketing activity, close monitoring of results is essential to make sure you're focusing your efforts in the right places and our systems provide reports and ideas to help you make the most of your email campaigns.
If you want to dip your toes into the world of email marketing give us a call and find out more about how we could help you to increase your sales in 2010.
Email: michelle@yourwebstar.co.uk
Tel: 01625 821 072
Mob: 07784 128 016
But more so than ever before, business have to watch their costs and climbing your way up through the recession means that marketing budgets are going to be even more tightly squeezed than ever. So here's how you can reach a wider audience with your messages for very little money, though that's not to say it won't take some time and careful planning.
If you have a message that you want to communicate or products that you would like to promote then think about direct marketing through email. Email marketing continues to bring the best results for the least amount of investment. It has been proven to be easier to drive consumers from your email campaign to a purchase, because they can simply click on a link and be taken straight to a purchase online or to your website.
Offering exclusive deals for email customers can really catch people's eye and often they will forward these emails onto friends which means you reach even more potential customers. Eye catching designs can make all the difference and this is where we can really help. We can design you templates that are guaranteed to catch the attention of your email prospects.
To give you some idea of the power of these emails here is a real case scenario:
We designed an email template for a business who sell Prom Dresses. They sent their email out to 356 people, they offered them a discount on dresses if they purchased a dress by Feb 28th 2010 (within a month of sending the email. They achieved a 38% opening rate which meant in real numbers that 135 people opened the email. 25% of those people clicked on a link to the website which means that 33 people visited their website. 18 people called the shop and made appointments to view dresses. In addition they received over 20 phone calls from people whose friends had forwarded the email to them. In total this resulted in sales of £3,560. The cost to send the emails was less than £40.00
We can provide an easy system to send out emails to customers and clients in a regular basis starting at £10.00 delivery charge and 2pence per email. As always with any marketing activity, close monitoring of results is essential to make sure you're focusing your efforts in the right places and our systems provide reports and ideas to help you make the most of your email campaigns.
If you want to dip your toes into the world of email marketing give us a call and find out more about how we could help you to increase your sales in 2010.
Email: michelle@yourwebstar.co.uk
Tel: 01625 821 072
Mob: 07784 128 016
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