News

The Ansoff Matrix – deciding your growth strategy

January 19^th, 2021 in News

The Ansoff Matrix is an old business model that survives to this day because it still helps you develop a growth plan for your business. It won’t magically reveal an option you’d never thought of before but it will help you understand the difficulties you’ll face with different growth options. Contents Ansoff 1: Market Penetration Ansoff 2: Product Development Ansoff 3: Market Development Ansoff 4: Company Diversification Here’s the model. Imagine a matrix with products across the top…

The Three Step Bounce – better sales pitches

January 18^th, 2021 in News

The three-step bounce model is your route to better sales pitches and a technique for improving every brochure, email or webpage you write. It works because it’s all about what the customer is interested in. Here’s the model. Imagine a four quadrant graph. At the top, we have you. At the bottom, we have your customer. On the left, we have the past. On the right, we have the future. When you’re trying to sell or promote something to a customer, what do you think they’re…

Marketing isn’t just about ‘digital’ and social media

January 13^th, 2021 in News

This is the high(er) resolution version of the animation we posted on social media (ironically). Everyone has become so obsessed by digital marketing in general and social media in particular that we’ve forgotten the other dimensions of marketing that could help our businesses. The world has now reached the stage where the likes of Mark Ritson are recommending candidates to lie about their devotion to digital marketing to get a job. He was probably talking tongue-in-cheek but you can…

The Long and the Short of It: questions and problems

December 23^rd, 2020 in News

OK, so let’s look at some of the very puzzling data and charts in “The Long and the Short of It”. Don’t let these questions detract from the value of the principles the report reveals. The message is undoubtedly right. But some of the data. Well, let’s take a look. The Long and the Short of It dataset “The Long and the Short of It” is based on the results of 996 advertising campaigns entered into the IPA’s national and international effectiveness competition between 1980 to…

The Long and the Short of It: lessons for SMEs

December 21^st, 2020 in News

This commentary on Binet and Field’s “The Long and the Short of It” is going to take two parts. The first part will cover the lessons business-to-business SMEs can take from it. Although it’s a study of big-budget advertising from large enterprises, many of the principles can be scaled down and made to work for organisations without such deep pockets. The second part will focus on some of the problems with the data and the way it’s presented. Some of it is really strange and yet it…

Price affects profit more than quantity

December 10^th, 2020 in News

Price, profit and quantity have a complicated relationship. If your marketing department works to any business metrics, they’re probably related to sales quantity. We’re always under pressure to sell more. If we sold 2,000 this month, we need to sell 2,500 next month. Simple maths shows us that this is the wrong priority. If profit is our ultimate goal – and it should be – controlling your pricing is far more important than sales quantity. Understanding our price, profit and quantity…

Brand attributes help sales

October 20^th, 2020 in News

What Are Brand Attributes? Brand attributes are the characteristics people associate with your brand. In a business to business environment, positive brand attributes could be “expert”, “good value” or “understands our industry”. Negative brand attributes could be “overpriced”, “incompetent” or “slow”. Do brand attributes help sales? Brand attributes have a strong effect on your commercial performance and competitiveness. Let’s demonstrate that with a very…

Using a psychographic profile in marketing

September 7^th, 2020 in News

A psychographic profile is a definition of a person (a purchaser in our case) based on psychological characteristics such as values, fears, goals, interests or opinions. It defines people by their personality traits as opposed to demographic facts like age, gender, income or location. It’s also different to the occupational characteristics we often use as marketers: job title, seniority, et cetera. Take a look at this chart that compares psychographic, demographic and occupational attributes:…

Buyer personas – understanding purchasing behaviours

August 24^th, 2020 in News

You can make your marcoms more effective by using buyer personas to describe the behaviour of people as they go through their purchasing process. People act differently as they move from being vaguely interested in a product to actively considering buying it. Contents Our cast of four buyer personas Browser Bill Interested Iris Purchasing Paula Loyal Luke Buyer personas aren’t linear Buyer personas aren’t singular These are not normal buyer personas Buyer personas and psychographic profiles…

The AIDA Model – is the purchase process linear?

August 20^th, 2020 in News

What is the AIDA model? The AIDA model describes a linear purchasing process. The four stages it proposes are Awareness (originally Attention), Interest, Desire and finally Action. The model originated in the American advertising industry in the early 20th century so it’s got a lot of history behind it. Contents Awareness Interest Desire Action What’s wrong with the AIDA model? Where does AIDA fit in your marketing strategy? How to develop the AIDA Model. Awareness At this stage in the AIDA…