Develop A Marketing And Marketing Communications Strategy And Plan For Small Or Midsized Companies

Planning for the year ahead is never an easy task. Lack of resources (people, time, budget), keeping up to date on what’s going on in your market, obtaining quality leads and improving brand awareness and reputation have become increasingly difficult for all organizations – for profit companies as well as nonprofits. This has become especially true among US CEO’s who are concerned with not just domestic but also international uncertainties.Developing A Marketing And Marketing Communications Strategy Is CriticalThis should be your priority. Without a strategy for a plan there are way too many opportunities to get off track and chew up your investment. Your ROI will suffer. Consider the following to focus your efforts when developing your strategy and plan:1. Determining, understanding and verifying your target customers and prospects should be at the top of your agenda. To improve profitability and ROI you must know what your audience wants and needs, how they perceive your brand and how it stands up to competition.Be sure to avoid industry and company “myths” and internal “opinions”. Employ primary and secondary research to understand your audience. With so much information available about companies and brands, it is truly the Age Of The Consumer and will be for a very long time.2. Additionally, as part of your knowledge of your audience, determine the size and scope of various sub-segments that exist today and will tomorrow. For example, does your audience include women, or Asians, or Hispanics? If so, look at the dramatic growth of these segments of the populations and determine if your brand needs to pay particular attention to them.Also, recognize that millennials (23% of the US population) are not a homogenous group. At the younger end (20 – 28 years), 40 percent t are currently living rent free with family, while at the older end (29 – 35 years), 43 percent have already purchased a home. With that in mind, how should your strategy differ if you’re targeting adults 55 years and older (21% of US population)?3. Once you clearly understand your audience, develop your unique brand position. To do this, create a brand positioning statement. The statement is a succinct description of the core target audience to whom the brand is directed and a compelling picture of how you want your audience to view the brand. Sound simple? Take a few minutes and try to answer the four components of your positioning:· The target audience, in very specific detail· The category in which you complete and its relevance to customers· The brand’s benefit and point of difference· A reason for the customer to believe – the most compelling proofAll marketing and marketing communications should flow from this positioning, and it should be fully understood and embraced by all employees, sales reps, partners and management.4. Improving brand awareness is very important but only the first step. You also need to create great customer experiences with each touch point of your brand. And that means creating brand advocacy at all levels of contact. Develop brand champions at every level of purchase and repurchase to improve ROI.Be sure these influencers completely understand, believe and can articulate your brand premise. And provide them with the training and tools to convey their trust-worthiness in a believable manner.Developing A Focused Marketing And Marketing Communications Plan And BudgetAfter the hard work of developing a meaningful strategy, recognize it’s equally important to develop a specific plan and budget. The following should be taken into consideration:1. You must be media neutral and open minded in developing your plan and budget. It is extremely important to understand the difference between “efficiency” and “effectiveness”, and not get caught up with the latest trendy new tactic.Regardless of the specific marketing tactic, or type of digital or traditional media, you’re evaluating, keep in mind that cost efficiency does not necessarily lead to effective results. Also, and most importantly, the best source of marketing communications leverage is the quality of the message, not the marketing tactic.2. The scope and diversity of marketing and marketing communications tactics has grown faster than the ability to measure some of them. Marketers now are actually spending money without knowing how it impacts their profitability and ROI! Consider the variety of ways in which nearly $450 billion is expected to be spent in the US in 2018:· Sales promotion ($83 billion), telemarketing ($60 billion), direct mail (($46 billion) and events ($40 billion) highlight projected 2018 US Marketing Services expenditures;· The internet ($78 billion), television ($68 billion) and the combination of radio, newspapers and magazines ($47 billion) are projected to be at the top of the 2018 US Major Media spending categories.Source: Zenith Total US SpendingAnd while it may surprise you, 90 percent of consumers (and 94 percent of millennials) still use coupons. The coupons come from a variety of on-line and traditional mediums, but mail is most popular. Why do marketers still use coupons? The simple answer is because they’re effective in guiding purchase. In developing your own plan and budget, determine and recognize the effectiveness of all marketing tactics, not just their efficiency.ROI Focused Marketing And Marketing Communications ConsultantsIf you’re like most small and midsized companies, you and your team may not have the expertise or time to develop an ROI focused marketing and marketing communications strategy, plan or budget.Even major global brands are seeking outside advisors. In my May article, I discussed the dramatic growth of management and accounting consulting practices (33% increase in US revenue) at the expense of traditional global advertising agencies (0.3% increase in US revenue). One reason for this 2017 growth of consultants is their focus – not on trends or what’s in the news – but on marketing and marketing communications effectiveness, profitably and ROI.While you may not be able to afford the large global consultants, you should consider hiring a marketing and/or marketing communications consultant. The type of people you should hire should:· Have a focus on ROI, with significant experience across industries, b2b and b2c brands, both large and small, as well as for profit and nonprofit organizations· Be media neutral, apolitical, down to earth, be willing to be part of a team and “tell it like it is” so candor will flourish· Have flexibility to bring in other professional specialists when and as needed so that overhead isn’t an ongoing expense· Have strong convictions to measure what has been done and measure what will be done to improve ROI, perhaps including a marketing communications auditIn today’s challenging environment, a greater focus on strategy, planning and budgeting can go a long way toward leapfrogging competition and improving brand profitability. And the fresh eyes of a consultant can go a long way to building a meaningful future for your brand.

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What Are the Different Types of Online Marketing?

If you want to be successful with marketing online, there are many different types of marketing that are important to understand. Each type of marketing requires specialized knowledge and understanding to ensure that it is effective.Here is an overview of the various types of online marketing that you need to know about.1. Search Engine OptimizationOften abbreviated as SEO, this type of marketing covers two types of SEO. First, there is on-page SEO which concerns optimizing each page of your website, social media profiles, blog sites, and so forth with the right terms, navigation, keywords, headlines and so forth.The other type is off-page SEO, which concerns itself with these same things off the pages you control. For example, guest blogging, forum commenting, and anything above board that you can do to get authoritative links back to your website and other online real estate are important for SEO.2. Pay-Per-Click MarketingThis is really an advertising concept but for these purposes we’re including it here. Often abbreviated PPC, this consists of any ads that you purchase that charges you for each click that a potential customer makes on the advertisement. The ad brings the lead to your sales page, or a landing page.3. Email MarketingOne of the most lucrative of all types of online marketing, email marketing is performed by using email marketing software like AWeber.com, or MailChimp.com. The software helps you follow the law when it comes to email marketing.4. Social Media MarketingAny marketing completed on social media networks that brings members, likes and connections into your product funnel is social media marketing. Social media marketing works best when you’re committed to engaging with your audience.Community and Relationship-Building MarketingThanks to forums, message boards, social media groups and more, you can now build an entire online community which enables you to get closer to them and build relationships with them. Relationships are very important when it comes to online marketing. Location MarketingToday, you should also consider marketing in your local location but you don’t even have to book a flight to market in many locations using the right search terms and focused content. If your audience is located in a specific place, you can focus all your marketing online and offline to that location.Affiliate MarketingThis is an effective way to get a legion of fans doing a lot of your marketing for you. An affiliate signs up to use your tools to market your products and/or services to their audience, and for each completed sale they get a percentage. You’ll need affiliate software for this like aMember.com or JVZoo.com.Content MarketingThis type of marketing consists of all forms of content such as videos, blogs, white papers, articles, eBooks, eCourses, email series. Anything that consist of content in all its forms is content marketing.

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Commercial Real Estate Investment – Basics

Commercial real estate investment is the natural progression from residential property investment. Experienced property investors tend to move into commercial real estate sooner than later – and for very good reasons.Once your portfolio grows you will find it very difficult to manage your investments if a large portion of them is tied in residential properties. Imagine if you have $15 million worth of residential properties. That will be a lot of homes and tenants to take care of.On the other hand $15 million will buy only a very small number of commercial properties that will be comparatively easy to manage with much lesser overheads.Commercial properties include offices, industrial sheds, free standing retail shop, bulk retail, block of shops, medical centers, service stations, motels, hotels, back packers, health clubs, churches, funeral parlors, child care centers, car yards, convenience stores, shopping malls, to name just a few. Each type of commercial real estate investment has its own peculiarities, strengths, problems, rewards and risks.The return on investment in commercial real estate is much higher than residential property.The income is net and not gross because the tenant pays all the out going expenses. The income is also more stable because of the long leases.It is typical to have returns of around 10% net for a commercial real estate investment and any where from 7% to 9% net return for a prime property.The value of a commercial real estate to a great extent is determined by the quality of the lease. In general the value is determined by taking net contractual rental being paid and use of a capitalization rate to arrive at a value. The value is also determined by the quality of the tenant and length of the lease.The value of a commercial property can drop substantially if it becomes vacant. I have seen commercial properties being sold at less than half their value if they are difficult to lease.Commercial property management is also much simpler because tenants have a strong vested interest to maintain the property to a high standard. Tenants usually derive their income from the property. They have to keep the property looking good and maintain functionality to impress their clients.I have seen tenants spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to make improvements to the property. Most of these improvements stay with the property long after the tenant has left the property.Real estate law is more flexible towards commercial lease contracts. You can virtually word and add any clause that is agreeable to the contracted parties. It is common to charge penalty interest on the out standing rent or lock the premises on continued default of rent.By far the biggest risk in commercial real estate investment is finding a new tenant in case of a vacancy. In commercial real estate the requirement of each tenant in terms of size, location, use and rent payment capacity is so different that it is very difficult to get the right tenant for the right property.For the reasons mentioned above it is also difficult to sell a commercial property investment. Higher the value of property there are lesser number of investors to buy the property. A commercial property investment is less liquid than other investments because there are very few players in the market. For a residential house there will be hundreds of potential buyers which is not the case with commercial properties.Commercial real estate investments are generally sold on capitalization rates and rarely on replacement value. It is therefore possible to purchase a poorly rented commercial property well below its market value. You can also increase the value of your commercial real estate simply by raising the rents during rent reviews or re-negotiating the lease terms when it come up for renewal.The funding for commercial property investments is harder to get as banks look at the quality of tenants, length and terms of lease. They will typically fund a maximum of 50 % to 66% of the market value of the property. The lending rates are also marginally higher. You will therefore need more equity to buy. This reduces your leveraging power to buy more property.Commercial real estate is where professional investors put their energy because of the higher returns and ease of managing them. For these investors commercial property is their ‘bread and butter’ and they drive their speculative income by trading in residential properties.Some commercial investors focus their attention to improve and add value to their commercial portfolio. Whilst others use their rental returns to fund development projects that show much higher returns but need different and more advanced skill sets.Commercial property investing is very rewarding but requires more knowledge, experience and capital out lay. It is advisable not to jump into commercial real estate from the very out set until and unless you have the knowledge, very deep pockets and risk taking ability. It is advisable to start with residential real estate investment to build your equity and cash flow.You should buy at least 8 to 10 residential investment properties before venturing into the world of commercial real estate.

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