Holovis are a VERY specialist technology company, based in Leicestershire. They were looking for a site which closely matched their existing corporate ID (very black, with dashes of yellow & blue). They build hardware for virtual 3D worlds, so wanted certain elements of the site to have a strong sense of depth. Check out the portfolio page as well as the partner page!
Also, Holovis had a very text heavy site before, which they didn’t necessarily want to lose. To sharpen up the design we created a ‘tabbed browsing’ system for the solution pages allowing the user to view more information as required, rather than be presented with long (boring) pages of text.
Business Vitamins is on Twitter. Yay. And?
Well, we rather like it actually. Let me divulge our Twitter strategy, which, by the way, is no great secret and you’re quite welcome to copy it, refer it on and claim it as your own or simply ignore it.
Here it is…
Ready?
We use Twitter to engage with people who we think might either become clients or might be in a position to refer us to new potential clients.
That’s it. Good eh? Not what you were expecting? No great mysterious cloak & daggeresque dark art? Nothing complicated or overly computery-utery? Nope, not here.
So how do we do this? Very simple really:
1. We signed up (free); we created our background (free); we downloaded Tweetdeck (also free).
2. We searched for local businesses and started following them.
3. We “tweeted” a few snippets of news and local interest information.
4. In doing so we acquired some followers , who, no doubt were searching on some of the keywords in our Tweets – ahhaaa…, did we choose our Tweets carefully?? ;-)
5. We followed people we met through local networking groups and Twittered with them directly.
6. We were ourselves - tough going, with only 140 characters!!
7. We Re-Tweet interesting Tweets that we see.
8. We suggest other Tweeters to our followers.
9. We allow about an hour and a half a week for all of this. Give or take.
So there you go, in less than 9 steps, and in four months we have about 400, extremely well targetted followers.
Let me tell you what we don’t do:
1. Participate in Twitter because we feel we should.
2. Start Tweeting with no strategy.
3. Always Tweet about our business.
4. Always Tweet "special offers".
5. Always Tweet on the same subject.
6. Follow too many celebrities or massive corporations.
7. Allow countless instances of Britney Spears (or similar) to follow us and publicise hyperlinks to iffy websites promoting, well, I'm sure you can guess..
Of course this is just our strategy and it might not work for you or fit with your business objectives. But if your objective is to build a local presence and get your name out there amongst similarly sized businesses, then you could certainly do worse than following the above steps.Do you need to outsmart your competitors? Contact us now on 0845 310 2457 to discuss what you want to achieve and how we can help you meet your goals.
Why not find out more about Business Vitamins, Strategic B2B marketing agency Suffolk.
Or follow BizVits on Twitter? Or Like us on Facebook?Or +1 us on Google+?Or see the Business Vitamins channel on YouTube?
Picture this…
You’re in Portugal. On the Algarve. You’re lazily exploring a traditional local market. There are a few bargains and a lot of “designer gear” of iffy provenance. You see daily essentials you might expect to find more readily in a supermarket (toe nail clippers anyone?), as well as a big slice of local colour. For all that, you might buy something, you might not. Who knows?
There’s a stall ahead manned by a somewhat squat, sweaty, moustachioed, swarthy looking gentlemen. He’s selling ladies underwear no less. There he is, thong in hand and held up high, calling “Tiny knickers – Tiny knickers! Buy them here!”, to the young ladies ahead of you.
Upon nearing the stall, the man notices you approaching. The thong is quickly discarded, and a revised undergarment is being paraded around, flaunted at full volume, “BIG knickers! – BIIIIIIIIG knickers! Buy them here!”. A thousand eyes look your way, most of which are accompanied by a rather large smirk. You scuttle off.
True story, and one my mother-in-law enjoys telling, despite the somewhat size-ist connotations! Oh how I laughed when she told me..
I don’t know if a purchase was made or not, doubtful I would think, given her obvious embarrassment at the time. But it did make me think that despite the rather clumsy execution it was a micro-level example of great marketing.
The aforementioned swarthy gent was simply adhering to one of the oldest marketing rules : identify your potential customers, choose the correct product/service for them, tailor the messaging, clear call to action.
I guess the part he missed off was ‘try not to offend anyone’!
Do you need to outsmart your competitors? Contact us now on 0845 310 2457 to discuss what you want to achieve and how we can help you meet your goals.
Why not find out more about Business Vitamins, Strategic B2B marketing agency Suffolk.
Or follow BizVits on Twitter?
Or Like us on Facebook?
Or +1 us on Google+?
Or see the Business Vitamins channel on YouTube?
I love cookies. Particularly chunky ones with lumps of chocolate in them the size of icebergs. Naughty but very nice. I love bananas too. Residing at the opposite end of the healthy lifestyle spectrum, the humble banana is high in fibre, vitamins B6 and C, as well as iron and potassium. In fact, the banana is a veritable smorgasbord of healthy goodness.
Driving back from a long meeting recently, I topped up my energy levels with a gorgeous looking white chocolate cookie. Scrummy. But as I ate, I got a funny aftertaste. After initially writing this off due to tiredness, my second bite yielded the same taste. Bananas!
As intriguing a combination as this might sound, the cookie was not supposed to be laced with essence of banana. I even checked the packaging to make sure I hadn’t picked up a rogue bag by mistake!
On reflection, I thought I might like to try a banana-tinged white choc chip cookie in the future, but that moment’s eating experience was tainted beyond redemption. Simply put, my expectations were not met. No matter how nice my “Banookie” might have been, it wasn’t what I expected.
We all need to be aware of and manage expectations carefully. As a marketing business, we need to be fully aware of likely response rates to various types of marketing campaigns. We think our clients should be too.
Many businesses might be surprised to learn that according to the Institute of Direct Marketing, a normal response rate to a direct mail campaign is “only” 2.6%. Sounds awful doesn’t it? 97.4% of contacts don’t respond! So if your campaign managed a 2% response rate, is that a complete disaster? What if your campaign achieved a 5% response rate? The reality is that whilst a 5% positive response is great, most businesses would STILL feel disappointed that 95% of the letters/cards/postcards/flyers they had paid to be lovingly designed, printed and distributed were so quick to find the recipients recycling system.
Of course there are tactics we employ to ensure response rates are significantly higher, such as multi-touch campaigns or tightly integrating direct mail into other marketing activity. In this way Business Vitamins aim to ensure that at LEAST a 2.6% response rate is achieved.
And to ensure neither our clients or ourselves slip up, we'll also ensure we discuss what you can reasonably expect to achieve. You might be surprised how much!
Banana update:
Try peeling a banana from the bottom and you won't have to
pick the little 'stringy things' off of it. Apparently that's how monkeys do it. Also, take your bananas apart before placing them in your fruit bowl. If you leave them connected at the stem, they ripen faster.
Do you need to outsmart your competitors? Contact us now on 0845 310 2457 to discuss what you want to achieve and how we can help you meet your goals.
Why not find out more about Business Vitamins, Strategic B2B marketing agency Suffolk.
Or follow BizVits on Twitter? Or Like us on Facebook?Or +1 us on Google+?Or see the Business Vitamins channel on YouTube?
The faintest sniff of global economic recovery is being smelt right now in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk. For it is here that one young couple we know are feeling enough house-market positivity to embark on the arduous process of moving home.
Considering a more rural location, perhaps they’ve reached a certain age where town living isn’t as appealing as it was once-upon-a-curry-night ago. Typically, the impetus for change is being driven by the lady of the house. This hard shove is being felt by none more so than the ‘paterfamilias’, having spent the last few weeks tool-box in hand. All recent spare time has been spent cleaning, tidying, painting, de-cluttering and fixing. No mean feat with a young daughter running them both ragged!
It’s all been worth it though. What was already an extremely attractive property in a great location now has even more curbside appeal. Once inside, it even appears more spacious. Everything is shiny and new for all those prospective buyers to admire. A speedy sale is assured.
Like selling a house, appearance is everything in business. Yet everyday I see small elements that severely tarnish business image. One reason for this is that we’re often told to “focus on the bigger picture”; repainting the door won’t bring us new customers!
Well, yes and no. How do you react to dead links on a website? Do you say hey-ho and continue to browse the site? I expect you return to Google and search elsewhere. It’s not just dead links, typos on or offline, out of date news or poor quality stationery. A recent annoyance is “Twitter Spam” – unsolicited followers offering links to porn, dubious tablets and get rich quick schemes. Hardly the sort of association most businesses would welcome yet they can be blocked so easily.
This is all down to ensuring all customer touch points are inspected and polished regularly. Every one of them speaks volumes about your business and the emphasis you place on attention to detail. Every sub-optimal feature conspires to create an impression. Not a good one either. Few of us would go on a first-date wearing odd socks (no matter how trendy it was) or show buyers around your property without sweeping the floors first so why not apply the same care to a business? Chances are, your customers will reward you.
Do you need to outsmart your competitors? Contact us now on 0845 310 2457 to discuss what you want to achieve and how we can help you meet your goals.
Why not find out more about Business Vitamins, Strategic B2B marketing agency Suffolk.
Or follow BizVits on Twitter?
Or Like us on Facebook?
Or +1 us on Google+?
Or see the Business Vitamins channel on YouTube?
My father-in-law enjoys a good rant. Although not a grumpy old man, he is a man in his mid sixties; successful in his career although long retired. Whilst it’s not his defining characteristic, he is compulsively METICULOUS in his execution of spelling and grammar. He hates American exports.
He’s really thinking about their language exports in particular. Small pieces of Americana drip-feeding into our psyche. Example: Have you tried renting a film recently? You might have more success renting a movie. Would you like me to post it to you? Yeah, “mail” it to me. Not sure? Do the math. That sort of thing.
Now, he’s not suggesting that our blacktops will be lined with sidewalks or that we’ll be buying diapers and candy with our hard earned greenbacks just yet… but it may happen eventually. Does the gradual colonisation of the English language from across the pond matter though? Language has continued to evolve since, well, since forever. We don’t talk or write like our Victorian ancestors any more than they spoke or wrote like their Tudor predecessors.
So if this has always been happening, why the fuss? I “guess” it’s because the pace of change has increased significantly in more recent years due in part to the proliferation of American television programs; oops, that should be programmes. Also the vast number of websites written in (at best) international English but more likely spell-checked by the U.S. dictionary version of MS Word must be guilty of cultural imperialism.
How does that makes you feel when you’re on the receiving end of Americanized marketing material? I know how it makes my father-in-law feel because he told me. Several times. And in great depth too. It might be fair to say that a younger audience wouldn’t give “a rat's ass” and may even embrace cool, Americanised txt msg style yoof speak whilst the older consumer would much prefer the written word to be spelt in precisely crafted and fully Anglicised English.
The point is that clear audience segmentation prior to any form of communication is the key to successful marketing. A business might have a very wide audience encompassing twelve year olds boys through to octogenarian nuns, but to manage one marketing campaign to successfully engage with them all would be ridiculous to the point of possibly being offensive.
God bless America.
Do you need to outsmart your competitors? Contact us now on 0845 310 2457 to discuss what you want to achieve and how we can help you meet your goals.
Why not find out more about Business Vitamins, Strategic B2B marketing agency Suffolk.
Or follow BizVits on Twitter?
Or Like us on Facebook?
Or +1 us on Google+?
Or see the Business Vitamins channel on YouTube?
Happy Birthday to Terry Wogan KBE, 71 years old today!
Revered as a British national treasure despite being Irish, Terry is one of our best loved and most loathed celebrities.
Rising to fame in the 1960s on Irish radio and subsequently Radio One, he moved to the smooth sounds of Radio Two in the early 1970s. He even released a single of his own and annoyingly, one of my earliest memories is of bopping around to Terry’s smash hit “The Floral Dance”. Thankfully Terry’s career in music-making was short-lived and he went on to become the face of his own TV chat show, Children In Need and of course your friend and mine, The Eurovision Song Contest.
Clearly, his long career in Radio and TV has made him extremely well known. And being so recognisable, both audibly and visually, it’s arguable he’s almost succeeded in becoming a brand in his own right.
But can a person be a brand? Or just a celebrity? Part of a brand’s image is its persona as embodied in human form, via likes, dislikes, gender, wealth, age, mood, status and more.
If we’re debating whether Mr Wogan has therefore become a brand, what does his brand represent? He’s Irish, obviously, and probably bald, but ‘Hello Magazine’ has yet to publish the photographs. He’s certainly an irreverent comedian, sarcastic too. He’s managed to position himself as a kindly uncle who’s fun and interesting to listen to (apparently) and yet also appeals to the grumpy-old-man, chiming with the Victor Meldrew streak alive in many of us. But I’m not convinced he’s a brand, to me he’s just a minor celebrity.
At the other end of the scale we have the Beckhams. They ooze glamour, style, wealth, vitality and sex. Cleverly, they entice us with their wholesome family image as well. You can buy Beckham branded products as their scent and clothes ranges have been launched around the world. For many, this allows us the opportunity to be them for just a moment… Back to my question, can people be brands? Surely if anyone can, the Beckhams are a good example?
As consumers, we have relationships with brands everyday via the products and services we choose. The strongest brands pop into our minds through association. For example, the mention of ‘family entertainment’ conjures up Disney for most of us. But a brand can also be a symbol like the Nike swoosh or the shape of the Coca-Cola bottle.
So can anyone actually be their own brand as opposed to being the face of a brand?
I guess that’s open for discussion.Do you need to outsmart your competitors? Contact us now on 0845 310 2457 to discuss what you want to achieve and how we can help you meet your goals.
Why not find out more about Business Vitamins, Strategic B2B marketing agency Suffolk.
Or follow BizVits on Twitter? Or Like us on Facebook?Or +1 us on Google+?Or see the Business Vitamins channel on YouTube?
