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Small Business Marketing Package – Vertu Chauffeurs

Posted on 17th August 2018 by The Marketing People

Small Business Package - Vertu Chauffers website design from The Marketing People

Small Business Marketing Package

A great small business marketing package is all about looking amazing isn’t it? All creative and colourful right? That’s only a small proportion of what real marketing is about. Let me show you how we approached the marketing for this superb private chauffeur service.

Kam @ Vertu Chauffeurs came to us without having the best experience so far from other marketing outlets. Like many others, he came with the notion that SEO would solve everything.

The business had been ‘sold’ some so called ‘SEO keyword’ services from a well-known business directory. Sadly, this was doing nothing for Vertu. Indeed, if it had done anything for him, the marketing in his old website was quite limited, not nearly effective enough to convert any potential website visitors into a lead. Any real SEO development could have been wasted.

We sat down and had a chat about his target audience, his business, his competition and his value proposition, plus effective key messaging for his business. Together, we talked about positioning this properly to attract the right kind of customers, looking for his exact type of service. We wanted to make use of the opportunities he already has to market his business. These opportunities included word of mouth, face to face networking and targeted literature drops.

‘Private, Punctual & Professional – For Business, Transfers & Events’

We wanted to discover the brief with Kam, not just take one from him. We needed to challenge his approach. By adding our experience and industry knowledge, it allows us to take in the information, validate it then translate this to a marketing brief.

This brief would dictate the look, feel, messaging, control and consistency for all of Vertu’s business marketing going forward. With his budget in mind we were able to determine how much time we could spend on each element, we could literally compress our expertise for this small business marketing package. We decided to trigger our essentials marketing package.

Kam uses word of mouth, face to face business networking, direct leaflet drops and traditional business correspondence, so we could see our essentials marketing package would be perfect. It provided, business cards, flyers and a website his potential customers could refer to after receiving his printed media. Find out more about this package here. ESSENTIALS

He didn’t need any SEO yet because this could potentially strip his budget and we were in agreement he needed a solid base to work from first. He could develop SEO later, once the business had grown some more. We would ensure however, the new site was optimized for future development. http://vertuchauffeurs.com/

So how would he use the package

Anyone from Vertu can now network with other businesses and hand them a business card or a brochure to introduce the service. Potential clients can also visit his website, which portrays the business’ brand values, service and solutions. Above all these potential clients can see consistent messaging, through these communication touch-points. It now looks professional, credible and his service is provided precisely for them, his very own chosen target audience. It is now an effective marketing base to work from.

The dots are now all joined up, they lead directly to his potential customers. These potential customers now have the perfect reason to lead themselves directly back to the Vertu Chauffeurs service.

All of these marketing outputs were designed to fit his business objectives. Designed in a manner that he is able to control, on his budget, efficiently, consistently and effectively.

This is real, effective, joined up marketing, oh yes and it looks great too!

If you are interested in finding out how we can transform your business with our small business marketing package, call our studio now on 01543 387 047 or email contact@themarketingpeople.com now for a chat about your business objectives.

5 Eggscelent Easter Marketing Campaigns

Posted on 13th April 2017 by The Marketing People

Eggscuse the pun, we only get the chance once a year! Here at The Marketing People, we all enjoy watching what’s going on in the world of Marketing. Easter is a great time of year for companies to use their imagination, and after much debate in the office, these are our favourite Easter Marketing campaigns.

Aldi – Lunch for the Price of an Easter Egg

If you can use the Easter holiday to market your home brand Mint Sauce, you’re definitely doing something right. Calculating the price of a decent Easter Egg at £3.80, the German retailer put together a tasty lunch, including dessert and wine, for the same price! Between a family of four, it would cost £3.80 per head for a lamb dinner, with vegetables, mint sauce, hot cross buns for dessert and a white wine to compliment it. This marketing campaign didn’t just show off their value prices, it did it in style:

aldi easter marketing — Honey, could you pass the chocolate?

Aldi employed the work of Jen Lindsey Clark, chocolate artist, to create a full sized table with a roast dinner made entirely of chocolate. Three weeks, and 50kg of Aldi Easter Egg chocolate later, Jen created everything from cutlery, peas, and wine out of chocolate. They even had a chocolate chair! We’d love a chocolate meeting table in the office but we’re worried Sammy of The Marketing Dogs would sniff it out and eat it during a meeting!

The Co-operative Food – The Good Eggs

Social Experiments are always risky business when it comes to television and internet campaigns. Sometimes the message isn’t as intended, causing controversy. When they work, they’re brilliant and go viral. UK retailer The Co-operative came up with a great idea for a social experiment last Easter, in which a gentleman with his arms in casts would sit on a park bench and struggle to eat his food. Many people walked past and left the man to struggle, but some ‘good eggs’ would help the man eat his sandwich. The Good Samaritans were awarded with Easter Eggs for their troubles.

The reason we love this stunt from The Co-op is the genuine sentiment behind it. Good marketing is always interesting, but it’s even better when it warms your heart at the same time.

Happy Egg Co. – Chick Cam

Talk about a long campaign, the Happy Egg Company ran their Easter Marketing Campaign for the entire lifetime of an egg! We absolutely love this one. Through mid- March up until Easter, The Happy Egg Co. live streamed some incubated chicken eggs, with the stream ending with newly born chickens hatching, and learning to walk!

The Happy Egg Co.’s Google Hangout went viral, for good reason, with people from all around the world tuning in to watch the baby chickens peck away from the inside of their eggs and break free. We all agreed that this was a great use of current technology for viral marketing. The Happy Egg Co. boosted their social presence by inviting the public to name the newly born chicks, sending their Twitter Facebook pages skyrocketing with engagement, they even appeared in the UK trending Tweets for a short while.

Whiskas – Earster Cats

We love animals here at The Marketing People, but you can see that by the blog that The Marketing Dogs write! We really enjoyed this next one, Whiskas grappled the huge iPhone and Android app market (2 BILLION PEOPLE!) by releasing an app that gave users an Augmented camera that put giant bunny ears on their cats. We thought it was genius that cat food could be marketed by virtual bunny ears! Unique marketing campaigns are always great, especially when they have such a huge potential audience. This was a truly imaginative way to get the message out there for Whiskas Cat Food.

We wonder if George will sit this still for a selfie

This was one of our favourites, but we’re not sure how Sammy, George and Chops would like a giant pair of ears. Leave us a comment below on who you think should get the Whiskas Earster treatment and keep an eye on the blog for an update.

Tesco – Find the Eggs

We’ve spoken about Pokemon Go on this blog before, and as readers out there know, we thought it was marketing genius. But, three years before it existed, Tesco used the same technology in their #FindtheEggs game. Tesco used a Google Maps based app to get people out and about hunting for virtual eggs, the players who went out and found three eggs would win a chocolate bunny from their local Tesco store.

What we love about this one, is that not only was it a massive viral marketing campaign for Tesco, it also gave people a reason to play it. With prizes such as chocolate bunnies and Samsung tablets, being involved in this campaign was genuine, unlike superficial campaigns that you see today.

Hubspot CRM: A Review

Posted on 3rd September 2015 by The Marketing People

Following on from our blog on 10 things to think about when considering a CRM, I thought it only fair to share some insight on the CRM we use, and why we think it is a pretty nifty tool.

Over the years I have had experience in a few CRM’s. Some were a horrible chore. Others just didn’t capture anything useful. And some filled me with absolute dread to have to use them. I never pictured a day where I would enjoy using a CRM system, or one where I would want to review it for that matter! But I have to say, I am rather impressed with HubSpot’s CRM system, so why not pass that joy on?

Below are the main points I would normally look at when considering a CRM: Installation, data upload, features, usability and support.

Initial Installation

Initial installation was simple. It did not require me to sit on the phone to the company. Or for them to take over my computer so I lost time at work. It was relatively quick and guided me through the process easily. The data on the free version of the CRM is open to all users listed. Though you can still assign tasks and contacts to each individual user. When the primary user sets up the account, you input the other users emails in. Which as well as adding them to the system, sends them a nice little welcome email and introductory video on what on earth is going on. Which I felt was a nice touch.

Uploading data

This will work differently for some of you. As we only needed some primary clients on first, I manually inputted them into the system. To ensure we had all the data we needed. However, when it came to inputting bigger contact lists further down the line, the import function on the contacts page is simple to use. It takes no time at all. And if there are errors, they are sent back to you in a clear report. So you can set them right almost instantly. The most annoying bit of the process was preparing the data beforehand!

The only slight problem I did find was when I was uploading our jobs (manually). Once I had uploaded around 50 of them, the system lags. And it becomes a great struggle to add anymore until a short while later. This will not be a problem 99% of the time, as we will not need to mass upload jobs once we are set up. But it did become a bit of a frustration when the rest of the system is so quick!

What can it do?

What can’t it do? Okay, that’s cliché. But really, it can do pretty much everything you need it to. It stores your contacts, and all the back history of any contact you have uploaded to the system before. The same as every other CRM really. So why do I love it?

These are what I consider the 5 best features:

The Dashboard

This is the very first page, and where the reports are. You can set your monthly target or quota, then as you add jobs, it tells you how close you are to the target. The jobs are colour coded by how completed they are, so at a quick glance you can see where you are for the month. But, if you do need a more in depth breakdown, you just click, and it breaks it all down for you. It also gives you a one glance look at your productivity and pipeline with how much you have done, and percentage of how much better or worse you have done compared to last month. With other CRM’s I have found reports tedious to create and to be honest, they don’t really cover everything you needed in one place. The dashboard covers all of that in one screen.

Sidekick email tracking

With HubSpot you get an add-on called side kick, which actually turns out to be a good sidekick! You can track your emails with it, so you can see when they are opened, and if links on the email were clicked through, you can store emails straight to the CRM, so you have a copy of your contact, and when you start a new email to someone, it will bring up a sidebar of all the last contact you had with them, so you can see when they opened the last email, and the dates you last sent it. It also links to their twitter account, so you can see their latest updates and reference them in the email if you wish.

Sidekick prospecting bar

As well as email, sidekick will help you to prospect too. If you go on to a prospects website, it brings up a tiny sidekick symbol in the right hand corner. When you click on it, it brings up a sidebar, so you can save the website, and all the contact information on it, straight to the CRM. You can also view any information stored on the CRM already about the company. It will then bring up any contacts it can find, or connections you have, and it can also do a related companies search too.

Full customisation

I have found with other CRM’s I have had to leave certain sections of it, as they are not relevant to what I am doing, there are too many options to fill, or not enough. With HubSpot, it is fully customisable, meaning I can use every inch of the CRM. Don’t need it? Remove it from the view! Not enough deal stages? Add more and rename them all. Don’t like the information you have to provide for contacts? Reset up what is needed for their file, and add in your own new field whilst you’re at it.

Integration

HubSpot integrates with so many other programmes, meaning less hassle for you. As everything talks to each other, it cuts out half the time you spend reposting updates to each program.

Usability

It’s exceptionally easy to use, and to link everything to everything else, so contacts to clients, clients to deals, tasks to contacts and so on and so on. It is all customisable, meaning we have a unique CRM really, with every section being used, rather than ignoring parts as they are not needed. Everyone can view and access everything, but in a company our size, and the way work, this is perfect for us, though I understand with bigger companies this may not be practical. Though I believe for bigger companies there is an option to pay for user accounts. The best bit for usability I find, is that it doesn’t add extra work to my day like other CRM’s, as it does a lot of the work for you, such as providing relevant information.

Support

This was one of my worries as a UK user, not being able to get support when I need it, and I have to admit, I panicked when there was no obvious number for me to call when I first had a problem. But the integrated help feature in the CRM means you can type in your questions, which get sent to the right person, who then email you back a relevant answer. Not only that, but you can suggest features for the system too, which I know from past experience are actually considered and implemented.

Overall Conclusion

This is the best CRM I have used, so far. Its simplicity and easy customisation make it the perfect tool, and even better, it’s free! Are there still hiccups with it? Yes of course there are, but they are constantly updating it so the system only gets better. Overall, for a marketing company, it is more than we could ever ask for, but don’t forget you need to find what is right for you and your goals from a CRM, and there certainly are enough to choose from!

If you would like to see for yourself, why not visit Hubspot’s CRM Page?

CRM’s are all about being able to give your customer the best service possible. Why not have a read of how you can use social media in customer support.