Let's get geared up for 2012! Here are 10 essential marketing tips for the big year ahead.

1. Your target audience is king.

Your prospects and customers buy your products and services, so remember all your marketing, advertising and branding should be focused on them. Use images that appeal to them, colours that excite them, sales promotions that will win them over - it's all about them.

2. Calculate (and estimate) marketing ROI

For all your marketing activities in the past year, sit down and calculate the ROI (return on investment) on all of these. For example, letterbox distribution, google advertising, sales brochures, local paper advertising - how much did you spend (or how much did it cost you)? how many phone calls did you get? how many leads, sales and new customers? Even if it's just an estimate, it's important to have a good understand on which marketing activities worked well for your business and your customers. Continue with the most effective marketing activities, and for the ones that didn't work so well - assess why, what went wrong, what can be improved. Then, consider giving them another go or ditch them altogether.

3. Frequency and consistency.

When it comes to advertising, consistency and frequency are essential to maximise results. For example, if you advertise in an industry publication - don't just advertise in one issue. Advertise consistently at least three times - perhaps once every second issue, depending on how often the publication is distributed. You're start to see a fantastic response after a couple of times - but you'll never get an outstanding response from from just one ad in one issue. The design of your ad should also be consistent every time.

4. Test new marketing channels

One of the smart ways of getting ahead of your competitors is testing new marketing channels - but be cautious, test and measure your ROI to ensure you know just how effective it is. There are ways to get reports to easily see the results - for example, use a unique 1800 number (the company can provide monthly stats), publishers of most online advertising can provide you with analytics or reports (number of clicks, visits to your website, number of submitted enquiries, etc). Analyse these reports with your own 'real' business stats if you can - number of leads, enquiries and sales from those specific campaigns or an incremental increase in overall business sales.

5. Answer the phone!

It's all well and good if you're doing regular letterbox distribution, industry magazine advertising or your google advertising. However, it won't bring in any return on investment if prospects and customers are calling but there's no one answering the phone! When you're spending money in advertising, a new campaign or promotion, it's essential to communicate this to your team or employees - even your receptionist. Ensure they know that you're advertising in 'such and such', what the promotion is or what you're promoting, train your staff to sell - all the core skills and knowledge to convert your inbound leads into wins, sales and acquisition of new customers

6. Integrate and work smarter

Integrate your marketing and use them in multiple channels. For example, if you're writing a blog article - promote it on your blog platform, facebok page, twitter, email newsletter, your website homepage - even a link from your email signature. Maximise the time you spend on one thing by promoting it with all the tools you have.

7. Stay strategic - don't sweat the small stuff.

Sometimes, we can get carried with the smallest tiniest detail - a thin white line on a brochure, a small typo in your website page, your logo doesn't have all the colours of the rainbow... Don't waste your time or stress over the small stuff - take a step back, assess the importance of the 'issue'. If it's not detrimental, move on. Look at the big picture and stay strategic. A potential million-dollar investor of your business won't care of the tiniest things.

8. Sleep on new ideas

Ever had a briliant idea pop into your head and you find yourself spending the rest of the day working on it? Brilliant ideas are fantastic - but not always strategic or in line with your business or marketing goals. So, sleep on it and have a good long think about it before spending all your time, resources and money on executing an idea which you may find is not so brilliant the next day.

9. Consistency is so powerful

Just recently, I was driving along the road and saw a bus stop ad. There was a truck next to me so all I saw was the top of the ad. Without seeing the headline or the graphics/images, I knew straight away that it was an advertisement for Mortein. After years of seeing (and not really noticing) their ads on TV and their products on supermarket shelves, I instantly recognised their colours and 'zap' icon. This is the power of consistency - Mortein has used a consistent look-and-feel for more than 50 years, and have consistently used it across everything - advertisement, product packaging, online marketing, etc.

10. Customer relationship marketing

A good CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems is invaluable to every business. This system captures customer details and can be used to create effective targeted marketing campaigns. You can choose to send a specific email campaign to lapsed customers - offering an enticing sales promotion. Or an email campaign to customers or prospects based in NSW only with a state-specific offer. Good CRM systems also allow you to see what email campaigns a customer or prospect have received (and whether they have opened or clicked on it), so your sales team can make follow up calls with sound knowledge of what communications they're read or what promotion they're aware of - it can be the make or break to closing a sale.

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This article was written by Grace Chau

About Attractivo

Based in the Inner West Sydney, Attractivo is a boutique agency with a team of savvy graphic designers, web designers and web developers. Headed by an award-winning marketer and a director with more than a decade of small business experience, Attractivo produces some of the best world-class designs and websites for SME's across Australia.

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