I do realise that we’re in the hottest week of the year and to be talking about Christmas is probably going to get me lynched, but if you sell a product or service that might be suitable as a gift, then you need to be thinking about Christmas right now.

Izzy and I spent a fantastic day at the Sheer Luxe Christmas conference yesterday in Fulham and have come away fully inspired from the wonderful speakers and delegates at the event. And once I’ve trawled through my twenty-odd pages of notes I’ll be sharing many of the gems that came out of yesterday’s conference. But the theme of the event was getting ready for Christmas and for retailers and e-tailers, the time to start thinking about Christmas is now, particularly if you want to get some PR in the glossies.

So if you run a gift or retail business, what sorts of things should you be thinking about in preparation for Christmas?

Start by thinking about your Christmas objectives. What do you want to sell? What are your bestsellers and what will you focus on this year? What lessons did you learn from last year and what resource do you have to throw at this?

How do you need to adapt your tone of voice to the Christmas market? If you sell Pashminas you’re probably selling to women most of the year, but come Christmas you’ll be selling to men. What do they need to know about how your product will make the perfect gift?

When will you start your Christmas campaign and what collateral do you need? Consider a microsite or adapting the design of your homepage to attract the Christmas shoppers. And don’t overlook the importance of printed literature. E-marketing makes promoting your product or service much simpler, but add a catalogue into the mix and you’ll see your success rate shoot through the roof – by up to 40%.

Plan ahead – all of this takes time. And a lot of it. Get planning now while you still have time, because as soon as the children go back to school Christmas will be in the air.

Bear in mind that pay per click search terms will cost you a lot more during the Christmas season as the keywords become more competitive so try and come up with creative ways to promote your business. Consider improving the content of your site to attract and retain visitors.

Email marketing is going to be essential in maximising your chances of success – and now is the time to start building your list. Pop-ups offering incentives to visitors who leave your their email and first name are a great way to add quality data to your list – especially if you offer money off a first purchase and ask them to double-opt in.

And finally plan some tactical campaigns to add into your strategic marketing mix. Don’t stop doing the brand awareness marketing you’re already doing, but think as well about how you can promote your Christmas offering. All of this takes time, but it will be worth it.

Have a fantastic weekend. I think I know what I’m going to be doing…

Running a business is tough isn’t it? Marketing, budgeting, planning, sales, people management, troubleshooting and then those “challenges” that seem to crop up that throw us off track – for a matter of hours, days, weeks, whatever! It’s sometimes easy to lose track of why you went into business in the first place. We’ve certainly had our fair share of challenges over the past couple of weeks – as well as plenty of exciting opportunities. But days like today remind me why I’m doing this.

I’ve had a blissful day working with two clients on their marketing strategies. First up, a Garden Designer needing help and focus on her brand and marketing strategy, and this afternoon, a supplier, designer and manufacturer of childrens playgrounds who is attending an exhibition in three weeks (yes! three weeks!) and needs a helping hand on his strategy. Both are industries that I’m passionate about and really identify with, so today has been a real ball.

Working with the garden designer this morning was a lot of fun. Refreshingly she had invested quite a lot of time and money in having a brand identity created (not by Flourish) which has helped give her a professional, serious and attractive look. She also has a professional looking website and a nice handout. Despite that she was just feeling a little “lost”.

Having left the city to pursue her dream, she had finally achieved what she’d hoped for. She was a fully qualified garden designer. But the work hadn’t come flooding in! And she was left confused and unsure of where to turn next. We’re going to be working together over the next three months or so to get her marketing back on track and this month we are working on her brand strategy.

We started by identifying what she’s best at. A long stint in the city had prepared her well. She has a high level of professionalism, is a great communicator and very process driven. That’s going to go a long way in such a creative environment. We also identified that she’s passionate about customer satisfaction and customer service, and has a great sense of style. We laughed as we discussed the designer on Channel 4’s Landscape Man a couple of weeks ago who when quizzed on how he saw his role as a designer answered that the clients were paying for his design and as such it was his job to bully them into accepting his vision! That’s certainly not how either of us see design – surely it’s all about understanding what your client needs and using your expertise to deliver style and substance? But I digress…

Identifying what this designer does best was our first port of call. Next up was looking at her profitable clients. Breaking each group down into what motivates them to commission a garden designer and what they would be looking for. Interestingly we had a big breakthrough here, realising that there’s a big chunk missing out of her portfolio. So plenty of “homework” was given for the next session!

We defined her “style” and came up with a list of evocative words that she can “try on” over the next few weeks to see how they feel in her business. These words are things like drama, mystique and sanctuary which will enable this designer to engage directly with her ideal clients. We also explored the myths these ideal clients hold about her business and explored how we might use marketing to educate, inform and build relationships with these potential clients.

There was a little time along the way to quickly review her website and identify how that was working with her newly defined brand strategy. And reassuringly despite being well designed, it lacked the emotion and approachability that we had defined from our earlier conversations. I say reassuringly, because now this designer has a route map forwards!

Finally we defined, in a nutshell, her brand strategy: what she’s best at, who her target clients are, her style and how she’d like to be perceived.

As the designer said, much of what we did was breathtakingly simple and obvious – but she’d needed some support and guidance to get there. We weren’t talking about reinventing the wheel today, but we were forensically examining her business and looking and what we do to maximise on this designers strengths and communicate powerfully enough to win her more business moving forwards.

Next month we’ll be looking at her pricing: how she can price herself at the right level to be able to attract the right sort of clients and make a profit. We’ll be looking to create “packages” where we can for her services which will make her business model much more streamlined and will make marketing herself much simpler. I left the session energised and rejeuvenated. It’s wonderful to be working with such a passionate, talented and committed lady – and I’m hoping that she might be thinking the same

There’s an important, and often overlooked, correlation between the strength of your brand strategy and the effectiveness of your marketing activity. In other words, people who have defined their niche in the market and communicate that consistently, find it much more cost effective to market their businesses than those that don’t.

Have you defined your niche yet? It’s pretty simple. You look at what you’re good at, what you want to be known for and what your clients love about you. Then you look at what your competitors are doing, and what they’re known for/ good at. Ideally there will be a nice slot for you somewhere that you can occupy: your niche.

Let me give you an example. A client of ours makes widgets. Those widgets are beautifully designed and expertly made in the UK. She’s utterly detail focused and so that’s the niche she’s chosen to occupy: high quality/ great design. Over the past couple of years she’s found that a lot of competitors have sprung up around her; many of which are outright copying her designs. And a fair few have copied her marketing design too – her website, brochures etc. and because she’s been on maternity leave, she’s understandably let the communication slide. She’s slipped into a nasty situation where they’re all jostling in the same marketplace for the same clients. It’s easy to get cross and upset about this, but ultimately she’s got to “own” her space and that should fend them off. They’re not all offering the same product, hers are higher quality and she leads the field in design, so by making sure she communicates where her niche is, she can quickly and cost effectively get things back on track.

So how do you go about owning your niche in the market?

Once you’re happy that you are really occupying a “niche” (because there’s no point in directly competing with your competitors) then you need to keep that niche at the centre of everything you do. And by that I mean sitting down, and actually mapping out what you’re going to do to communicate your brand position. That could be that you create “engaging brand identities and powerful marketing campaigns that help people grow their businesses”; it might be that you’re the “UK’s leading colour consultancy” or that you’re a “gardener with knowledge”.

Once you’ve defined this, map out what marketing activity you’re going to undertake to communicate this. This is such a powerful thing to do because not only will you save money (ie you won’t be tempted by that last minute “deal” in the local newspaper to take a full page advert), you’ll also find that your marketing is a whole lot more effective because your target market will be attracted to what you do; and they’ll “get” it much faster because throughout the year you’ve been talking to them consistently. So how do you do this?

Well you find activities that will support this, and you also make sure that at every opportunity you’re reinforcing and re-communicating your brand strategy. In other words, you stay focused. Many small businesses make life difficult for themselves because they fail to carve themselves out a niche, and once they’ve got that, they rarely communicate that niche via their marketing activity.

I’m going to visit a potential client this afternoon who owns a children’s shop. This is an enormously competitive marketplace to be in: you’re competing with the multi-million pound marketing budgets of the likes of JoJo Maman Bebe, Gap and Monsoon. And you can compete on a smaller scale, but you’ve got to be focused.

Once we’ve worked out what her niche is, we need to communicate that in everything she does. She already has a plan to run a competition (fantastic idea!) but she’s got to be clear on what the style of the shop is and who her target market are. She needs to make sure that when the winners’ photoshoot happens it’s done in a location that supports her brand strategy and that will appeal to her ideal client. And all the design of the entry forms and adverts needs to look instantly engaging and attractive to her audience. And then once she has these photos, she needs to use them in a way that backs up her niche and makes the most of them. And that’s just one piece of marketing that she needs to think about!

“Owning” your niche is hard work. It takes focus, determination, and frankly, some investment of your time, if not your money and someone elses’ time, upfront. But it WILL pay off. You’ll find that you spend less time and money in the long term on marketing that doesn’t work; and you’ll also find that your marketing is much, much more effective for it.

How about you? Have you had experiences of this either way? I’d love to hear from you!

If you would like some one to one help, you can find details of our client marketing strategy sessions here.

Have you seen the new John Lewis advert yet? It’s an utterly moving piece that has reduced me to tears every time I’ve watched it. I have no doubt that John Lewis’ agency, Adam&Eve will be up for an award for it – and if they’re not, then they should be! And whilst it’s very easy to sneer at ads that are made to further the ad agency’s ego, this time I really think they’ve pulled it off.

From innocent child to graduate, mum to be and grandmother, the continuity of the ‘girl in red’ draws you in. On the surface, this is an advert that reminds you of just how short life is. To savour every moment, and the importance of family. To Autumn-led people (confused? I’m talking colour psychology personalities here) it’s going to be exceptionally appealing: family, community, love and sociability. And I challenge all but the most hardened cynic not to be moved by this ad. The beautiful song and the way the film is shot just adds to the emotion of this advert.

Already the ad is a talking point, and it’s been out for what? All of two/ three days? And to be honest, I am drawn in by the endline “Never knowingly undersold: on quality, service and price. Our lifelong commitment to you.”. Why? Because it fits in with my values, and having grown up on John Lewis, it fits with my experience of the company too.

Someone very wise once said to me, a brand is a promise, an experience, and a memory. Well this is one strong promise!

Now whilst I’m not advocating that small business owners sign up top ad agency Adam&Eve and blow £6m on a branding campaign, I think there are some lessons that we can scale back to our own businesses. Firstly, they’re not trying to promise anything they can’t deliver. Never knowingly undersold has been a John Lewis strapline for as long as I can remember, but this is the first time they’ve linked it so emotionally in an ad campaign. Most of us perceive JL as the bastion of the middle classes and so quality – in both the way the film is shot and the images they’re portraying is logical.

What I think we can all learn from is the way that JL have brought emotion to the brand. They’re well known for having a band of incredibly loyal followers (anyone remember the Alice-band wearing kitchen-shoppers from the TV show?) – but in this advert those raving fans are actually acknowledged. Small businesses are often afraid of making their corporate identities too emotional. They worry about getting it wrong. And yet time and again, when we work with a business to bring “heart” to their identity, their only regret is that they didn’t do it sooner.

I also love the fact that they’re not jumping on the “cheap” bandwagon. In fact, they’re saying forget all the pile-it-high-sell-it-cheap stuff you’re overwhelmed with: buy things that will endure, things that will enhance your life.

This advert is reinforcing their brand strategy and position in the marketplace. And whilst you might think “Of course! They’re not working with a top ad agency for nothing”, the small business lesson is to stay true to your brand strategy once you know it works. Not to cling to something that’s not working, but at the same time, not to skip around and confuse your customers memories at every opportunity. And of course, you can’t get all of this across in one 90s advert. But you can if you have brand equity, and a legacy, and the people watching have memories of shopping with you.

Finally I love the fact that everything represented in the advert is so archetypally John Lewis. From the spotty rug in the second scene to the jug in the garden party scene. Again, it sounds so obvious, but it’s so easy to stuff this kind of thing up. I see it happening all the time when businesses lurch from one “look and feel” to another as they swap their design agency more often than they change their underwear. I think it’s about not being afraid to stick with what works. That doesn’t mean being stuck in a rut or refusing to move forwards. But it does mean being consistent in how you present yourself to the world; in what you stand for and how you want your customers to see you.

Hurray for John Lewis and Adam and Eve. I LOVE this advert and I hope it translates into sales for them. Me? I’m off to get a price for that spotty rug…

It’s easy to get seduced into advertising your business on the side of a bus or on a roundabout. But what does it really achieve? A neighbour of mine is spending serious money sponsoring a roundabout in Guildford. As he sees it, he only needs to get a couple of jobs to make the exercise worthwhile. But he’s disgruntled that no one has called him yet.

Why? Well because roundabout advertising achieves brand awareness at best. It’s not going to compel people to pick up the phone and order with you. Particularly if you neglect to put your website on there. I’m not a huge fan of advertising for small businesses – it’s easy to outlay thousands over the course of the year for minimal return.

That said, if you’d like to know how it feels to have your name on the side of a bus, try this website out – it’s a bit of fun and you get the confidence boost without the outlay!

It’s tempting to think that a website will solve all your marketing problems. Once that new site’s built the customers will coming flooding in. Or will they?

I speak to far too many business owners who have invested (usually not enough) money in having a website built for them. They’re struggling to make ends meet and genuinely can’t understand why their website isn’t generating the enquiries they need. So they chuck a bit more money (again, usually not enough) at someone else to try and fix the problem.

The thing is that I think the problems are usually much deeper. Take a contact I spoke to at the beginning of the week. He’d just had a site built by a company and was frustrated that his site wasn’t being found in the search engines. A quick look at the site told me the problems were greater than just being able to google him.

The copy was weak. It didn’t show prospective clients how he could help them. Instead he talked first about himself and his business. Secondly there were no “products” that people could easily “buy”. But crucially, his marketing plan started and ended with his website.

Your website is a piece of the marketing jigsaw. But it’s only a part of it. If you haven’t thought through your offering; if you haven’t created a process for managing and converting your enquiries into clients; if you haven’t identified other ways of spreading the word offline as well as online, then I think you’re going to struggle.

So before you invest all your time, energy and hopes into your website, just think for a minute: do I have a robust marketing plan that will help me win the clients I need? If not, then start looking there first and come to your website when you know what you want it to say.

I talk to a lot of business owners who are sceptical about the role of blogging in their marketing mix. Just like many social networking tools, they see it as a huge time drain, they wonder what on earth they’ll write about, and they wonder who will read it!

I’ve been blogging for 2 1/2 years now and I can categorically say that I would not be without it. It’s helped me build relationships, get slightly famous, demonstrate my expertise and showcase our skills. And yes, I have won plenty of business as a direct result of it. But it hasn’t been easy, and I’ve learned lots along the way. I’ll be sharing my top tips on how to get your blog winning you more business in a future post, but let’s just assert for now that blogging will win you business, if you do it in the right way.

Let me share an example with you.

I’ve been blogging a lot recently about some of the work we’ve done for Matt Pereira. My post on his exhibition stand was particularly popular, and his blog redesign was a hit too (it was tweeted a bit more than that but since I changed my permalinks I lost all the tweet stats!). Now I blogged about this for no other reason than the fact I was proud of it. There was no agenda, no sinister motivation. If we’ve done some work that I love, then I’ll put it on the blog if I have time.

I was pretty astounded when two weeks later I had two meetings with two potential clients. Both of them were photographers, and both of them brought up the fact that they loved what we’d done for Matt. It was definitely a tipping point in them working with us. One of them has already started working with us on her website and blog design; the other we’re hoping to work with very soon!

My point is that blogging absolutely can win you business, but I don’t think that it should be your primary motivation. You’ve got to love writing and have a passion for what you do. And you have to be committed.

I was at a networking event with a couple of friends some weeks back. They were quite excited to meet someone they’d been tweeting with for several months. He’d inspired with them with some compelling thoughts on his particular area of expertise and they’d built up quite a relationship with him. Excited to finally put a name to a face they introduced themselves to him. Sadly he had no idea who they were, despite the dialogue they’d had.

Why? Because he’d been paying is VA to tweet for him.

My friends were slightly less than impressed. All that goodwill he’d built up on twitter had been shattered because they realised that he wasn’t for real. I mean of course he was – all the expertise had been written by him, but the dialogue felt like a charade.

Contrast that with The Home Show’s George Clarke. I’m a bit of a fan and I’d tweeted him (along with half the female population) a couple of times. I didn’t expect him to remember who I was. And yet when I met him at the Homebuilding and Renovation show at Earls Court back in October he couldn’t have been nicer. He recognised me from my photo on twitter -and we had a nice chat! I left an even bigger fan than when I arrived!

Here is someone who probably should be getting his PA to tweet for him, but who realises the power of personal PR. I know who made the more lasting impression on me.

So that begs the question… If twitter can help you build relationships (as long as you’re the one actually building the relationship), position you as an expert (as long as it is your expertise that’s being tweeted) and drive traffic to your site (as long as what you’re saying is worth hearing) then is it ever ok to pay someone to tweet for you?

I think the short answer is yes and no. I honestly believe that if you’re on twitter as yourself, then the tweets must come from you. I think tweets that come on behalf of you, whoever you are, are empty if you’re paying someone to do them. Ultimately, people will “find you out” and that’ll do more harm than good.

But if you’re tweeting as a company or organisation then I think that’s a different matter. Quite frankly most of the companies I follow tweet nothing more than blatant links (at best) – spam at worst. They could do with someone who knows what they’re doing to tweet properly for them! And there’s not the risk of “finding you out” because we don’t always expect one single person to be tweeting behind a company.

What do you think?

I’ve always used exhibitions as a core part of my marketing strategy. At my first exhibition I picked up 100 leads and converted 70 of them into paying clients over the course of the year. When I tell this story people are always astounded – they don’t often find they have such a profitable experience! So I’d like to share with you, in a nutshell, how I did it, and how you can do the same.

1. Be clear about why you’re going. Set yourself realistic goals and make sure your marketing collateral and stand design is set up to help you achieve them.
2. Understand why the visitors are going to the exhibition. What do they expect of you? How can you fulfil their needs (most people get it wrong by pushing what they want to sell at visitors – try coming at it from a different angle!)
3. Create a stand with wow factor. A couple of posters you printed out at home won’t cut it. Be creative, set the scene and allow a little time for wow factor. Think styling! You can see an example of a stand we designed for Photographer Matt Pereira on our blog.
4. If you want to sell products on the day, run a compelling offer (10% off won’t cut it!). Think big discounts, gifts with purchase or bundle offers that compel people to buy now.
5. Selling a service? Think about what you want people to do next – book an appointment perhaps? Create a small “taster” session so that people can try you out without too much commitment. Most of the 70 people that bought from me spent �49 on some business cards. It was a low-value order that enabled people to try us out without having to think too hard. What could you do?
6. Bring your product or service to life. Offer tastings, trials or demonstrations.
7. Run a relevant (not bottle of champagne) competition to gain targeted leads.
8. Try and get a speaker slot if that’s your bag – you’ll boost your exposure and demonstrate your expertise.
9. Be creative with the giveaways. Do people really want another pen? Try and think of something creative that reinforces your brand message. We give away seeds because we help people grow their businesses!
10. Schedule in time before the exhibition for the follow up. Make sure you’ve blocked out at least a couple of days to follow up on all your leads – if you don’t, your competitors will!
11. Have a robust communication plan and be persistent. I converted 70% of my leads because I kept in touch, I called every single one of them and I made sure I kept them on my postal and email distribution lists.
12. Review the event and think about what you could do differently next time.

Getting this right is hard work, but it’s absolutely worth it. If you’ve got an exhibition coming up why not join me on 18th March for a morning of exhibition planning! I’ll walk you through each step to ensure you get the most out of the opportunity. Workshop: How to use exhibitions to grow your business.

This post was taken from my Marvellous Marketing Tips newsletter. If you’d like to be added to the list simply email the studio studio@flourishstudios.co.uk and ask to sign up (just until we get a more sophisticated mechanism in place!).

Imagine if you could create a brand so iconic that it would not only provide an attractive, engaging and compelling identity for your brand; but would also become a design icon it it’s own right. And perhaps seventy, eighty years down the line, you’d be selling products bearing that very design as a revenue stream.

I’m a huge fan of the retro Penguin books identity: and it seems like I’m not the only one. The Penguin brand has recently taken on a life of it’s own with mugs, posters, stationery and tea towels to name just a few. Stores such as Bloomsbury (one of my favourites) and Art Meets Matter are chokka with more Penguin books merchandise than you can shake a stick at.

It seems that there’s no stopping the iconic brand, and whatever Wikipedia might say about the publisher’s fortunes the merchandise is only growing in popularity. So what can we learn about the brand? Just why is it so irresistible to us?

Simple, clean, iconic design. The best designs are simple, not overly fussy, and engaging. Penguin ticks all these boxes with the icon that has just the right level of personality (without being overly cute or kitsch), a clear “3 band” design and a simple colour palette.

Logical use of colour. Penguin haven’t just thrown colours on the book covers depending on how they feel in the morning, they’ve separated each genre into a different colour for ease of use. Very simple, but effective at the same time.

Consistent (but not boring) brand identity. The simplicity of the brand identity: a palette of colours, the Gill Sans font, the 3 band layout means that all the books look like they’ve come from the same company. Could you put all of your literature together over a period of ten years and say the same thing?

Engaging colours. Intense, rich, Autumnal colours are both engaging and yet intellectual at the same time. Which seem to fit very well with Allen Lane’s aim of producing high quality paperbacks for the same price as a packet of cigarettes. According to the official story

“We believed in the existence in this country of a vast reading public for intelligent books at a low price, and staked everything on it.” Allen Lane, founder of Penguin Books

The retro revival. Nostalgia is big right now. Think “Keep Calm and Carry On”, think the Ladybird books (oh the joy of finding Peter and Jane books all over again – I loved them!). Does it have something to do with us buttoning down the hatches in the recession and craving the safety-net of nostalgia? Who knows?

All I know is that I love the iconic brand that is Penguin books… Put me down for a couple of those deckchairs…