Mile Square Marketing

2.      Find a Reader. Give your newsletter to someone OUTSIDE your company and ask for their feedback. Ideally, you can find someone in the industry(ies) you’re starting. If not, at least find someone with a similar job – don’t give your CFO a letter that you’re sending out to sales managers.   3.      Hire a Writer.  Figure out how much content you need, how often you need it and then hire someone to take on the job of writing the feature articles on a regular schedule. Keeping someone consistently engaged means you get someone who starts to understand more deeply the issues your customers face. In time, they can probably provide you with suggestions for content. Until then – you’ll probably need to provide topics (see #4).  You can find good freelancers on sites like guru.com and elance.com. Or check magazines in your target industry for contributing writers / editors. Outsource your feature articles to a talented writer and keep promotions & offers, events & calendars, and “in brief” topics in-house to keep costs down. 

I am frequently asked by my clients about newsletters.

E-Newsletters seem to be leading in popularity, but print versions are still in play. Print or electronic, the questions tend to be mostly about things like design, frequency and e-mail services.  

When I read and critique these newsletters though, the #1 problem is content. Everything from too much about the company (I really only want to know about changes relevant to me) to articles well outside my ability to understand (Yes – a lot of my clients are in the high-tech field, but their clients are business owners, so if it’s too technical for me – it’s too technical for them.) Plus about 50% of the articles seem aimed at selling me something (directly or indirectly (but obviously)).  Enough of the newsletters I was reading were poor enough to get me to start telling clients NOT to do newsletters at all. They were just investing too much time in an activity that yielded a poor product and results. Turns out newsletters are just too popular to stop though and more and more clients are looking for ways that they can effectively add newsletters to their marketing mix. On the plus side – most do understand the effort a newsletter takes and are making the appropriate allowances for   So – for the next few weeks, I’ll be posting my Top Tips for getting your newsletter read. Do just ONE thing from this list if that’s all you can do, but definitely do that one. It will make a difference.  1.       Figure out your audience. The same people that instantly recognize the need to have a message in their direct mail or other marketing pieces seem to completely forget this when doing a newsletter. The very nature of newsletters and the difficulty in consistently developing good content seems to add to the problem. Ideally, you should create different newsletters for different industries or audiences (with some crossover content). If that’s not possible, then don’t assume your readers will sort through the content you have to find what’s relevant to them. They won’t. If you need to mix industries and audiences in a newsletter, make it REALLY easy for them to find the content most relevant to them. Use a hyperlinked Table of Contents that breaks out articles by audience or in a print newsletter – a front page TOC or design elements throughout the pages to indicate who the article is for.   More tips to come.

Whenever I speak with small businesses about marketing, the conversations usually revolve around the best method of marketing, response rates, creative ideas, etc.

I’ve yet to hear anyone discuss the need for process and execution assistance. BORING! Right? Wrong. Based on various studies, marketing overhead can cost as much as 30% of a marketing budget.

Poor processes and execution aids make everything harder to get out and in turn - it’s less likely you’ll be consistent with your messaging and delivery.

Do you have a process or execution issue in your firm? Think about this:

1. Do you have a library of letters centralized or on the desktop that are used for every marketing touch (new prospects, follow-ups, etc.) or are you searching through a server for a letter you used last month? (Helpful tip — Microsoft has an Office toolbar posted on their template site: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/results.aspx?qu=sales+toolbar&av=TPL000

Please let me know if you use this or other tools.

2. Is there a central list of all offers and promotions in market (for you and your vendors?) And is it updated monthly?? Firms are usually not aware of how many offers they are their parnters have floating around. Keeping a list of offers in market can save you time when putting together new campaigns or when you’re on the phone with a prospect.

3. Do you do regular materials audits? Keep a list of all materials you need / have already and their locations. Do a materials audit twice a year and refresh your materials and decide what else you need. (Check out the materials checklist posted on my resources section.)

4. Have a new customer willing to do press for you?? How many of those opportunities have you wasted while you figure out how to engage? Make sure you have a case study template, writers selected, a checklist for how quotes are used, etc.

So - the advice I give all my clients — before you start a new campaign, plan, idea of the day –take the time and step back to make sure you have the foundation in place to make your plan effective. Review all your existing materials, the processes you go through (from letters to newsletters and web changes) and streamline those processes first.

I guarantee you’ll have smoother and more successful marketing in the future. Build your foundation now and spend your time with the Glitzy part of marketing down the road.

For your information:

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- If you want to post a new topic please email @ barbpf@milesquaremarketing.com so that you can be added as an author of this “Blog” site.