This is a classic example of outbound marketing, and frankly it sucks. Here are some other examples of outbound marketing:

• Radio and TV, with those intrusive adverts that interrupt your TV shows and music
• Spammy emails that land in your inbox without your permission
• Adverts in paper based media channels like newspapers and magazines that are slapped in between the pages of an article you are reading
• Those pesky, flashing, pop-up adverts that distract you from the stuff you are reading on-line
• That telesales person on the other end of the phone that literally highjack’s your time and doesn’t allow you a word in
• Direct mail that comes through the post with those ‘amazing’ offers

Basically, outbound marketing is all the communication that intrudes, imposes and interferes. It’s the stuff businesses throw at you. It’s the kind of marketing that you don’t opt into, the stuff that literally interrupts you. If you don’t enjoy this kind of marketing then why do it to your customers? Instead, why not consider inbound marketing? This is absolutely key. Stop outbound marketing and start inbound marketing.

Inbound marketing is the complete opposite of everything I have ranted about above. You could describe inbound marketing as attraction marketing. It works because instead of rudely interrupting people you present them with content and solutions that they actually want. You know they want it because they choose to be part of it. Examples of inbound marketing are:

• Social media — channels like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are great because people choose to follow you, like you or link to you.
• Content marketing like blogs and articles are great examples of attraction marketing because people can choose to read them by subscribing to feeds and newsletters for example. By giving people useful and helpful content you draw people in. You attract people who are interested in your given topic and who actually want to read you content.
• Search Engine Optimisation — your ability to ensure you content is found on search engines is an example of inbound marketing because doing it correctly means people looking for your content and expertise can find it.

So this refreshing thing called ‘giving people choice’ is the kind of marketing that you should be adopting. None of this old hat trickery and wizardry — like the sealed blank envelopes that get me every time. The ones that come through the post which I have to open in case it’s a random note from a friend. Know the ones I mean? But no, they are always stuffed with the ugliest of pointless leaflets that I scrunch up in frustration.

Implement inbound marketing in your business and you’ll find that over time you’ll build a following. I believe it’s so much better to have a group of dedicated fans than an army of enemies. And, use inbound marketing correctly and you’ll find out that a group of dedicated fans could turn out to be an army of fans that will champion you and buy from you.

Each morning you’ll consider what your day has in store and dress appropriately. You’ll be aiming to send out the right kind of signals depending on what you want to achieve. Some will make conscious decisions about their choice of dress while others will argue they don’t care how they dress. To those who say they don’t care, my point is, you still get dressed. I have yet to come across naked people doing business (thank goodness)! Let me clarify…

As a business you’ll have products or services that you need people to buy. How you communicate these (how you dress them) is a key factor in determining how successful you are at selling your wares. Throwing them out to market completely naked is not considering the image of your products or services at all. It’s like turning up naked to a meeting with a potential client. Imagine what effect that would have!

Presenting your wares to market with DIY or cheap websites and leaflets is like throwing on the first thing you come across in the morning without considering the effect you want your clothes and image to have. So, you turn up to a meeting with your potential clients in the first thing you picked up. Who cares that it’s cruddy t-shirt and jeans which missed last weeks wash? Seriously, you’d never think, that would do as you left the house. And if you would then you shouldn’t be in business. Yet so many people look at their potentially good offering and create a naff website and product leaflet and think, “That’ll do”. Stop a minute. Doesn’t that insult all the hard work you’ve put in? So many products and services I see could actually make an impact if they were just dressed appropriately.

Consider how you dress your wares just as you think about how you dress yourself. How should your products and services look to the market? Are they dressed in a way that makes your target audience notice them and think, “I really need them?” Just as you would consider your choice of attire and what effect they have, consider what effect your choice of words, colours and design will have on your target audience. Once you add up the money you waste in DIY and cheap routes that don’t work (you lose time which you should value and you lose out on sales) you’ll realise you would have been better off investing in a quality approach to dressing your wares in the first place. If you’re serious, dress yourself and your wares for goodness sake!

Note that this is not a discussion on the legalities of copyright and ownership as that would need a thesis – these are just simple enough tips to help you come across more professionally. Here we discuss reputable image sources and the best way to handle your images.

Reputable sources of imagery

Contrary to what many people we talk to think, you can’t just use any image you come across. Don’t fall for using images off Google as these are someone’s images. Reputable sources of imagery are:

1. Contracting your own photographer. This may not be as expensive as you think especially with growing numbers of graduates wanting to make a name for themselves. Talk to your photographer about ownership and how you can use the images. This can be the best way of getting exactly the right imagery you need for your brand but only if you get the right photographer and set the right brief.
2. Stock images like Istockphoto can be a useful and more economical source of images. Make sure you understand how you can use the images (see Istock’s explanation here). Stock images offer a vast resource but be careful – they can look ‘stock imagey’ if not chosen carefully and popular images can be spotted in use again and again – something that may not be good for your brand.
3. Flikr.com can be an excellent free image resource but tread carefully – not all images can be used and most will need to be credited. To understand the rules read about the Creative Commons Licence on Flickr.  You can search within a particular licence type from this page.

Handling your images

Once you have the images you need make sure you avoid amateurish mistakes and follow these tips to ensure a quality finish.

1. If you need to change the size of your image make sure you keep it proportional.
2. Don’t make your images bigger than their original size so that they pixelate (blur).
3. If you are going to print out your images make sure they are set 300 dpi (dots per inch) which will ensure a non blurry print out.
4. If you are using the images for your website set them at 72 dpi and make them as small as possible without sacrificing quality – this helps your website not get too slow.
5. Think about how you place your images – ugly white space around them are exactly that – ugly.

Getting the best out of your images may take a little time. Experiment with how you use images particularly in your blog. You may need some more detailed tutorials on the technical handling of images which I have only just touched on but there is no shortage of these around. With a little bit of effort you can make a positive impression by using images effectively.

In reality, only a relatively small group are actually doing what they are meant to be doing, only 20% are doing it right. Do the hard work and you can be part of the top 20% that are getting 80% of the results. Relating this to websites, what are the 20% doing to their websites? And what is the 80% they are getting out of it?

Just 20% of people, your competition, other businesses or whatever you want to call them are definitely doing four things:

1. Developing a website that is specifically appealing to their target audience and easy to navigate and digest 
2. Regularly and consistently updating their website
3. Communicating their expertise in their industry by sharing their knowledge and helping people
4. Channelling traffic to their up to date website through social media

This 20% are getting 80% of the results and some of these results are increased

1. Visibility
2. Brand awareness
3. Website traffic
4. Relationship quality
5. Rankings
6. Leads and conversions

Dare I say it, it’s Biblical – you reap what you sow. Simply put, it takes hard graft, lots of time investment and a genuine desire to help people and then you will achieve. Because the people, businesses and websites you aspire to be like have invested lots of time and effort they are a minority. This 2011, follow the tips above consistently and you may find yourself on your way to being in the 20%  who achieve 80% of the results. Notice I said, on your way – there never is a quick fix, and that is true of website communication too.

I quote, “Unless you’re a fortune teller, long term business planning is a fantasy. There are just too many market conditions that are out of your hands… Writing a plan makes you feel in control of things you can’t actually control…” So there I am trying to be ‘good’. I’m spending my already nonexistent free time on a plan and I read that. The Rework approach is to make quick short term decisions. Decide on a daily and weekly plan and certainly not anything past a monthly plan. Yearly plans are definitely OUT. The Rework authors conclude that chapter like this, “Working without a plan may seem scary. But blindly following a plan that has no relationship with reality is even scarier.”

Right. Here’s my take on plans based on my recent experience. I persevered and finished my marketing plan. The Business Link website and the CIM websites were very useful. In fact the CIM have a marketing plan tool which I used.

The pros of marketing plans

• It’s a detailed look at a specific area of your business which you will otherwise never really do – it makes you think about your business in a way that you haven’t for a long time.
• If you follow a guide the process makes you ask questions you never normally have time to answer or that you’d never think to ask yourself.
• It gives you a bird’s eye view of where you’re at and most importantly where you want your business to go.
• Action points come out of a plan that is done correctly – as a result of taking time out to do our marketing plan we have a list of things we need to action to help us achieve the goals we have set.
• The process helps you become more market aware because you have to consider things like your competitors and what your customers actually want.
• You have to express clearly your business purpose, your core values and why your offering is unique – an important aspect in my opinion.
• It helps you target the right prospects.
• Writing a marketing plan helps you to bring everything together so it all makes sense! If you understand all the pieces of the puzzle and put it together in a complete jigsaw then your potential buyers will understand the tangible, compelling and meaningful reasons why they should take action and buy from you. When every aspect of your marketing and communications just makes sense and tie together, you help your target audience trust you.
• As designers who help people create communications like websites, fliers and logos I recognised that if my customers came to me after they had gone through the marketing plan process they would be clearer about what they wanted from our services.

The cons of marketing plans

• Many of the guides available are more applicable for traditional business models and they haven’t evolved as fast as businesses have had to.
• Today it’s important to include social media in your marketing plans and many of the guides I found have not yet included this aspect – another reason why the marketing plan can be perceived as outdated.
• Most plans advise you to write things like your commitment and mission statement which are often convoluted untruths very disjointed from the actual customer experience you provide. This is especially true for for larger organisations. Use these in the wrong way and you’ll do more harm than good.
• I found there was too much focus on competitors. I guess it is important to know about the opposition but felt that it took up a lot of time as it was so detailed. The good thing that came out of the competitor analysis was it gave us confidence – there is a lot of poor competition out there!
• I also found too much focus on things we cannot control. Like market conditions and the economy for example. Yes, we need to respond to changing conditions but we can’t respond until conditions change and this is where I agree with the Rework argument I talked about above.
• All plans tend to end up gathering dust on a shelf, lost in a filing cabinet on sitting on your computer never to be referenced again. This is a major weakness.
• Many business owners (especially new ones) can hide behind perfection before they get their proposition out there. Plans can take up a lot of time and can stand in the way of you going out there and learning from experience and getting some business along the way. I wrote about this in, “A small business conundrum.”

My conclusion
I’m glad I took time out to do our marketing plan. It has brought clarity, we have goals with reason behind them and we have actions to complete. We are going to change quite a bit about our business and this planning process has taken random thoughts and conversations and crystallised everything. My marketing plan is 25 pages long as a result of following the CIM marketing plan guide. I really don’t think it needs to be that long. In fact, since marketing plans do bring clarity and would help our clients we’re going to champion a simpler approach to marketing plans (more on that later).  I am going to have to battle against forgetting about our plan and reference it at least monthly to see how we are getting on.

I agree to some extent with both extreme views: ‘don’t plan and you plan to fail’ from traditional marketers and business gurus and the Rework theory, ‘planning is guessing’ and put our approach firmly in the middle which I think, is much more balanced!

We’ve been suffering from the two year itch syndrome. It’s about two years since our business officially started. And the good news is that we’ve survived – just! But the two year itch shows up when you tend to get busy in a bit of a hamster wheel that is just going round and round, and round and round…. doing I suppose, exactly what a hamster wheel is meant to do. You’ll only realise that you are going nowhere if you break the rules and take that long hard stare at yourself. Take time out to do this regularly, maybe every 6 months or so. It’s sometimes painful, sometimes scary but always beneficial.

So this is the result for us. We’re relooking at our marketing strategy, marketing plan and in the process clarifying our business proposition. And here’s a confession, this time we are actually going to commit these strategies and plans to paper! (As opposed to scratchy, undecipherable notes in my notebook). We’ll be changing some of our services and adding some exciting new ones. We’re going to roll out a new communication master plan, and we are going to act on it. Funny how we do this for our clients but don’t do it often enough for ourselves. We might even give you some insight into what we are doing in this uncomfortable process of shedding dead skin (yucky as that sounds), how we do it and what benefits we gain from it. It might work out as a little bit of a rebirth blog series. I don’t know all the answers yet so we’ll see how this goes shall we?