In an increasingly crowded marketplace, more and more businesses are turning to artificial intelligence (AI) tools to boost their marketing efforts.

AI can help to drive sales, improve customer journey, automate repetitive tasks and facilitate fraud detection and prevention – an extra spot of reassurance for your customers.

Here, we’ll be explaining what to look for in AI marketing tools and taking a peek at what’s on the market right now.

You won’t find an all-rounder product that has AI functionality for every part of your marketing plan. Rather, they’ll focus on key areas such as your SEO, content or analytics.

Harvey Morton, founder of Harvey Morton Digital, explains what AI tools you could utilise to better your business.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) tools

AI-powered SEO tools assist marketers in optimising their websites and content for search engines. These tools offer features such as keyword research, content optimisation and competitor analysis to improve rankings and organic traffic.

Content strategy platforms

These are AI marketing tools to automate content creation and optimisation. They generate high-quality, SEO-friendly content tailored to specific keywords and niches, saving time and ensuring content performs well on search engines.

Social media marketing tools

AI tools for social media marketing aid in audience segmentation, content scheduling and sentiment analysis. Marketers can create highly targeted and engaging social media campaigns that resonate with their audiences.

Google Ads optimisation software

AI-driven tools optimise Google Ads campaigns by automating bidding strategies, analysing ad performance and refining targeting parameters. This maximises the return on investment for paid advertising efforts.

Email marketing automation solutions

AI-powered email marketing tools segment audiences, optimise send times and personalise email content. Marketers can create more effective email campaigns and increase engagement with subscribers.

Predictive analytics platforms

These tools utilise AI algorithms to analyse historical data and predict future trends and customer behaviours. Marketers can make data-driven decisions for their digital marketing strategies, improving overall effectiveness.

Chatbots and virtual assistants

AI chatbots and virtual assistants enhance customer engagement by providing 24/7 support, answering queries, and offering product recommendations. They improve user experiences and boost customer satisfaction.

AI marketing tools use machine learning algorithms to make tasks such as content writing easier. They analyse customer data from places where customers dwell such as social media, email and engagement with your customers. This in turn gives interesting insights into customer behaviour and trends.

On the plus side, Morton says that tools like these can boost output at a lower cost and increase customer engagement while giving you accurate insights to drive your marketing plan and reach your goals.

Data from Sitecore tells us that the top three benefits of using AI for marketing are:

• Being able to do faster market research on prospects and customers (70 per cent)
• Create and scale content faster (65 per cent)
• Inspire future campaigns and ideas (63 per cent)

However, there are downsides to these tools. They must be used responsibly, especially when handling sensitive information. Morton points out that small businesses must ensure that they have proper data protection measures in place when using AI marketing tools. “Respecting customer privacy and complying with data protection regulations is crucial for maintaining trust and loyalty,” he added.

Content is also a sticky subject here. Left entirely to AI’s devices, content can come across as cold, bland and clearly not written by a human. “As a digital marketing consultant, I’ve been aware of a couple of instances of clients using AI for social media content and copy, and the output is often not very good. It’s easy to spot when somebody is using AI for content generation and it’s not genuine,” said Morton.

To combat this, you need to teach the AI your tone of voice, but more importantly, ask a human to have a glance over any copy to ensure it doesn’t read like robot drivel. Morton recommends having a person responsible for marketing output and to consider working with a freelancer for £250-£500 a month.

Simon Bacher, founder of the Ling app, also warns of the potential complexity, cost considerations and the risk of over-reliance on technology when using AI platforms.

So, is it time for you to adopt an AI marketing platform? Peter Wood, entrepreneur and chief strategy officer at Spectrum Search, told Small Business that when considering AI marketing tools for businesses, especially small ones, it’s paramount to focus on practicality and scalability. “As someone deeply entrenched in the tech industry and AI innovation, I’ve observed that small businesses often grapple with the allure of cutting-edge tools that promise grand outcomes but lack practical applicability in their specific contexts.”

He recommends starting with AI tools that enhance customer interaction and engagement, pointing out that tools that provide insights into customer behaviour, predict trends and automate responses can be particularly beneficial. That being said, tools must have a proven track record of delivering results for similar-sized companies – this could be in the form of case studies or testimonials, for example. If they’re available, consider starting with a trial period to get an idea of the tool’s effectiveness for your business’ needs.

“Innovation doesn’t necessarily mean adopting the most advanced technology available; it often means utilising the right technology effectively,” said Wood. “For small businesses, this could mean choosing AI tools that integrate seamlessly with their existing systems, are user-friendly, and/or offer tangible benefits in terms of time and cost savings, as well as improved customer engagement.”

We’ve gathered a selection of AI marketing tools that serve various functions, detailing what they’re used for, along with features and cost.

Jasper.ai

https://www.jasper.ai/

What is it for? Writing commercial copy 

Features:

• AI everywhere with browser extension
• AI Google Docs integration
• Output content in your brand’s tone of voice
• Different dashboard views

Cost

Creator: $39 (£31) per month

Teams: $99 (£78) per month

Business: Bespoke

ManyChat

https://manychat.com/

What is it for? Reaching customers on social media

Features:

• Identify interested leads and reengaging without running retargeting ad campaigns
• Auto respond to messages
• AI assistant and plug and play templates to build automations
• Customised marketing chat campaign

Cost

Free: £0

Pro: $15 (£12) per month

Premium: Bespoke

AlliAI

https://www.alliai.com/

What is it for? SEO

Features:

• Bulk OnPage optimisation
• Schema mark-up
• Interlinks
• Live editor

Cost

Consultant: $299 (£236) per month

Agency: $599 (£470) per month

Enterprise: $1,119 (£885) per month

Reply

https://reply.io/

What is it for? Sales

Features:

• B2B contact and customer base
• Build prospect lists
• AI-backed multichannel systems
• Analyse outreach results
• A/B testing

Cost

Free: $0

Starter: $60 (£47) per user, per month

Professional: $90 (£71) per user, per month

Custom: Bespoke

Influencity

https://influencity.com/

What is it for? Influencer marketing

Features:

• Find and analyse influencers
• Curate lists and manage relationships with influencer database
• Manage campaigns
• Access fast and unbiased statistics

Cost

Custom: Bespoke

Basic: $134 (£106) per month

Professional: $278 (£220) per month

Business: $558 (£441) per month

Tableau

https://tableau.com/en-gb/solutions/ai-analytics

What is it for? Analytics and data visualisation

Features:

• Augmented analytics
• Forecasting
• Predictive modelling functions
• R and Python integrations

Cost

Tableau Viewer: £12 per user per month

Tableau Explorer: £34 per user per month

Tableau Creator: £60 per user per month

Rytr

https://rytr.me/

What is it for? Writing emails

Features:

• Blog ideas and writing
• Business idea pitches
• Create calls to action
• Write social media ads
• Keyword extractor

Cost

Free plan: £0

Saver plan: $9 (£7) per month

Unlimited plan: $29 (£23) per month

Looka

https://looka.com/

What is it for? Logo design

Features:

• Logo maker
• 300+ branded templates
• All accessible in one dashboard

Cost

From $20 (one-off) for a basic logo package

Brand kit subscription from $96 (£76) per year

Writesonic

https://writesonic.com/

What is it for? Content creation and optimisation

Features:

• AI article writer
• Paraphrasing tool
• Text summariser
• Story generator
• Landing page generator

Cost

Free: $0
Small Team: $13 (£10) per month
Freelancer: $16 (£12.50) per month

Which AI marketing tool is right for my business?

Unfortunately, only you can know that. Take stock of what your business needs and how tools like the ones above can slot into your existing operations. Good luck!

Benefits of chatbots for your business – Chatbots can make customer service more efficient, cost-effective and achieve better customer satisfaction

7 best email marketing software for UK businesses – Factors to consider include the number of recipients you need to mail out to, design customisation to match the brand, integrations, data migration and ease of use

How to write a marketing plan – This guide offers practical advice on developing and writing a marketing plan using simple English

The post AI marketing tools for your business appeared first on Small Business UK.

You will find that a lot of guides to writing a marketing plan are heavily laden with marketing jargon; buzzwords that may sound impressive, but upon closer inspection mean very little. This guide offers practical advice on how to write a marketing plan using plain English.

Why write a marketing plan?

Put simply, the aim of developing a marketing plan is to map out how you can gain more customers for your business, which strategies or tactics are right for your business, and how and when you are going to use them.

It should detail who you intend to sell to, how you will sell to them and how you will let them know about your business.

The marketing plan may form part of your overall business plan as a complement to investor presentations, or you may want to write a marketing plan as a separate document.

The focus should be on gaining new customers, persuading current customers to buy more often and getting inactive customers to return. They’re also useful for establishing what your strengths and weaknesses are as a business, who your key competitors are and what campaigns they’re running.

We’ll be looking at what you should be doing before you write up your marketing plan, how to write one, and examples of common elements you’ll find in a marketing plan.

Before you write a marketing plan

You need to identify the target audience you are aiming your product or service at, or indeed clarify whether there even is one.

Too many small businesses fail because they haven’t done enough market research. Don’t just rely on what your friends and family say, as they may not be the most objective observers.

>See also: Guidelines for conducting market research for small businesses

A market from which you can profit will be made up of people who need your product, or at least have a perceived need, and who will be willing to pay for it. Understanding your customers will allow you to identify the best way to sell to them.

Think about your product or service and who is likely to spend money on it. Remember, if you aim to sell to absolutely everyone, you will be less successful than if you can narrow down your market focus. A product or service aimed at everybody is one aimed at nobody.

Conduct face-to-face interviews

If appropriate, get out there and conduct some market research face-to-face. Ask people in the street if they can see the need for your type of business in the area and how much they would be willing to pay.

Survey the market

Identify who your competitors are and try to spot any weaknesses in their strategy. Can you capitalise on this? Is there a lot of competition in that area or will you be filling a gap? If not, could you find somewhere else more suitable?

How to write a marketing plan

Your marketing plan should consist of two halves: the brand proposition and the communication plan. The brand proposition defines your reason for being and why you answer a need, while the communication plan explains how you’re going to get the message out there.

Know your brand proposition

You need to spell out the thinking behind the brand you want to establish. Why should people care? A clear brand proposition will contain some form of:

Purpose of the brand: the purpose should define what you do – we exist to….? If you find that difficult, try defining what you don’t do – sometimes that marks businesses out from the competition. For example, “We are a locally produced soap product that only uses vegan ingredients not tested on animals.”

A purpose doesn’t need to be a perfectly crafted strapline, nor it is it likely to be seen by the public, but it should reflect what your business stands for.

Who your target customer is: who you think should notice and care about what you are offering – and why. The more focused this is, the better. If you have several focused customer groups then there should be a sense of priorities, possibly distinguishing between their value and the order in which you’ll go after them – these are not always the same.

When thinking about your target customer, try not to think in terms of demographics, such as “Young mums aged between 25 to 34” and more in terms of values, such as, “Environmentally aware women supportive of local independent businesses”.

Pro tip: Visualise your perfect customer and sketch out how they spend their day to tap into their mindset, attitudes and behaviours. Are they cost conscious? Then explain how a bar of more expensive vegan soap is better value than cheap shower gel. Creating this pen portrait may also help you figure out the best time of day to communicate with them.

What is unique about you? What makes your business better than the competition; some use the term unique selling point (USP) but really, it’s what makes you stand out from the crowd. You need to demonstrate what it is about your product, service or business model that will give consumers the reason to believe you.

What is behind the name: If this is not perfectly obvious (usually a good place to be with a name) then what is the story behind your company name? Is there an anecdote you can use in marketing or a press release?

>See also: Britain’s funniest business names

Tone of voice: This is important. The way you want to show up in front of your potential customers, the kind of language you would use, your house style, must be consistent. If you are setting yourself up as a financial adviser, for example, you would want to reassure and be patrician. A novelty kid’s product might be zany. Ben & Jerry’s ice cream still has a Sixties counterculture vibe, even though it’s owned by Unilever.

Pro tip: Create a mood board to illustrate the tone of voice, other brands or services which have the same kind of ethos to yours.

Communication plan

If the brand proposition is to get everybody excited, the communication plan is how you get the message across. Again, this will be defined by your target audience. Marketing channels to consider include:

• Direct marketing – either through mail or hand-delivered flyers
• Social media – where does you target audience like to go? Instagram, TikTok or if it’s an older demographic, Facebook
• Out of home advertising – the cost of renting space on a digital billboard can be less than you think. Digital screens typically cost £1,000 a week, according to 75Media.
• Events and trade shows – best for B2B businesses where you can meet potential customers

Make it short, concise and easy for the rest of your team to understand

Indeed, you may have to pass this on to other members of your team – or other parts of the business altogether – so keep it clear and accessible.

“I think that a marketing-centric business needs to have something that someone who isn’t marketing trained can read through and be like, ‘Yeah, okay, I get that. I know where we’re headed,’” said Rachael Dines, founder of Shake it Up Creative, a marketing firm that helps small businesses write their marketing plans.

Dines has developed her own template, ensuring that it’s very bright and that it’s got clear sections for each of the different areas discussed with her clients. “People could update either one or more sections or the whole thing if they need to over time,” she told Small Business.

Setting a budget

You also need to think about cost. Setting a budget is important and will help keep your advertising spend in check. Consider which of these marketing strategies will give the best return on investment.

“The question I always get asked is, ‘Well, how much budget should I have?’ And that’s not always a set percentage,” said Dines. “But I think you have to look at spending it very wisely. Of course, we know that marketing is a bit experimental. But reviewing it regularly is very important.”

To measure your return on investment (ROI), look at anything that you can track digitally, such as unique tracking codes that can be used, utilising analytics to see where visitors are coming from and whether the specific campaigns that’s utilising all the social media platform insights to get that engagement data, any kind of sales figures that align with marketing activities and marketing, said Dines.

“It can be hard to track because sometimes it takes people a few goes of seeing something before they start to interact with it. It’s never completely accurate, but give yourself a good idea. It’s using a mix of tools, not just relying on one thing.” This could be looking at email open rate, pay per click (PPC), web traffic or video engagement.

You could even ask similar businesses in another area how they go about advertising. You would be surprised how generous people are with their time. Speak to people in a similar situation, but preferably not the businesses against which you will be competing directly.

Get the message across

Having clearly defined goals will allow you to keep an eye on how you are progressing over a set period of time.

Does the message you are putting across need to be short and sharp, or will you customers be willing to spend more time learning about what you have to offer? Either way, there are some key points to consider, which should be included in your marketing material to make it more persuasive:

• Explain the problem facing your customer and identify a need for your product or service
• Emphasise that it is important to solve that problem
• Explain what makes your company different and why it will benefit people to buy through you
• If you have them, give examples of satisfied customers and their comments
• Explain prices and how to pay clearly and concisely
• If you can, give some sort of guarantee as to the quality of your work or product, or offer incentives or discounts for responding within a set time period.

Set targets and review progress

Having clearly defined goals will allow you to keep an eye on how you are progressing over a set period of time. Use SMART targets as a useful way of approaching this area. SMART means that your targets should be:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Realistic
• Time-specific

You could include sales targets and the amount of profit you are looking to achieve, targets for enquiry levels and so on.

Once a month, you should conduct a short review of progress to see how you are getting on and whether these targets need to be adjusted. However, don’t jump to re-adjust targets immediately if you aren’t hitting them. There may be something else in your marketing strategy that could be changed and will allow you to achieve more.

“When I do a plan, I generally go through who the target market is, what the products are, pricing and the process and timings,” said Dines.

Detail is key here. “Normally, it’s that people have things they want to achieve, but they don’t put a time on it. They’re not specific enough. Some of them will just say, ‘Oh, we would like to do X, but there isn’t a time on there.’ There’s no drive or endpoint for them to work to. And they won’t know how long to do their activities for, how much budget would apply to it, etc. That’s the fundamental mistake.”

As mentioned, reviewing the plan can also help you learn from any mistakes and help you adjust. When you write your marketing plan always bear in mind your desired results. The plan is therefore an important tool to help you author your business future.

Dines says that marketing plans don’t tend to be published and are kept internally. However, you might find examples online from larger companies or templates from marketing businesses.

Most are online or in print, but there are exceptions. Coca-Cola did part of their 2020 marketing plan in the form of a video:

The one thing to remember is that the following examples should be used as guides, so don’t rigidly follow them. Each marketing plan will look slightly different depending on the needs, audience and aesthetic of your business.

Bear in mind that a lot of the examples below are stylised too. You can just create Word docs or Excel spreadsheets if that works for you.

Here are said examples. Your marketing plan could be made up of any or all of these things.

Executive summary

This is a rundown of your business and what it does. It also includes a bit of information on market need, target customer and what’s coming up of the firm.

Source: Shopify

Target customers

Source: Venngage

USP

Your unique selling point (USP) sets you apart from your competitors and re-establishes market need.

Source: Shopify

SWOT analysis

You may have come across SWOT analyses before. They look at strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats for your marketing to help drive your plan forward.

Source: Zapier

Competitor analysis

This can also help to drive your plan based on what your competitors are doing. Either filling in for their shortcomings or taking inspiration from what they do well.

Source: Venngage

Action programmes

This can be seen as an outline for what’s coming up, sometimes driven by your SWOT analysis. It’s generally one year up to five years, though it still needs to be reviewed regularly.

Source: Institute of Enterprise and Entrepreneurs

Budgets

This will give you an idea of how to get your plan into action and where you can move some money around.

Source: Smartsheet

There may even be sections that aren’t here that you feel are more fitting to your business and its marketing goals.

If you’re still flummoxed by the whole thing, then don’t worry – help is out there!

“There are lots of organisations and support that is available either at county level, or sometimes via various partnerships, like Enterprise Nation or your Chamber of Commerce,” said Dines. “There will always be someone nearby that you could maybe have a power hour with or get a grant to work with.”

Further reading

E-marketing made easy

The post How to write a marketing plan appeared first on Small Business UK.

If done well email marketing can still deliver dependable results. With the sales funnel becoming ever more complicated and GDPR around the corner, now more than ever, businesses need to take charge of every part of the customer journey. Here Andrea Blair from Hallam Internet, takes you through an email marketing checklist for success.

Marketing departments should be thinking about communicating with their customers at many different touch points. Therefore, there is a pretty long list of things that email marketing can be used for; the main ones being:

1. Obtaining new customers
2. Improving customer loyalty
3. Building brand awareness
4. Tracking and measuring behaviour
5. Testing new products and services
6. Generating sales

Email marketing used to be about mass messaging. These days are gone, and have been replaced by a channel that delivers a unique personalised experience. The vast amount of data being collected has allowed us to target based on behaviours and various other elements.

Getting email marketing right can often be a difficult task. Once you hit that send button, there’s no going back. Avoid any disasters by running through this email marketing checklist:

1. Nail Your Strategy

Before you even start to think about sending mass messages out to the world, you need to make sure you have a clear brand strategy. It seems like a bit of a no-brainer, but knowing how you are perceived in the outside world and the behaviours of your target audience are key before you start looking into email marketing. Ask yourselves the following questions:

• Are you clear about your competitive positioning?
• Is this the right distribution channel for your target audience?

Do you have a solid message that stands out from your competitors, and offers the best in the market?

2. Use Email Marketing Software

Use or invest in email marketing automation software. There are a lot of good free tools out there for smaller companies who have smaller list sizes, the main one being MailChimp.

For those bigger databases, you may find restrictions on list sizes and template constraints mean that you’ll have to invest a bit in this. Most of the top email marketing automation tools are really simple to use and allow for things like personalisation and split testing, to make sure you’re communicating and not spamming. Some tools that are worth considering are MailChimp, Vertical Response, Campaign Monitor and Acoustic Connect.

Examples of marketing email software include:

• Acoustic Connect – Acoustic Connect (formerly Silverpop) is a multi-channel marketing platform that covers email, social media and SMS messaging. Its email marketing tool that has a drag and drop editor, AI assistance and behavioral insights.
• ActiveCampaign – ActiveCampaign offers a suite of pre-made automation workflows and over 250 B2B and B2C-friendly email templates. You can split test up to five different email versions to see which performs best. The platform also integrates with PayPal, Stripe, Shopify and hundreds of other software providers.
• AWeber – AWeber is a very good option for beginners as it offers templates based on your website’s URL alone, images from Canva (as well as thousands of stock images) and help from an AI design assistant. It also offers free 3,000 emails for 500 subscribers.
• Campaign Monitor – Like AWeber, Campaign Monitor can draft up an email’s design based off a URL alone, basing it on the brand colours and logo.
• ConvertKit – ConvertKit is geared towards those in creative roles. Its free plan allows unlimited emails and landing pages and the ability to sell subscriptions and digital products.
• Mailchimp – Mailchimp works for businesses of all sizes and complexities. It has a drag and drop editor, email automations (a way of targeting customers automatically based on behavior, such as a purchase) and AI suggestions.
• MailerLite – Like AWeber, MailerLite is a great option for beginners as it not only has numerous templates, a free image gallery and an easy-to-use drag and drop editor, but can craft email copy with it’s AI assistant (well, ChatGPT).
• Vertical Response – Vertical Response offers various easy-to-use email marketing and landing page templates with the option of automated follow-up emails, A/B testing and an AI-powered content assistant. Its deep insights tool is very useful in identifying where your recipients click, the devices they used to open the email and where they’re located, so you can better personalise emails to them in future.

3. Follow These Tips When Composing “the Email”

Pay attention to that subject line, as that’s what drives the recipient to open your email. Keep it short, precise and engaging. The majority of emails are now read on mobile, so make sure the important bits aren’t being cut off. Most importantly, don’t forget to check it for spelling errors.

• Urgency – make the user think that they have to click through
• Curiosity – keep a little bit back to improve the chances of people clicking through
• What are you offering? – people will be more likely to click through if there is something in it for them
• Personalisation – know your audience and share relevant timely information

Segmentation remains one of the highest priorities in email marketing. The one size fits all approach of email marketing is no longer working – although you could argue that it never did work. Using your existing data to segment your emails means that you are delivering a relevant and specific experience, which will ultimately make your campaigns more successful.

Write compelling copy: ensure it is short, catchy, and engaging. Invest time in creating and repurposing good content, and its content that will get customers to open the message and hopefully continue to read, as you send them. Don’t forget the call to action.

4. Check Before You Hit Send

Is it mobile friendly? It is important not to overlook how your message comes across on different devices. Emails might still convert better on desktop, but recipients may make a decision from viewing it through mobile first! Your email marketing template needs to be responsive on mobile devices. Most email automation tools will offer this as standard, but it’s best to check.

The goal of email marketing is to get people to visit your website, so make sure you link back. Added bonus if it’s a dedicated landing page, if you want to increase conversions. Check all your links – there is nothing more irritating than a broken link or one that goes to the wrong landing page.

Check the version of the email is going to the correct list. It is common to create two versions of the same email based on behaviours.

Check your spelling and grammar, then check again. Get someone else to check. Customers are quick to pick up on these things and it could damage your brand massively. This is a vital check that you will find a lot of people don’t bother to perform.

See also: Five email marketing mistakes your start-up is making

5. Follow up and Improve

Report, review and improve. Email marketing is not about setting up your campaigns and walking away. Check your reports or stats following every email, and monitor the negative results and look for ways to improve.

6. Don’t forget GDPR

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a new digital privacy regulation being introduced on the 25th May 2018. Businesses are now required to offer new consumer opt-in permission rules, and need to store and manage proof of consent. They should also offer a method through consumers can ask for their personal information removed.

I would recommend taking legal advice, to make sure you know where you stand. But for starters, you should at the very least, take an audit of your current databases. Know all of your contacts, and how you acquired them. Be transparent and review and disclose your data practices, and think of the future, so look at your upcoming initiatives to ensure compliance now.

In conclusion, email marketing is still an essential marketing tool, by far working as a better conversion tool than social platforms. By following this email marketing checklist, you can ensure that your email marketing campaigns are accurate, engaging and reach your recipient no matter which device they choose to view your message.

Andrea Blair is a digital strategist at Hallam Internet

Further reading on email marketing

Top ten tips to mastering an email marketing campaign – Here, Tom Gottlieb, email marketing team leader at Wix.com, advises us on his top tips for running an email marketing campaign.

Reactivate your email list and re-engage subscribers – Inactive subscribers can be a drag on your email list. But a re-engagement campaign can get them involved and provide useful intel for your business

7 of the best email marketing software platforms for UK businesses – With descriptions and price points

The post A guide to successful email marketing appeared first on Small Business UK.

The purpose of email marketing is to inform your customers and leads of what’s new at your business – be that offers, new stock, what’s best for the season or as a means to get them to engage on your website.

To best engage your leads, content must be relevant, personalised and be a clear representation of the brand. Email marketing software can help your business achieve this, with easy-to-se drag and drop editors, personalisation tools and AI-generated content to help when you’re struggling for words.

What is email marketing software?

Email marketing software allows businesses to create, send and track emails to their customers and leads.

To maximise the effectiveness of email marketing, your business will need email software that is best suited to its needs. Factors to consider include the number of recipients you need to mail out to, easy-to-use design customisation that allows you insert your logo and colourways, integrations with other relevant software and data migration.

Email marketing software providers offer varying levels of all these factors with price points to match.

7 best email marketing software for UK businesses

Brevo

Brevo’s marketing platform is a relatively cheap option if you’re a small business at £16 a month for a starter package which allows upwards of 20,000 emails a month, customizable email templates, basic reporting and email support. Brevo also has a CRM platform which you can integrate with the email software.

Highlights:

• Automation tools
• Drag and drop editor
• Campaign analysis

Price: £16 a month (starter package for smaller businesses)

Campaigner

Campaigner has a list verification tool that every now and then scans your contact list, rating and flagging any that could result in bounces.

Its drag and drop editor is easy to use (though there’s also an HTML editor) and is completely compatible with all mobile devices, without compromising on quality or functionality.

Highlights:

• Personalisation tools, including by geo location and buying behavior
• Drag and drop editor
• 24/7 support

Price: From £42 per month (starter plan)

Get Response

Get Response offers an affordable software solution from just £10 per month. With that, you get unlimited monthly emails, an AI-powered email generator, A/B testing and Google Analytics tracking.

Highlights:

• AI-powered newsletters
• AI-powered analytics
• Data-driven segmentation
• Integration with over 170 e-commerce platforms
• 24/7 support

Price: From £10 per month

Campaign Monitor

Campaign Monitor One helpful feature is how easy it is to customise to fit your branding. By inserting your URL, the editor will automatically import the brand colours and logo. Another unique feature is Campaign Monitor’s link review, which detects any broken links and flags any that need your attention.

Highlights:

• Drag and drop editor
• Mobile optimisation
• AI tools
• Segmentation and personalization
• Automatic transactional emailing
• Email analytics
• Software integrations

Price: £16 per month (for essentials package)

HubSpot

Like other email marketing software on this list, HubSpot offers a drag and drop editor for ease of use. One differentiator, though, is what HubSpot claims to be superior email deliverability, ensuring it hits the right folder in the customer inbox. HubSpot also has AI tools which can generate copy for you if you’re suffering from writer’s block. The downside is if you take just the email marketing product from HubSpot, it is far more expensive than the others on this list. If you already use the platform as your CRM, however, it is free.

Highlights:

• A/B testing
• Analytics
• AI copy generation

Price: Free with CRM (£702 a month without CRM)

Klaviyo

Like Mailchimp, Klaviyo has a range of templates which make it easy for a beginner to email marketing to get started.

Klaviyo offers advanced segmentation tools for personalization and makes good use of AI with subject line automation, predictive analytics and user recommendations based on their browsing history.

Highlights:

• Advanced segmentation
• Integration with over 300 software providers
• AI tools for personalised send-outs

Price: From $45 per month

Mailchimp

Mailchimp has drag and drop editor tools, meaning it can be easy to pick up for an email marketing beginner. It is also highly rated when it comes to email deliverability – i.e. avoiding the customer junk folder.

Mailchimp offers over 300 integrations with software providers – including Google Analytics so you can measure the success of your campaigns – as well as a host of AI tools such as abandoned cart notifications to help you achieve successful campaigns.

Highlights:

• 24/7 customer service
• 300+ integrations
• AI automation tools

Price: $20 per month (first month free)

More on email marketing

Reactivate your email list and re-engage subscribers – Inactive subscribers can be a drag on your email list. But a re-engagement campaign can get them involved and provide useful intel for your business

Ten tips to master an email marketing campaign – Tom Gottlieb of Wix.com advises on some best practices for email marketing.

The post 7 best email marketing software for UK businesses appeared first on Small Business UK.

In business, commissioning market research may seem intimidating or even unnecessary when you’re on a tight budget.

(SMEs) often think it is only for big business, but this is far from the truth. Customers can be difficult whether your company is big or small. They have their own vocabulary, their own ‘goods and services’ and can have very fixed perceptions.

In fact, with relatively low budgets and restricted resources, smaller companies may have more to gain from early and effective insight into their customers, and yes, it can be done a shoestring budget. It isn’t about cutting corners, it’s about thinking intelligently and flexibly from the outset.

According to figures from the Federation of Small Business, SMEs account for 99.9 per cent of UK businesses. With so much resting on these economic powerhouses, it is vital they understand how to benefit from customer insight. Done well, it can enable informed decisions which ultimately – through better customer understanding – leads to better design of ideas or communications and grow profit.

When conducting research, it’s always important to carefully consider what you want to learn about your customers and how best to do that. Choosing the right researcher, however small (and there are many one-person consultants) is crucial.

To get the best results, treat your researcher as a partner and invest time with them to ensure they understand you and your business. The more you put in, the more you’ll get out of the process.

Find a consultant or agency that is prepared to be honest with you and be ready to take their advice on board – the good news about what you’re doing as well as the less flattering feedback.

Below are a few extra pointers to get started.

Examine what you already have

Begin at the beginning by analysing the data you already have access to.

You might be surprised about what you already know about your customer base, or potential customer base. Businesses often forget that they are already sitting on customer data.

If you have it, you’ll need to establish how good it is. Check there isn’t bias in it by considering what sort of questions you asked (did they lead towards a specific answer?), how you did it (did the method favour a particular group over others?), and who you asked.

Organise data appropriately before considering adding any more to the mix. By analysing what you already have and thinking about how you can feasibly use it, you’ll be in a position to identify the gaps and give a much tighter brief to your research provider.

Remember to keep GDPR in mind when handling customer data.

Quality over quantity

Prioritising the quality and usefulness of each piece of research rather than simply collecting as much information as you can is sage advice, particularly for SMEs. A huge amount of data is one thing but it’s not much use until it is properly interpreted.

It’s not the information itself that will help you to achieve actionable insight, but the questions you ask of it.

Take advantage of free resources

There’s lots of data out there that you can access without incurring costs.

The Census contains a surprising amount and is an ideal place to start. Royal Mail’s excellent and accessible MarketReach database is useful if you’re thinking of using direct mail in your marketing.

Social media is clearly a great place to establish what matters to your target market, but it must be approached with caution and an awareness and understanding of your sample.

Those who are particularly expressive online represent a relatively small and unique group, so bear in mind that more private or reserved people could be overlooked. Not all age groups use all social media, and some don’t use any at all.  Make sure you’re not missing out on customers by relying too heavily on one data source.

Think flexibly

There are also ways you can adapt your own behaviour to gain insight into your target market. Don’t underestimate the power of qualitative insights (put crudely, talking and listening to smaller groups and individuals) alongside numerical data and trust the instinctive steer such observation gives you.

Something as simple as looking through your target audience’s preferred newspaper can help. This is part of a process to continue listening to your customer in their context. Staying curious about them isn’t just fun, it’ll keep you to stay ahead.

“Don’t underestimate the power of qualitative insights”

This flexible approach to what constitutes valid research is vital for businesses who may be struggling with smaller budgets. By thinking flexibly and realising that useful research is not beyond their reach financially, SMEs have everything to gain.

Jane Frost CBE, CEO of the Market Research Society (MRS)

Further Resources

How to use market research to make smart marketing decisions for your business – Mentor, speaker and author Katie Tucker on understanding your customer better and creating research-driven product awareness strategies.

8 Templates to Plan and Organize Your Market Research – These free templates from Milanote include a Brand Positioning Map, Customer Personas, SWOT analysis, and other classic market research projects.

20 Market Research Tools (With Importance and Types) – A comprehensive list covering data analysis, software, and competitive intelligence resources from Indeed.

Why market research is so important for a start-up business – Eric Brandenburg of market research company Marketest, looks at how unbiased research will uncover the merits of a new product to a market.

Smart marketing tips for start-ups – Advice on creating a consistent, varied and impactful marketing strategy.

And also, checkout this succinct explainer from OnStrategy on How to Conduct a Market Analysis in 4 Steps

The post How to do your market research on a shoestring budget appeared first on Small Business UK.

Global affiliate marketing network Awin is a key supporter of our British Business Awards, taking place on 3 October 2023.

In this exclusive interview, Small Business sits down with global customer success director Michelle O’Sullivan, to find out more about Awin’s mission, how affiliate marketing could change the game for your small business and why the company is proud to champion the best of British business.

Tell us a bit about what Awin does?

Awin is a leading affiliate marketing platform that enables businesses of all sizes, types and industries to partner and grow online.

How do Awin specifically support small businesses?

In 2020, Awin launched their starter plan, Awin Access, which was set up specifically to help small online businesses, micro-SME’s, start-ups and entrepreneurs take advantage of the exciting world of opportunity that affiliate marketing can provide.

By lowering the initial commitment term to just three months and removing the need for long contracts, small businesses get the freedom to test affiliate marketing with lower risk. Costs for using Awin’s platform were also reduced to just £75 a month for this plan, supporting SMEs with their often-stretched marketing budgets.

Awin understands the personal sacrifice and risk associated with spending in a small business. We are passionate about making SMEs confident in affiliate marketing as an accessible, controllable and safe online channel, and a great alternative to expensive digital ad platforms.

Can you explain a bit about what affiliate marketing is and why it benefits small businesses, and not just the big brands?&

Affiliate marketing is what’s known as ‘performance-based marketing’; an ecommerce website selling a product or service will reward a chosen partner for successfully driving an agreed action on their website. This action is typically a sale but can also include other interactions, like completing an online form.

For small businesses, reaching new audiences can be challenging. Affiliate marketing through a reputable platform offers an effective solution by partnering with influencers, price comparison sites, voucher code sites, cashback sites, bloggers and more. It helps online ecommerce stores reach vast new customers in a way that they often can’t alone or through costly digital ad platforms.

What sets affiliate marketing apart is that you only pay for confirmed results generated by your chosen partners that are verified and tracked through an affiliate platform like Awin. This makes it a cost-efficient, safe and secure channel for online businesses looking to grow online sales and reach new audiences.

You can read more about affiliate marketing and what it can do for your business in our full guide.

The economic climate for small businesses in retail is tough at the moment, why is investing in the right types of digital marketing so important?

Effective digital marketing isn’t just about the number of online marketing channels used, but also about discovering the best channels that feel comfortable and familiar to your customers.

Consumers now seek out services and products online across multiple channels, so testing and trying new ways of reaching them is essential. You may have tried Google ads, but you might have found that you’re paying for clicks without much impact on actual website sales, because it’s so fiercely competitive.

In this economy, consumers are pickier about where they spend their money, and endorsements from websites or bloggers that they trust mean a huge amount.

A channel like affiliate marketing lets you search for, connect with and recruit a reputable influencer in your industry who can promote you to their already loyal customer base. You are in control of your costs, and what you chose to pay those partners. For example, if you were to select that you pay a partner 5% for driving a sale, and they deliver you a sale worth £100, you pay them just £5 once the sale is approved.

What’s more, using a trusted affiliate platform will mean that this partner is vetted and committed to driving results, and all payments owed to them from driving a successful sale are managed within the safe and secure platform.

Awin is supporting our British Business Awards this year, why did you want to be involved?

Awin is delighted to support the British Business Awards for 2023 because they represent and celebrate the very people that Awin Access strives to support and champion. In these challenging economic times, it’s great to see all the brilliant SMEs and technology providers, who work so hard to keep the vital small business community thriving, being recognised and rewarded. It is a privilege to be part of this passionate community and we wish the very best of luck to everyone shortlisted.

If you could give one essential tip to small online businesses right now, what would it be?

Make the most of the retail peak period by diversifying and testing new channels sooner rather than later.

Awin data shows that many SME retailers are starting their ‘Golden Quarter’ promotions as early as October, which means that consumers are hunting for gifts and bargains well before Christmas.

When it comes to retail dates like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, promotions and exposure need to be treated like a marathon and not a sprint. This gives you the time to plan and ensure that you are getting seen and noticed in the flurry of activity.

Starting early with something new like affiliate marketing means giving yourself time to get set up, search for your perfect partners and build strong relationships ready to be front and centre of their seasonal promotional campaigns. This could be a mention in a ‘Top 10 best Christmas gifts for Mums’ blogs or ‘The luxury gift to get the friend who has it all’ social reel. Let them do the heavy lifting for you.

At Awin, we understand about the challenges that SMEs face from our experience in supporting over 25,000 growing online brands worldwide. We have really seen first-hand how taking the step into this exciting channel can reap huge benefits for SMEs.

Awin empowers only businesses of all sizes to grow their businesses and reach new customers online.

Awin is a proud sponsor of the British Business Awards 2023, the biggest award scheme recognising and celebrating the outstanding achievements of British small and medium-sized businesses.

The post How Awin can support your small business appeared first on Small Business UK.

With the amount of space to fill in ever-diversifying media, especially online with websites hungry for content and millions of people posting their experiences daily via social networking sites, it can be easy to assume that good copywriting has become an irrelevance.

But quantity does not win the contest against quality, and this is even more true for businesses. Indeed, in a survey of business leaders by Freshword, nearly all respondents believed that ‘poor writing poses serious risks to their reputation, and affects [their] financial and legal risk’.

Small business owners and managers tend to focus hard on their actual enterprise, taking great care to get the client offering or product mix right; ensuring both quality and service, and working to pitch prices at the right level for their customers. However many of them, especially cottage industries and start-ups, pay considerably less attention to how they market themselves – to the words and images they use to convey the vital message of who they are and what they have to offer. They often see it as an avoidable cost.

Does this matter? Yes it does. How do you react, when, for example, you see a menu in a restaurant with spelling or grammar mistakes, or (my personal bête noire) a missing or incorrectly placed apostrophe? Or an advert which looks as it’s been thrown together on a poorly-designed template?

Most of us, consciously or otherwise, will perceive that business as sloppy, low quality, and unwilling to pay the level of attention to detail that we hope they would extend to us, as their customers. In short, it makes us far less likely to spend our hard-earned cash with them, however good we may have heard them to be.

By contrast, if we are presented with a flyer or brochure, or for that matter an email or website, which is well-presented, clearly written, nicely designed and, all in all, a pleasure to look at while telling us what we need to know in an accessible way, the chances are we will automatically feel well-disposed towards the company concerned, and far more likely to trust them with our money.

Copy that means something

Beyond the grammar and presentation, though, a firm’s copy needs to mean something to its customers. To make sure the right message will get through, there are three elements which need to coincide. These are:

• Reflection – a company needs a clear view of what it wants to say, what it doesn’t want to say, and what the reader needs to know, avoiding waffle and overstatement. The thinking part is a vital building block to good copy.
• Precision – the message needs to be phrased clearly, succinctly and without jargon. Editing is crucial.
• Connection – perhaps the trickiest part to get right, the tone needs to draw the reader in and then convince them with a compelling argument or call to action, without appearing arrogant or patronising. An assertive but accessible style, avoiding ‘mights and maybes’, accurately pitched for the known customer base, will help form a lasting bond.

If your copywriting in particular, and your marketing communications in general, don’t meet these criteria, it may be time to do your business a favour. By spending a little more time, care, love and attention on presentation, a company can dramatically improve both its reputation and its bottom line.

Large firms tend to budget for spending at least 15 per cent of turnover on marketing (which may also include market research, advertising and other more costly activities) – but small ones will find that just 3-5 per cent can make a real difference. It will not only help bring in new clients, but can encourage existing ones to upsell or upgrade. It will also help create the image you want to build a healthy future for your company.

See also: Six marketing skills every business needs

Write headlines that sell

Whether you are writing headlines for sales letters, job or product advertisements or email newsletters, your objective should always be same: you need to grab the interest and attention of your target audience.

The most important part of any advertisement is the headline, which should be eye-catching – you need to use it to hook your customers in. They will use headlines to decide whether they read on or not, and unread copy will not help you sell your products. If you’re stuck for inspiration, then follow these five tips to help you write winning headlines.

Your headline should be need-based

You need to establish a desire in your customers, and suggest that the product or service you are offering is something they want. Try to decide what would make you buy the product and consider the audience you are writing for. It’s a good idea to look at tabloid and broadsheet magazines and newspapers for some ideas on headline writing, and to get a feel for which words appeal to which audience.

Use tried and tested words that grab attention

Words such as ‘new’ and ‘free’ work well as they are eye-catching and will encourage curiosity on the part of your readers to find out more. Other key words that can be useful are words related to announcements, such as ‘how’, ‘how to’, ‘discover’, ‘solve’, ‘introduce’, ‘advice’ and ‘wanted’. Featuring special offers, or the price in the headline can also be effective.

Try to suggest the feelings of ‘quick’ and ‘easy’

You can draw customers into the rest of your offering by suggesting that you have a product or benefit that is quick and easy to get. However, ensure that you make the headline believable – supporting it with facts and figures can help you achieve this. But avoid headlines that simply state facts, as your audience will know what you are trying to say without having to read any further.

Don’t put everything in capital letters

Your headline needs to be as clear as possible as you will only have a few moments to grab a customer’s attention, and although capital letters stand out, they make the text harder to read, so don’t put everything in capital letters. Don’t be afraid of writing long headlines – a long headline that conveys a message can be more powerful than a short headline that says nothing.

A personal touch can work wonders

For example, if you are using email as a marketing tool, it can be a good idea to put the letters ‘FW&’ in front of the headline, as it looks as if you are forwarding it from someone else, and this can add a more personal feel.

There are no hard and fast rules for writing headlines that sell – the key is to keep on testing your ideas and styles until you find one that works. A good way of testing whether your headline is getting the right message across is to test it with a group of people, such as your friends and family, without telling them what you are trying to sell.

Related: Why content marketing is essential for a small business

The post The importance of good copy in your marketing communications appeared first on Small Business UK.

If you’re an SME selling online, you’ll know how important seasonal retail dates are for sales, and how they can make or break your entire year.

With Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas to name just a few, you could easily spend all of your time planning for seasonal promotions and bidding on increasingly expensive digital ads, in order to compete with the large brands and competitors.

But what if we told you there was a way to reach your potential customers and have someone else do some of the legwork? That’s where affiliate marketing comes in.

What is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is what’s known as “performance-based marketing”. An ecommerce website – known as an “advertiser”- will reward a chosen partner – known as a “publisher” – for successfully driving an agreed action on their website. This action is typically a sale but can also include other valuable interactions, like completing an online form or submitting an email address.

‘Many customers using Awin get an average return of £14 for every £1 spent’

This can often mean access to vast numbers of new customers that can be difficult to get access to alone, or through other expensive digital ad platforms, so it’s a great way to spend precious marketing budgets. 

Read our full guide to affiliate marketing to get more information on how this marketing channel can reap huge benefits for an SME.

Want to know more about how to supercharge your online sales? Download the full Awin webinar for free here

What is the best time of year to start an affiliate marketing campaign?

Do your homework on the seasonal dates that mean something to you.

Ten years ago everyone was focused on December as the main retail period. Now, with so many celebrations through the year, it’s important to maintain good relationships through an affiliate programme year-round. By doing so, you can measure performance and gather enough data to know where to put extra focus.  

A 2023 study by the Influencer Marketing Hub said that more than 80 per cent of marketers use affiliate marketing at the earliest stage of the customer journey; when trying to build awareness with brand-new customers. So, it’s also good to maintain a year-round presence if you’re a niche or luxury product so that you increase the chance of individuals who are shopping for that payday treat, or gift for a loved one, finding you through your chosen partner at the right moment.

Affiliate marketing provides a reliable and low-maintenance income stream, so it’s it an ideal choice if you’re looking for a source of steady revenue. Whenever you chose to join an affiliate platform you stand a chance of reaping huge benefits.

If you’re thinking specifically about preparing for the busy winter retail season, many retailers are now starting their sales as early as October.  To get the most out of this peak, it’s best to be setup and exploring partnership options in your chosen affiliate platform by early September, so that you can take advantage of specific promotional pushes or marketing opportunities offered by them for days like Black Friday and Cyber Monday.  

Around 30-40 per cent of customers that are attracted from an affiliate partner are brand new, according to data from Awin.  That figure can rise to more than 50 per cent depending on which partners you chose – showing just how impactful it can be for SMEs who are reliant on these key retail dates.

5 top tips to prepare for seasonal retail dates

#1 – Hang out where your customers do

A great digital marketing strategy is about more than just the number of channels used. It should also focus on the channels that your specific target audience regularly use, and that feel comfortable to them.

Using a wide range of channels lets you explore where customers are best engaging, and this will help you shape your strategy. For example, you may already have tested Google Ads with some success, but it cost you a lot and you didn’t see any real sales. How about being featured on a cashback or voucher code site? Or, getting an influencer in your industry to give a product demo or unboxing to their loyal followers?  

The biggest benefit for an SME of working with partners through an affiliate platform, is that you only pay them when they drive a customer to you and they complete an action that you agreed. So, it’s easy to see great ROI on a tight marketing budget.  In fact, many customers using Awin get an average return of £14 for every £1 spent.

#2 – Go early

Do your homework about all the peak events across the peak retail seasons. Don’t see days like Black Friday as a one-day sprint, but a month-long marathon.

Retailers are starting their Black Friday and Golden Quarter sales as early as October, and consumers are hunting for bargains well before Christmas.  You’ll need to think about how to sustain promotions across multiple sales events and spread your offers across the months rather then splurge in one generic promotion.

By partnering with affiliate partners through a reputable affiliate platform, you can integrate with their marketing plans and expertise. This allows you to take advantage of the hard work they’re already doing to reach their audiences in different seasons and retail dates.

With the Awin platform, once you are set up and have selected the perfect partners for you, you can speak with them directly through our communication centre about ideas for seasonal dates. Whether it’s about a feature in a “Top 10 gifts for Mother’s day”’ social reel, or a “Best Christmas gifts for a cycling lover” blog, you can let them do the heavy lifting.

#3 – Play to your strengths

Online SMEs have quite a few things in their favour when it comes to working with affiliate partners. Firstly, you can be agile, flexible and quick to respond to new opportunities when they arise.

Awin works with different technology providers that can help you address poor visit to sale conversion rates, or companies that can stop so many customers leaving your site before they buy.  Larger brands can take months to implement tech like this. As an SME you can avoid lengthy internal process and switch these on quickly through the one platform.

Lessons learned from the pandemic show that consumers are moving to supporting local and small companies. Use this to your advantage over the big corporates and find ways to push your small business credentials in your banners and offers. Find affiliate partners that have a desire to support smaller businesses, or select micro-influencers who may have a smaller but loyal following.

#4 – Don’t assume peak season is just for retail or gifting

You may think that people are focused purely on gifts for friends or family on key retail dates. Awin data shows that many people are looking to buy for themselves as much as they are for others.

Think about how this can impact your messaging, rather than just focusing on gifting. Speak directly to and appeal to shoppers getting themselves that payday treat. 

Other interesting Black Friday trends show that people are looking to purchase all sorts of things online, not just traditional retail. So, even if you sell things that you don’t think fit into the usual Black Friday or seasonal categories such as telephone contracts, insurance or experiences, you can still take advantage of the surge in online traffic around the end of November and across Golden Quarter.

Where do I start?

Awin’s affiliate marketing solution, Awin Access, has generated over £200m in sales for SMEs. It is the perfect first step to get ready for peak season, reach new customers and grow your online sales. 

Michelle O’Sullivan is the global customer success director for Awin’s exciting entry-level SME affiliate solution, Awin Access. With over 21 years’ experience in digital marketing Michelle is passionate about supporting SMEs and independent businesses in accessing and benefitting from great digital marketing opportunities

The post When is the best time to run an affiliate marketing campaign? appeared first on Small Business UK.

From $1.7bn in 2016, influencer marketing has grown rapidly to reach an estimated market size of $16.4bn in 2022.  According to a recent study by the Influencer Marketing Hub, this fast-evolving industry is predicted to expand even further to be worth a projected $21.1 billion in 2023.

With over 80 per cent of marketers reporting that influencer marketing is an effective channel for them, this valuable industry isn’t just for big brands, and can have a real impact for online growth and sales for SMEs too.

Read on to find out what influencer marketing is, why it’s important for smaller businesses, and get some practical tips to making it work for you.

What is influencer marketing?

It’s a form of online marketing that involves endorsements by popular individuals or groups on social media. Influencers with a relevant audience can be rewarded for promoting your products or services in a timely way to their audience, and make a powerful addition to any small business marketing strategy.

Want to know more about how to supercharge your online sales? Download the full Awin webinar for free here

What are the main influencer types?

Influencers are categorised based on their follower count:

• Nano-influencers: 1,000-10,000 followers.​
• Micro-influencers: 10,000-50,000 followers
• Mid-tier influencers: 50,000-500,000 followers.​
• Macro-influencers: 500,000-1 million followers.​
• Mega-Influencers: 1 million+ followers (e.g. ‘Mrs Hinch’ for home life or ‘James Charles’ for beauty)

As an SME, focusing on nano and micro-influencers can generate great results and sales from a more trusting, loyal and authentic audience. These types of influencers often offer more affordable rates, making them a great opportunity for SME’s with modest marketing budgets.

Why is an influencer marketing strategy important for a small business?

Influencers and content creators already have established strong and trustworthy relationships with their audience. This can help to increase your brand awareness and provide wide reach to a variety of potential new customers, or showcase your niche or luxury products to very specific audiences, in ways that can be tricky to do on your own.

Successful influencers are the experts in creating engaging social content and can offer lots of exciting and original opportunities to promote your products, such as grid posts, competitions, stories and reels. They understand their followers and know how to resonate with them.

By working with influencers, you can cleverly utilise giveaways, discount codes, takeovers, gifting or sponsored ads to entice users to try your products and services.

As a small business entering the world of influencer marketing, you have things in your favour such as, speed, flexibility and the ability to work with micro and nano-influencers. These types of influencers may have smaller, but highly loyal, audiences and your business can flourish working with them in ways that  large brands may struggle. This provides an opportunity to create strong relationships, support one another, and grow together with a mutual vision.

Five tips to making influencer marketing work for you

#1 – Test

Experiment with micro and nano-influencers. They are great advocates for other small businesses, can have cheaper rates and may boast more loyal audiences. Don’t overlook larger influencers though, as they’re not just for big brands and some may be keen to promote smaller, independent brands. Test a few routes, closely measure performance and pursue the strategy that best suits your product or service.

#2 – Gift

Giving influencers a physical version of your product for an unboxing or a demo can be powerful. You don’t need to gift products to every influencer as we know this can be costly. Instead, select those that you feel have an authentic connection to your brand.  This can help build trust with their audience and emphasise the legitimacy of your product.

#3 – Discounts

Discount codes are a quick and easy way to encourage influencers to promote your brand. Each influencer receives a unique code, allowing you to track and measure which influencer is driving which sales, so you can put more resource and time into those that are working for you.  

#4 – Legitimacy

Are you an ethical or sustainable brand? Does your brand contribute to charity? Have you won any awards? Share key information with your influencer that could help them reinforce authenticity to their followers. When an influencer believes in you, their endorsement will come across as authentic and your partnership will perform better.

#5 – Video

Small businesses should capitalise on the growing interest in video platforms, such as TikTok, to reach younger audiences with short video formats, reels and stories. Work with your influencers on developing engaging, short and compelling information through your affiliate platform, so that they can transform this into viral videos that quickly and effectively engage customers.

How do I find the right influencers for my business?

The easiest way to locate thousands of relevant influencers is using an affiliate marketing platform tailored for small businesses or beginners, who already host hundreds of thousands of influencers across many industries.

These affiliate marketing platforms will have already gathered and vetted the influencers, making it convenient to find multiple potential partners in one place.   

If an influencer you want to work with isn’t yet on your platform you can invite them to sign up as a partner, so that you can still work with them in this controlled environment.  What’s more, with Awin’s simple Instagram sign-up process, this can be done in just a few steps.

With a great affiliate platform like Awin, you can search influencers by sector and find the perfect match for you.  Your affiliate platform will also manage payments securely when a sale is confirmed by your influencer, so you know that you’re only paying for the results you wanted.

Awin Access is a self-managed affiliate solution, set up specifically to connect SMEs with content creators, influencers and other affiliate partners to help you reach new customers online.

Michelle O’Sullivan is the global customer success director for Awin’s exciting entry-level SME affiliate solution, Awin Access. With over 21 years’ experience in digital marketing Michelle is passionate about supporting SMEs and independent businesses in accessing and benefitting from great digital marketing opportunities

The post Influencer marketing for small business appeared first on Small Business UK.

When it comes to digital marketing the options can seem overwhelming, making it difficult to know which channels are most suited to your business and target audience. One channel that you might be overlooking is affiliate marketing, which is not just reserved for large brands.

As an SME, you’re focused on maximising an often tight marketing budget’s return on investment. At Awin, we understand these challenges from our experience in supporting over 25,000 growing online brands worldwide. We have seen first-hand how taking the step into this exciting channel can reap huge benefits for SMEs In this guide, we’ll demystify affiliate marketing, show you the benefits for your business, and walk you through some practical steps to get started.

What is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is what’s known as “performance-based marketing”. An ecommerce website – known as an “advertiser” – will reward a chosen partner – known as a “publisher” – for successfully driving an agreed action on their website. This action is typically a sale but can also include other valuable interactions, like completing an online form or submitting an email address.

‘Affiliate marketing is an effective and accessible online channel that can bring consistent revenue streams for small businesses’

For small businesses, reaching new audiences can be challenging. Affiliate marketing offers an effective solution by partnering with influencers, price comparison sites, voucher code sites, cashback sites, bloggers and more. It helps online ecommerce stores reach vast new customers in a way that they often can’t alone, or through costly digital ad platforms.

These online partners act as intermediaries, connecting your online store with potential new customers. They are rewarded for enticing those customers to buy your products or service. What sets affiliate marketing apart, is that you only pay for confirmed results generated by your chosen partners. This makes it a cost-efficient channel for online businesses looking to grow online sales and reach new audiences.

Want to know more about how to supercharge your online sales? Download the full Awin webinar for free here

How does affiliate marketing work?

Your chosen partners will promote your product or service to their own audience using a specific link to your product page or website. They can promote this link through various channels such as blog posts, social media, review videos, or display ads on their website.

This specific link is unique to each partner and is tracked. By using an affiliate marketing platform like Awin, you can easily monitor the number of clicks and sales generated in a simple dashboard. You’ll be able to easily report and measure ROI against your marketing spend.  

When your partners drive successful actions you reward them with a fee, known as a commission.

How much does it cost?

An affiliate platform will take a monthly membership fee to securely track these valuable relationships. With Awin, that’s only £75+VAT per month.

Once you’ve discovered your partners, you’re control of setting the commission that you pay them. For example, if you chose to reward your partner 5 per cent for each completed sale and they successfully drive a sale of £100, you pay them £5.

The affiliate platform will take a small fee for connecting, tracking and managing the sale, which is 2.5 per cent of the sale value at Awin.   In summary, on top of your monthly fee to use the platform, a tracked sale of £100 would cost you £7.50, offering great ROI for your marketing budget. It can even be more cost-effective than some of the large ad platforms.

Why should I use affiliate marketing?

Challenging economic times call for trusted solutions. A recent study by the Influencer Marketing Hub said that more than 80 per cent of marketers use affiliate marketing at the earliest stage of the customer journey; when trying to build awareness with brand new customers. For small online stores, affiliate marketing presents a sustainable way to grow your online presence and find new customers in new places. We’ve cherry-picked the best reasons affiliate marketing will help you do this.

Positive ROI

According to a 2023 study by Affilimate, the average return on ad spend for affiliate marketing globally is 12:1. This means for every £1 spent on affiliate advertising, businesses are getting £12 back. Small businesses who start affiliate marketing with Awin see an above-average return on their spend of £14 for every £1. Hear from real businesses growing online and seeing tangible results from affiliate marketing.

Control costs

Some bidding systems on digital ad platforms, such as social ads or Google ads, use complex algorithms to determine the cost of an ad placement.

With affiliate marketing, you have full control of the costs, avoiding skyrocketing marketing expenses and the need for extensive digital marketing knowledge.

You can choose to pay for sales, per download, per call (or call duration), per lead or per impression based on your strategy, providing flexibility and alignment with your goals.

Simple setup

Setting your business up on an affiliate marketing platform is simple, even without experience or a full-time marketing team.  You’ll get lots of information about how to navigate the platform, tips and tricks for success and access to resources like webinars.   

Awin’s self-managed solution for SMEs, Awin Access, offers simple integration with your website, email support and guidance, and has just a three-month initial term to let you test affiliate marketing out with low risk. After that, you can cancel easily with 14 days’ notice.

Grow together

With a great affiliate marketing platform, you have the freedom to choose partners who align with your brand values to represent you. You should be able to filter the partner directory by sector to find your perfect match.

You can opt to work with partners who have widespread audiences or select nano or micro-influencers with a smaller, loyal following to suit niche or luxury products. Your agility as a smaller brand allows for building strong relationships and growing with your partners.

Future-proofing

Changes in consumer behaviour have affected how small online businesses interact with their customers.

With affiliate marketing you’ll be confident that you’re hanging out where your customers are. Whether this is by being visible on a website they trust, recommended by an influencer they love, or having a feature on a blog that feels comfortable to them, they’ll trust this more than a Google ad.

Diversifying and testing new channels will protect marketing investment, build a suite of performing channels ready for busy periods, and keep you adaptable for market changes.

When should I use affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing offers a year-round revenue stream for your business, so you can start a programme anytime and get the benefits.

While certain periods such as Mother’s Day, Valentines Day, Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas witness increased online sales, you can optimise their performance by cultivating strong relationships during less busy times. This enables you to gather data on fruitful partnerships and determine who to do more with.

Planning ahead means you can be ready to take advantage of specific seasonal campaigns that partners may be running. This way, your affiliate partnerships are doing the heavy lifting for you in this busy period.

Online businesses are now starting their winter sales as early as October.  Read our guide to preparing for peak season to ensure you’re ahead of even the most organised of retailers.

How do I get started?

Affiliate marketing is an effective and accessible online channel that can bring consistent revenue streams for small businesses. It’s important for advertisers to find secure and vetted partners through an experienced platform to promote their service or product effectively.

Awin’s affiliate marketing solution, Awin Access, setup specifically to support small online businesses has generated over £200m in sales for SMEs. It is the perfect first step to reach new customers and grow online sales.

Michelle O’Sullivan is the global customer success director for Awin’s exciting entry-level SME affiliate solution, Awin Access. With over 21 years’ experience in digital marketing Michelle is passionate about supporting SMEs and independent businesses in accessing and benefitting from great digital marketing opportunities

The post Affiliate marketing – what is it and what can it do for your business? appeared first on Small Business UK.

You may have spotted the regal royal warrant logo on something that you have bought. Maybe it says, “By appointment to Her Majesty the Queen”. But what does that mean, can it boost sales for your small business, and how are you even granted one?

What is a royal warrant?

A Royal Warrant of Appointment is granted as a mark of recognition to people or companies who have regularly supplied goods or services to the late HM The Queen, the late HRH The Duke of Edinburgh or HRH The Prince of Wales or their households.

These symbols on packaging or websites not only show that the companies meet high standards but have also supplied the Royal Household on a regular basis.

One thing though is that the royal households outside of London, whether that’s Balmoral or Windsor Castle, are keen to use local tradesman. Hence a royal warrant for a roofer and even a sporran maker.

The Royal Warrant Holders Association, which represents warrant holders, told Small Business: “The warrant is a mark of recognition from the royal household. Most of its suppliers do not have a royal warrant. They can be for everything from the everyday through to almost the crown jewels. It’s everything that a country estate or a hotel or a restaurant could need.”

How many royal warrants are there?

Approximately 850, held by around 750 companies or individuals, but it changes almost monthly.

Which companies can have a royal warrant?

Until their deaths, the late Queen, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother and HRH The Duke of Edinburgh were all what’s called grantors of royal warrants, as was the new King in his position of Prince of Wales.

Existing royal warrant holders will have to reapply to the Royal Warrant Holders Association by the new King and Prince of Wales but can continue to hold their existing warrants for two years.

The 180 royal warrants King Charles issued as Prince of Wales will continue now that he is King, as they go with the household, not the title.

However, many royal warrant holders are on tenterhooks as any decision at to renew or withdraw their warrants is only expected to be made after the coronation on May 6.

However, the RWHA is confident that the system will restart with the coronation out of the way.

“The warrant is the personal gift of the monarch, and they decide who they will grant it to,” the RWHA told Small Business. “The same goes for charities, which are also on hold. However, the new king has granted warrants for 42 years and has supported the current system.”

For how long does a royal warrant last?

A royal warrant is usually granted for up to five years and reviewed in the year before it is due to expire so that a decision can be made as to whether to renew it for up to another five years.

What kind of goods hold royal warrants?

They can be anything used by royal households on a regular basis from chimney sweeps to dry cleaners. For example, my plastic dish cleaning wand is by royal warrant holder Minky and it tickles me to think of Her Majesty also doing the dishes with one.

There are currently over 800 Royal Warrant holders, including such luxury British brands as jeweller Asprey, shirtmaker Turnbull & Asser and hotel The Goring, where the Princess of Wales stayed the night before her wedding, just as you’d expect.

What’s surprising is that there are also multinational brands including Coca-Cola and Nestle among royal warrant holders, as well as American brands including Heinz and Kellogg’s. You wonder whether these multinationals really need the royal seed of approval.

On the other hand, there is also a scaffolder, a window cleaner and even a sporran maker – all by royal appointment.

One insider points out that being a royal warrant holder is nothing to do with promoting UK plc abroad or being there to help with luxury goods exports, but is simply a recognition of good service.

How long does a royal warrant last for?

A royal warrant is initially granted for up to five years to a named individual at a company, known as the “grantee”. An official royal warrant display document is sent to the grantee which provides evidence of the authority to use the royal arms.

Do I have to supply my products for free?

No, each royal household buys products on commercial terms.

What can a royal warrant do for my business?

Obviously, there is quality by association, and being a warrant holder can certainly help when it comes to luxury goods and exports.

However, being granted a royal warrant means you can do nothing more than state you are a warrant holder. There are strict rules about how the warrant must be displayed on products, stationery, and advertising materials. 

Indeed, warrant holder Rigby & Peller, once supplier of lingerie to the Queen, lost its warrant in 2017 after a former worker revealed details of bra-fitting sessions within Buckingham Palace.

How to apply for a royal warrant

Companies can apply for a warrant after they have supplied a royal household with goods or services for at least five years out of seven (to include during the 12 months before applying).

Applicants must complete an application form, a trading review form, and the sustainability criteria as part of their application. The forms and details on how to complete the online sustainability criteria may be obtained from the RWHA.

The closing date for applications in each year will be advertised on the RWHA’s website.

Businesses that cannot apply for royal warrants

• Bankers
• Brokers or agents (including insurance brokers or agents)
• Solicitors
• Employment agencies
• Party planners
• Training providers
• Veterinary service providers
• Newspapers, magazines, journals

How can I get product into a royal household?

This is the confusing part. The process of getting your product as a small business owner in front of the royal household is opaque. Basically, you can’t. There is no central procurement system and, as one insider told Small Business, if there was, the palaces would be inundated with free samples.

Rather, each household from Buckingham Palace to Kensington Palace to Sandringham has its own needs. A bit like being knighted, one must wait to be tapped on the shoulder.

Why might a company lose a royal warrant?

Because a company or brand loses favour with the Royal Family. Unsurprisingly, Harrods lost its royal warrants in the early 2000s as the Queen, Prince Philip and the then Prince of Wales all ended their association with the department store after the death of Princess Diana and her relations with Mohamed Al-Fayed.

Other reasons include that the product or service is considered substandard, or the company itself goes out of business and the product is no longer manufactured.

What happens if a royal warrant is rescinded?

You have up to 12 months to alter packaging, stationery, and advertising and to remove the warrant from buildings and vehicles. 

How many royal warrants are cancelled each year?

Between 20 and 40 – and a similar number of new ones are granted.

Further reading

UK Small Business Events and Exhibitions Calendar

The post What is a royal warrant and how do you get one? appeared first on Small Business UK.

Your business has a great service or product. You know that, I know that, and your customer will know that – as soon as they discover you.

But as a small business owner, you are familiar with one of the biggest challenges you face: marketing. Doing it well can be expensive, slow and confusing. There are thousands of articles that tell you to just ‘get on TikTok’ or ‘post to Facebook’ without giving you the context you need to actually do those things in a way that doesn’t waste your time or energy.

You’re facing a limited budget, gaps in brand awareness, big competitors, and difficulty with even measuring what works and what doesn’t. You don’t have the luxury of just posting until something magically works.

One of the best ways to reach your audience cheaply and quickly is through video marketing. Research shows there’s a strong correlation between video marketing and customer purchase intent. What’s more, short-form videos are the most engaging types of social media posts, according to audience preferences.

Committing to creating a steady stream of videos, however, can feel like a lot, especially if you’re already stretched thin. Luckily, there are plenty of video creation tools to help make your job easier, faster and more enjoyable.

1. Trend-fuelled ideation with RightRelevance

Not sure where to start with video marketing? The worst thing you can do is post video content based on your gut feel, without validating your ideas using data. That’s a recipe for wasting time and energy. Especially as a small business, you can’t afford that.

Instead, take a more analytical approach with a resource called RightRelevance. Say you’re a small business that sells speciality board games. RightRelevance shows you trending topics, videos and similar content related to board games.

You can see who shared these videos and even filter by geo-location.

This helps you come up with video topics that are likely to appeal to your target audience, based on video content that’s already successful. RightRelevance is free to use as a research tool.

2. Brand consistency with Visme

What’s one thing that almost every multi-channel marketing expert will tell you to do? Be consistent.

That obviously breaks down into a lot of facets, such as consistent brand colours, consistent posting schedules and consistent topics. But one of the easiest to get right is a consistent video intro.

If you’re working on a budget (and let’s be real, what small business marketer isn’t?) creating branded, reusable video intros using a tool like Visme is one of the best ways to save money and time, while making your content look more professional.

It’s an easy tool to use and there’s a free tier if you want to take it for a spin.

3. Visual pop with Videoleap

You have some content ideas and you’ve got your branded intro. What’s next? The video itself, of course. All small businesses face major time constraints, as there just aren’t enough hours in the day to get it all done.

Videoleap can make your time go further by helping you easily create and then reuse your video content time and time again.

You can use the platform’s community-shared video templates to quickly throw together some content that has high production value. Videoleap supports some really nifty special video effects that you can use to make your video stand out and by using templates, you can benefit from the soundtrack syncing, fancy cuts and visual effect setups that others have worked hard on.

Create your video using Videoleap, and then repost it onto TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook or even your own blog. It comes with a free trial.

4. Repurposing audio with Headliner

To help make sure your content investments pay off, you need to reuse it in new formats across channels. A great way to do that is to turn audio content into video. This lets you post in more places where your audience might be hanging out, without very much work. For example, you might record a podcast, then upload your podcast as a video to Twitter and YouTube.

A tool like Headliner gives you a few options to do that. You can upload the audio and just add some video to make it more engaging for a listener. You also have the option of adding text to make your video content more accessible.

The very best thing about Headliner is how convenient it is. You can automatically hook up your podcast to YouTube, for example, and import your entire back catalogue with just a click. Headliner will keep automatically importing and publishing your podcast onto YouTube with some jazzy visuals as long as you want it to. Save time, reuse content and rely on tools that help you automate workflows.

Headliner has some great pricing options, and you can even go for free forever, though it caps you at five monthly unwatermarked videos and ten minutes of transcription.

5. Easy editing with TikTok

You may think of TikTok as merely a time-wasting app. Without careful vigilance, it can become that. But it can also be a great free tool for your small business marketing team. This platform has revolutionised video marketing forever by making it free, easy, and even fun to create short videos.

You’ll notice that this list doesn’t contain Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere or any of the other ‘professional’ video-making tools that cost a fortune and are hard to learn. TikTok’s user interface is intuitive and simple. It has a short learning curve, so you’ll quickly be posting with the best of them.

Not sure where to get started? Go back to RightRelevance, find the right topic in your niche and get inspired with the popular content.

Video creation doesn’t have to be an expensive hassle

We all know that especially in times of economic downturn, marketing budgets are one of the first things to get cut. Your shoestring budget has been whittled down to a thread. You’re wearing so many hats, you may as well be a milliner. This list of tools aims to help you streamline, automate and expedite your video creation as much as possible.

These tools can help stretch your budget, give you back some of your time and make major parts of your job fun and enjoyable again.

Read more

How small businesses should structure a video marketing campaign

The post 5 video creation tools that make marketing your small business easier appeared first on Small Business UK.

Your marketing will not be effective if you don’t deeply understand your customers. Market research is the best way to get close and personal with customers and is the foundation of an effective marketing strategy.

Market research is not just for big businesses, and it does not need to be expensive. In fact, with reduced budgets and restricted resources, smaller companies may have even more to gain.

Being small can actually be a real superpower when it comes to marketing to customers. Small often means being closer to your audience (easier direct access) and the ability to move quicker than bigger competitors (less red tape).

>See also: Marketing trends for small businesses in 2023

Market research will help your create content and craft messages that speak directly to the people you’re targeting. It ensures your marketing budgets are optimised and that your marketing efforts convert to sales.

Research can also identify market demand for your good or service before it launches, help you understand your customer – what motivates them and engenders their loyalty – and will always save you money in the long run.

No matter whether you are starting a business or running an established one, there is no excuse for not researching your target market. Knowing who is buying your products and how this can change over time will help you stay relevant and maintain demand.

Start with a marketing strategy

Research-driven marketing needs to start with a strategy. Your marketing strategy is the overarching plan that will drive your business forward. It identifies how you will create awareness about your product or service and when done effectively should generate steady demand for your business.

Your marketing strategy will include details on who is doing what, what tweets and Insta posts will be posted when, the design of the leaflets, the timing of press releases and more. It sets out what you are trying to achieve from the different marketing channels you use.

Understanding your customer with effective market research will also help you correctly position your product or service in the market and ensure your marketing reflects what your customers care about.

>See also: Marketing a new business

5 reasons why you need market research

Your marketing strategy needs to be based on solid footings – and this means understanding how to position your product or service with customers, ensuring your message resonates with your target market, knowing what channels to use and what content to create and finally how to keep your brand relevant.

#1 – Product positioning  

Clearly, to know how to position your product or service effectively, you need to know who your customers are and what makes them tick. When you started your business, you probably gathered this information. But are your customers today the same people as they were last week, last year or 10 years ago?

It is common for the customer demographic of a business to change over the years, which is why market research will help to understand your customer demographic better. Customer behaviours also change.

Knowing who is buying your products (and who isn’t) will help you target customers better. Can you create a customer profile from the information you already know about your customers? If you can’t, you really need to update this knowledge.

Surveys and customer interviews are a great way to get new information and ensure you are correctly positioning your product or service in the market. You’ll find out why customers use your product over competitors (or vice-versa). What they care about (don’t forget to go beyond the obvious use or your product or service and ask questions about their wider interests) and why they are using your business or businesses like yours.

#2 – Speak your customers language

Understanding customers helps businesses communicate effectively. Speaking your customers’ language is key if you want good engagement and conversions from your marketing. Remember, the way you describe your offer and the value it brings might not be the same way customers would describe it.

The language and tone you use will differ depending on who you are speaking to. Are you speaking to legal professionals? Cool and hip teenagers from Generation Z? They don’t speak the same language.

Engaging in market research activities such as customer interviews can help you identify the right language and tone to use in your marketing materials.

When interviewing customers for research don’t put your words into their mouth, ask them to describe your product or service and what it helps them do in their own words. Plough what you’ve learnt back into your own marketing

If you want to understand your customers’ language, it’s also useful to look at where they hang out online (communities, forums, trade associations even LinkedIn). Notice how they write. Which words do they use.

#3 – Channels

If you are a small business, it might not be feasible to operate across all available marketing channels. Understanding where your audience prefers to consume content will help you focus on the channels that matter most to them.

To find that out you can start looking at what channels are preforming well for you now versus others. Most platforms have analytics that will help you. You can also ask customers where they consume content from their favourite businesses, what are their top three channels, and in what context do they use each (for example: Instagram on the move, TikTok in the evenings, newsletters during work time etc).

Remember, it’s always better to use a few channels really well than to spread yourself too thinly.

#4 – Content marketing strategy

You invest a lot of time, money and effort into creating marketing campaigns that you “hope” will work. But crossing your fingers isn’t enough and shouldn’t be the basis of any marketing campaign.

Does your audience prefer videos to words? Do they want tips or case studies? What questions do they typically have about your category?

Finding out the answers to these questions will help you spend time, effort and money on content that converts.

You can do that by asking your audience directly (social media, surveys) or by observing what content has performed well in the past and doing more of that type. How well did it go down? Was its message clear? Did customers like the imagery or the tone?

How customers reacted to a past campaign, help crafts your new one, improving its reach, engagement, and effectiveness.

Platforms like Answer the public are a great resource for small business too and showcase what type of things people are searching for in certain categories. It’s a great way to get relevant content marketing ideas for your business.

#5 – Brand

If you don’t quite have a handle on your brand, you need to ask yourself some questions – how do your customers perceive you? How does your brand stand alongside your competitors?

Market research can be used to improve your branding by exploring subjects such as:

• Personification: What characteristics do customers associate with your brand?
• Brand awareness: Are customers familiar with your brand? How well do they know it?
• Comparison: How does your brand compare to that of your main competitors?

You can seek the opinion of your customers on a wide variety of topics, such as the appeal of your website, what they think of the online buying process or your customer service. The more information you have, the better changes and improvements you can make.

Beyond effective marketing, market research can help your business on a wider scale. Whether it’s expanding and growing your business to deciding what features to release to the market first, getting customers involved early will significantly increase your chances of success.

>See also: Six digital marketing tools every small business needs

How to conduct market research

Market research need not be intimidating or expensive. You can begin with the tools you’ve got before calling in a professional.

>See also: Guidelines for conducting market research for small businesses

Start with desk research

You’d be amazed how much free information is just a click away on your computer. Big-budget consultancies publish quarterly and yearly trend reports about all sorts of subjects you can read for free. And trade associations, such as retailers’ association BIRA, publish free trends reports.

Something else you can do is set up a Google news alert for your business keywords (e.g., consumer + trends + report + perfume) to get new insights sent straight to your inbox.

Interview your customers

Talking to your customers is by far the market research method that generates the best insights. Identify people in your customer database and ask if they’d be prepared to be interviewed quarterly. All you would need is half an hour of their time and in exchange you could offer them a discount or a gift voucher. Talking to customers every three months enables you to track shifting sentiment. Avoid speaking to friends or family though – often they just tell you what you want to hear.

Ask the right questions

One of the biggest mistakes a small business can make is asking its sample audience outright whether they’d buy soon-to-come your product or service. People are bad at predicting how they might act. Also, they will probably always tell you what you want to hear. Instead, ask open-ended questions, such as – if you were researching a new perfumed candle product – “Tell me how you like to unwind before going to bed…” or “How important is the sense of smell to you? What kind of smells do you enjoy?”

Five tips for effective market research

• Preparation is crucial when you undertake market research. Think backwards. What are the kind of findings you are looking for?
• Good questions are key to gaining relevant insights. Spend time refining/testing to make sure responses will be relevant
• Think about your audience and ensure a large enough sample to be truly reflective
• Choose what method to use (qualitative or quantitative) and call on a credible researcher such as OnePoll – to help guarantee breadth and segmentation
• Once data is collated, plan time to review results; capturing trends/insights and then act on them

Katie Tucker is an experienced product leader with over 12 years’ experience leading teams and delivering stand-out products and services. In 2020 she founded Product Jungle, helping hundreds of businesses understand customers better. She is also a mentor, speaker, author and the pen behind the popular newsletter Jungle Juice

Her book Do Penguins Eat Peaches? And other unexpected ways to discover what your customers want will be published by Practical Inspirational Publishing in October 2023 and is ready to pre-order now

The post How market research can boost your marketing strategy appeared first on Small Business UK.

You’ve done the hard work of up getting your business on the road – now you must ensure you’re seen. Marketing a new business is one of the hardest things to do. To have the greatest chance of success, you’ll need to research the market, develop a marketing plan and target your audience.

Set your marketing objectives

To market your new business successfully, you first need to know what success looks like and what you’re trying to achieve.

Perhaps you want to increase traffic to your website, increase your sales pipeline as quickly as possible or position the brand in a particular area.

>See also: How to market a physical therapy practice

Prioritise your wider new business objectives and then see how marketing can help achieve those. Examples of these include increasing brand awareness, improving reputation, launching a product and increasing revenue or profits.

Whatever the objectives are, make sure they’re SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic (and relevant) and time bound.  

The importance of research

Surprisingly, this next step is a one many businesses skip.

Its impact when done right however, can be significant. Market research won’t just allow you to understand the market as it is but can shape a USP by spotting any gaps within it. In other words, it gives validation for why your business exists.

As Chris Peach, research director at research agency Walnut Unlimited sums up: “Believing in what you offer is important, and showing you are passionate about it can be very compelling, but success will come from convincing many others about the benefit of buying from you, so knowing what it is that they think makes you unique and better is crucial.”

How to conduct market research

How can you conduct market research for your business? One port of call is Google. It’s possible to understand the demand for a product or service by seeing how many searches on Google it generates.

Another method is to conduct surveys. Find which online communities your target audience reside and conduct polls for almost immediate insights.

>See also: How to market your gaming app

You can also go face-to-face. Conducting interviews can help shape your customer personas – what interests they have, what motivates them, what they think of your business and your competitors. Similarly, focus groups can provide instant feedback on how you to improve your product or service.

Pricing research of the competition can also show if your price-point and brand image line up.

“Research is essential to our process,” Tom Edington of market research and design studio The Yard Creative says. “Research enables us to truly understand what will resonate with our clients’ target audience to ensure the creative solutions we provide stand out within their marketplace and connect to the consumer.

“Our preferred method of research is to always pair primary and secondary research. Conducting secondary research whilst analysing our clients’ data enables us to cast our net wide to really understand the market and our clients existing and target consumers.

“Having an understanding of our client’s market, sector and consumer then allows us to be very focused with our questioning when we move into qualitative interviews and quantitative surveys.”

New business marketing strategy

To market successfully, you will need to create a marketing strategy first to align marketing efforts with the overarching aims of your new business.

The marketing strategy should include the four Ps of marketing (also known as the marketing mix): product, price, place, and promotion.

“The most important part of a marketing strategy is product and price,” Tom Welbourne of The Good Marketer explains. “Promotion, place and people can be tweaked accordingly as time goes on, i.e., you can target a new audience through ads or run a payday sale.

“For start-ups, consider starting with three or four products to give customers variety and to generate a good average order value [AOV].

“Generally, start-ups think lower-priced products will be more successful, but often, that’s not the case. We encourage start-ups to aim for an AOV of around £40-£50 to be profitable on the first order.”

Business consultancy and accountancy firm Xeinadin was the fastest-growing business Britain this year and its director Paul Whitney says having a marketing strategy was crucial to its rapid success.

“Don’t be afraid to adjust your strategy,” he says. “Continually monitor the effectiveness of your chosen media marketing mix and measure your return against your budget. If something is not working as you would have anticipated, don’t carry on doing it, stop the activity and test different messaging and media and compare the results.

“Most business owners approach marketing with the goal of merely getting their name out into the wider world. However, we would advise that the message you attach to your name is much more important.

“If your message doesn’t resonate with your ideal customers and is the same as the competition, why would they choose you?”

Building your new business marketing plan

You’ll then need a clear and concise marketing plan. This should include the brand proposition – which will outline the reason for being – and the communication plan on how you get your message across.

The brand proposition includes the purpose of the brand and who the target customer is. Why should they care? What are their priorities when it comes to choosing their product or service? You should also distinguish here why you’re different from others in the market.

The communication plan will outline whether you will target through social media, email, events, direct marketing and what your tone of voice will be for all these.

To outline the importance of using the right words, Peach says: “As a small business you may have seen bundled insurance packages for say ‘hairdressers’ – it recognises that business owners want to focus on their core activity and so this bundling saves them time and cognitive effort.”

The benefit of producing a marketing plan include:

• Defines your target market
• What your business USP is
• Who the competition is
• Ensures marketing budget is spent efficientl
• Tone of voice is consistent across the brand
• Provides a strategy on how to reach potential customers

Finally, ensure you have the document saved somewhere for everyone to see and adhere to. This is good not only for ensuring future decisions are made in line with the brand but aims and objectives can be crossed off and updated as you go.

> See also: How to write a marketing plan

Targeting your customers

Once you’ve identified your target audience, you will need to market to them. Customer profiles are a great way of understanding the communities your audience gets involved in.

After that, you need to engage with them, with one obvious method being social media.

“We would first recommend a small business identify social media platforms where their audience is on,” Jack Shepherd, co-founder of The Social Shepherd says. “Don’t try to create content for every single social media platform. Focus your energy on one or two social media platforms in the beginning.”

Short-form video performs very well across all platforms, so this should be the priority in a strategy for any small business, he says.

“Video content is best for reaching new users, as reels and TikToks have the best discoverability on social media right now, and then use Instagram stories and static posts [single images and carousels] to nurture your audience.

“Once a small business has tested different pieces of content and has begun to understand what resonates with its audience, it’s time to use paid social to distribute those top-performing pieces of content further. With organic reach only getting you so far, we always recommend including an ad strategy to get in front of your ideal customers.

“You’ll need to consider showing prospecting audiences something more educational about your product or service, whereas if you’re retargeting audiences that already know your brand, you’ll want to deliver content to them which builds social proof and trust to get them to convert.”

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