Free Marketing Plan Template 2012
If you're a small business or a solo entrepreneur, you must have your marketing plan running in full gear by now. It's the start of 2012, another promising year after all.
But if your marketing is facing unforeseen hiccups, here's a free downloadable Marketing Plan template that you could use all your life.
Use it to create new marketing plans or tailor cut and refresh stale ones and give your business the marketing wings it seeks.
Go ahead, check out our free Basic Marketing Plan template - a must have for small businesses. We hope you'll love it.
Download Your Free Basic Marketing Plan Template: Click Here.
Alternatively, if 2012 is getting the most out of you leaving no time for marketing, think about engaging a marketing agency. Outsourcing your marketing needs to an agency which especially caters to SMEs is a step in the right direction because:
- An internal Marketing/PR person will cost you a full-time salary, a computer terminal, laptop, and other taxable items. A marketing agency won't, while simply charging you on a hourly basis.
- No hassles of payroll.
- Specialists in branding.
- A team works on your brand versus a one-man inhouse army.
Nothing matters more than your brand image. This year, grow it, foster it, shine it!
Happy New Year!
About Revive ProjectsRevive Projects is an award-winning Melbourne-based leading Marketing Agency with years of expertise in franchise marketing, Health & Fitness marketing, Mainstreet marketing and Distribution-based marketing. www.reviveprojects.com.au.
Photo by woodleywonderworks.
Posted by Pooja on 24th January, 2012 | Comments | Trackbacks | Permalink
Tags: Marketing plan, marketing agency, Marketing agency Melbourne
How to Use A/B Tests for Effective Advertising
It’s possible to increase the reach of your brand using effective advertising. If you know which ads work well for your demographics, you have hit gold. Effectively written ads go a long way in bringing more eye-balls to your website or landing page, and therefore more sales.
But what if you are not sure what your audience will click and what it will reject? Well, no one is, at least in the beginning. Yet great campaigns are made.
Enter A/B Testing – a unique way to build effective advertising campaigns.
With A/B Testing you can separate ads that give a good ROI from the rest. Simply put, A/B Testing is a method where you compare two ads against each other. One ad may be different from another by a single factor such as the image, ad copy or heading.
Once you pick this differentiating factor, run the ads simultaneously and see what happens. For example, while promoting a travel booking service, you may pick one image of Tibet for ad A and that of Europe for ad B, and see which one works better. Compare them against your “goal” such as maximum number of Facebook fans or maximum sales. (But remember, often a sale would take days or weeks to close. This doesn’t mean your ad is not working – it may well be impressed on the customer’s mind. Just that he isn’t buying yet.)
At times ad A would deliver more click-throughs than ad B. But does it also lead to most number of conversions (becoming a fan, “liking” the page etc)? If not, it may not be your best ad yet. In other words, a great click-through but a poor conversion rate won’t cut it.
It is better to take other factors into consideration, such as the CPA, or Cost Per Acquisition, which takes both click-through and conversion rates into account.
How to Conduct an A/B Test
Step 1. Pick a Control Ad: Your control ad is your starting point. It will help you to create several variations by changing its one factor at a time. Remember to change just one element because if you change two, you won’t know which one worked. For example, while testing, change the image or the wording of your ad (but never both) and then compare the results against that of control ad.
Step 2. Change Your Control Ad to Generate a Variation: This ad will be compared to the control ad’s performance. If it does not perform better, it will be chucked. The test will continue with another element of the control ad changing.
Step 3. Run Your Ad: Don’t be quick to dismiss an ad if it’s not generated enough clicks, for example, in the first day. Similarly, don’t label an ad as a winner just because it got 50 more likes than its counterpart on day one.
Always run the ads simultaneously. If you run ad A on Tuesday and ad B on Wednesday, which is a national holiday, perhaps people will laze around on Facebook a lot more than usual and ad B will appear as a winner.You can only know if you run them at once and stay long enough to gather sufficient data which can represent your audience.
Step 3: Record the Results: Did the image of Tibet get more clicks than that of Europe? Did the user sign up for your newsletter after clicking the ad? What was the result of changing this one element? Record your results and decide to ignore this ad or change it a bit more to find the best variation. If Tibet wins, change the image with that of India and see how it does this time.
Once you have a better performing ad, throw the “loser” and gear more money toward the effective one. Now keep making subtle changes to the latter and run the ads side by side. Rinse and repeat.
Hopefully, this post gave you the basic idea behind A/B Testing and how it can be used to generate effective advertising, and thereby convert prospects. We’d love to hear your experience with A/B Testing in the comment below!
About Revive ProjectsRevive Projects is an award-winning Melbourne-based leading Marketing Agency with years of expertise in franchise marketing, Health & Fitness marketing, Mainstreet marketing and Distribution-based marketing. www.reviveprojects.com.au.
Photo by faith goble.
Posted by Pooja on 18th January, 2012 | Comments | Trackbacks | Permalink
Tags: A/B Testing, marketing agency, Marketing agency Melbourne
Twitter 101 - Building a Community
Twitter is one of the most popular social networks used by millions where a user can send short messages up to 140 characters to everyone in their community.
Several of your friends and business associates must be already up and active on Twitter, and more are signing up every day. But what is the aim behind using Twitter? Is it just another milestone in avenues created to pass the time or is it something more? How can Twitter be used for business? And for once, what are Twitter communities and why bother using them?
To answer such questions, here's a mini Twitter guide on Twitter communities.
Building a Community on Twitter
Twitter is not-so-old way to communicate and facilitate interesting conversations. But communication is done by participating communities. Without a community of your own, you cannot communicate. Simple enough. That leads us to how to create a Twitter community that suits you.
How to Create a Community on Twitter
To create a community wherein you can mingle with like-minded peeps, it is important to first determine why you want to be on Twitter. Is it to stay ahead of the latest trends? To share some laughs? To advice and help others?
Identify your ideal purpose and take it from there.
1. Create a user-friendly Twitter ID: Ensure this ID is something you relate to very well. It can be your name, your brand name or even your field of interest. You can create a shorthand for your name or keep it full and intact. Remember though, if you use your brand name or full name, it may take up a lot of characters and therefore limit your interactions (which are to be limited to 140).
For example, we are Revive_Projects on Twitter. It takes 15 characters but retains the brand name.
So pick what's important for you and go from there.
2. Look for Who to Follow: Once you've set up an account, don't just leave it at it. Search for people who have common likings, hobbies, professions or whatever it is you're on Twitter for. And yes, it's OK to "follow" someone who you don't know in real life.
Use services like TwitDir, Twellow, and Twitter Search (Twitter's in-house facility) to follow more people and build your community.
3. Twitter Mumbo-Jumbo: Or smart talk? You decide. But if you're on Twitter, make sure you understand the basics such as:
@: Used to mention someone you're replying to or referring to in a conversation.
DM: Direct message which works like personal email. Only you and the recipient can see the contents.
RT: Re-tweet.
Tweetups: Twitter meet-ups.
#: Hashtag. Used in front of relevant keywords to categorise the contents of a tweet in such a way so that it is easy to find the tweet during a Twitter Search.
There are some common hashtags used on Twitter like #followfriday. You must have noticed this tag being used enormously on Fridays. #followfriday is a neat way of suggesting tweeps (Twitter people) to follow other interesting Twitter users. Everyone gets a chance to speak out the name of their favourite user.
For example, if you love Revive Projects, you could tweet something like this:
#followfriday the team at @Revive_Projects is awesome!
4. Spread Your Name: Twitter name, that is. When commenting on blogs and replying on forums, leave your Twitter handle (@'followed by your Twitter name) just below so as to allow people to follow you if they wish.
5. Promote Others: If you like someone's tweet, or love their product, say it on Twitter. Be generous. Make sure they know it by using the @ sign before their Twitter name. Spread the love!
6. Avoid Sending Personal Info in Public: This is common sense but trust me, tweeps still do it. It is considered against Twitter etiquette to bombard your community with personal information like phone numbers, address, email ID etc. If you want to share these with someone in particular, try to DM them instead.
Conclusion
Stick to the above and build your own Twitter community. It could be for business exposure or just for fun. Like any social media platform, Twitter has its etiquette and basic lingo. Familiarise yourself with these and engage with your community. 140 characters can say a LOT!
Hop on to start your Twitter community and if you find the lack of time/resources/knowledge holding you back, why not engage a marketing agency to do it for you?
How is your community doing on Twitter? Share your thoughts with us!
About Revive Projects
Revive Projects is an award-winning Melbourne-based leading Marketing Agency with years of expertise in franchise marketing, Health & Fitness marketing, Mainstreet marketing and Distribution-based marketing. www.reviveprojects.com.au.
Photo by Pink Sherbet Photography.
Posted by Pooja on 8th January, 2012 | Comments | Trackbacks | Permalink
Tags: Twitter, Marketing agency Melbourne, marketing agency, marketing Melbourne
|
