Blog

It’s been a shamefully long time between blog posts, long enough that we have welcomed many new clients to the littleBig Marketing & PR family that I’d like to introduce.

Sun Health Foods produce delicious healthy alternatives to chocolate bars.  They’re full of nutrients and fill you up just when you need that energy hit.  We are now handling their PR.

We’re also undertaking some PR activities for gorgeous North Carlton (Melbourne) eatery, Bistro Flor.  Do yourself a favour and book in for dinner.  Amazing cuisine at amazingly reasonable prices and a cosy, friendly atmosphere you’ll want to revisit over and over.

Thinc Wealth – financial planners with heart, knowledge and passion – will soon have a website featuring words lovingly crafted by littleBig Marketing & PR.  Stay tuned.

We have just finalised laying the groundwork for a PR campaign for Melbourne Food & Wine’s Put Victoria on Your Table campaign, an important campaign designed to engender loyalty for Victorian food and wine.  Certainly has me thinking twice about supporting local producers and choosing local wherever possible.

Switch Business is a fabulous company redefining business management for SMEs.  We are assisting them to refine, define and roll out their brand nationally.

The Harridge Group help “design your future” with stellar, full service financial advice.  We will be serving The Harridge Group with event planning and management services over the coming months.

Please support these wonderful supporters of ours at every opportunity.

Until next time…

Sally

Did you know that there are right and wrong ways to brainstorm?  We all love a good brainstorm and often feel it will solve all the problems of the world but an unfocused brainstorming session can be completely useless.  This article from Productive Thinking Expert, Ken Wall, on dynamicbusiness.com warns of some of the blunders you need to avoid and provides tips on ensuring a productive, worthwhile brainstorming session.  Essential reading in my book!

Sally

Simple things you can do to help your website creep onto that holy-grail of search engine marketing – the first page of Google.

• Create a blog as part of your website and blog twice a week.
• AND/OR have a news section where you make sure you upload news as much as possible.  Maybe daily.  You could even simply link to other articles online including an intro you write.  An easy way to do this would be to source the articles from daily business newsletters relevant to your audience.  
• At every stage of uploading something new attach ‘tags’ which describe the article and people are likely to search for in Google.   
• Make the title of every blog/news item include words that people searching for your service are likely to type into Google.
• Generally in your site use lots of words people are likely to type into a search engine.      
• Get as many people as possible to link to you.  The easiest way to do this is to have a Links/Friends/etc. page where you link out to suppliers/clients/interesting sites/referral partners/etc.  You then get the people you’re linking to to do the same for you.  The more sites linking to your site the higher your Google ranking.    

Hope these tips help.  Email me if this is something you’d like to find out more about.

Sally

A couple of examples of PRs getting it wrong (according to the media representatives involved) and being publicly wrapped over the knuckles for it were highlighted by Mumbrella  and one of its readers today.  Read http://mumbrella.com.au/mark-learns-the-sorry-bloggers-pr-dance-5529 and http://www.smh.com.au/national/black-day-for-ivy-league-20090514-b4tr.html (Cat got their tongue).  

Tough break for the PRs in question as mistakes are easily made as we all know and being slammed in the media in a way that could likely jeopardise your career and the reputation of your company is harsh to say the least.

But then again, we all need to be kept on our toes and if nothing else the above two examples should certainly ensure we do that.

Thanks to Mumbrella, Ben Glazier and Sean Nicholls/Erik Jensen for reminding us that any media approach involves risk and exposure for both our clients and ourselves, and that there’s no room for laziness and lack-of-thought in the PR game.

Although any publicity’s good publicity isn’t it?  For MarkComms I think it was today.

Sally

I’ve never been a fan of ‘networking’.  The sort of networking where you enter a room, cockily stride up to someone, hand outstretched, and tell them your name which is neatly reinforced by the dinky name tag on your chest, that is.  

Not that large networking events aren’t fantastic.  I go to them quite often, often meet people that are interesting and always learn something.  But I can’t say any of the people I’ve met at these type of events have made long-term contributions to my career or the success of my business.    

The people that have are the people I’ve picked up along the way.  You know, the girl you worked with for a few months before she went on to another industry, your Mum’s best friend, who just opened a coffee shop, your old boss, the guy who used to do the photography for your favourite client, your lecturer, etc.

When I started littleBig Marketing & PR the first thing I did was send an email to EVERYONE I knew – that is friends, family, colleagues, suppliers, etc. – past, present and prospective.  I let them know what I was setting out to do and encouraged them to get in touch if they or anyone they knew might need my services.  Within one week of sending it that email generated my first three clients.  You could say it generated every new client from then on also, thanks to word of mouth and the experience gained from the connections it instigated.  

See I never realised the strength of my network until I tapped into it.  And tapping into your existing network is even easier now thanks to social marketing tools such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.  

I guess the moral of the story is, don’t stress out about networking, networking, networking.  Your network is developing everyday without you even trying.  Just endevour to create and maintain good relationships in every area of your life and you’ll have a fabulous network – no awkward conversation required.  

Sally

Just some quick tips re: using your email list, no matter how big or small it may be…

• Send to it regularly.  We’re all very conscious of not bombarding the inboxes of our subscribers however some of us are a bit too conservative.  We suggest you mail your list at least once a month.  If you’ve got something good to write about once a week is fine and sometimes even more is great, depending on your business/service.   You’d be surprised how quickly an email list will expire.  People leave their job (and their email address) or forget who you are all too soon.  Before you know it that list of 5,000 people you sent to three months ago, is now only a list of 4,000 because of new bounces and unsubscribes.  
• Keep the content brief and succinct but… put ALL the key points in the email rather than expecting the reader to click through to a website.  You’d be surprised how few hyperlinks within emails are actually clicked on.  
• Don’t think ‘my list is too small to bother with’.  It’s usually the smaller lists that have the better open rates.  You’re probably closely connected with the people on your email list so they really want to read what you have to say.  If 40 people out of your list of 100 open the email and 5 of those people call you to take advantage of the offer in your email, just think what that might do for your business?  
• Always promote a reason for people to forward your email on.  This might be in the form of a competition, a referral program or some other promotional function.  You’re emailing your list anyway so why not use the opportunity to grow it?  This also relates back to my first point about emailing your list regularly.  Ensuring you’re actively growing your list will help compensate for the email addresses that will be lost between campaigns.  The more on your list, the more opens, the more sales/bookings/traffic/etc…  

Email marketing is a great, cheap way to speak to your audience, research it, spoil it, provoke it, refine it and grow it.  Contact us if you want to know more!

Sally

Clients often come to me wanting something – a PR campaign, a brochure, a new website…  This is great.  This is what we do at littleBig Marketing & PR.  But, there’s no point creating this new, wonderful, targetted, measurable campaign/marketing material if the item requested is not what’s actually necessary.  Most likely the activity will increase brand awareness and improve market position regardless, to some extent at least, but if you’re aiming to increase sales in the Melbourne region then a national PR campaign isn’t the right action to take.  If you want your existing customers to buy more, a brochure selling them what they already buy isn’t going to help.  We get so used to doing what we do and doing what we know that we’re often blinded to what we truly need.  

I encourage all my clients to think about the reason they need marketing, what they’re truly trying to acheive.  We’ll then put together a tailored solution aimed at acheiving that targeted result.  

Don’t get me wrong, much of the time my clients know exactly what they need and for all the right reasons.  They’ve already thought and talked things through very carefully, we’re all on the same page and we’re off.  But if the first thought you’ve had is simply ‘we need a mail-out’, ‘we need a one-page ad’, ‘we need a…’, then I implore you to talk your current position and ideal positition through with a marketing professional before doing ANYTHING else.  This will ensure that the right marketing problem can be solved the right way and, most importantly, ROI is maximised.

 A clever expert in Productive Thinking has made me realise how truly important this is, now more than ever…

Now I’m completely biased here of course, because LetsShop.com is a client, but have you checked it out?  It’s great.  OK, you blokes aren’t going to love it because it’s very girly but if you’re a female and, like me, have no idea where to start when it comes to shopping online, particularly for fashion and beauty products, it’s the perfect place to start.  

If there’s something in particular you’re after you head to Sales, Shops & Specials and you can filter by category and find a whole lot of great stores including special deals and vouchers for LetsShop.com visitors.  LOVE a bargain!   

Heaps of fun fashion, beauty and goss snippets all over the site and really great Competitions too (my pick of the comps currently listed –  gorgeous suede boots, mmmmm).

And a little birdy told me there’s something else special about to start on the site too.  Keep an eye out.  Sign up for their newsletters to keep up with it all…

Hope you enjoy!

Sally