In a recent post I discussed our brand values and why they were important to consider before designing a logo for Eliot Turner Ltd. As some of the more observant readers of the blog will have noticed we recently changed our holding page which revealed our final brand design.

It is important to remember that although the logo is what most people associate as being a brand, it is only the first part of a branding process and must be reflected correctly across all associated marketing literature. Some of the areas we considered are:

• Logo Design
• Stationery Design
• Order and delivery confirmations
• Email Signatures
• Printed marketing literature
• Email mailshot design
• Advertsing both online and offline
• Packaging

All these items are different methods of marketing / communication, which will reflect our brand. We used our company colours as the primary way to create brand recognition. You can see from the Eliot Turner Twitter page we have even made sure we have correct brand alignment. Our brand goes beyond colour but into the quality of the packaging, what paper we use for printing and how we word our communication.

Here are a few items of our branding which should give you an idea of how things are looking:

Check back later this afternoon when we’ll be revealing a sneak peek of our website!

Scenario: Walking down a high street window shopping, something catches your eye and you enter the store. The next thing you’re doing is walking out of the store with a purchase.

The above scenario shows that without realising, you can actually become one part of a sales tunnel very quickly. Online things are different, granted people window shop but only seasoned buyers will go to the same online shop time and time again. This would usually happen if they’ve had a really good buying process, excellent customer service and event better delivery times.

For the general Joe/Jane Blogs who might only buy twice online in a month, buying online is generally different. They’re more likely to hear about a product socially.

Word of Mouth has changed dramatically in the last year or so, you’re more likely to find a group of people talking about a product online than you would physically. It takes one conversation with one link added for someone to become a buyer.

The question is, once you have a buyer how do you keep them interested in you and your company to come back and be return buyers?

The answer, you stay social.

Companies large and small really need to hook up to the fact that people are people, just like themselves they also need to understand their customers. Customers LOVE interaction. They LOVE feeling a part of something bigger. Get to know your customers socially, make a friend and you’ll gain a loyal follower. Remember however that it is not good of you to force yourself on people, present what you have in the right way to the right people and you are half way there.

Up to now, we have talked solely about online marketing, however it is important to include some traditional offline marketing in your campaign to drive traffic to your website and improve presence in the market place. Research shows that the majority of people visit a website after reading it in a newspaper or magazine or hearing it from a friend, someone at a meeting or on TV, hence why offline marketing is important for your online business.

 Advertise

There are so many adverts on the internet that people have learnt to tune them out and so placing ads on TV, print and radio can be extremely effective despite the claim that print media is declining. Also, offline advertising usually has something physical attached to it meaning people are more likely to remember it.

If you can afford it, advertising in national media will obviously have the largest reach however if you are running a small business, start with local media whilst building your brand and then move on to the national media once you are more established and making more money. There are plenty of local media stations that need advertising slots filled and won’t charge the earth.

Placing adverts in local or national print media can be highly targeted as there are now so many different publications out there. Choosing particular magazines which you expect your target demographic to read will almost guarantee traffic to your site providing your web address is clear. Often writing only the URL of your business in an advert is effective as it gains curiosity. This doesn’t require much space and the cost will be reduced.

Event programmes are an effective way to directly reach you target market. Search for relevant industry events for your field and advertise in their programmes.

The Yellow Pages and other directories can bring traffic to your site as more often than not people will check out your website before, or instead of, phoning.

Network

Talk about your business at any opportunity you get.  You will meet potential customers wherever you go  so anyone who asks you anything related to your business tell them your web address and always carry your business cards with the URL and email address on it. Attend Industry events and join networking associations and societies.  Choose carefully which events to attend – those where you expect your target demographic will be and announce your website address to all those you speak with.

Also, donating one of your products for a raffle at an industry event will act as extra publicity for your brand. The price of the product will be little in comparison to the exposure it will bring you.

Get articles published

If you can get an article published in a newspaper or magazine, you will get noticed by thousands and it likely won’t cost u much. Whatever your area of expertise, there will be an appropriate publication whose readers are in your target demographic. Make sure you include your web address with your name in the byline – not only will your article raise interest in you and your brand, but will also advertise your URL to every reader. The same applies for press releases, always include your web address.

Also, most local chapters of business associations have printed newsletters that are sent to all members. If you can commit to contributing an article regularly, it is a good way to get your web address circulating around your target demographic. Search all the associations in your area and choose the most relevant to your industry.

Put your URL on everything

Finally, put your URL on everything! Having your web address on things such as your vehicle and your uniform means everywhere you go people will see it. Also, it’s surprising how few companies have their web address on their company signs. Every person who walks or drives past your sign is a potential customer.

Last week I had the opportunity to sit through a seminar titled “Building a brand with Social Media”.

This seminar intended to educate those unfamiliar with social media websites and in particular how they can be used as a marketing tool to build a brand for your business or product. The internet has allowed everyone their own voice and this seminar explained the platforms available such as Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn and blogging to get this voice heard.

The keys to success are simple; talk, engage and communicate, be human and be honest. Do something different and be remembered for the right reasons. Even if you are remembered for something other than your product at first, people will associate this with your company and improve brand awareness.  Also, don’t think about the competition, you cannot control what they’re doing so concentrate on what you are doing.

A point that was echoed throughout the seminar was how this cannot be done overnight. Developing relationships and building a community around your brand takes time but if done properly will show results. You must treat this community you have built with respect and if you make an error resolve it and make people love you by doing something positive and different.

The Internet is the only tool that allows you to see what many others are thinking about you and your brand instantly without any extensive market research. You can identify people who love what you do and those who hate it and gather feedback about what you can do differently.

During the seminar, the speaker explained how Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and blogs can be used effectively in business;

Using the tool search.twitter.net on Twitter you can find those searching for your, or similar, products or services and utilize this by engaging with those people. The speaker gave personal examples from his own experiences, for example , after tweeting about his hay fever he received  a message and link from Lloyds pharmacy leading him to hay fever tablets. This can be done with any business, all you need to do is search for those tweeting about your product or service and engage with these people. This is also a great tool to find instant information from your customers about your brand and the products/services you sell and if necessary, turn your haters into fans.

Once you have a community of followers you can tell them about new products and tweet out offers.  If you engage with those with influence in your field you will become even more respected especially if they retweet your tweets to their followers.

Facebook offers paid advertising that is highly targeted meaning you can advertise to those who have mentioned they like or need a product or service that you’re offering. Not only this, you can create groups and fan pages for your business and build a community similar to twitter updating those interested in you with products and offers.

Flickr is a photo sharing application where you can upload photos and join different groups. This is another opportunity to add links to your website.

If you can write a blog with good content, you will gain interest and raise the profile of your business. Again, this is something that takes time and you have to gain respect in your field with interesting content that will bring regular readers.

Also, SEO should always be part of your online marketing campaign and you should hire a consultant to do this for you but use the right company.

The seminar looked at online marketing versus print marketing stating that although dependent on the industry, online marketing was much more efficient. This is because word of mouth is the best type of marketing and due to the instantaneous reaction of the internet, it cannot be beaten by offline print marketing. Online you can reach a global audience in little time, social media is massively viral and with the millions of users, it is easier for something to spread, for example, the T-mobile dance in the train station and Samsungs LED sheep.

The seminar was interactive showing live examples of the ways in which social media can be used. The speaker posted a prepped post to his own personal blog and demonstrated how, using bit.ly, you can shorten the URL for your post then use the twitter feed service to send the RSS feed of your blog to twitter. The link to your post will then be seen by your followers and if any of them decide to retweet your link it will also be seen by their followers.

The speaker suggested it was a good idea to employ a social strategist who will market your business online using social media for those who feel they are unable to do it effectively.

Twitter

We’re a pretty social group, we’ve all got Twitter accounts and we usually send out most of our info out via @ecomexperiment, however we have our own @eliot_turner account now and plan become more socially active.

We want to communicate and relate with people about the service we’re providing, telling them about our new stock and quite possibly throw the odd offer around from time to time. We would like people to know we’re there to talk to.

As well as being openly social, we will create dialogue with two types of twitter users; the average user who is our potential customer and those who are influential in our field who can promote our business interests. An authority in our field such as a fashion influence endorsing a link will have much more response than unknown quantity tweeting out links. An influencer’s voice will be respected by our target market. Networking with bloggers, publishers, journalists and other business owners will also create traffic.

When tweeting, we will take in to consideration the quality of tweets and not overwhelm you with links making you switch off.

Also, we will use search.twitter.com to our advantage, identifying users who have searched for anything jewellery related. We will not only be able to gain consumer insight but also establish a relationship with these people and offer them discounts or information about our products.

Email Marketing

As you may already know we have built up a database of around 3000 potential customers via an online prize draw at www.eliotturner.com. Those who have entered were given the option to sign up to our mailing list meaning we have a list of people who we know want to hear about our products. We will send these people emails at our launch promoting our products and any special offers we may have. We will then record those who’ve been responsive to emails and those customers who have bought products and send out questionnaires to these people to learn more about who our target demographic actually is. We can then target specific customers with emails, for example, send only male customers an email with Valentine’s Day offers.

Voucher code websites

We will be placing a voucher offering around 10% off products at Eliot Turner which will bring traffic to the site and hopefully create sales.

Prize draw websites

We will register a prize draw on various prize draw websites which will have an option to subscribe to our email newsletters. This will not only expand our email database but increase awareness of the Eliot Turner brand.

Paid Advertising

Fashion blogs

We plan to place adverts onto fashion blogs such as www.fashionista.com, www.myfashionlife.com and http://fashionblog.dailymail.co.uk. These blogs are influential and receive significant traffic numbers and are likely to be viewed by our target demographic.

Google ad words

Once the site is launched we will place an advert on Google ad words as there is often at least a two month wait for SEO to take effect. Once Eliot Turner appears higher in the search rankings we will amend and reduce spend on our advert.

Affiliate marketing involves allowing a third party to market your product for you leaving you to concentrate on other aspects of your business and only having to pay them for referrals that create a click, registration or, most commonly, a sale. Referrals to your site are usually made through a link on the affiliates site and when this link is clicked by a visitor, it is recorded by your system as being from the affiliate and so any sales that are subsequently made can be documented. As this way of marketing functions around a ‘pay for performance’ model, your return on investment is predictable.

Choosing a system

When choosing an affiliate system you can either build your own, buy one or use a service provider. Building your own obviously takes time and expertise but enables you complete control over the process. Buying a programme offers the same control but with the added cost. Building and buying systems both need ongoing upkeep and so it is often a good idea to use a service provider who do all this for you. Not only do they have all the systems needed in place but they will already have a database of affiliates to promote your products on. A service provider will take a cut of commission and most require a set up cost ranging from £500-£2000, however they will eliminate costs such as ongoing administration that you would have incurred had you bought or built a system yourself. One of the largest service providers is Commission Junkie who offer a ‘global network of publishers, educational resources, and sophisticated reporting tools’.

One of the most important aspects of the affiliate system is the payment model. The most common type of commission is a percentage of the total sale amount the affiliate generates. Also, adding bonuses and incentives, such as offering a larger commission percentage for reaching a certain amount of monthly sales, can attract larger affiliates partners.

Recruiting your affiliates

Once your affiliate program is in place you must promote it to attract affiliates. This can be done like a launch of any new product – create a press release, advertise on your own website, spread the word on social media sites. If you are with a service provider, they will also be promoting your programme.

You also need to decide which affiliates you wish to target. Their audience needs to fit with your own, otherwise the amount of referrals you receive will be limited. When considering Eliot Turner we must choose affiliates that are likely to have visitors with the same interests as we expect our customers to have rather than just building a database of random affiliates, e.g. websites associated with similar or related products.  It is not a good idea to target a website that sells competitive products but instead look for potential affiliates that are more interested in communication than eCommerce, for example, fashion blogs would be ideal for Eliot Turner.

Once you have recruited your affiliates it is important to work together with them to generate more leads. You need to update them on new offers or products which can be done with a monthly newsletter. Otherwise, your affiliates won’t have an awful lot to work with and won’t generate the sales you want.

Risks

Affiliate marketing may seem a perfect solution however there are obviously some risks associated. You are no longer in control of your own marketing and are allowing a third party to decide how your company is being represented. Affiliates may use marketing methods you are not comfortable with, for example, being too intrusive. Also, there is always the risk of fraud which can affect the merchant, customer and affiliate. Customers can be diverted to a duplicate site preventing the merchant from receiving potential customers and often when the affiliates commission is on a cost per click basis, both affiliates and competitors have been known to commit click fraud whereby repeatedly clicking on a link that pays out can drain the merchant of money. Keeping careful track your system and making sure it has fraud detection will help you discover any unusual behaviour.

That aside, an affiliate programme can really boost sales if done correctly, and if it doesn’t, you won’t have to pay! This is one online programme that must be part of your marketing plan.

The Affiliate Marketing List

• www.advertising.com
• www.affiliatewindow.com
• www.affiliatefuture.com
• www.zanox.com
• www.webgains.com
• www.tradedoubler.com
• www.silvertap.com
• www.ro-eye.co.uk
• www.paidonresults.com
• www.onlinemediagroup.co.uk
• www.offersquest.com
• www.netklix.com
• www.cj.com
• www.buy.at
• www.afform.co.uk
• www.affili.net

This was going to be a video post but time didn’t allow! I’ll be going into more detail about running prize draws and where to submit them later this week.

We now have our domain name online and a prize draw running. Head over to http://www.eliotturner.com to enter and try and win a Handmade Swarovski Silver and Pearl Jewelery Set (Necklace, Bracelet and Ear-ring Set). The prize draw is a world wide prize draw so please pass it around and give it some link love. The only restriction is that it is one entry per person.

Little bit of background behind today’s first video blog post. Last night I decided to put together a short video on something that has been bugging me about Twitter lately, and it links very well to marketing the eCommerce experiment and Eliot Turner. I chat a little about the auto-follow feature in Twitter and how it can be violated so that people can have a 0-10000 follower race in hours. It’s not marketing at the end of the day, follow people for a reason, engage in conversation for a reason and win those customers that LIKE you!

We’re moving on with the eCommerce experiment and currently putting the design together for the new store. The sneak previews will be shown in the coming week. We just wanted to let everyone know that a new name will be popping up on the blog in the next few weeks.

I had the opportunity to interview a few candidates as part of the ‘Shell Step Programme‘. The Shell Step Programme brings together students and graduates who want to gain valuable experience on real work placements with companies who want an injection of fresh ideas, talent and enthusiasm to inspire and build their business.

The last interview took place last week, and we offered an 8 week placement to ‘Alexandra’ an extremely enthusiastic student from a North East University.

Alexandra will be doing some competitor analysis, social media work, marketing, advertising and generally giving me a hand with the promotion of Eliot Turner.

We will be setting some goals for Alexandra to complete before she leaves and we can’t wait to get her on board.

Today we received a new comment on the blog with regards to our “Setting a Budget” post. I felt it was so well written that it was worth responding to in full. The comment was from Oliver Ker, a freelance designer from Huddersfield, UK.

Thanks to Oliver for taking the time to write such an interesting response. This has actually made us realise that we hadn’t addressed this issue in full and has prompted another post.

You can find a full response to your comment here.

I don’t have a great deal of experience of budgets when setting up, is this budget what you would expect your customers to pay to you as a start up looking for your services?

As a designer I am worried about the design/development being “swept under the carpet”. Are you noting down the hours spent developing this project to calculate the cost later?

Also I would be worried about £100 as a marketing budget? What does this cover? Marketing can make or break your company. What do you class as marketing? Writing these blog posts and your twittering about the project is classed as marketing and Im sure you have spent more than £100 of your time.

Personally to start a business on a shoe string, I would have used a platform that already exists and anyone could set up (I have done this, and (http://mlbadges.com/schools) is now quite successful, and would not like to add up the hours spent developing, designing and marketing it). BUT does this not contradict with why you started this experiment, as your client left to seek a bigger platform to handle a bigger turnover.

As you can tell I am following this project and interested to see where it goes. Good Luck

I think it is worth clarifying that the budget we’ve set out in our original post for Eliot Turner only includes our start-up costs. It does not include our staff time for the design, development or creation of the marketing strategy.

You can see from the post “How Strong is Your Team” every member of carrotmedia Ltd is becoming a director in the business and taking share options. With this structure in place we have all committed to carry out the necessary work setting the site up outside office hours. We are in a unique position to have all the skills and software at our finger tips to launch such a site with little cost to ourselves. Before you ask, yes there was a cost originally for developing our eCommerce system. However, these developments are required for our existing eCommerce clients and if we add any new features these will be released back to our clients as upgrades to the existing software. We therefore felt it would be inappropriate to build this cost into the startup budget. If a client required our services to setup an online shop we would be charging for a full design and build so the costs we’ve set out in our initial budget will seem very low.

An eCommerce website is not a part time business which can be managed outside office hours once launched. We fully understand once launched it will require work during office hours. At this stage we will keep a track of our time and raise a management charge from carrotmedia Ltd to Eliot Turner Ltd for time spent on the site. The management charge will be based on a cost price for our members of staff and not the retail rate being billed to our clients.

So how are we calculating the management charge?

• Salary + Tax + Employers National Insurance
• Divide this by 235 days to allow for holidays & weekends
• We work to 5.5 billable hours in a day so we divide the amount by this number.
• We then add 10% to the figure to account for overheads to give us our hourly rate.
• For example, on a salary of £20,000 we would be looking at around £20 per hour.

I agree with your assessment of the marketing budget of only £100 being small. This £100 will cover the first month of trading and we will be modifying the budget throughout the year which will be based on the margin achieved on turnover.

There is an important business issue which is partly why the marketing budget is so low. We are looking to test the market in the first month of trading and don’t want to commit to a large amount of stock which may or may not sell. If we commit a large marketing budget we may sell more stock than we have in hand. We never want to be in a position where customer service is anything less that 100% and overselling could kill us before we’ve even begun. I’ve made no secret that buying jewellery is not my primary occupation so being cautious and accepting slow organic growth in the first few months is advisable. Once we’ve gained the confidence and developed a strong marketing strategy we can build up our stock levels. It takes some time to take photographs and add items into the eCommerce system so until we have someone dedicated to the task we have to limit marketing spend to control sales.

The comment about our client leaving to be supported by a larger platform isn’t correct. The client left due to them feeling we lacked the marketing experience to take their turnover into the millions and they were approached by a dedicated eCommerce design agency. Unfortunately we didn’t get the opportunity to demonstrate that we did have this experience. In reality this is why eCommerce experiment exists as we’re looking to show we can not only demonstrate skills in web design but also business acumen.