Marketing guru Delia Bull looks at the SMART marketing options for resellers.

First published in Comms Business February 2005

In November's edition of Comms Business Magazine Alan Cob from the TIA Alcatel's Neal Tilley talked about engaging your customers so the competition can't cut away business from you. Customer care, CRM, old fashioned good quality service, whatever you call it, is an excellent way of looking after your existing business and ensuring you get revenue from existing customers.

But what if you are a small reseller looking to grow your company through gaining more customers?

Marketing your company is key to increasing your customer base. Companies looking to grow often do not approach marketing from the correct angle. Many small resellers have various horror stories of precious budget being wasted on marketing activities, which has resulted in no return on investment, prejudicing the company against marketing in the process, leaving them reluctant to spend money again. Some vendors, resellers and distributors have marketing teams with large budgets and complicated plans, but these are not necessary for marketing a small company.

For companies who count every penny, marketing can be seen as a frivolous expenditure, or something which is out of their budget…it's not. Marketing takes many forms, and as a result fits many pockets. The most important part of any marketing campaign is the plan. Marketing is often seen as a woolly discipline, which is done by 'creative people' and is not associated with business planning. In order for marketing to be successful it has got to be planned and integrated with the rest of the business. Lack of planning and integration results in money lost, with no visible return. Even small campaigns which last one or two months should be planned in advance.

At the start of the planning process, everyone who is a key decision maker should be involved, the marketing plan has to have support from everyone in the company. The business plan should also be present to ensure that the marketing goals stems from the business objectives.

For any campaign SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and targeted) goals should be created, so everyone agrees what is to be achieved from the campaign and at the end, it can be measured and celebrated!

Part of the planning process is to effectively target your audience. There are several ways of doing this, by region, company size, company turnover, a customer who bought a PBX system from you three years ago, or another method which makes sense to your company and your potential customers. Once you have targeted your audience the message you use has to be tailored, for example is the person you are contacting technically or financially driven? Will the words DDI, VoIP, SIP etc make them immediately throw your marketing straight into bin? If that is the case then you will need to make your message business focused and appealing to your audience.

When planning it is important to bear in mind that there is a theory that a company needs to be 'touched' seven times before they will make a purchase. This 'touch' can be a sales call, advertising, PR piece, direct mail piece or an event. A single marketing campaign may need to have two stages or three touches within it, as the seven touches tend to be over eight or more months in the B2B market. These stages could be as simple as sending out a sales letter and following this up with a telephone call.

There are many tactics which can be implemented as part of the marketing, far too many to describe here, but it is worth bearing in mind projects can be done on a small budget, but if you have the money to spend on materials make sure they are high quality, it is well worth it as you can make your company stand out.

Tactics include: direct mail, telesales, face to face contact, public relations, media relations, advertising, brochures, catalogues, events, exhibitions, conferences, to name a few. When several tactics are used, as part of an integrated campaign then the marketing project will be much more effective, delivering better return on investment.

Once the tactical side of the project has been implemented it is important to measure the results of the project, against the goals originally set. If the goals are not met then the project needs to be assessed, to understand why the results were not gained which where wanted. It may have been the original targeting of the audience was wrong, or the key message was not right for the audience. This information will enable the company to get the marketing right for the next project.

Marketing is a very effective tool for all sizes of companies, regardless of the amount of budget, however budget can often be increased through vendor co-op funding. The most important part of marketing is the plan, a single project can be part of a rolling marketing plan, or it may have its own standalone plan. Whatever the case planning can make marketing budgets go further.

Delia Bull is the founder and Managing Director of Bull Marketing & PR, a full service agency. www.bulluk.com