Category: Marketing for Freelancers

The biggest challenge for any growth business is to build awareness – you need to make more people aware of your brand in an increasingly crowded consumer world where the average person is exposed to 5000 brand messages every day. The same challenge applies to the world’s biggest brands when launching new products, but they usually have the budgets to shout about it. So how do you cut through the noise on a budget?

The fundamental principle that clients and agencies must address if they want to gain editorial coverage in the media is relevance.

When you first hear the words Public Relations spoken, what are the first images that come to mind? Surprisingly, when small businesses are faced with this question the responses generally convey negativity.

Businesses large and small are guilty of wasting marketing spend. Here Second Opinion Marketing explores the common pitfalls companies encounter and makes recommendations on how to avoid making expensive mistakes.

Press releases can be a valuable method of increasing business and letting people know who you are, what you do and what upcoming activities you have planned. However, it is easy to fall into a few traps that can get your release ignored or discarded as general sales spiel by an editor.

Let’s be honest: small businesses have a lot of competition during the festive season. For big brands, waiting until the end of November to get customers in the mood is just fine, and it works every year.

Spend a few minutes a day on these simple activities and you can double or triple your win your sale closure rate.

One of the biggest challenges facing any business attempting to use marketing to grow, is the fragmentation within the industry: Today’s consumer environment is multi-touch, continually evolving, and the industry has grown to reflect that. As a result, the role of each individual channel can become unclear for business owners, which means I’m regularly asked what the role of marketing is versus a PR or advertising agency.

Marketing is often misconstrued as little more than advertising – lots of brands jumping up and down and shouting as they try to grab potential customers’ attention. Done right however, marketing will cover every touch point of your business from raising brand awareness (where advertising is often a good tool), to activities that develop trust, drive trial, encourage repeat sales and incentivise them to tell their friends about you.

The vision you create for your brand or business is one of the most powerful drivers of growth. Having a vision of what you want to achieve, and where you want to get to, is infectiously compelling – to your consumers, to your team, to any potential investors.