Whatever the government figures might say I feel there is a long way to go before the UK sees good times again, and they may never be as good as they were a few years back.

Many economists are predicting a long hard slog for businesses in the UK and to me it stands to reason that in a world that has been rocked to the core by the financial crisis things are not going to get easier for a long time.

In fact even if your business is doing well now do you have marketing methods in place to keep business rolling in or is your business just ticking over?

The term ‘ticking over’ refers to an engine not driving but just ‘ticking over’. So is your business parked up at the traffic lights? and will it be able to respond when the lights turn green? or are your competitors ready to jump ahead of you when the time comes?

At Aida Marketing we speak to a lot of business owners who say the following: –

‘we’re doing ok right now’
‘we have got enough customers’
‘we are quite busy considering…’

But what if business dropped off a little? would those businesses and maybe yours too, start to suffer?

In business if you are not going forward then you are surely slipping backwards.

If your business is doing well then now is a great time to go through everything you do on the marketing side and make sure it is ready for a sustained battle. Can you improve in any way? If so do it know rather than when it is too late.

If you feel you could not improve, then you are either extremely good at what you do, and in that case, nice one, well done, good effort, or your are deluded.

A good way to look at the marketing side of your business is to get a big sheet of paper and write down each and everyone of your marketing activities and then do a flow chart and follow each activity through ensuring you have a good solid procedure in place in each case.

For example let’s say you advertise in a Newspaper or Magazine. You could have an arrow leading to website enquiries, which then leads on to an automated email response, which leads on to a series of email responses, which then leads on to further follow up email special offers.

This is just for those advert responses that come via your website, when a person calls you on the phone from your advert the process could be: –

You take the name and address of the enquirer, you send them a brochure with a covering letter this leads on to a follow up phone call 3-4 days later to enquire about the possibility of a sale, if they do not buy then a second letter follows offering an incentive to order or a special limited time price and so on.

Depending on your business, your piece of paper may need to be extended as you discover more and more arrows leading from each component of your marketing armoury.

If you need any help with your marketing flowchart I hope you will give us a chance to help you. Call today on 01490 460239 or use the contact form.

How would you like to have a website slave work for you for just £10 a month? The exact amount does depend on the exchange rate but for $49 a quarter if you haven’t done so already you can put a brilliant piece of software to work for you 24/7.

The virtual salesperson tool I am talking about is called an Autoresponder and the very best one I have found is this one Click Here.

Imagine your best sales person, which may well be you, putting down in an email your very best and persuasive sales pitch. Now imagine that same sales pitch being available to every single visitor to your website and those visitors receiving not one but a series of sales messages all sent on complete autopilot.

This is a powerful strategy and whether you realize it or not it is already being used very widely all over the Internet. If you are not using it, you are almost certainly at a big disadvantage compared to any of your competitors who are using it.

This powerful tool has to be about the best investment you can make for the online side of your business. If you want to find out more and even take a trial Click Here Now.

If you want to know more about the power of a good Autoresponder please feel free to email me or give me a call on 01490 460239.

My advice is simple, if you have a website but you don’t have an Autoresponder, get one! Get Your Autoresponder Here

12 years ago businesses were telling me that they didn’t need a website; now they all have one, lets’ hope they are more forward thinking about an Autoresponder.

Don’t miss out on using one of the Internet’s most powerful tools Click Here Now

Welcome to the Aida Marketing website if you need help with any aspect of your marketing you could do a lot worse than spending some time on our website.

Better still give us a call for an informal chat about how we could maybe improve your marketing and in turn increase your profits. Aida Marketing specializes in Direct Marketing, copywriting and Internet Marketing. We are based just outside of Corwen, North Wales and the company has been in existence since 1998.

The word ‘Marketing’ can sometimes be a little vague as to exactly what is meant by it. To us Marketing is simple and straight forward.

Marketing is offering your product or service to a business or individual and finding the most effective and profitable methods with which to achieve that goal.

Direct Marketing is all about knowing exactly what is working for you and what is not and in times like these few business owners have much money to waste.

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” John Wanamaker

In 1875 John Wanamaker opened what was said to be the first Department Store in Philadelphia he was a pioneer in the field of marketing. This now famous quote highlights the fact that it is very easy to lose track on what you spend on ‘Advertising’ and it is still happening today.

Unless you know that every pound of your marketing budget is paying its way, you cannot possibly know what to do to improve it and increase your profits.

For example, let’s say…

• 30% of your marketing budget goes on Newspaper and Magazine Advertising
• 25% goes on Radio Advertising
• 20% goes on Yellow Pages and Yell
• 10% goes on Pay Per Click
• 10% goes on brochures
• 5% goes on signage

In this example it is often difficult to track if your marketing pound is pulling its weight. However by employing some simple Direct Marketing techniques, in all bar one of the above you could easily find out what is working for you and more importantly what is not.

Incidentally the one that is really hard to track is the 5% of the budget spent on signage but even signage can sometimes be given the ‘direct’ treatment as it were.

Staying with the example, if you knew that the 30% of the budget you spent on Newspaper and Magazines advertising and the 20% you spend with Yell and Yellow Pages only produced 20% of your turnover, it would certainly be time to so some restructuring of your budget wouldn’t it?

If your company is based with a 40 mile radius of Corwen, North Wales, we will be delighted to visit you at your place of business for an informal chat about how we could maybe help you.

Some companies are pretty much on top of their Direct Marketing activities but we are yet to visit one where some serious improvements could not be made. No business is perfect, including ours, but the more Direct Marketing techniques you can use and improve, the more chance you have of increasing your turnover.

Contact Aida Marketing today on 01490 460239 and let’s have a chat to see if we can work together and make sure every pound you spend on marketing is made to work for you.

Contact Neil or Catherine on 01490 460239 or email neil@aida.co.uk