Owners of new and growing businesses, if they have any sense, try to keep costs down, work smart, grow only as fast as the business allows and keep a careful eye on cashflow. Very often that means staying small when the nature of the business demands that they look as big as possible.

If you are a service company, for example, small can mean personal service and attention to detail. But it can also mean insufficient staff to deal with problems, erratic response rates and poor communication.

So should growing business tell it like it is and manage their clients’ expectations accordingly (“There’s only two of us, so we might take a while to get back to you”)? Or do they project a ‘bigger’ image and hope they can cover the ground when things aren’t going smoothly?

In dealing with this frustrating dilemma, good quality and thoughtful marketing – particularly regarding the brand proposition – plays a helpful role.

Templated websites, newsletters and the full range of social media have made professionalism accessible to all businesses, including the smallest back bedroom enterprise. But it is the way they are shaped that makes the difference between a business that over-promises and one that doesn’t go far enough.

Looking professional and competent is something most businesses aim for and that’s now relatively easy to achieve. But beyond that, what is it you want to promise? And how do you put that across?

Two recent Two Lizards clients have provided interesting examples.

One is a professional body with no full time staff, run by committed individuals who give up their time to organise events, training, provide resources and interface with the UK media when needed. In developing their brand and, subsequently, their new website, we have emphasised professionalism and size, at the same time working to ensure routine contact such as membership applications, enquiries and event books are online as far as possible, since there are no staff.  The aim has been to create a ‘larger’ image than the reality of the organisation but with a realistically low-maintenance approach to customer relations.

At the other end of the spectrum we are developing a website for a one-woman consultancy, where the product is the individual, their skill and reputation. In this case the aim is to draw visitors into a one-to-one relationship as quickly as possible. And while the site projects professionalism, it is also warm and friendly, inviting contact direct with the consultant without any impression of a ‘back room’ of staff.

You can see examples every day where marketing has failed to grasp, or even confront the ‘size matters’ issue. Business cards for significant consultancies that might as well be for plumbers for all the permanence they project. Sales material for small, friendly companies lacking the personality that is their real sales advantage. Promises of service that can’t be fulfilled or lack of interaction where sales calls are the life blood of the business.

That’s why with every new client we discuss the issue of size: we take the trouble to find out how their business actually works, right down to the way they answer the phone and collect the money. We look at their competitors and work with them to develop a brand that strikes the right balance.

You don’t have to be as big or as small as you look. But the relationship between the reality and the appearance has to work for you and your clients. And if things go well, it needs to be adapt in order to survive.  To find out more call us on 01403 751 585 or go to www.twolizards.co.uk

You don’t need a crystal ball to know that in 2012 there will be less money available to compete in a more competitive market place, with technologies emerging and burgeoning at the speed of light. But alongside predictions about the rise in m-commerce, Social Advocates and RFID tracking chips is a timely reminder (from the Mail Media Centre) that holds good for marketers of any size of company, but is particularly valid when times are tough. It is that long term strategy needs to replace short term stunts and the marketing mix is still with us ‘even if how you mix it may have changed’. 

In other words, while looking at ways new media and technologies can benefit them, any company, whatever its size, needs to get the basics right.

This is why at Two Lizards, our starting point with any new client is: who do you think your customers are and how and you currently trying to influence them to buy? This is a question many clients find difficult to answer. There is touching belief by some that you only have to create a website and customers will flock to your door. Or that one ad in a glossy magazine will sort your year’s marketing in one fell swoop. We cannot blame clients for this. There is a kind of rule that says whoever you first approach over marketing will sell you their specialist skill. Approach a magazine and they will sell you an ad.  Approach a social media consultant and they will sell you a social media strategy.

Our promise is that we won’t try to sell you anything. What we will do is help you work out the most effective way to win and keep customers and the marketing mix that will achieve that.

In some cases, with completely new businesses, this means starting with the development of the brand. As I write, we are just finishing a proposal that includes putting a new name and logo on the client’s vehicles, T-shirts, Adshells and stationery as well as on a new website.

In other cases the brand and business may be well established and we are looking at attracting more customers to spend more money, and (very importantly) come back for more and recommend you to others. The right mix might be direct marketing and social media. It might be a membership-based website and e-mailings to the client’s database, prompting customers to visit the site and read about new products. It might be a really professional suite of sales materials. The magic is in the mix.

Although a sizeable marketing budget helps, this is 2012, so let’s be realistic. The most important factor is the way your budget is used. We love a challenge and, whatever the sum available, we can show you how to use it most effectively, whether that’s putting the building blocks of your strategy in place or launching and testing a coordinated campaign. As with everything, it’s what you do with it that matters.

What do you want to achieve with your business in 2012? Call us for a discussion on 01403 751 585 or email us now. You can also visit us at www.twolizards.co.uk    

Whatever happened to fun direct mail? At Two Lizards we yearn for the kind of direct mail that makes you really enjoy opening the envelope, combining really creative design and copy to make you smile. Yet the sheer dullness of most business or consumer direct marketing (and regardless of whether you are in the office or at home, an awful lot of it is financial or IT/telephony) makes us fear for its future.

So we were heartened to read about Ikea’s ‘Everyone is a designer’ direct mail campaign. In the Netherlands, Ikea’s products are popular but not always seen as fashionable. Ikea asked MEC Active Engagement to create a campaign that would debunk the power of the ‘trendy designer’ and give ordinary people the feeling that, with Ikea, they too could create fashionable interiors.

The campaign kicked off with the mailing of millions of ‘designer glasses’ and MEC invited people to take photos of themselves wearing them, staged a ‘demonstration’ in Amsterdam where people proclaimed their right to ‘design their own life’, decorated statues with the fake glasses and generally had a load of … fun!

Was it a success? Of course. Tapping into current events (love the demo idea!), going effortlessly viral, the campaign increased spontaneous brand awareness and generated a huge amount of precisely the right kind of PR.

Fun is such a powerful driver in all our lives. But when even the clumsiest slapstick clip on YouTube gets millions of hits in a matter of days, when you can get emailed the same joke from three friends on the same day, why are we so reluctant to use humour in advertising and marketing?

A friend this morning said ‘I just can’t face the news. It’s just one awful doomy headline after another’. In this ‘fun vacuum’ any idea that lifts the mood has a good chance of a warm reception. By being in touch with the mood of the nation (and the entire world, come to that), tapping into our universal love of dressing up and larking about, Ikea have achieved something that no quantity of earnest, benefit-driven propositions could have achieved.

At Two Lizards we love direct mail and have found that lightening up can achieve great results. For an example of our own use of fun in a direct marketing campaign, take a look at our work for MarketingRadar. And if you have a direct marketing nut to crack, we would love to discuss it with you. Simply email us or call 01403 751 585.

Do websites give start-up businesses an advantage they wouldn’t have had a few years ago? This was one of the subjects recently covered on BBC Radio 4’s business programme The Bottom Line. The panel agreed: while too many people still start a business without actually knowing whether anyone will want to buy the product or service they are selling, creating a website ‘for £200 or so’ now allows them to quickly find out whether they have a viable proposition for their business.

It is certainly true that many new businesses have not done their homework on basics such as their potential market, pricing or competition. However our experience has been that a quickie ‘have a go’ website will generally compound rather than solve the problem.

For a number of our clients, that first ‘quickie’ website almost proved the death of their business, sucking time and emotional energy from them when they needed to devote it to shaping their company, failing to deliver on promises of visitors, interest and sales and making them question whether they should have stuck to the day job rather than venturing into the shark-infested waters of self employment.

At this point Two Lizards have been happy to help them make a fresh start, using our experience to create a website that actually does what it is supposed to do: announce to as many people as possible that their business exists and start attracting customers.

 It is bizarre to suggest that a basic, DIY type template website is a good way of finding out whether your business proposition is a good one any more than taking a jog round the block is good indicator of whether you will manage to complete the London Marathon. As anyone who has actually started a business will confirm, you need to give every aspect your best shot not least because, in today’s trading environment, few people have the luxury of a second chance. So in answer to The Bottom Line’s point, here are two observations:   

1.) Whether your website is absolutely central to your business because you are selling or attracting customers primarily via the internet, or it is a brochure site – a showcase for your brand and product/service offering – it needs to pull its marketing weight and be absolutely fit for purpose.

2.) Equally importantly, it needs to sit within a well thought-through marketing plan. Websites are great, but they aren’t magic. If you are selling something everyone wants but currently can’t find on the internet, the chances are that customers will quickly find you, start buying, tweeting links to all their friends and colleagues and your business will start to grow. For every other business, the basics of marketing still apply. Who are your potential customers? Why would they want to buy your products or services? How do you reach them if they don’t know about you? How do you keep them interested, persuade them to buy, recommend you to others and stay loyal?

At Two Lizards, we always discuss your whole business proposition before we make any recommendations. We are experienced in working with start-ups and growing businesses, and have been there ourselves, so we understand absolutely the concerns and pressures you have.

We are also unusual in offering a complete service under one roof, from graphic design, brand development and corporate stationery (from scratch if needed, even helping you come up with a name for your new company) to marketing strategy, web development, direct marketing, press adds, brochures, leaflets and PR. And we offer really practical, hands-on advice on getting the most out of free media including social network marketing and local business listings.

None of our work is ‘off the shelf’. It is created to be right for you, your business and your aspirations and, of course, your budget. And, working in the Guildford area, the Surrey/Sussex borders, London and the home counties, our friendly, local service is perfect for busy business owners. To find out more, get in touch now or call us on 01403 751585.

“The recruitment marketplace is crowded, with a lot of me-too advertising and what Two Lizards felt we needed was a powerful, memorable idea that made us stand out from the crowd. They came up with a really strong concept that says exactly what we do and used the design to advantage across a new website, turning a complex mass of content into a clear, easy to navigate site with an incredibly powerful marketing message.” Anita Howe, Marketing Manager www.vantagerecruitment.co.uk

“Having just started a new company, I needed a strong and focussed marketing partner. Two Lizards took the time to really understand our business, created a strategy and have taken me step by step through every stage of the marketing process. By providing a complete service from the brand and business stationery right through to my website, optimisation and marketing they have been a huge help and I feel I now have really expert marketing support behind me. I would definitely recommend them to start ups and to any business that wants to grow.”

Pat Maier, Director, The Language Development Partnership www.thelanguagedevelopmentpartnership.com

An esteemed direct marketing copywriter colleague Sheila Hennessy once watched, fascinated, as a woman opposite her on a train opened a direct mail pack she had written, tore it into small pieces and ate it.

While it’s unusual to see all your hard work chewed up and (well, let’s not go there), plenty of direct mail packs, magazine inserts, leaflets and mail order brochures are binned before they are opened or after a cursory glance, read in a haphazard way and then binned, or simply left lying around unread pending a decision (usually made by whoever clears up the pile of stuff that mysteriously collects by the phone/on the hall table/in the fruit bowl) to chuck them out.

When direct mail pacsk are read, it is rarely read in an orderly way (outer envelope message, letter, leaflet, other bits and pieces, response device if there is one) and this is why the most effective direct mail is designed and written so that the essential selling messages are on each item. That way the reader doesn’t switch off by reading them in the ‘wrong’ order. As direct marketing professionals know, this isn’t simply a case of repeating the same thing on each item. The persuasion needs to build, in the way a good face to face sales person will start with one argument and change tack as they go, offering more reasons to buy and covering off reasons not to, moving the customer towards a purchasing decision that feels logical and comfortable.

Bearing in mind the amount of direct mail I receive which completely fails to do any of these things, I am fascinated to read that a new service, from European company Eyetracker, will enable direct marketing clients to find out how their customers interact with their direct mail, doordrops and catalogues. As its name suggests, eye-tracking technology is used to work out how consumers look at the direct mail and this analysis of their cognitive engagement is combined with interviews to create qualitative analysis of the mail piece.

Royal Mail are offering this as a new service from the end of October, and it will be interesting to see if it throws up any revelations. But at £1,250 a session, it seems likely that only the larger, high volume direct marketers will find it attractive.

The rest will need to rely on the skill of the direct marketers behind the campaign, and such skill is in increasingly short supply.

At the core of Two Lizards is a highly experienced art director and copywriter team,  Alison Jelfs and Hilary Thomson, trained in direct marketing with Readers Digest, Book Club Associates, Smith Bundy and WWAV and with over 30 years of business to consumer, and business to business, experience. 

Part of that experience (for everyone who thinks direct marketing creatives sit around waiting for ideas to appear out of thin air) is a thorough knowledge of what interests and motivates direct marketing customers, whether you are asking them to consider giving to charity, making a purchase or requesting more information.

We acquired this knowledge by working at the sharp end of the business, for companies who totally depended on direct marketing sales or sales leads, and for whom the difference between a pack, ad or insert that pressed all the right buttons and one which didn’t, could add or subtract a few hundred thousand pounds from the balance sheet every week.

Only really experienced writers and art directors will have had this specialist direct marketing training. Most will not have had the luxury of fantastic mentors and a hundred per cent focus on the link between creative skill and sales results.

So for everyone who likes the idea of an eye-tracking IT solution but isn’t mailing the kind of volumes that justify the cost, here’s a suggestion.

Contact us and we would be happy to analyse your direct mail pack, leaflet, insert, take-one, flyer, brochure or catalogue, discuss with you why it isn’t performing as well as it could, and how it could be improved.

The process will be pleasant, friendly and encouraging. It will give you a clear way forward and will be entirely free of charge. And if you want us to take it further, we will be happy to help.

You can see recent examples of our direct marketing here and read more about our experience if you wish.

And, who knows? You may gain more from the experience than the Eyetracker session. People can switch off a piece of direct marketing for a whole raft of reasons: the way an offer or proposition is worded, the colours, imagery, the branding, the amount or lack of information or simply (and most frustratingly) an overall lacklustre look and feel that is the death of direct response. There is also the possibility that they have no interest in the product or service that is being sold.

Whatever it is, we are confident we will spot it. We’re not called Two Lizards for nothing.

Excellent copywriting and web content written with a real, in depth understanding of what I do and what makes my clients tick. I know I can always trust them to get the tone of voice and the detail exactly right. Tracie Giles, MD Tracie Giles Permanent Makeup www.traciegiles.co.uk

I would recommend Two Lizards to any company that wants to grow its business. We rely on our website to bring in clients, and they have helped us grow the traffic by over 60% year on year. They are not only effective and efficient, but really nice people to work with!” Francesca Sherwood, Beauty and the Beach, Twickenham www.beautyandthebeachsalon.co.uk

First, a bit of good news for everyone who finds drinking the recommended two litres of water a day a bit of a drag: it turns out that it’s complete twaddle and, if your body has been telling you it doesn’t really need to glug down all that liquid, your body was right.

There. Now we’ve got that out of the way, what does it have to do with PR as part of a marketing strategy?

To answer that, imagine an advertising campaign in, let’s say, the mid-1970s, in which a mineral water company has suggested there are health benefits to drinking two litres of their product a day. Picture people in flared trousers toasting each other with brimming glasses of sparkling water, probably in a party scenario featuring a lot of brown, cube-shaped furniture. Would you have believed it? ‘Aha’ you would have said. ‘The mineral water people would say that, wouldn’t they’.

But the fact is that they didn’t run any such campaign, because they didn’t have to. At some point during the mid 1970s, the idea that medical experts recommended a minimum water intake of at least 2 litres a day took root in the global psyche. Shortly after, people started wandering around with plastic bottles of water, swigging from them at their desks, on public transport, at the gym (where they might have actually needed them) or sitting watching TV (where they probably didn’t).

Where did the ‘2 litre myth’ originate? It’s open to debate. Possible from a 1974 book called Nutrition for Good Health by US physician Dr Frederick Stare or from a 1945 work from the US Food and Nutrition Board of the National Research Council. Neither book based the theory on any scientific research. Dr Stare refers to ‘liquid’ and not ‘water’ and suggests only ‘6 to 8 glasses per 24 hours’. The 1945 study adds (crucially) ‘Most of this quantity is contained in prepared foods.’ 

In time the myth grew legs. Although the Dr Stare book stated that your liquid intake ‘can be in the form of coffee, tea, milk, soft drinks, beer, etc. Fruits and vegetables are also good sources of water’ the word was that these alternatives were not as ‘good’ as water and would not ‘count’ so you had two drink two litres of water in addition to all the other stuff you drank.

Some uncharitable souls have suggested that the mineral water companies propagated the myth. Certainly they were enormously helped by it. Thus a theory that never was, has led millions of people to pay for a substance most of us can get by turning on a tap and contributed tons of waste plastic to the environment.

The story illustrates, if proof were needed, that ‘it must be true, it was in the paper.’ And despite the phone-hacking revelations, the erosion of the barriers between editorial and advertising, the decline of newpaper sales, the move from paper to digital media and almost unstoppable, unregulated power of digital communication, a news story is still worth its weight in gold.

This intrinsic credibility makes PR a perfect marketing partner. And there are specific situations where credibility is called for. Launching a new business, for example – particularly if that business is doing something new or different. Every creative will testify to the difficulty of convincing a target market that a totally new style of product or service is worth betting on. But get the PR message right and you have overnight already convinced thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, that your product or service is, at the very least, one to watch. As Annette Gardner of Sphere Enterprises comments, “The strength of PR lies in the endorsement of your business by a journalist as a third party which makes it far more valuable than just advertising alone.”

Then there’s the environment. A press ad on one page of a paper or magazine when there’s also a writeup or review in another section is a remarkably powerful combination. Suddenly this thing is happening! Yesterday you’d never heard of it, today it seems everyone is talking about it! You have information and detail from the ad and an endorsement from the editorial. What could be better? And the more targeted and specialist the editorial, the more convincing the message. If Fruit Grower magazine thinks your new organic pesticide is the best in the market, your press ad on the opposite page is pushing an open door.

But beyond this traditional use of PR in the marketing mix there is a brave new world of opportunities. Good PR that includes a web address generates instant hits on your website, which means instant marketing for your business. A magazine or newspaper with a sizeable circulation can turn a cinderella company into the must-have of the month and a perfect circle of PR-web presence-revenue-advertising spend. Readers get clicking on the website, the rankings improve, the hits accelerate, the reviews proliferate, they give the website a feel-good factor, turnover goes up and suddenly there’s more budget for marketing.

As a health and beauty PR specialist, Lucy Dartford has played a key role in this ‘perfect circle’:

‘’PR can play a vital role in jumping that one step ahead of the competition and can really making a mark in today’s crowded market. A good PR campaign will dramatically boost the brand image and awareness, strengthen credibility and influence public opinion leading to increased web hits, business enquiries and most importantly, increased turnover. With intricate knowledge of suitable media outlets  good PR can transform a brand and grow a business, ensuring it stays that one step ahead and remains in the public eye. PR makes a brand ‘dazzle’. Unlike advertising, PR is ‘backed’ by the publication/journalist, making it a must-have product/ service that everyone is talking about’’

PR is also good news when you are building a brand. For a big business, throwing a great deal of money at the wall in the shape of brand-building press and TV isn’t necessarily a problem. For most other businesses, particularly those who need direct marketing to bring in sales or sales leads, brand building is a luxury that needs to driven by more urgent considerations. In this situation, PR can back up the marketing and present a consistent brand message that makes the product or service more desirable and the customer more likely to buy, making every pound of ad spend bring in more business.

Sitting midway between marketing and PR, social network marketing harnesses the power of chat, approval, review and endorsement. Not quite as convincing as a ringing endorsement from a daily paper, tweets, forums and postings also carry the conviction of a human voice – even if it’s from someone you don’t know and often without a real name.

And if you want the best of both worlds? As well as a commitment to PR as part of marketing strategy, Two Lizards has developed a strong line in advertorials. For the uninitiated, these are ads using skilful copywriting and graphic design to masquerade as editorial (the similarity is down to policy of the magazine or paper). We work with you to write the ‘story’ in an editorial style that’s right for the readership and supply the carefully chosen photography. The magazine or paper in question typesets it and presents it in a way that usually blends in well with the editorial. The result is a sizeable piece (a double page spread in a magazine is not unusual) over which our clients and ourselves have complete control, so the message is exactly what you want to say and the photography, quite literally, puts you in your best light. You can see an example here.

If you would like to harness the power of PR as part of your marketing drive, create the PR you always wanted through an advertorial, or simply find out more about our complete marketing service for growing businesses based in London and the Surrey/Sussex area, take a look at our website and get in touch.  

 As for the water, the full story can be read at http://ajpregu.physiology.org/content/283/5/R993.full   Food for thought.