We all take in huge amounts of information every day. Before we leave home, we may talk with our families, receive mail, read a newspaper, watch television or listen to the radio. Advertising is just one element of this mass of information, so it has to work very hard to compete for our attention.
It is easy to overestimate the power of your advertisement and expect too much. Whilst there is no doubt that good and appropriate advertising does work, there are numerous factors to consider when investing in advertising:

• Advertising is persuasive not coercive: it cannot make people do what they do not want to do.
• Advertising has to be seen by its intended audience: so using the appropriate medium is essential.
• The audience has to be receptive: they must have an interest in your message.
• The message has to be driven home: a single advertisement may be missed or forgotten.
• Competitors advertise too: your offer must be better or different, otherwise why choose you?

The hardest fact to accept is that most people ignore most advertising. The key is to ensure that they take notice of yours. There are a number of reasons why people find certain advertising memorable, for example:

• They recognise your brand, company or its products/services: People like what they know. Regular advertising builds awareness.
• They have company, brand or product loyalty: Existing customers have a relationship and take notice of what you do.
• They are actively seeking to purchase: Your product or service is something they have already decided they need.
• They are “in the market”: Your product or service is something they are considering purchasing.
• The “offer” is attractive: Your advertising contains a positive incentive to purchase (e.g. a free gift with the purchase or a price reduction).

Good advertising works because it puts the company, its products and its messages at the forefront of people’s minds. It either stimulates an early purchase, or helps to ensure that people know where to go when they do decide to purchase.

The final point to consider is tell people what to do next. Nobody will buy from you unless they know how to, so always include contact information, e.g. CALL FREE ON 080012345.

Where to advertise
Once you have identified your target audiences, you need to communicate with them either directly (verbally or in writing) or indirectly through an advertising medium.
When choosing where to advertise, you must identify those publications, broadcast media or other methods that offer the best ‘fit’ with your target audiences. It may be appropriate to use different media and different messages. However, before you decide, you must understand what is available.
Direct marketing is one of the most accountable forms of advertising media, since both costs and results can be measured precisely. It also assists with customer relations by building a two-way dialogue, thereby helping you to understand customer needs and expectations. It includes such disciplines as direct mail, mail order, direct response advertising i.e. television, radio and press advertising which invites an immediate telephone or written response and telemarketing, where existing or potential customers are contacted by telephone. The industry average response rate is around 2.6%. Keep in mind though that is just an average.

There are three main aspects to a direct mail campaign that will affect its success:-
1. The mailing list
The best mailing list is the one that contains the most potential purchasers and is very accurate and up-to-date. This would normally include existing or previous customers. The difficult part is including potential new customers.
List Brokers specialise in sourcing the most appropriate lists for businesses. Rental charges are typically between £80 and £150 per thousand names for one use only. If you know what you want, you can also choose to go to a list owner or have your own unique list compiled by a list builder.
2. The proposition
The proposition is the offer that you can make that will encourage recipients to respond. It must answer the question ‘what’s in it for me?’
Accuracy of your information will influence how people react. Make sure all names and facts are correct. Information about your company, its products and its reputation will build confidence. Simplify the response mechanism, ideally by enclosing a post-paid, self-addressed envelope. Make them an offer, it is important you make clear the real reason why you are writing.
3. Creativity of the mailing
Creativity in direct mail is a means to an end. The use of stylish graphics, professional copywriting or photography should be used to achieve that pre-determined objective. Just as job candidates are expected to be well presented, so a “well-dressed” mailing is more likely to be read and appreciated than one that looks ‘cobbled together’.
Stylish, relevant design grabs and holds the attention. Literate, well-structured copy increases readership and response. Lastly, ensure that your direct mail complies with the Data Protection Act.

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Raising awareness of your products/services is where the sales process begins. However, in order to provide an excellent return on investment then you need to measure the performance of all your marketing activities.  This can be done by:-

The value of marketing activities to the business

In practice shareholder value is driven by:

Better returns – better margins achieved through price premiums supported by differentiated propositions, focusing on best customers and products, capturing value created through better pricing, building stronger relationships, improving allocation of spend and effectiveness of marketing activities.

Accelerated growth – driving greater sales through strong brands and communication, innovating new products and services to broaden the portfolio, extending the customer experience, entering new markets, finding new niches, developing additional channels, and cross-selling to existing customers.

Improved efficiency – achieving cost advantage over competitors through streamlined supply chains, improving productivity of people and efficiency of processes, working in partnership to share resources and outsource non-core activities, and better financial management.

Some larger companies have various marketing budgets for:

• Advertising & Promotion
• Brand Development (other than advertising)
• CRM (Customer Relationship Management) budget
• New Product Development Budget
• Sales Force Budget

To improve marketing a business needs to be able to measure its performance in order to understand how it may be improved. Areas where marketing performance indicators can be utilised to benchmark your marketing activities against include:

Quantative Marketing Performance Indicators

• Measuring Sales Revenues (increase in sales attributable to the promotional activity less the cost of the activity)
• Measuring Profitability (allocate costs to the activity to understand the profitability of products and customers)
• Market Share (measure by the numbers of customers now, versus the number of new customers after promotional activity, less cost of activity)
• To drive sales of certain product range (measure on products sold before promotional activity v products sold after activity, less costs of the activity)

Qualatitive Marketing Performance Indicators

• Generate brand and product awareness (measure on what needs to be known, what should be known, what is known and what is not known. Measure this by conducting market research and or test with consumer panels before and after promotional activity.)
• Generate company awareness (measure as above)
• Generate customer knowledge (measure as above)
• Improve Customer Satisfaction (measure by consumer survey before activity v consumer survey after activity)
• Improve Customer retention

Remember if you can’t measure it you can’t manage it!

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Ongoing Marketing Campaigns To Deal With Online Reputation Crisis

After the advent of the internet, many new marketing strategies have emerged and these strategies help businesses to reach their target audience faster. However, the internet era has brought its own challenges. As much as it helps brand identity development, the internet also can work against a brand. Reputation management has become all the more challenging today because the negative word spreads faster through internet and it has viral effects.

All your marketing strategies should take into consideration possible reputation management crisis.  This is where ongoing marketing campaigns becomes highly relevant and where http://www.lethalmarketing.co.uk/services/marketing-agency can help.   If you have a strong brand image then during crisis situations the damaged caused will be considerably lesser. On the other hand if your brand popularity is already weak then the damage caused will be doubled. So do not wait until the adversity to hit your brand to take urgent promotional efforts.

Today anyone can easily post negative feedbacks and reviews about your brand, products or services. It can be a dissatisfied customer or a competitor. When negative feedbacks and reviews circulate on the web, your customers will not take the time to review the sources but they will make swift decisions about your brand. To combat negative feedbacks and reviews if any, you should have an overwhelming positive image. Your brand should enjoy the highest level of visibility. For example if people see negative remarks about Nike it will have very little impact on customers’ choices whereas if the same negative remark should be posted about a new or emerging brand the effects will be much adverse. Nike being a popular brand and that it has already established its brand credibility through extensive marketing efforts, it is easier for such brands to deal with reputation crisis.

You must be consistent with your marketing efforts and to boost your visibility level. For more information on how we can help please go to http://www.lethalmarketing.co.uk/services/marketing-campaigns.co.uk Greater the visibility level, better the customer response. Your ongoing marketing efforts should be used to bolster your reputation online. Posting positive product reviews in popular websites using relevant keywords will help your website not only gain good visibility but it will also help you in times of crisis situation. When your positive reviews appear on the same page as the negative reviews, you will be able to

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All of us understand the importance of our branding efforts to fight competition. Though we understand the importance of branding, very often our efforts do not produce the proportionate results. In our ignorance, we make several branding mistakes that work against us rather than helping us. Despite spending a lot of time, money and energy our efforts will produce very little or no results. If this has been your story, then you should start reviewing your branding strategies very closely to strip them of all possible mistakes that hamper your growth.  If you need further advice on this then contact us at http://www.lethalmarketing.co.uk/services/brand-development

One of the most common mistakes that we make is lack of organized approach to branding. Our efforts are often random and still worse; they are reactions to our competitors’ branding efforts. When your branding efforts are not cohesive then you cannot possibly expect good results despite the efforts put in and the money spent on the individual efforts. You must have a clean blueprint for all your branding efforts for the entire year. Only when you plan for the entire year, you will be able to set aside a reasonable budget. Moreover, all the efforts you take should complement each other and build on the previous effort getting a cumulative result for all the efforts taken. If you make isolated unconnected branding efforts, then they will not have any lasting impact. The very idea of branding is to make your brand name remembered by your target customers. If your efforts do not pave way for that, then you should consider all your efforts futile.

Many small and medium sized businesses think that they can handle all their branding activities themselves. Some of us may have the required expertise in branding but we may not have the required time to take consistent efforts. While others may not have the required time nor the expertise. Either way, branding efforts will suffer. Not hiring an experienced brand development agency could be a costly mistake. Entrepreneurs try to cut costs by not hiring a brand development agency without realizing that it will cost them a great deal of money in the long run in the form of reduced sales and reduced profit.

Several small and medium sized companies fail to set aside a decent annual budget for their branding. Branding expenses should be considered as investments and not as expenses per se. The competition level in every industry is so high and if you do not take proportionate efforts to fight this cut-throat competition you are likely to trail behind the competition.

Another common branding mistake is not using the latest branding strategies and latest tools available to us. Though many old branding strategies are still effective, just holding on to them is not sufficient today. You need to break ground and explore into new branding strategies. Unless you learn to be a trend setter in your industry, you are very likely to be left unnoticed. You must not hesitate to get professional branding help to boost your brand name.

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Many new brands are launched regularly in every niche industry. Each brand tries to out do the other by introducing many new features with their products and services. This trend results in fierce competition in every niche. If you want to survive this competition, you will have to make sure that you have very strong brand image. One of the reasons why top brands spend millions in branding is because they know that is the only way to retain their customers. They try to project that they are the only brand that customers can trust and they are the biggest brand in the market by aggressive branding campaigns. Such efforts certainly pay rich dividends, however, if you need further advice then please see http://www.lethalmarketing.co.uk/services/brand-development

Unfortunately not every organization can afford a huge budget for branding. You will have to come up with creative branding strategies that are cost effective at the same time. You get help from professional brand development agency to help you with your branding efforts. When you are hiring a brand development agency, spend time reviewing their history of success in helping companies in brand development. If there are any case studies available of the past brand development assignments it is worth spending time on reviewing such case studies as it will help you assess your brand development agency.

Your brand development agency should be able to provide you with cost effective solutions. They should work within your budget and they should at the same time help you have the desired impact on your customers.

Though attracting new customers is an important aspect of marketing, retain the existing customers is also equally important. Only when you retain existing customers your brand will grow. You will be able to take your organization to the next level of success only when find a way to stop losing your existing customers. On the one hand your products should be of consistently good and on the other hand, you should implement powerful marketing campaigns. It has been found that there is a strong correlation between brand loyalty and brand promotion efforts from the company. Companies that engage in aggressive brand promotion not only attracts new customers but their enhanced visibility levels also retains the existing customers.

You will have to work with experienced brand development agency so that you will get the best value for your money. Why it is important to hire a brand development agency is that they will be able to help you organize your efforts and take a systematic approach towards branding. Many companies spend a lot of money on branding but they fail to get the desired results because they take random efforts. Focused and well executed branding efforts will help you get good results. Timing of your branding efforts is also equally important for your success. Your brand development agency will be able to help you time your branding efforts correctly so that you can achieve your marketing goals and get the best ROI on your investments.



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Every business owner should consider having a powerful website as part of his or her brand promotion strategy. Today you cannot think of running a successful business without having a website. Gone are the days whereby people flipped their phone books to identify a service provider. Whether it is a B2B or B2C products and services the first thing people do to find out about the products and the services they need is to go online. Making an online search is far easier than flipping through the bulky phone books or searching through a business directory. If at all you are serious about your brand name promotion, you must know to make yourself where people are looking for your products and services. As of today world wide web is one sure place that people search for the services they need. [...]

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Lethal Marketing is proud to announce that it has successfully designed and developed several new items of packaging & branding for an internationally renowned pharmaceutical company Crosscare (which is part of the Crosscare Vetpharm Group) who manufacture and distribute worldwide consumer healthcare products. The new branding and packaging designs were successfully launched into Boots and other major UK retail outlets. In deed one product which has been developed by the company has seen a major breakthrough for babies suffering with infant colic disorder. This baby healthcare product is now being sold throughout the World and is currently manufactured and distributed from UK.

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Big brands spend a lot of time and money in coming up with their product design and packaging. The success or failure of a product greatly depends on how professionally it is presented to its consumers.

Many factors have to be taken into consideration before designers can come up with a unique and different packaging design. For people to try your product and its features they need to be attracted towards your product in the first place and this can only be done by designing attractive packaging. The big brand companies spend a huge amount of money on advertising their products via the popular media channels, but without an engaging packaging strategy matched with an eye catching design, the attention of consumers will be lost.

Over the years, many products have come and gone, some of them being a great hit while others failing terribly. Many products fail not because they are bad products or useless products but, they fail because they fall short in grabbing the attention of the consumer, principally because they are contained in poor packaging which does little to self itself of the shelf.

One of the main functions of packaging design is to make sure that your products can reach customers without any damage. Therefore, your products packaging should be very carefully designed to meet this purpose and you must choose the right packaging material depending on the product that you are selling.  Whilst considering which packaging materials to use it is vital that upon disposal you minimise any risks to the environment.

The next important function of product’s packaging is to win the trust of consumers.  Today, there is severe competition in every industry and no product can afford to get to centre stage if it is not a first class product. Often customers perceive the quality of the product from the packaging more especially when the product is new to the market. Therefore, for all your marketing efforts to bear fruit, and with products stacked high on supermarket shelves, you must make sure that you create stunning, designs which clearly define your products unique attributes and sales proposition in order to attract consumers.

With excellent packaging design, you will be able to turn most products into a huge market success. You should also ensure that your product is of the highest quality and that it does exactly what it says it will do.  The marketing company that you choose to design your packaging should have a thorough knowledge of the market sector you intend to sell your products to and they must also be able to adhere to any legislation which is applicable to your market sector; for instance if selling “over the counter” medicines then packaging designs should comply with the Medicines Health Regulatory Authority.  They should also employ a highly creative team that can come up with impressive designs which ensure your products (as opposed to your competitors) fly off the shelf.

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