Hands up who REALLY evaluates their campaigns?

Hmmm I can see some half-hearted hands being raised at the back there! Are you the ones who have "evaluation" on your to do list but never seem to quite get around to doing it? Don't worry we're not here to tell you off - just to give you a gentle nudge in the right direction.

When you are busy putting a campaign together, working on strategies and developing content and nose to the grindstone getting information out there, it is all to easy to forget to evaluate just how well (or not) your campaign is being received.

For a PR campaign, tracking press coverage is the obvious evaluation tool. There are many ways to track coverage, the most fool proof is to pay a cuttings agency to do the reading for you. A daily report of coverage in the press (trade and consumer) lands in your inbox. Easy! These services will also cover broadcast media if you need them to. Then there are Google alerts which, if you use the right keywords, will pick up any coverage online. Of course effective PR isn't just about the number of mentions or the column inches - it is about the messages, the response from the public and what you do with it. Do you circulate your press coverage to your team? I bet you'll see lots of smiles and "oh wow we're in the newspaper" if you do! Great for morale.

If it's a new website (or an old one for that matter) there is the genius Google Analytics. Find out who is visiting your site and when. Where are they coming from? Searches, Facebook, Twitter....which pages they stay on and which makes them switch off in a nano-second. Used wisely this FREE tool can give you a real insight into how your website is performing and how it can be improved.

For social media campaigns you can track your "likes" and "followers" and see how the numbers grow. Check locations here - if you are a UK based company but all of your followers are from overseas you may want to re-think your strategy for building your network. How much interaction are you getting? It's all very well having a great big bunch of followers but if they're not commenting on your posts, retweeting you or interacting in anyway they're not hugely valuable to your business.

So why not make it your mid-year resolution to take the time to evaluate the marketing work you are doing. We promise it will be a real eye opener and you might even be able to pat yourself on the back for a job well done!

Nothing quite like a good old chin-wag!

For those of you who have met Lisa and I personally you'll know we LOVE to talk! (As it's Claire writing this I can say Lisa REALLY LOVES to talk!!) We think that meeting or talking on the phone with our clients and contacts and chatting through their objectives, needs and marketing dreams is so much more productive than relying on email.

Of course email has its place and most of us would be lost without it but I have once again today been blown away by the power of picking up the phone!

I am "selling" a story into the regional press for a client - it's a great story, a huge amount of money raised for charity, some great pictures but it's never easy getting coverage in the press.

The lazy way to send out a release is to just email it to the generic newsdesk@ email address of the publication, wait and see if there's any coverage.

But here at One to Three we don't do lazy.

We pick up the phone, we chat to the journalist, we remind them they ran a piece on the build up to the event last year, we are charming, helpful and we send well written press releases and clear well captioned images.

The result is not only coverage for our clients but relationships being built with journalists.

So why not try peeking out from behind your email for a change and you might just see a whole new world!!!!

Bite size chunks.....

.....is how we recommend our clients approach their marketing. We work with a huge variety of industries, from funeral directors to vets, stylists to HR consultants and the size of companies is just as varied too. Our biggest client is a global pharmaceutical company our smallest are sole traders working from their home office. The industry or size of a company makes little difference to our initial advice however - bite size chunks is the way to go.

Marketing is one big puzzle made up of many small pieces - websites and SEO, social media, PR, brochures, events, your brand........no business could (or should) tackle all of these at once.

For starters a strategy should be set out that includes clear objectives, messages and targets. Who in your team will be responsible for delivering results and do you have a budget in place to outsource some of the more specialist areas?

One of our most popular services is social media marketing - our two hour workshop provides all of the basics of what to say, how to say it, how to build a social media strategy. This is a classic example of one of our "bite size chunks". Our clients go away understanding more than they did when they first sat down with us but we are careful never to overwhelm.  You can find out more in our Social media case study

Our PR offering is the same - one of our bigger clients has two very separate audiences to connect with. Professional and consumer. We set out clear objectives for both, decide on a quarterly basis where the focus needs to be and map out a strategy that fits both in terms of being on message but also within budget and capabilities of the team.

So, think "canapes" rather than "all you can eat buffet" and you might even have room for dessert!

STOCK UP ON STAMPS……..or consider other methods of communication!

A first class stamp will cost 60p as of the 30 April 2012 and its second-class pal will rise to 50p!

If like one of our clients, you have up to now preferred to communicate with your clients by post (direct mail is still big business in some sectors) perhaps now is the time to consider new ways of spreading your message.

E-newsletters are becoming more and more popular as even the most basic web based email systems have become more sophisticated and design-led content can be viewed easily.

They can be set up quickly, easily and cost-effectively. Systems such as Mail Chimp even allow you to track who is opening your newsletter, who is linking back to your website – who doesn’t like statistics!!

Social media – Facebook for business, Twitter and LinkedIn are all fantastic platforms to tell potential clients all about you and what you can do for them. We have worked with a number of businesses lately who had been a bit scared of dipping their toe into the sea of social media but once its benefits were explained and tools like Hootsuite introduced, which is a great time saving device, there’s been no stopping them!

Getting your website spot on is also important – if you are running an event, for example, you could have all of the information neatly stored on your website – simply email your targets and ask them to take a look online. Anyone who isn’t able to do this can still be offered the chance to receive a copy of the information in the post but you are bound to save costs by giving email a try.

The team at One to Three won’t abandon good old snail mail altogether – we still get excited receiving a nice card in the post! - but we will continue to embrace all of the other ways of communicating that have been so successful for our business and for so many of our clients. And we may well stock up on our 1^st and 2^nd class friends (as long as the price isn’t printed on the stamp they will still be valid!)

What do your clients mean to you?

As we “march” into Spring we wanted to take some time to recognise the fantastic people who make what we do a pleasure – our clients!

We are lucky enough to work with some fantastic people and it means that we really enjoy coming to work every day and genuinely want to do a fantastic job for them. In our first two years we have worked with over 30 clients and this figure is growing on a weekly basis - in March alone we have worked on various SEO, social media and PR projects for new clients including a country pub, a hairdresser, a jewellery maker and a healthcare company in Australia!

We work for a wide variety of companies in industries as different as funerals and interior design, pharmaceuticals and recruitment. One of our clients has almost 1,000 employees others are sole traders.

What they all have in common is a desire to be forward thinking when it comes to their marketing and PR strategies – they are not frightened to take the leap into social media or to put themselves “out there” by using PR. They value us as part of their team and we take the time to really understand their business and their specific objectives.

One of our longest standing clients, Companion Care Vets (www.ccvets.co.uk) was listed as one of The Sunday Times Top 100 Companies To Work For on Sunday 4^th March. We are so proud to work with this fantastic company who have always treated us not as consultants or freelancers but truly part of the team.

Our clients mean the world to us – they are the life blood of our business, the reason we love what we do and the day that we stop getting excited about getting a client in the press or getting them on the first page of Google is the day we will stop what we’re doing….but we don’t think that’s going to happen, do you?!

It's our birthday!

It's amazing to think that we have been in business for two years when we can so clearly remember deciding on our company name and branding, getting our website ready and hitting the "send" button on our launch email!

Twenty-four months later we honestly haven't looked back - we have worked with over 30 fantastic clients, many of whom have retained our PR and marketing services on an ongoing basis! From vets to funeral directors to interior designers and photographers the variety of our client base is fantastic.

One day Lisa will be working with a company on their social media strategy, the next giving them the tools to get on the front page of Google. Claire will be working with a national newspaper or trade magazine on a piece of editorial or writing copy for a clients blog.

There is never a dull moment and we truly love what we do!

We have learnt so much - about running a business, the benefits of networking, new marketing techniques and much much more.

Most of all we have learnt that with a lot of hard work, determination and creativity we really can achieve anything! Building our business up to the stage we are at now, from a standing start, has been so fulfilling.

We are fortunate enough to be old and very close friends - we often refer to ourselves as "two peas in a pod" and find that our business brains are as in sync as our personal ones! Twenty years of friendship runs very deep and we both hope that in another 18 years we will be blogging about twenty years of business and forty years of friendship!!

 The response to our birthday video - which you can view at http://www.youtube.com/user/OnetoThreeMarketing?feature=mhee has been overwhelming and the support of our families, friends, clients, suppliers and colleagues does not go unnoticed.

We would like to thank each and every one of you for the support you have given to us.

Claire & Lisa

Case studies...case studies...case studies

One to Three is a marketing solutions agency. But what does this really mean? The list of services that a marketing agency can provide is endless and we have found that the best way to demonstrate exactly what we can do is by keeping a fresh bank of case studies. 

Looking at specific clients we are working with, detailing their objectives, our strategy and tactics and results we are able to show prospects (and existing clients who may only use one element of our expertise) exactly what can be achieved.

A case study should be a real-life example with strong facts and figures - we have recently updated our own gallery - take a look at http://www.onetothree.co.uk/casestudy.htm  to see examples of our work in PR, Social Media, SEO and Google.

So, if you're great at what you do - shout it from the rooftops! We can help you to formulate a winning case study formula - just get in touch if you think we can help!

Claire & Lisa