Nicola Ryall is the Director of Ryall Marketing founded in 1992. With over 30 years of experience in marketing and sales, she has been guiding people through planning and executing their sales strategies.
Nicola’s vast knowledge in the sectors of professional and financial services, hi-tech and telecoms, manufacturing and consultancy has been helping many a small business to grow. Additionally, she is Director at Brolly Marketing and KAI Foundation and conducts workshops and seminars on strategy, integrated marketing, copyrighting, lead generation and digital and social media marketing.
In an iGlobal Radio special recently Nicola Ryall shared her expertise on the intricate approaches of marketing.
Here are some highlights from the discussion:
How do we make digital marketing work for our businesses?
It is an interesting one because digital marketing means different things to different people. Some people immediately just think of social media but the court is much bigger than that. It is anything in the digital space, so it could be an article which is being written in a magazine which is online, it could be a website or a LinkedIn profile or it could indeed be your social media.
So, let’s have a little think about that:
If you are wanting to work in a business environment, then we are looking at owning that digital space where businesses operate. So, that would be LinkedIn, making sure your website is in order and it potentially means some kind of learned articles or if you like thought generating articles.
If you are in a consumer market, well it depends on the age of your consumer. It could be anything from Tik Tok, Snapchat, Instagram right through to Facebook.
Understand where you are supposed to be and make sure you fit in with it really well. Make sure your brand is nice and consistent and you are saying the same message wherever you appear, so people get to recognise it but give them what they want to hear. Don’t sell to them.
I think one of the biggest mistakes in marketing is people always feel that they have to tell you about themselves, about what they are selling but it’s the other way round. It’s what your clients want to hear, what they want to know about what you are going to be satisfying for them if you sell them that particular service. It is all about making the client the important person not your products or your services. Easy mistake, very hard to deal with.
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What are your top marketing tips?
The most important thing is communication. Remember it is a two-way street. Marketing and salespeople are great at doing all the talking but you need to listen. The most important part of a relationship is listening and bear in mind that your prospects and your clients are entering in a relationship, and you must not ignore them.
Listen carefully to what they are saying to you and respond appropriately in a timely and regular manner. Make them king: They are the most important and they must feel good. That old fashioned sense that “the client is always right, the customer is king” still is true today because actually our psyche, our personalities still haven’t changed. It’s still “about me, what’s in it for me”. You have got to answer that question.
And if you can do that satisfactorily, then they are likely to buy from you. That’s really the bottom line.
*Listen to this podcast for the iMoney Show here.
