Aktileda Marketing Foundation


	...size matters! How big is yours?
	The marketing your business needs depends on 2 things, what it is and how big it is. These 2 things give you 2 sliding scales. The "What it is" scale goes from mundane to exciting. In other words, from accountant to film star. The more dynamic and exciting your business, the more dynamic your marketing must be. The "How big" scale, obviously goes from small to huge. The bigger you are, the more you need. Linked to these are 2 other sliding scales "Content" and "Cost". The "Content" scale goes from a hand full of Instagram posts every day, all the way up to co-ordinated product based international TV and glossy mag' adverts. The "Cost" scale escalates along a similar curve to the content, obviously. We'll get to big company marketing later, but we'll start with the small business that has grown to the point where the owner suddenly realises he needs someone to do his marketing for him - an ad' agency like us. Let's start by destroying 2 SMALL BUSINESS myths right here. Myth # 1: Quote: "Snaps from my cellphone is all the marketing we need for this business" Myth # 2: Quote: "Professional marketing is way too expensive for us" Wrong! on both counts... 1st myth: Before you go any further, make up your mind. Are you running a business or talking to your friends? Sharing snapshots on your Facebook page isn't marketing. The only people who will see your snaps are a small number of your contacts. So in-fact, all you're doing is talking to a few of your friends. Marketing, real professional marketing, is the foundation on which your retail sales are built. There's a lot more to it than dropping a few snaps onto FB. Just take a look at the Activation page. Your marketing must reach people, lot's of people, with the right message. There's only one way to do a job...right! 2nd myth: The cost of marketing should be based on the absolute MAXIMUM your business can afford. With Aktileda, the first thing YOU do is set a monthly budget - BEFORE - we sit down to organise your contract. And remember, who ever you choose as your marketer, your contract should always INCLUDE an amount of photography per month. Your contract should always INCLUDE a minimum number of tasks per month (e.g. 12 social media posts and a newsletter per month) - AND - you should always get it in writing! But before you think about setting a budget or sitting down with us to organise a contract, let's answer the most important FAQ, "What do you get for your money?" The question is quite understandable because you probably don't know what goes on inside a marketing company. If you jump over to the Creative page, you'll see that the answer is more complicated than you think. Or you can take a look at the video we made called Building Creative. This video follows the creative route behind just one social media post. If you've been doing your own marketing up to this point, we guarantee you never did Creative Scaling on any of your posts! Take a look and you'll have a much better idea of what you haven't been doing up to now, what a marketing company does, why you need a marketing company and what you would get for your money. Before we take look at larger businesses, down below you'll see a selection of Creatives from actual campaigns. You'll see that each image includes elements beyond the initial background photo. This is graphic design. To learn more about how we bring a simple photo to life, take a browse through our Graphics page.

	...and now for your larger businesses
	As your business grows, your marketing becomes less and less an endless stream of basic social media posts, and becomes more and more product and campaign driven. The rules of big company marketing are very simple. The first and most important is very obvious: The bigger your company, the more retail revenue your products must earn to support your company, and hence the more effective your marketing must be. Rule 2 isn't so obvious: The scale of your marketing (and hence the cost of the content) must match the scale of the planned revenue. Failing to understand how rule 2 works is a common mistake. The key words are "Planned Revenue". Unless you've re-discovered the Holy Grail, the retail revenue from your product is going to grow from zero to something - slowly! Now here's the thing. If you've got to the point where you need marketing, then your product manufacturing must already be set up and running. So you should know exactly how many units you can manufature during the 1st year, and you should know exactly what the retail price per unit must be to support this level of manufacture - don't you? So, the planned gross retail revenue from your product in it's 1st year is simple mental arithmatic. This figure is important, because this is probably what you should be spending on your marketing for that 1st year! That figure determines the scale and type of marketing you'll need to achieve your target. From here on, the services we can provide for you depend entirely on that figure. Here's a few ideas...