Up-to-date details

Everything seems to change faster these days, although in reality fashion has always been fickle. Nevertheless, when you publish business information with technical details, prices, dates or statistics, these seem to need updating almost as soon as you look away.

At least with web sites you can often alter details fast. Details to review regularly could include:

  • range of products – have some been withdrawn or are new ones available? Have specifications changed?
  • prices – have these gone up or down and what about the rate of VAT applicable?
  • dates – do adverts for events now passed need deleting or archiving?
  • special offers – are these still applicable or should details be removed?
  • copyright notices, terms and conditions – are these up to date?
  • employee names and titles – are these current? Has anyone left or joined who needs to be deleted/added?

While it is usually easy to amend web sites, printed material can cause more of a problem. If you produce a large annual brochure, it could be expensive to reprint and distribute an amended version just two months after launching the original. Such publications need careful planning to consider the options of a separate, smaller price list that can be reprinted at minimal cost without reproducing the whole brochure.

What is most important is to have up-to-date information available at all times and to show that you review and amend your material regularly. Changes to information also present opportunities to communicate with potential and existing customers to tell them about new products, events or special offers. By letting people know you have updated your web site you can attract more visitors to it and generate more sales.

After our last blog, are you focusing on what you can actually do now to develop your communications?

z2zine tomorrow: Choosing communications providers

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Avoid the credit crunch!

There’s quite a bit of doom and gloom in the press and media about the credit crunch, house price falls, consumer confidence and all manner of economic disaster.

As a business, what do you do? Bury your head in the sand and hope it doesn’t happen? Or panic?

Well, there is another way. Make sure your business is fit to compete in a toughening marketplace.

One of the ways to do this is to increase your marketing efforts when others are cutting them. How? Assess all your marketing material: brochures, web sites, sales letters and all customer communications to make sure that every one is up-to-date and promotes your current products and services.

Will it increase your costs at a time when you want to reduce them? A freelance copywriter, proofreader or other specialist should be able to help you revitalise your material at a reasonable cost. And if they help you to increase sales, it won’t be a cost at all.

On the other hand, there are many things you can do yourself and we offer a range of useful free prompts and checklists to guide you through these.

So don’t panic – strengthen your marketing armoury and win more business.

Robert Zarywacz

email: hello@z2z.com
Telephone: 0333 0444 354