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Business Advice/Marketing
Why do successful and savvy business owners still ask this question?
The most fundamental reason is they are (quite understandably) consumed with their own business and can't get outside it long enough to understand the benefits. When they do take a peek at the "marketing services" landscape business owners are overwhelmed by the vast number of service propositions at different cost levels. Without fundamental knowledge of the disciplines is it wholly unsurprising that they shy away from a decision.
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Business Advice/Marketing
Businesses reach plateaus and moving beyond them can be a challenge.
You've invested a great deal of time and money creating an excellent business identity and bringing it online and elswehere in an ordered and appealing way. Your web guys and other external resources have done a good job for you.
A new website development or rebrand isn't always going to be the answer you are looking for.
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Business Advice/Technology
Dropbox is an innovative solution that is very helpful to small businesses. The following key features become indispensable once you start using DropBox:
Free and easy to install
Online backup of files
Access to files from any computer that you install dropbox on
Ability to share folders with others Take a look right now and make your life a lot easier Dropbox download link (using this link should get you a bit of extra free storage space)
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Business Advice/Technology
Texting is a fast and efficient way to get your message across to customers and prospective clients. Appointment reminders, event updates, critical information broadcasts, promotional offers are all good reasons to send out texts to customers. Bulksms.co.uk offer a free software suite that offers a very familiar user interface and allows customers to send texts from their desktops or laptops. Texts are charged at very reasonable rates and text delivery can be scheduled in advance. When you add the fact that replies come to an inbox on your desk top its clear how this innovative communication mechanic is a good way to enhance your customer communications.
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Business Advice/Marketing
It's surprising how many businesses think that social media is "Not for them" or "Not relevant to their business". Social media is nothing new it's just a way of communicating. Like any other form of communication you have choices to make: when, to whom, what will you communicate. The social media explosion is simply the transfer of online communication from emails to constantly visible web pages. It's similar to the transfer of call technology from landlines to mobiles. The event hasn't changed but there are new opportunities being created and customers that adopt will be keen to test their new platform by using suppliers who have embraced the technology, be it twitter, facebook, linkedin or another of the popular platforms for social media. You may decide to ignore social media but you might find your customers are already experimenting with it and by the time they are ready to use it for commercial purposes you may be too far behind the game to be in with a shout. James Macdonald - Managing Director (c) Spiritas Website Design @spiritasweb
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Business Advice/HR
Well here's a useful resource that looks like it could be useful to a lot of businesses: A number of the South's large universities are working together to provide a resource for graduate recruitment and internships. Of course this resource should be pretty useful for graduates too, its hard to get started these days! We' ve had some great experiences with graduates and seeing them fly off to bigger and better things is a real motivator. We're going to look at using this service ourselves but if you're a graduate looking to get in and get some experience then we highly recommend contacting companies you are interested in directly and make it clear what you are happy to earn so they know if you are after a job or just work exeprience....if you stand on the fence they are likely to do the same resulting in a lose lose scenario. (c) SpiritasWebsiteDesign.co.uk
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Business Advice/Marketing
....is to get the fundamentals in place as soon as possible. Take a good hard look at your audience and ask yourself what they will want to buy from you and then present your services clearly and in a way that they will find engaging. Most startups go out of business within 2 years because they fail to invest in growing their business and do not understand that it is primarily the growth that pays for the investment not the cash they don't have on day 1.
Build a well optimised marketing led web site.
Bring traffic to the website with effective advertising.
Convert traffic into buyers with relevant engaging content.
Provide excellent service and build a loyal client base (gradually becoming less reliant on advertising).
Maintain client loyalty with suitable promotions and communications.
Innovate and publicise new services as your skills and experience grows.
Join your recognised industry body as soon as you possibly can.
You will need find it easier and be more likely to succeed if you engage a marketing expert to provide a plan of the process and handle the various services you will need. Leaving you free to do the business. Your hardest decision and task will be finding a marketing expert who will provide you with a costed plan, evidence that they have done it before, and an understanding of your industry. They should understand and address your cashflow needs by staging payments. They should have all this available for you for free so you can make you decision and drive your business to growth from day 1. If you don't do this you will lose money in lost sales, your business will grow more slowly, if at all and you will spend countless hours struggling to deal with a range of experts selling you their various wares each individually convinced that its the most important thing you should do, and they may indeed be good at their specific discipline. Only a marketing expert can show you the whole picture with your commercial objectives at the forefront and audience in mind. Spiritas Marketing have been serving business of all sizes since 1996 please feel free to call us on 01293 406000 if you would like to discuss your marketing, website design project or new business startup planning. (C) Spiritas.co.uk 2010
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Business Advice/Marketing
Marketing a business is not free and should never be attempted on a shoestring. There seems to be a worrying trend, particularly in a currently harsh economic climate, for self acclaimed gurus and assorted marketing pundits to constantly tell small businesses just how much they can do for free. It is a grave concern to think that small businesses are being actively discouraged from investing in their businesses to the maximum possible extent. That's right if you want your business to grow you better wake up and smell the coffee about marketing investment. Very few small businesses make anything like the investment they need to do to grow. Of course there are some very valid reasons for this, including:
Lack of cash
Lack of resource
Lack of expertise
Confusion in the marketplace from suppliers that claim to deliver marketing solutions
Fear of losing/wasting money
Lack of time to really understand what needs to be done
When businesses have neither the time nor the expertise to buy a product that is at times intangible, technical and missold by everyone from designers to printers to business consultants the result can be inaction, no growth and continuing the rollercoaster ride of small business existence. The solution to these problems is not to try and do things on a shoestring. That's not say you should throw cash willy nilly at anything that seems like marketing but you must try to explore the market and understand the work that needs to be done before investing a managable amount consistently each month. The start point should be a knowledgeable resource who can give you an outline of a marketing plan and some idea of the costs involved. I would strongly recommend you start with a business that sells itself as a marketing agency. Any marketing agency that won't give you such a plan and a clear idea of costs for free is probably not geared to dealing with small business so may be too expensive. However it is far more logical, cost and time effective to find a business that look after all your marketing needs than potentially end up with five or six suppliers to manage who all have vested interested in seling a single product which is itself outside your area of expertise.
Let the "shoestring marketers" sell their books and blogs to other people while you get on and grow your business with an agency that understands all aspects of the marketing mix and provides a single point of management control for you. Am I biased? Yes. I've run a marketing agency for 15 years and seen countless businesses struggle with this issue. If you run a business and would like to discuss your marketing strategy please do contact us on 01293 40600.
(C) MarketingAction.co.uk 2011
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Business Advice/Marketing
If you run a business you will have asked yourself this question....but maybe you have to ask the right people to get the answer. Businesses are over run with conflicting messages about what they need to do and they all seem to come from specialists (website designers, seo gurus, graphic designers, advertising companies, etc) who have the answer and the product or service you just have to buy to be successful. They are of course champions of their own discipline and can be terribly persuasive about why you need to spend your valuable marketing budgets with them. Of course many of these specialists are indeed very good at what they do and individually they may even offer good value, however, if you're not an expert at orchestrating all these marketing services into a cohesive pattern that delivers a predefined cumulative result you may end up overspending with one and under spending with another. Or worse simply missing a vital link that prevents you every creating that cohesive result that will make your business grow.
Resource for the Marketing plan
Traditionally the only way to be sure that the sales and marketing plan stays cohesive is to employ an experienced marketing manager or a marketing agency. These too could present problems a single person is likely to have strong biases about the work they like doing or simply be too overloaded with the ongoing business tasks to see the big picture.These are also the high end solutions that mean a big ramp up in costs and you have to start incurring these costs before you know if they will deliver the solution. So what is the best solution? How do you grow your business and make more money? The answer is to go and see some marketing agencies and ask them. Showing companies how to make money in various ways is what agencies do for a living. All marketing agencies should be able to give you a clear list of activities that could be undertaken in order to grow your business. Examples of work, financial scenarios and other supporting materials should be ready to hand to illustrate clearly how to create a virtuous circle of activity that can increase your flow of customers.
Free Marketing advice. Why wouldn't you make time?
There shouldn't be any charge for this, if a business can't give up an hour of its time to show you what it can do for you then its not very serious about winning your business. At Spiritas.co.uk we give small to medium businesses a presentation on the essential components of their marketing plan if they are looking to find a long term partner with a vested interest in seeing them make money and growing then we can move into a commercial relationship if they want to take a few ideas and go their own way that's fine too. The bottom line is its free to find out what you need to do to make more money and grow your business. What still surpises us after 14 years operating a marketing agency is how reticent businesses are to make time to ask the right people the right questions. Our door is always open why not call us on 01293 406000 and make some time to get some free business marketing advice?
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Business Advice/Sales
Are You Following A Sales Process?
Are you following a sales process? If not, you are not only wasting your time, but you are also losing sales because of it. You think you are in control but in reality you are out of control. Have you ever been rejected? If your answer is yes, you have just proven that you are not in control of the sales process; however, the buyer is in control. Isn't it your job and responsibility as a sales professional to qualify the prospects and to reject them if they are not qualified?
Who is really qualifying? Who is really in control? The buyer!
Do you want to know why and how the buyer is in control? The answer is simple; buyers follow a buyers' sales process, just like you do when meeting with a sales person. Sales people assume they are in control by answering all the questions, but in reality it is the buyer who is in control. They actually carry out the rejection, not you. Allow me to share the buyer's sales process with you. As a buyer, let's pretend you know you want to buy a white shirt and your budget is £40.00. You walk into a retail outlet and the salesperson approaches you and says "Hello, can I help you?" How do you usually respond? The common answer is "No thank you, I'm just looking". The standard Step 1 in the buyer's sales process is to mislead the salesperson. You essentially lie to them. Why do you do that? Is it because they have not earned your trust yet, or because you know they will lie to you and you are just trying to stay one step ahead of them. Step 2 in the buyer's sales process. You find what you are looking for and call over the sales person and begin to ask relative questions. The sales person falls into your trap and you receive free consulting because they are willing to share all they know. What do you say once you have gained all the necessary information? Step 3 in the buyer's sales process. "Leave it with me to think it over and I will get back to you?" Standard buyer's line in the sales process is to lie to the sales person again. Most sales people fall into this trap every time. As a sales person, has this happened to you? Step 4 in the buyer's sales process comes into play when the salesperson makes a follow up call and leaves a voice mail or sends an e-mail. After all, the prospect did say he would think it over and get back to them. Buyers never get back to a sales person, nor do they answer their calls or reply to voice or e-mail. Buyers simply hide. Your job as a professional sales person is not to get trapped by the buyer's sales process, but to have a sales process which puts you in control. You want a sales process which will allow you to quickly build rapport and to gain necessary trust. You must set parameters in order to eliminate surprises and to establish a clear and concise process which will allow you to move forward. At the same time, you must qualify the prospect with respect to buying motivators, financial ability and decision making. When this process is complete and everything is summarized, you will be in a position to determine if the prospect is qualified or not to allow for your time, products or services. Then and only then, you can decide to proceed with a prescription or simply walk away from the sale. ------------------------ Bob Urichuck is an International Speaker, Trainer and Best-Selling Author. Learn personally from Bob in the areas of Sales, Motivation, Leadership and Team Skills. Bob presents a series of great ideas and strategies with combination of facts, humor, and practical concept in a high-energy and self-discovery process that you can apply right away to achieve results. Subscribe to Bob's Free Newsletter, worth $297, visit http://www.BobU.com Now! Source: http://www.submityourarticle.com Permalink: http://www.submityourarticle.com/a.php?a=55651
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Business Advice/Sales
12 Best Questions To Ask Customers -
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Business Advice/Sales
6 Top Tips for increasing online sales conversions
Submitted by: Allies Computing
Monday, 22 June 2009
For businesses that have identified their potential customers, targeted their marketing, have a brilliantly designed website and have managed to get potential customers onto their website, the next crucial part of the process is to make sure the customers then buy the product or service! Problems with website checkout processes constitute the principal loss of income for the majority of e-commerce sites, with lengthy processes and pressures on customer’s time being the main issues. Research from Web Conversion specialists Lost Ferret has found that on many occasions checkout abandonment rates have exceeded 80%, meaning only 2 out of 10 people who visit the checkout will actually buy anything. Allies Computing Ltd, creators of the PostCoder® range of addressing software ideal for adding address lookup to web forms, offer some simple tips that you can employ on your website to ensure that potential customers don’t abandon you at the checkout:
1. Remove registration from the checkout process – Research from Econsultancy indicates that registration pages at the beginning of the checkout process contribute to checkout abandonment as this can be time-consuming, off-putting and often tedious for those who have forgotten their username or password.
2. Don’t ask customers to duplicate information – if a customer has keyed in their name and email address, make sure this data is populated automatically as the default value if the information is needed in another part of the order process, for example for billing and delivery.
3. Use additional services to make it easier for the customer, such as automated address lookup. This can reduce keystrokes and save time by up to 80%.
4. Don’t collect data you don’t need – have a valid business reason to collect the data
5. Make sure the layout is simple and clear, with any steps to purchasing labelled and progress clearly visible. If you have more than five steps, you probably have too many.
6. List all the relevant information such as delivery costs and times, on the main part of the website to ensure there is no interruption to the buying process and no nasty surprises when payment is finally required. Hidden charges are another reason customers may abandon the checkout.
Is your website already in good order? A quick review and testing will identify any holes in your processes to make certain you are not loosing out on valuable sales. A leading independent DIY home improvement company, Godfrey DIY, has seen significant improvements to their website conversions as a result of using an online address validation tool. Barry Godfrey, Managing Director of Godfrey DIY says "Now we have address lookup functionality added to our site I am very confident that we have minimised the possibility of customer drop-off at the checkout. I regard it as a very effective tool in protecting us against failed deliveries due to addressing errors." By taking simple steps to improve the usability of your website’s order pages, the impact on sales could be quite significant so it’s definitely worth some consideration when next reviewing your website. See http://www.postcoder.com/tt for more information.
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Business Advice/Sales
Sponsorship Opportunity
Are you in the business of Sales? Contact us today if you would like to sponsor this business advice section
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Business Advice/Marketing
These Marketing mistakes are all too easy to make, so watch out for them:
Run without a plan - having no marketing plan means you could be wasting your resources on activities that simply don't deliver. You could be sending the wrong message to the wrong audience. You could be falling for sales pitches and buying adhoc activities like advertsing that might be completely wasteful.
Spending too much on tactical - don't throw the kitchen sink at your tactical execution, its easy to get carried away with that latest brochure or website but it might not be the thing that brings you most business. Ask hard questions about what a component of your plan is going to deliver and then budget accordingly.
Being inconsistent - even a fabulous bit of communication is wasted if the recipient then has a year to forget you exist. Better to do simple things regularly than fail to deliver consistently.
Dabbling - usually hand in hand with having no clear plan this is when a company does a "bit of this" and a "bit of that" achieving not very much at the end of it all. This can also generate a lot of frustration and confusion with other stakeholders who start to see Marketing as trivial or unnecessary because results are limited and activities cause constant upheaval.
Ignoring existing customers - repeat business forms the backbone of your annual sales in most businesses so repeat business needs to take a large share of your marketing budget, its not just about developing new business.
Doing it all in house - when there is no full time marketing resource this solution usually results in lots of random ideas and initiatives being sidelined while the person who was going to do it carries on with their main job. It's a better idea to get external support for the planning and strategic work and then pick and choose which tactics can be delivered internally.
Buying advertising from salepeople - chances are you are throwing your money away. Sales people are specifically trained to counter your arguments and make their media sound like the Holy Grail for your business. They are also specifically trained in how to wriggle out of any responsibility when it doesn't work, although you won't get your money back. If you have a plan you can add any new ideas, products or the like at an evaluation point, if it's not in the tactical plan you shouldn't do it.
Overcomplicating - keep communication simple and it's usually more effective as more people can understand it quickly.
Confusing Marketing with Sales - a ton of Marketing isn't going to replace a sales strategy, it should support it, tell you what to say and what to sell but it won't replace it.
To be continued....
If you think you might be making some Marketing mistakes and would like an outside opinion please contact Spiritas Marketing Agency.
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Business Advice/Marketing
Planning
Your marketing success will generally be relative to your planning effort. A clear plan that gets delivered offers some key benefits to a business.
Budgetary Control
Clarity of Purpose (Strategy)
Consistent Delivery (Tactics)
Evaluation and Measurement
Budgets
There are many different views on how to set your marketing budget we tend towards the view that it should be the amount of money you need to spend to achieve the business objectives. If you can't afford to spend the required amount you may either have to adjust your objects or adjust your investment.
Audience
You must define who you are talking to. Not only does it make a huge difference to what you tell them but it also makes a huge difference to the channels you use to reach them.
Message
Your product or service must be communicated to your audience and you need to work out what you should be telling them. Cheapest? Fastest? Coolest? If you get this right you have a much better chance of turning your audience into buyers.
Channels
How will you reach your audience to give them your message? Choosing the most effective communication channel has a massive impact not only on your chances of success but also the cost of your campaign.
Tactics
Once you have these factors sorted you can start building a tactical plan. One of the major challenges for businesses is generating a good spread of activities across different disciplines (promotions, pr, direct mail, advertising, events) on a limited budget. This challenge is best solved through careful planning and realistically there are often compromises that need to be made.
Execution
Only once all these things are in place should you be worrying about how they look or how to deliver them. Company cupboards are full of gorgeous brochures that never saw the light of day because nobody considered how they were to be distributed.
Evaluation
This should happen quarterly, ideally. The process should be simply a case of running through your plan and considering what's been achieved against the standard criteria of time and cost and results. Adjustments can and should be made according to these results.
Getting External Support
A marketing agency can assist your business with input on all the areas above and implement your tactical plan as well. A marketing agency has access to all the creative services you might require, Designers, Printers, Photographers, Stand Builders, etc
Spiritas Marketing Agency offer a free review and Outline Marketing plan service.
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