Marketing Strategy for Business Growth

Marketing plays a significant role in business development and growth. Marketing is a vital player in constructing and delivering the proper message for your prospects and customers. It is very important to understand that one of the main roles that marketing has is to generate the interest in potential customers and to bring them in to the business. There is a major difference in marketing for B2B and marketing for B2C. While creating a marketing campaign for business-to-business organization can create an interest most often you still need sales people to actually close the deal. The primer reason is that usually you have higher sums to work with and to pay for the service or product. Let’s take a telecommunications dealer as an example; they sell phone systems for businesses. A phone system is not cheap, and there is a process of implementation and maintenance attached to it. Therefore a sales person has to go over all of those details in order to sale. Now in comparison let’s take a headphones by Sony, you as a marketer create several different messages including numerous channels such as: TV ads, radio spots, billboards and internet marketing to generate general interest. Next, customer usually goes online to read review or research features of the headphone piece then travels to the store to play with them and finally finishes up with purchase (if he liked them).

The process is different, however the main idea stays the same as the goal is to create an interest and to influence one’s buying decision. Marketing uses multiple channels to reach the most appropriate target audience. It is always the best to go for a targeted audience approach then to blast out your message to the general audience. The more targeted it is the more results it will bring to you as you’ll be speaking with the audience of interest. To establish the most appropriate target audience marketing professional needs to use marketing research. Marketing research helps to create a plan supported with the actual data of the research to establish areas where the product or service can be advertised for the most beneficial outcome.

It doesn’t matter how big or small the company is, because marketing is one practice that is needed all the time. It helps to develop and grow the business at any level. Marketing is very broad and rich in its practice, there are many creative solutions to any problem that marketing needs to solve. The most amazing thing is that marketing is endless in its creation and creativity. Marketers can be as creative as they want to be, there is no limit!

How to out power the competition

Every business has competition. Even if you are in the niche market, there can be only a small amount of time until others jump into your market. This is a usual strategy to wait until someone succeeds in the niche market. Being in the competitive environment brings many positive and negative aspects. From the positive side we have several factors that actually help us succeed and develop better business by perfecting products or services. From the negative side we have factors that are not allowing us to gain the higher market share because our competition does things to become better as well. Here are several positive and negative factors about being in competitive environment:

Positive:

·         Better product or service development
·         Enhanced customer service
·         Competitive advantage
·         Marketing strategy
·         Employee engagement

Negative:

·         Tougher to compete
·         Competition does the same
·         Competition advances (more resources)
·         Many players

Competition is one thing that makes it more challenging to any business to survive on the market. Unfortunately, every market has at least several players who are taking out the majority of clients. New businesses have to compete with minimal resources in order to have a chance to become a bigger firm at one point. Company’s growth fully depends on the owner’s ability to strategically rationalize goals and plan out good tactics to achieve them. A good leader must understand the business he is in and needs to understand the competition. It is very important to do a competitive market research in order to establish competitor’s advantages and weaknesses. It is also important to do a competitive analysis on your own business to understand what might be the potential treats and opportunities. SWOT analysis might be very helpful in this situation as it defines: strength, weaknesses, opportunities and treats.

SWOT analysis can be used at any growth stage of the business to rationalize what can be done to strengthen the business. It is important to use competitive research in order to know who you competing against, without knowing you are shooting in the dark.

Identifying new leads and opportunities

Every business is determined to live upon finding new leads and opportunities and converting them into customers. Without customers and sales there is not business. Business can only be successful if all sales cycles are met and the customer is willing to buy service or product. Depending on the business you might have different challenges with one remaining constant throughout all organizations striving to get more sales through acquiring new lead and generating new customers. Generating new customers is somewhat challenging especially at the beginning stage of business. When you are in the early stages of business it is hard for you to get a constant customer flow and big numbers of sales, but don’t worry it’s almost the same for everybody. At the early stages when you don’t know many tricks and pitfalls you are destined to make business mistakes. It is better to do them now with lower amount and lower risks then when you have big sums and big deals.

Now, let’s come closer to identifying how to get new leads and where to find new opportunities.

First of all, let’s not forget about the oldest way of unintentional marketing that is transferred by your customers – word-of-mouth. It is the oldest and probably one of the most influential forms of “marketing” that the world knows. Each customer’s reference is a powerful tool and has a very high chance of converting into a sale. People trust each other and share information. Therefore, if your product is good and reliable be ready for some customer references. However, to be successful in word-of-mouth you have to be sure that you have a good solid product or service; otherwise people will be sharing their negative experience with their friends!

Second, there are many and many business/professional directories where you can find business names including contact information such as phone and emails, or at least you can get the name of the person or persons you want to reach. Having a name of the person your contact is critical. You can always find out extra information such as email or phone number from contacting the firm directly and talking to the reception and telling them that you’d like to send something to Mr. or Ms. so and so but don’t have their email. One of good business directories is Jigsaw. Certain information is free such as: name, position and title; however the information that you need the most such as email and telephone number is paid.

Third, traditional forms of marketing. For a very long time marketing played a very important role in any business, its primer role is to create awareness, attract customers and communicate with them through the means of marketing messages. If this is applicable to your business you should be trying traditional newspaper and magazine advertising, billboards, direct mail, radio ads (if the budget allows you) and other forms of traditional marketing.

Fourth, online forms of marketing. With the internet expansions there are many different forms of marketing that you can engage yourself into, they range from email marketing, banner advertising, paid targeted websites ads, Pay-per-click by Google and Bing, SEO (search engine optimization), affiliate programs with other websites and other types that would suite your business.

All those sources should work cohesively to create a good funnel and a fresh flow of leads and opportunities for your prospect to customer conversion.

5 Tips for Powerful Online Business and Online Selling

Business Blog is keen to providing you with the best reading and learning experience. We do our best to provide you with the most useful and filtered information for you to spend less time on  going through the material and more time on actually extracting all the needed information. We do understand that in the busy business life you don’t get much time to spend on information that does not bring any benefit. Therefore, every week we update of 5 Tips section to help you learn and develop your skills.

This week we’ve decided to spend some time on sharing some tips on online business and sales. Let’s start with 5 Tips for Powerful Online Business and Online Selling:

1. Introduce your business to the prospect or buyer. In order for someone to buy from you or do business with you they need some history. Provide them with several important tips about your achievements in the industry, years in business, products, your overall mission and vision. Many businesses suffer from not realizing that people need to know you before doing business with you. If the prospect does not know how long you’ve been selling online or doesn’t see obvious signs that you can be trusted most likely he won’t convert into a buyer.

2. Use social media! Social media becoming more important in the customer service and customer interaction than any other source; customers can contact you and have conversations with you at the time and location convenient for them. It is a very important channel of picking up new customers as well. A well deployed social media channel is very likely to bring you new customers and keep connected with old. The more friends and likes you have the more you can appear on the pages of your customers which in its turn will bring you more exposure. One thing to keep in mind is that all social channels have to be updated on a regular bases, you might not have time to update it every day but it has to show a sign that someone is taking care of the account and it’s posts not dated one month old.

3. Check on competition. It is your task to keep up with the competition and to scan through what they do. The suggestion is very simple learn of what they do and do it better! All developments can be enhanced and developed better than what is available now on the market.

4. Update your technology. Make sure that whatever you use is up to date and in a good condition. For example if you use software for your e-commerce make sure you bought all the necessary upgrades and licences, same goes with computers, servers and any other important tools for your business.

5. Deliver more! Your customers are important to you, therefore deliver more then you actually can. It is your responsibility to make ever customer happy. Of course there are situations where it is not possible but still try to do your best not to do just a minimum job, do more and you’ll see the benefits.

We hope our tips on online business and online selling (e-commerce) helped you to increase your knowledge. If you have any questions or suggestions, please contact us or leave a comment.

Thank you!

Creating Business Development Strategy (Part 2)

Please read Creating Business Development Strategy (Part 1)

Up-Sale or transform old customers to New Opportunities:

The cost of finding a new customer is always higher than the cost of transitioning individual to the returning customer or retaining the customer. It cost several times more to target, develop a message and communicate that message to the potential target. Therefore, after developing a onetime relationship with the customer it is critical to continue your communique and to retain the customer for the future business. You have to grow your funnel by continuously growing the number of prospects and the number of existing customers. If the customer bought your major product you can up sale anything that will logically suite customer’s needs. For example you’ve sold a phone system to a customer you can also sell peripherals because they suite the purpose of communication.

Uncovering and Creating New Opportunities:

There are numerous ways to target and create a potential interest from the customer to you; you can use marketing to target your audience. Here are several marketing methods that can be implied to find new prospects:

·         Internet Marketing
·         Email Marketing
·         Direct Mailing
·         Telemarketing
·         Lead Purchase
·         Researching existing Tier 2 and Tier 3 customers for potential conversion
·         Exhibitions, seminars, user groups
·         Referrals
·         Other forms of marketing

Be cautious as not all of the above might suite you or might be effective for your industry, but they will lead you into the ideas of how you can attract and what methods to use when trying to find new prospects. It is recommended to have marketing campaigns at least once in 3 month. Marketing should be a reoccurring and constant practice that you should be using for your business to grow. You have to experiment with various strategies and techniques to find the best marketing bundle that will work best for you. It is important to mention that there is no ultimate one practice that will be brining you all the opportunities but at least several different practices that should make you successful.

Business Development Plan Example and Ideas:

It is your best bet to develop a Business Development Plan and review it every 2-3 month to identify what stage you are at and to see what needs to be changed in order for you to succeed more and what is successful right now.

You need a copy of all existing accounts to go over and to sort out what is logical to target. If you are just starting out, you might as well use all leads that you have or you’ll need to find all the leads to target.

Target all possible sources: business directories, online directories, websites, verticals, etc. At the development and growth stage you must be adding a certain percentage of leads rapidly. Every week you must increase your funnel and work on the current leads. Growing you funnel doesn’t mean anything until you close the deal. Therefore, develop skills for closing deals.

After developing a certain amount of leads you must develop marketing strategy and message. Contact your prospects through the means of marketing.

You should be getting opinions of others, ask people who might know of what you are doing and know business side.

You can use a “SMARTER” mnemonic to set objectives and measure you success or failure (read more at Wikipedia):

·         S.pecific
·         M.easurable
·         A.chievable
·         R.elevant
·         T.imed
·         E.xciting
·         R.ecorded

Successful Business Development Strategy comes from developing your thoughts and constantly looking and measuring the results. It is critical to work hard on all the errors and things that don’t bring any positive feedback. Your strategy has to be supported with your action, which is the only way to track your results.

Summary:

It is important to set goals and to follow the plan; no goal means - no target to reach. You have to have a specific target to make sure you are where you want to be.

Product Export (5 Tips)

Every week Business Blog provides its readers with the 5 tips of the week. This week we’ve decided to provide you with several tips about the exporting; they should help you to decide whether exporting your products is something your business requires.

Here we go, 5 tips on Product Export:

1. Are you established in your own area? Before getting into exporting you have to think strategically and logically. The reasons why many export are: it is very competitive in their own land, they’ve capture the majority of their own land, they have an ability to produce in big quantities, they have an ability to produce at much cheaper price and many other reasons. All the named reasons are good for anyone who is already established in their own area. Therefore before thinking about the export think if you have any of those factors and can meet large enough quantities to export. However, if you have a good connection at the place where you want to export, research first if your product is needed.

 2. Exporting is a very risk taking practice. You have to realize that fact and research if you want to get into exporting. In addition, exporting might dramatically influence on the core ideas and beliefs that you had about your business and the ways you though you want to develop you organization. In addition exporting takes lots of time to establish all needed relationships and find the right people.

 3. Market research. All successful exporters have done a successful and full exporting research on the target market where they’ve decided to export. You can’t just assume that someone from another county would love your product just because it came from outside of the county. You have to really get into the heads of the consumer from the targeted export place. You have to realize that their needs, wishes and wants will be different and sometimes drastically different from what you are used to, therefore your product has to accommodate their needs, not yours and not the market’s that you are coming from.

 4. Culture and cultural differences. As stated above research should help you outline and predict the cultural differences and the tastes of the potential consumers. Although it is the best way to spend some time living in the actual culture to grasp all the needed habits, most of the time small-medium businesses don’t have enough resources to conduct such a full research. However, with the help of internet and many business websites especially those provided by the government, you should be able to find all the needed data.

 5. Decreasing costs. When exporting there are always costs of travel, communication costs and etc. There are several ways to decrease those. For example, instead of flying in every time for the meeting you can arrange virtual office and instead of using long distance you can use Skype as your VoIP solution and chat through the Internet and your computer.

If you have any question please leave a comment or use the “contact us” section.

Market research creates business success

Let’s say that you have a good idea to start a new business or a start-up and because you are very excited about it you want to start it as fast as you can. Stop right there! Before you jump into working on your project, thinking out strategies and other business related matters, you might be missing one very important step! You have to take the time to research whether the business model you are interested in is worthwhile spending your time on. Developing an in-depth market research and market analysis on your business idea will give you the knowledge you need to be informed of the current trends and competition.

Below is the list of several important topics that you should be researching in order to make your business profitable and successful:

1. Are you unique or do you have a niche? You have to identify if your idea is unique or has a niche to demonstrate the successful start of the idea. Ultimately, don’t worry if you are not the first on the block and there is someone else. In order to be successful you don’t have to be the only person to provide such service, although it is nice. As mentioned you don’t have to be first, but what you have to do is – provide the best service. Therefore, get to know the market place, the type of business and ensure your business has something unique to offer to the clientele as a point of differentiation.

2. Target market. Do you know who your potential customers are? Yes? No? Researching and identifying the target market is an essential part of starting any business. Your main goal is to get to know their needs, wants, wishes, likes as well as spending habits and approximate amount that they can spend.

3. Calculating profitability. It is somewhat difficult to calculate what you don’t have, but you have to calculate roughly the amount of hours, labour force, purchases, hourly rates and everything else that is relevant to the price of your business operation. When calculated try to identify how much profit left after everything is paid off. Your main mission is to forecast future sales and to guess the operational costs of the business.

4. Competition. Are you different? You have to identify yourself as a point of differentiation on the market to attract clients to your business. You have to maximize on whatever makes you more attractive. For example, you can sell at a lower price, deliver day or two faster; give better product or service quality.

5. Business Plan. Do you have one? If you don’t have a solid business plan - you are losing out! Business plan is a must for any business start. Business plan is a journal with the guidelines for you to follow.

 6. Permits and licenses. Before starting out you should also find out what permits or licences you must obtain in order to open you business.