Category Archives for "marketing"

How to reduce your competition

People’s attitudes to other businesses that are in competition to their own are variable. Some adopt the “head in the sand” approach and just ignore competitive businesses, while at the other extreme, some business owners get very concerned about their competition. What approach have you taken? The key to this is to make sure you […]

The Power of Design: Getting your brand right

One of the key marketing challenges for any new business is to establish a strong visual brand. Every business has a fundamental need to connect with its customers and target market, and one of the best ways is to develop a distinctive visual brand that is recognisable and also one your customers can build an […]

Grow your business by targeting a niche: are you fishing in the right pond?

Niching as a client attraction tool Would you feel nervous at the thought of focusing your business on a subset of your current market? I’m basically describing a very standard marketing approach that focuses on targeting your marketing message on a defined niche. Does the thought of that make you nervous? I see this a […]

Growing your sales: Is your marketing armour complete?

Your marketing armour Imagine you are wearing a suit of armour on a mediaeval battlefield.  You can see thousands of opposing soldiers, all holding very sharp looking spears and other weapons able to inflict considerable pain.  You are reasonably comfortable surveying this sight as your armour is new, covers all your major organs, and you’ve […]

Words that sell

When big words aren’t clever You’ve done it. I know you have. I have too. At certain times, you’ve given up on reading something because it was either badly written, too difficult to understand or just very heavy going. Having said that, have you ever read some information – something with a bit of juicy […]

Describing what you do in a way that’s engaging

When I first started out I called myself a business advisor. I found that I used to say it in a way that was almost apologetic as if it was the world’s most boring profession ever! The net effect was that it killed most conversations which is certainly not helpful at networking events. Now if […]

How to increase your sales leads: Let’s get that funnel flowing

I’m pretty sure that you are like most business owners in that you would love to have more enquiries coming in. Am I right? Well, you can! This is one of the simplest “things” to improve yet it’s one that most business owners are fearful of as they sit it in the “too difficult pile”. […]

Easy marketing: Testimonials that sell

Put yourself in the shoes of your prospects…how do they know your products or services are as good as you say?  In some cases they will ask a trusted source, but what happens if they don’t know anyone who has used your products/services before.  You would love them to make the leap of faith and […]

List building: Who’s on your list?

When you are in business your list is absolutely vital but yet a huge number of businesses either do not have a list or if they do they don’t use it.  Do you have a list?  Your list should contain the contact details for all of your clients (past & present) & at a minimum, […]

Quantifying your business growth

So how are you going to find all those extra clients this year? Recently we have looked at your average client spend per year and used that to calculate how many leads you need to generate to hit your targets.  This time we are going to take the next step and look at what marketing you […]