Archive for the ‘Businesses’ Category
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Aim for loyal customers over satisfaction
If you make your customers happy, then they are satisfied; but that is not the same as loyalty. Loyalty requires working on these satisfied customers, giving them excellent, high quality service, forming a relationship with them to find out exactly want they want, how it can be delivered to them in [...]
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What marketing success factors do you have?
One factor facing marketing today that is not accommodated adequately by businesses is that it needs to take time to succeed. So many companies confuse it with sales and expect immediate results, whereas marketing is a long-term strategy, slowly building up relationships, spreading expertise and gaining credibility – [...]
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What’s the difference between marketing and selling?
I’ve been tweeting about the difference between marketing and sales, and that they’re not the same: the former is about gaining relationships, spreading expertise and maintaining credibility; the latter is about making money.
But what does marketing mean to you? What and why is it important? How can it be used to transform [...]
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How much added value do you give?
It’s fascinating noting the different styles of American waitresses and how they treat you. Of course they are always excessively nice because they depend on your tips to boost their meagre wages, but they still have varied methods of attentiveness, depending on the kind of restaurant they are serving in, the response of customers seated there [...]
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A century of lightening change
I heard on the radio a headline from an Edwardian newspaper, and it made me laugh. It was so complicated, academic and theoretical. That was a time when things were slow, ponderous and laborious, people had time to stop, think, read, measure up an argument, consider a concept and cope with long-winded titles designed to [...]
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Caped wonders at Body Shop
I popped into my local Body Shop to stock up on a few essentials and by mistake picked up the test bottles instead. This was rectified at the counter, and the staff complained this was a regular occurrence because the ‘Test’ stickers were too small for people to realise.
What they really needed was something that [...] -
How to make your advert stand out
In this particular local magazine I regularly receive through my letterbox I get a chance to purvey various attempts at designing advertising. I do feel sorry for multiple trades who have to compete with each other, all trying to attract the same customers from the same page:
Look! Four plumbers jostling with each other to capture [...] -
Small advert? No need to clutter it
In my mind a lot of advertising you see is money down the drain, because their owners, designers or writers don’t understand the psychology of how to compose a successful ad (read more in my post 5 things to consider when writing adverts). Although I have given you five reasons there, here I will, in [...]
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Perhaps perfection is important after all
Six months since giving up my business, things have become rosier. My post Perfection doesn’t work in business was a result of my feelings of rejection, failure and disillusionment. But now I can look at business in a new light, having had plenty of time to analyse my present situation and learn from my mistakes.
In [...] -
Do your customers use the same social media?
This was the topic of conversation I had at a CIM course on marketing trends the other week. Of course the speakers were stressing how important it was to get into social networking, in order for our businesses not to get left behind, but one particular lady next to me was not [...]
