It’s important not to forget how your customers think. There’s the old adage: “put yourself in their shoes” – but there any many businesses who don’t. The trouble is, they get so wrapped up in what they’re doing, the technology and the objectives, the jargon and the statistics, the products and the profits, that they…
Marketing is actually a fairly recent phenomenon. It came about as a series of methods to enhance profits, analyse customers and to produce planned processes. After the industrial revolution arose the means of mass production. Companies could produce much more on demand, which in turn created more discerning customers with changing expectations, combined with increasing…
Philip Kotler’s definition is: “Marketing is the social process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating and exchanging products and value with others. Of course people have many conceptions as to what marketing is – it depends on where you work and what you want to achieve. Some see…
I’ve gone back to school again. Getting a qualification in the subject I work in seemed imperative if I am to do justice to my boss’s clients, so I’ve signed up to do the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM)’s Professional Certificate of Marketing at Bracknell and Wokingham College. After one lesson, what struck me most…
One of the features of Appletree’s newsletter system JAC shows how many of your newsletter’s recipients have opened it (and there is also a new feature that shows you who has opened it too and how many times). One statistic is that newsletters with large mailing lists seem to show a low open rate. So…
This question arose during one of my regular meet-ups with a couple of friends who set up their businesses at the same time as me and now are either struggling or have given up. Careful consideration arrived at these points: • Lack of processes in place: certainly in my case I didn’t have a series…
This is a good subject for start-ups and very small businesses who don’t have a large budget to work with.. The first free marketing method is networking. Go to as many meetings as possible, particularly the free events or those that don’t require a big entrance fee. But to make these successful you must arm…
Yesterday Chrissie Slade of Gorgeous Guineas came to see me for a half hour health check (but as always with me she got a bit more than just half an hour!). Chrissie makes aromatherapy skin products for guinea pigs, and claims she’s the only one in the world doing this. It’s a fascinating little business,…
Many people have told me that they are afraid to start blogging. Digging further into this revealed a number of different fears, and not necessarily about the technology side, which I thought was the main reason. Yes, technology is a hindrance, but it is something that can eventually be overcome with guidance. It is the…
While visiting Nottingham we decided to go for a Chinese meal. Just down from our hotel was an restaurant called ‘Big Wok’, which looked enticing at ÂŁ10 for all you could eat. Now normally these ‘pile it high and sell it cheap’ establishments skimp on quality for the sake of price, but we were pleasantly…
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