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…
Characteristics of the product life-cycle (PLC) stages shows how a product progresses through its useful life, just like a living thing: Development – this is when product ideas are considered to be viable, feasible and profitable, but they incur high research, test marketing and development costs, and create no sales. It’s a bit like pregnancy….
Products are “a bundle of benefits which satisfy a set of wants that customers have”. There are three key facts here: benefits rather than features, wants rather than needs, and customers, the most important element of a business. You can break a product down into three aspects: physical (what it looks like), functional (what it…
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 £10 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…
OK, without the multi-million pound marketing budgets the big corporates have, how can SMEs compete? But you can accomplish it just as well within your sphere by using these three simple, common sense marketing techniques that needn’t cost the earth. First, make your messages regular, repetitive and always upbeat. There are plenty of ways to…
Guest blog by LisaMarie Dias, e-newsletter diva As a designer of e-marketing materials, people will often ask “Should I blog, tweet or start an e-newsletter?” While the question is usually posed as ‘which one’, I will often answer “Yes” in an attempt to help them re-frame the query. There are valid reasons to start any…
Customers are extremely important to your business, where would it be without them? This may sound obvious, but there are some businesses that trundle along taking no notice of this vital element. When analysing a business promotion, take notice of to whom they are talking to. Who is the main objective in their marketing message?…
Guest blog post by Jessica Swanson of Shoestring Marketing In order to succeed in your small business, you simply cannot be like everyone else; you need to stand apart from the crowd. Always keep in mind that you don’t want to be ‘just another fish in the sea’. You want to be the biggest, brightest and…
In these difficult times, it isn’t easy to get your customers to keep on buying. So you must change for the better. First, analyse the product that sells the best. Find out why, which attributes are so popular, what aspect appeals to encourage a sale, and how does this product benefit your customers, what value…
A sales rep rang me up today (just as I was about to go out to a networking meeting) and tried to sell me her income protection plan. Apart from not being in a very receptive frame of mind, I was irritated that she tried to pin me down to a time, first before Christmas…
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