Professional services are intangible; they don’t have a defined shape or physical characteristics and no intrinsic colour, texture or flavour. More importantly, they don’t have a set of clear expectations which come with them. The actual composition of a service is more or less unknown until your communications are able to give it substance and make it real. Continue reading
At the end of the day, ‘people buy people’ is still a constant truth in business. The work does not always go to the best business on paper – sometimes it goes to the one who made a better connection with the client, was more personable or gave the impression that they’d be easier to work with. Continue reading
I spoke about giving your customers a reason to buy from you in a previous post The Reason Why and wanted to expand on this theme today.
Once you’ve given them “the reason why” what next? It would be nice to just sit back and watch the pennies roll into a bank account but in reality that won’t continue if you go cold on your customers once they have purchased from you.
Set time aside to implement your customer acquisition strategy
Acquiring new customers is all about opening up new relationships and that is all about how you present yourself and your company.
Here are eleven tips for acquiring new customers: Continue reading
Impulse buys make up a significant part of retail revenue – whether its due to the product placement, the promises it makes or the promotion its part of.
You know the kind – think of a product you bought that you didn’t really need? Impulse buys are usually low value, low risk and disposable items often found in the aisle displays or near the cash registers.
Many businesses view their product or service as the tangible item the customer receives.
So you buy a new car and that’s the product. It’s not as simple as that in marketing terms!
The product is more than what you see
Taking the car as an example the product becomes more complex than you first thought as there are three levels to this product. The Core product, the Actual product and the Augmented product.
Put yourself in a situation where you desperately need help. For example you are stranded on a motorway in bad weather with no mobile phone and only a marker pen and a flip chart to hand!
How would you attract the attention of other motorists and persuade them to stop and help?
You wouldn’t write a joke, a clever play on words or draw a nice graphic – you would probably write as big as you can “HELP ME” on the paper. That would do the job of getting your message across to your “audience”.
Effective listening is not a passive occupation! It requires considerable mental effort, not only to comprehend but also to sift the words for further use. Many people think hearing is enough. It isn’t!
Hearing does not mean listening. Hearing is only the first stage in the listening process.
Hearing does not mean listening - there is a difference!
Here are ten ways that you can start to generate publicity for your company, which not only helps to position you as an expert in your chosen field(s) but also helps to keep you in the limelight ahead of your competitors.
Central to any company’s effective marketing is a message that speaks powerfully and consistently to your existing and potential clients.
Work through these points and you will be well on the way to developing a marketing message for your own business.