Healthy competition can be good to keep you on your toes!
Having competitors is a fact of life for most businesses; few can genuinely claim they have none – and if they do they must question why. You have to be aware of the rules of competition in your chosen markets in order to win business when the prospect has a choice of many suppliers.
Somebody once told me to imagine my path towards a goal as a straight line with A as the start point and B as the finishing point. He told me to imagine myself walking along this path with random objects flying at me and tempting me away from my route – these random objects were opportunities.
If you’re the sort of person who is open to opportunities then they will always be around, the trick is to make sure that the opportunities you explore fit in with your business and marketing objectives.
Straight on for success
Is there one thing that you keep putting off that you know if you tackled it you would get great results? Is this your biggest marketing challenge?
It isn’t uncommon to have this “huge” obstacle or challenge in place. What it actually is will be different for each of us. There are many diverse activities involved in marketing and often you have to swap caps at an alarming rate. Do you need to be creative? Analytical? Maybe stern? Sympathetic? Whatever you need, some of these skills don’t come naturally to us all.
What does success mean to you?
We all know what we should be doing but sometimes a quick recap revitalises our focus.
The best marketers channel their efforts at the front end of the sales and marketing process and here are 5 ways to revitalise lead generation in your own business.
The great thing about viral marketing is that you keep your distribution costs to a minimum! You get your customers, colleagues, contacts etc to recommend your products or services to their own networks, meaning that an effective viral marketing campaign can get your message in front of thousands of potential customers extremely quickly.
Viral Marketing starts with just one person – you!
How do you make your prospects choose you above your competitors? What reason do they have to do so?
There are lots of pitch stories out there but one that sticks in my mind is the very brave design agency which pitched to British Rail, and deliberately kept them waiting in reception for an hour, with bad refreshments and no explanation for the delay… in other words, trying to get them to experience the frustration that their own customers felt daily!
Regardless of how unlikely it may first appear to be, anyone could be a valuable business contact. The most obvious question being, ‘How can you know who they know?’ You can bet that the first time you make the mistake of dismissing a potential contact as unimportant they’ll probably be having lunch with your dream prospect every week. You just never know. Continue reading
Without a doubt I would say yes. However, as somebody who has been actively networking since 1998 you can also waste an awful lot of time. I have been a member of numerous different networking groups and some work better than others. That said, I am a firm believer that you get out what you put in so within reason you have to “do your time”.
Often, your business’s greatest competition isn’t from other businesses who want your customers but rather from life and the hectic pace of things. As you may be able to relate to, your prospects are probably very busy – and constantly fighting against the distractions and interruptions which occur throughout a normal day.
There is an insulating level of indifference you must overcome Continue reading
We came across this article from VerticalResponse and felt it was worth sharing. They’ve provided a low down on some popular terms that you will need to be familiar with when undertaking an email marketing campaign. The text below is copied from their blog (link below).