Tag Archives: Marketing

Strategies For Building A Positive Brand Reputation

Contributed article in our business series. Enjoy! – Kimberly

When a consumer is trying to decide between two different brands for the same product/service, they will always choose the company that has the best reputation. This is because a positive reputation means that the company is likely to be reliable, to provide a good customer experience and to have high-quality and good value products/services. This can make it challenging for new and/or small businesses that can often struggle to create a reputation for themselves when competing with much larger brands. It will always take some time but here are the most effective strategies for improving your brand reputation.

Improve Customer Service

Much like personal reputations are formed around how you treat others; brand reputation is formed heavily around how your company interacts with customers and visitors. People want to feel valued and listened to so you need to make customer service a priority – people will always return to a brand that looks after its customers but never a company with poor customer service, even if they have high-quality products. Additionally, customer service is an area where smaller companies can excel over much larger businesses, so this can give your small business a competitive edge.Continue reading→

How to Create a Start-Up in Style

Contributed article in our entrepreneurial series. Enjoy! – Kimberly

Sometimes a little style, confidence and razzmatazz is just what’s needed to launch a new business into a prosperous future. It’ll show off your credentials and will cast away any lingering doubts or worries, instead investing you and your team with a confidence that may well lend itself to the first stages of opening a business up to new, competitive markets. This article takes a look at some of the best ways to start-up in style, using the invested money you’ve got to position yourself squarely in your industry without any hint of weakness or insincerity.

Launch Party

Every promising new business deserves a launch party, and yours should be no different. After all that preliminary work – most of it fairly dull paperwork – to establish your business as a trader, your launch party is a celebration of what you’ve achieved so far as well as a momentum-builder for the immediate future, filling everyone connected with the business with hope and positivity. Buy some bubbly and get some nice nibbles organized and prepare to bask, just for one evening, in the preliminary successes of your business.Continue reading→

4 Ways To Keep In Touch With Your Customers

Contributed article in our business series. Enjoy! – Kimberly

It is said that around 80 percent of your business will come from just 20 percent of your customers – that means it’s easier, and more cost effective to keep your current customers happy, contented, and loyal than it is to try and find more customers. Keeping in touch with your customers is a great way to ensure loyalty and good feelings, but how can a business do that successfully? Here are some ideas.

Newsletters

Having a newsletter that your customers can sign up to (or one that they are automatically signed up to) is a fantastic way to keep your company and your products and services in the mind of the people who will hopefully spend money with you. Keep them in touch with what is going on with your business, run competitions, give them discount codes for loyalty and so on. As long as you send out your newsletter regularly (perhaps once a month), then your company will easily stick in their mind.Continue reading→

5 Ways Email Marketing Can Help You Grow Your Business

Contributed article in our business series. Enjoy! – Kimberly

Email marketing remains one of the most common marketing methods out there. It is a low cost way to market to customers with a high rate of return. Here are five ways email marketing can help you grow your business. All of them are within easy reach of every business utilizing email marketing, and none of them involve spamming your potential and current customers.

Use Email Marketing to Enhance Local Outreach

When someone talks about local outreach to potential customers via digital marketing, they initially think about local search engine optimization or sending messages to those customers in your marketing database and local area. However, you can use email marketing to improve local outreach. Continue reading→

The Best Ways to Market Your Small Business on a Budget

Contributed article in our business series. Enjoy! – Kimberly

When starting your own small business, marketing is exceptionally important. You can have the best products or service in the world but that isn’t enough to make your business a success. You need to make sure people know about it. Big businesses have a huge budget to employ a marketing team to do it all for them. You might not have the resources to do this in the beginning. Fortunately, there are many great marketing strategies you can implement yourself.

Image Ref: Creative Commons CC0

 

Social Media

Social media is absolutely massive. As well as the main platforms, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest, there are 100’s more you could use. Continue reading→

Marketing Tips for Startup Businesses

Contributed article in our business series. Enjoy! – Kimberly

Getting your business off the ground is hard work, regardless of how experienced you are and what industry you are hoping to break into. Those first few months of operation can take their toll, with registering your business, developing a business plan, investing in equipment, etc. The list is endless!

However, one important factor you must consider is your marketing strategy as it is a major element you simply cannot neglect. The marketing strategy you choose and develop is the difference between your businesses unwanted anonymity and having too much work to cope with.Continue reading→

The Most Effective Way to Develop an Email Campaign

Contributed article in our business series. Enjoy! – Kimberly

While email marketing has been around for years, the way that marketers develop campaigns has evolved over the years. If you’re not an expert in this area then you would be forgiven for thinking that it is fairly basic . . . you write an email and send it to your list of contacts.

Years of research has gone into calculating the most effective way of developing email campaigns, and this research has shown that 77% of email marketing ROI came from segmented, targeted and triggered emails. So, just sending a “one size fits all” email is not going to get you the results that you are looking for.Continue reading→

How Create a Stronger Brand Identity

Contributed article in our business series. Enjoy! – Kimberly

A company’s brand is its unique selling point. If you fail to create a strong image, you may struggle to survive in a competitive market. A solid brand will not only capture a potential customer’s attention, but it will ensure you appear professional and trustworthy, because you have taken the time to refine your image.

Create a Key Message

Your brand is your voice, so you must identify what valuable things you need to say to the customer. To set yourself apart from other businesses, it is vital to create a key message that covers a company’s unique selling points.Continue reading→

How to Attract More Clients to Your Law Firm

Contributed article in our business series. Enjoy! – Kimberly

Every law firm wants to attract more clients. While this can sometimes feel like a challenge, there are things you can do to attract additional clients to boost your firm’s success and revenue.

Create a Niche

Instead of specialising in every area of the law, you might be able to attract significantly more clients by becoming a leading expert in one legal area within your city, take a look at Horn Law in Independence, MO car accident lawyer, as the perfect example. Continue reading→

How to Manage a Successful Exhibition Stand

Exhibition advertising promotion stand orange design layout template vector illustration

Contributed article in our business series. Enjoy! – Kimberly

The investment in both attending and having a business presence at a trade show needs to pay dividends for the company. There are many different ways to bring value and get the most out of diverting money and employees to the exhibition centre to meet and greet with interested attendees. Here are a few suggestions for managing a successful exhibition stand:

Focus on the Lighting

Lighting is everything. The human eye is attracted to things that are bright enough to be noticed and interesting enough to keep the attention once it has been acquired. In a sea of other exhibition stands, the importance of effective lighting should never be overlooked.

Stand Out With a Professional Exhibition Stand

Especially for small businesses and smaller exhibition spaces, it is critically important to make a statement with your exhibition stand. Leaving this up to the professionals is the right approach to take. A company like Finesse Exhibitions that has been in the business of creating attention-grabbing exhibition stands for over two decades is a good choice.

Maintain a Consistent Marketing Message

There is nothing like confusing potential customers with a marketing message that seems to be saying different things to different people. All literature, posters and press packets need to present the brand in the same way so that it is recognisable and clear. The staff members managing the exhibition stand need to have practised their 30 second pitch so that they will not get tongue-tied when customers walk up. If needed, provide time ahead of the exhibition for proper practice or training.

Building Rapport with Visitors to the Stand

Building relationships is all about making people feel comfortable. A successful exhibition stand in many ways lives and dies on the successful interaction between the staff and visitors to the stand. Staff should talk to as many people as possible. Don’t let staff members be afraid to walk up to attendees at the edge of the stand and begin a conversation.

Ask the visitor questions. Show interest in their business and what their needs are that the company may be able to help solve for them. Each face-to-face meeting is an opportunity to learn about the individual needs of the customers of the business. This can be invaluable.

Keep Staff Members Out in the Open

Depending on the design and construction of the exhibition stand, employees may have difficulty standing out in front so people walking past can see them. People have a tendency at trade shows to stay behind the welcome counter or in other positions that put a barrier between themselves and the potential visitors wandering into the stand area to learn more. You should learn about the different ways to attract new visitors to the exhibition stand before attending.

Consider Rotational Shifts for Staff Members

Exhibition days can be long and drag on. Meeting and greeting a new collection of people every hour gets exhausting quickly even for those who claim to be “a real people person”. Ensure that staff members get sensible rest periods and if possible, create a rotational shift which reduces the total number of hours that each staff member is at the exhibition stand. This way they’ll be fresh and energised when meeting each new visitor to the exhibition stand.

Plan ahead for your next trade show to help get the most out of your investment in an exhibition stand.