Archive for January, 2010

Cost Effective Marketing Tool: Building Meaningful Relationships

Monday, January 25th, 2010

When brainstorming marketing prerogatives for the New Year, keep in mind the power of relationships.

Build Trust, Build Brand

Build Trust, Build Brand

Talking to people is a free marketing tool. It can often lead to meaningful connections, referrals, or at the very least, beginning a rapport with someone as you enhance the credibility of your business or brand. Nothing is more effective than building relationship, having conversations and making connections.

So get out there! Develop a monthly networking calendar, go out with the right mentality, build your network, jump into the conversation, and put a friendly, receptive face to your brand. If you are feeling really ambitious, host a meet up event and bring the people to you. By distinguishing yourself as a go-getting networker, you will put yourself in great a position to get more business.

With that said, it is important not to forget about your current customers. Developing a relationship built on trust through honest interaction and clear responsive communication, your clients will see your worth and value your advice. People are more likely to work with someone they trust and have a personal relationship with, than those they do not.

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The Power of Online: 2010 Marketing Trends

Friday, January 22nd, 2010

2010 is the year that online marketing trends really take off. Businesses, moms, companies, vendors, consumers are all out there cruising the web. Twitter, Facebook, Google, iPhone apps, Bogs, YouTube: are the new vernacular and everybody using it and doing it. If you are out to market your goods, turn on your computer and get to work.

With real time benefits, more interaction and connectivity, and audience engagement, online marketing has become more hands on than ever before. For the first time, business can begin to understand their audience in an up close and personal manner. Who they are, where they spend their time online and how they spend their money–and use that knowledge to create strategy accordingly. Business have already started to employ SEO, RSS syndication, bookmarking, pull marketing, and audience sourcing through Social Media platforms to get their products/services directly to their market.

It is important to remember, although marketing is taking a turn to digital, creating synergy between online and traditional campaigns is still crucial to effectively reaching your marketing aspirations. By employing traditional techniques like using a consistent brand and message identity across all channels and understanding objectives and metrics, utilizing these tools to the online sphere will boost any marketing campaign.

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Sherlock Marketing Strategy

Wednesday, January 13th, 2010

One of the most cost-efficient ways of entering into the New Year is developing a solid business and marketing strategy. While it may be time consuming, the time spent developing a strong plan of attack, will not only save you money all year long, but it will give you a clear vision of how you will reach your revenue goals.

Developing an approach is a lot like performing detective work; you have to become the Sherlock Holmes of strategy. Asking the right questions, uncovering clues of the market, understanding the players involved all in order to obtain the correct answers to solve your business case.

Strategy begins with research. Good ole’ fashion research it acts as your magnifying glass for analyzing the market, recognizing and learning from competitors and having a thorough understanding of your target audience and how to reach them. By defining your customer, identifying who they are, how they make their purchasing decisions, what demographic they are in, will allow you to strategize an effective plan around how you will reach them and secure their business.

After discovering the aspects of the market you can then determine a realist budget

Thinking like Holmes

Thinking like Holmes

for your marketing campaigns and prioritize where you should focus your assets and attention on.

Sherlock gets it when he says, “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. (A Scandal in Bohemia)” So go out there and get your data and form your theories of how you will succeed in this New Year.

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Jump-Start the New Year with Business Resolutions

Friday, January 8th, 2010

We’ve all made our New Year’s Resolutions: eat healthier, save money, join a book club, spend more time with family. Having this firmness of purpose is what is so exhilarating about resolutions. Why stop at personal resolutions, why not apply them to your business? This year make determined resolves for your business.

It’s a New Year. A clean slate, a fresh start. New goals, objectives, ambitions, and metrics. While we slowly climb out of this recession, now is the time to focus on cost-effective solutions that will jump-start the New Year and allow you to make the most of your resources and get you to where you need and want to be. The New Year allows you to refocus, update expectations, set new benchmarks and ultimately strategize how you will reach your aspirations for the year. Where to begin?

Start at your vision statement. Where do you see your business headed? How do you want it to operate? What will it be in the future? What are your core values and how can those attributes make your vision a reality? After defining your vision and clearly articulating it, move on to your mission statement.

Compose your mission statement with your vision in mind. Ask yourself what the main strategic intent of your business is. What are your essential competencies? By understanding your purpose and aim as a company, and using your attributes to your advantage you can set focused, targeted goals.

New Year’s Resolutions have a bum rap for always getting thrown out the window around week three. This year, resolve to stay on track.

Mission Statements Inlaid with Vision

Mission Statements Inlaid with Vision

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