Running out of ideas for marketing your business? Check out the 133 marketing channels you'll find in the PDF file here. You'll need a reasonably up to date version of Adobe Acrobat to open and read it, which most people have installed on their PC anyway.
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An old friend called recently and asked, "Can you help my business grow?". After initially fast growth, he's pretty much steady state now.
Here's how he describes it in his own words, "I grew the business really fast for the first five or six years, but then it seemed to hit a barrier. I want to make my business grow again, I don't want to be stuck at this turnover forever."
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Munro Estates team celebrates
I was delighted to hear from Jonathan Bell and George Pirie, the directors and driving force behind the growth of Munro Estates earlier today.
More on Property Rental Business Quadruples – Taking Gold, Too…
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A while back, I got an enquiry from a guy who wanted help marketing his business. But when I asked him what business he was in, I got a five minute description that I couldn't understand.
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Two things this week that are very clever ways to make sales, but leave a bad taste in the mouth of many potential customers.
Do you think these class as clever strategies, or marketing scams? In my mind, they're certainly bordering on the scam side of things.
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Airworld Tours Limited are a travel agent/tour operator based in Edgeware with sales in the millions. They're a client I met in January 2009 who had run into a serious problem with their business – they'd hit a "perfect storm" with three issues causing them grave concern.
Do you ever wonder why you're business isn't growing?
A 14th Century monk can give you a clue – he came up with Occam's Razor, which is the principle that when you're trying to solve a problem, the simplest answer is usually the right one. We can use Occam's Razor for business growth, believe it or not.
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Client rings in on Monday morning.
Lee, something you said to me last week really struck a chord.
You said that we expect to do our marketing and sell right away.
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On Monday a client emailed this to me..
The Power of Lee's Loop Marketing!
Hi Lee
I thought you would like this!
39 emails sent on Friday morning to previous enquiry database (none of these have purchased before).
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This is an important business story about the law of the jungle.
I was reminded a few days ago of the story of two hikers in the forest who startle a bear.
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Use many channels to get the most "bites"
In the first two articles about writing a simple one page marketing plan for small business, we compared marketing to fishing and covered the need to choose the kind of "fish" you want to catch, plus putting some strong "bait" on your hook.
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A juicy worm to tempt the "fish" you want to catch
In the first article about writing your marketing plan for small business, you were introduced to the idea of marketing being like fishing. That first step was all about choosing the kind of customers (fish) you want to land.
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Marketing Is Like Fishing…
If you struggle with marketing your business, you're not alone. I would guess that a full 97% of companies have no marketing that they have any sense of control over.
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Can you think of a tougher business to be in right now than the travel business? With people cutting back on luxuries and exchange rates at a real low, it's not an easy trading conditions.
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Differentiating your business from your competitors, so that customers will choose to buy your products and services instead of your competitors, is the job of your Unique Selling Proposition.
The trouble is, it's easy for you to get stuck on the idea that "there's nothing I can do that's different to my competitors". So in this blog post, you'll discover how a true commodity business – the dairy industry – has lots of differentiation.
More on Unique Selling Point – How To Stand Out In A Competitive Marketplace
Well, that's my first big goal of 2010 now achieved – to hold a free teleseminar about marketing.
In truth, I'm not happy with it as I was so tense I think it sounded like I'd just run a marathon! I'm always comfortable talking to an audience and so this came as a bit of a surprise to me, even though I'd done a few dry runs!
UPDATE
A couple of weeks ago, in a post called Improve Your Attitude, I noted that several people I work with, or had recently met, were achieving very different results and that their attitudes seemed to be reflected in their results.
There's a headline news story today that incenses me. It's a complete public relations fiasco for Maclaren, and will unfold over the next few days. It will cost them millions in lost sales in the UK alone.
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200 years ago, it would take several days, maybe even a week or more, to communicate with somebody in another city or town. With the advent of email, the Internet and next day delivery (assuming no postal strikes!) we've now got that down to between instantly and 24 hours.
Had a fantastic week this week talking to a couple of clients.
First, The Riverside Restaurant in Barnard Castle have now officially grown to twice their original sales, with profits to match! When I said to Andrew what had made the biggest impact, he said no single thing, but a combination of lots of changes each building on the other to create a whole new level of business.
Recently I've been talking to a number of people in business who have got really depressed by the state of the economy. They're suffering from a bad dose of recession depression. We all have bad days, and it's OK to feel fed up occasionally, but when it happens most days, you've got a problem and you need to fix it.
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by Richard Pakey – guest author
Hi, my name's Richard Pakey and I'm a member of Chris Cardell's marketing club. I'm also one of Lee Duncan's 1-1 coaching clients.
I offered to write a blog post for Lee explaining why I decided to work with him, even though I was already a member of the Cardell club.
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Just out of a meeting with a client who runs a fantastic Sri Lankan restaurant in Balham – it's called Hop & Spice and serves the most divine curries ever to pass through my lips. In fact, TimeOut magazine voted it 4th out of their top 50 restaurants, so I'm not the only one who loves it.
More on Market Research Example – Imitation Is The Best Form of Flattery…
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Is your business at risk of doing a Woolworths?
Last year, Woolworths gave a last gasp for air before sinking beneath the waves of change, after a 100 year history. They were comprehensively beaten on just about every front by Tesco, Sainsbury, Morrisons and Asda.
