Winning Ways While sitting quietly at the 2009 annual Business Awards ceremony of the regional newspaper, Philip Mashinchi of Bright Visions Ltd was delighted to hear his name called for Small Business of the Year. At the same time, he felt bad for another business in the room he knew he was up against, The…
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. And the writing was on the wall for years before…
Marketing plans don’t need to be complicated. Here’s a simple 5 step marketing basics plan that you can use to get the ball rolling… 1. Build a database of customers – capture their details simply by asking for them. Or you could get creative and capture them in other ways. Perhaps use a feedback card,…
I was in a fabulous restaurant last week, talking to the owner. The food was exceptional and prices reasonable, so it was great value for money. We got chatting about the impact of the recession on his trade. He benchmarks himself against his competitors in the town, but I was curious when he avoided comparison…
The fastest way to get your business to the top of the search engines is to use pay-per-click advertising. Since Google accounts for around 70% of all searches done online, the Google Adwords service is the obvious place to start. Every day there are millions and millions of searches happening. Just yesterday I was looking…
When times are tight you want to cut your fixed costs and make the most of your sales opportunities. There are two ways you can cut costs – first, if some part of your business is broken beyond repair, extreme measures may be the solution. In the same way that amputation might be the only…
Do you need a marketing calendar? Are you one of those people who has lots of great ideas, starts them but then they trickle out? Or perhaps you’re just really busy and forget to do things that you know are important, but that never quite make it to the top of the To-Do list? We…
Last week a recruitment and temp agency told me that demand for telemarketing staff has massively dropped in the last few months. I don’t know about you, but with things being tighter at the moment, I have increased my marketing rather than cut it. I’ve also paid a lot of attention to doing more of…
In 2004 the business was called Richmond House Mortgages & Loans and was a typical small broker providing mortgages and insurance to local clients via word of mouth marketing. By early 2008, the company had grown to sell as many as 225 mortgages per month under a new name, The Mortgage Broker Limited. Fast Growth…
Even the best idea without enough follow-through will end in failure, but a poor idea with total commitment to follow-through will get good, or even great, results. Hence business success is so often 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration. This came back to my mind this evening while I watched "All Over The Shop", the BBC2 programme…