|
|
|
|
10 Ways to help you avoid being of the 50% of businesses that wont be around in 3 years time. with marketing techniques generally! But there are many simple ways to turn such reticence around. Perhaps a gentle way to enter the marketing world is to embrace these ten marketing tips, designed to drive your business further The Australian Bureau of Statistics recently released a report titled: Counts of Australian Business that looked at (amongst other things) the mortality rates of businesses between June 2003 to June 2006. For businesses earning between $50K and $200K, the mortality rate was a staggering 50% in 3 years. More than ever before businesses need to adopt effective marketing techniques to protect them from the crap shoot that SME business survival is becoming. Perhaps a good way to fortify your marketing arsenal is to embrace these ten marketing tips, designed to drive your business further. · Listen to your customers before you do the talking. The best way to uncover unmet customer needs is simple enough in theory. Just ask questions that will make customers think about what is wrong with their current situation and how it may be improved to better meet their needs. The hard part of course for many people is to listen and keep listening till the customer has nothing else to say. Capture all this invaluable feedback and you will be in a position to act. · Respect your customers. Respecting customers may take many forms but ultimately the key take out message to this point is that your customers are left with a sense of appreciation that they get from you. Appreciation that comes from their business today, their loyalty over time and their feedback to help refine and improve your business. Discounts, value added services and loyalty programs are some simple ways you can show your appreciation for your customers. · Look for groups of customers with similar unmet needs. Businesses can not simply be all things to all customers. What they can do however is that a good look at the market they operate in and try to segment it into a smaller number of groups of customers who have similar needs that the business can provide at a price and in a way that the market will value. This segmenting of the market can be done on either customer descriptive dimensions like demographics that try to accurately describe the customer and /or on the basis of behavioural dimensions that describe what the customers buy and why. From this analysis viable groups (or niches) of customers with similar needs will emerge and will be able to be targeted by the business. · Be honest about the strengths and weaknesses of your business. You need to do an annual SWOT analysis and be honest about the results. The findings will certainly change over time. Take for example the case of a well established photo mart that has always considered it’s strength to be it’s lab equipment and technical expertise, but with the advent in recent years of digital technology it’s equipment is outdated and this has quickly become a weakness relative to it’s competitors and the needs of the market. · Strengthen areas of relative weakness. From the photo mart example above, the business in question must decide quickly whether or not to go on. If it decides to continue on, it must acknowledge its weaknesses and quickly retool it’s lab from traditional film based technology to digital photographic camera and picture development technology. · Observe the market to capture early opportunities. Great marketers are always strong strategic thinkers. They look up from the tactical complexity of the day to day running of the business and consider the crucial strategic issues for their businesses. They see trends in technology, government policy, social attitudes, legal issues and cultural swings early and always ask how the changing pattern may impact both on their market and business down the track. Many furriers went out of business in the 80’s but few needed to, given the clear changes in how people started to feel about the fur trade. · Always exhaust available data before paying for research. Although well designed and carried out market research is a vital cog in the marketing machine and yields many useful insights for the business, the truth is that most of what you need to know may already be existing around you and therefore does not need to be redone on every occasion. Sales records, customer data bases, association reports, industry journals and other existing sources of secondary sources must first be thoroughly gone through and only when it does not reveal all the information required, is new (primary) research appropriate. · Reward those people who contribute to your success. It is important to always acknowledge the customers that drive your success. For what ever reason a customer remains loyal to you over time, you must reward them as such. Often customers remain loyal but not by design but rather through convenience. Eventually it will be more convenient for that person to leave and they will. Before then, understand who your key customers are and then, both tell them and show them your appreciation. And if you really want to be clever, link your rewards program back to the customers unmet needs. · Enjoy the journey and learn from the ups and the downs. Perhaps more aptly put, appreciate what has occurred during your earlier business highs and lows and make sure you have learned from them. There is too often not enough analysis done comparing actual and planned performance levels and other key performance indicators by businesses, and this is especially true for SME’s. Enjoy the ride certainly, but learn from it and ensure that all key findings are incorporated back into the marketing mix.
By Daniele Lima Director Road Scholars Marketing Consultancy PH: (03) 95768486 or 0413297617 Website: www.roadscholarstraining.com And Co author of the new marketing book for all SME’s: Marketing Works: Big Company Strategies for Small Business Available through all good book stores and Amazon.com
|
|
Send mail to admin@roadscholarstraining.com with
questions or comments about this web site.
|
