Many people in commerce are familiar with the idea of a “USP” or “Unique Selling Proposition”, that is, a benefit which is unique to your product or service that will attract new customers. Of course coming up with a “USP”, in today’s market place, is not easy when the competition is so fierce.
Category: Marketing
Business marketing advice, tips and guides to help you boost your promotions
Choose the ‘write’ route
If you’re going on a long journey, there may be many ways of reaching your final destination (both in terms of the route chosen and the method of transport). Your ultimate choice may depend upon factors such as speed, cost and convenience.
Similarly, there are many ways of promoting awareness of your company and/or its products and services. The one you choose will depend upon factors such as:
The ‘write’ approach to marketing
Most people in business have the (usually misguided) notion that they can write well. After all, they learnt English at school, so there’s nothing to it, is there? That’s a bit like saying that we all learnt maths at school, so none of us need accountants…
In this article. Phil Allcock looks at a specific type of writing – copywriting. (This shouldn’t be confused with copyright, which is an entirely different subject!) Copywriting refers to the production of words for different types of marketing material.
Search engine optimisation: Tips and tricks
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. It is the art of making your website communicate well with search engines. It plays a crucial role in gaining the right sort of visitors to your website, so it should be the first thing to think about when you start to build one.
New Year Resolutions & Predictions
New Year has come and gone and all around the World talk inevitably turns to resolutions. Are you looking towards a slimmer you? Giving up smoking? Perhaps you have decided to dedicate more time to others.
It’s also a good time to sit back and review your networking. Is your current activity working for you? Are you in the right networks, getting the referrals you want for your business?
Take the time to check you are on the right track. Even the top networkers do it. I spoke to some of the UK’s leading networking experts and heads of networks to find out what they expect to happen in networking in 2009 and their own plans for the New Year.
ecademy security breakdown gives a stark warning
ecademy – the business-orientated social networking site, that we have covered many times within the pages of Business Matters, gave a stark warning to its members of the possible pitfalls of using social networking as they left supposedly private support emails sent through the site publicly viewable as the result of a programming error earlier this week.
Are you chasing the wrong deals?
It is an all-too-common scenario when I’m working with sales teams or business owners – that when I look at their sales pipeline (you do have one of those, don’t you?) far too often I see they are very busy, but they’re chasing the wrong deals! In this article, we’re going to examine that particular challenge and how we overcome it.
The rise of the social network
Andy Lopata, networking specialist, talks about the rise of social networking for business gain.
Why your sales people still get price objections?
Whenever I’m speaking to sales managers and directors, I find that many are frustrated that seemingly no matter what they say to their sales team, the team is still getting stumped over price objections from their clients! In this article we’re going to look at why your sales team still get price objections and how this gets in their way (and yours) of sales success.
Do you feel lucky?
Often, salespeople put their success (or lack of it) down to sheer ‘luck’… but just how much of their achievements should be put down to luck alone? How can certain salespeople excel during a sales slump whilst others fall the wayside? Are some salespeople just born lucky?
I remember a quote from the golfer, Gary Player, when accused of being "lucky" he said, "The harder I practice, the luckier I get".
Making Marketing Accountable
Marketing accountability should be a priority, but in reality there is a lot of talk on the matter, and less action. Given access to large corporate budgets, marketing staff have promised returns on investment and increased market share. However, the evolution of the dot.com era has contributed to the fact that marketing staff can no longer get away with promising big results without quantifiably measuring them.
The future of networking
Increasingly, businesses have been looking to ‘word of mouth’ marketing to find clients with the growth of networking groups providing opportunities for companies to spread the word and get referrals.
Times move on and with the growth of online social networking opening people’s eyes to the power of the internet, companies are looking to see how the increasing number of ‘social’ business networks can be used for marketing and sales purposes.
Nine out of 10 web users watch video
Almost nine out of 10 UK web users watched video online in December, according to comScore, whose data revealed the dominance of YouTube.
In the UK, 28.7 million web users, or 87% of the online population, watched video in December, accessing 3.1m videos.
Social networking: why not embrace innovation?
177 years ago this month, the south-east of England was aflame as farm workers rioted. Under the leadership of the mysterious ‘Captain Swing’, they launched an orgy of burning and destruction across the countryside.
Is video content the future for business websites?
If you, like me, are the kind of person who hides away when the video cameras come out, you might well ask, why on earth would you want video content on your company website?
The reason why I’m recommending that you think differently today is because I believe that 1. video content is the future for business websites and that 2. business websites with video content attract more customers and drive higher sales.
