Here a 9 Marketing Strategies
1. Become a student of your business. Study your customer, competitors and the industry trends. Make it one of your goals to become an ‘expert’ in your business, so much so that you know how your customers think. The more you know, the easier you will find it to get customers and give them compelling messages that convince them to buy your product or service.
2. Sit down with a friend or business contact and get them to put themselves in your customer’s shoes. Try to come up with ten new ways to market and promote your business. It’s really difficult to come up with these ideas yourself as sometimes you can get too close to your business, but someone else can often give you fresh ideas.
3. Remember that not everything you do to market your business will get you clients. Some things you do will be better for building your reputation or getting awareness of your business (PR for instance is very good at getting people to recognise your business is out there) than getting you clients. You need to have a good mixture of marketing activities designed to build your reputation, get awareness of your business and actually get your customers in order to market your business.
4. If you hate a particular aspect of marketing your business, don’t do it! For instance, if you hate cold calling, why push yourself to do it? There are loads of methods that you might like doing more AND don’t cost a great deal to do.
5. Do marketing!! Most small business owners don’t like marketing. It’s another activity that eats into their time. And on top of that, it’s not much fun. Ideally though, you should be spending 2 half days a week on marketing (at the very least), so choose something from my list of 50 ideas and do it!!
6. Decide what is a marketing activity for you , it could be emailing 5 customers a week to see how they’re getting on; writing a proposal; going to a networking event; seeing a potential new customer etc. Why is defining what marketing is important? Well, once you start doing this, you will realise that you are doing some marketing…then it becomes easier to do more.
7. Stretch your comfort zone – write down what activities you’re comfortable with and also write down which ones you’re not comfortable with. Then choose one activity you don’t really like doing every month and get on with it!!
8. Most of us are very good at following up if we need to. For example, if I said to you “Here is a potential customer” you would probably contact them. But, how many of us follow up without a real reason? Try this exercise – next time you go to a networking event, get the list of attendees and then contact all those you haven’t met by email asking if they would mind spending 15 minutes on the phone with you so you can find out a bit more about each other. This is excellent for building relationships and may even get you clients too!!
9. Remember marketing is like riding a bike. Most people start off by peddling really hard (doing lots of marketing) and when they get busy and don’t market their business, they can coast for a while. But, if they don’t start to market their business again soon, their bike will stop and believe me, it’s hard work to start peddling again. So, you need to keep marketing all the time.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Leadership Qualities
Leadership is nothing but a quality that makes a person stand out differently from the ordinary employees . There are 10 qualities that a good leader should have . They are :
1. Physical Features : In order to lead a group , a good leader must be mentally as well as physically healthy.
2. Vision : A good leader must have a clear picture of the objectives and goals of the organisation , team and individuals within it.
3.Clear Strategy : They also need to have a clear strategy of how they will achieve these objectives, and the ability to form a strategic plan.
4.Ability to Make Decisions : Good leaders show strength in making difficult and unpopular descisions . They have confidence in their own ability and strength of their own convictions. A good leader understands that in decision of their part waste resources denies the organisation opportunities.
5.Risk Taking : Leaders must have the strength and courage to act in business situations where they are not guaranteed success. Agood leader is willing to risk failure.
6.Ability to motivate others : Its is the most important qualities within a list of leadership qualities. A good leader articulates their vision to others, persuading them of the worth of their ideas. A leader inspires people in working towards the objectives of the organisation as well as ensuring that they achieve their personal goals. Pushing their individuals to achieve and develop for the benifit of themselves and the organisation as a whole.
7. Build Teams : Alongside motivation leaders build teams ensuring that they draw the best from each individual and the team as a whole , they coach teams to ensure collaboration , consesus and resolve conflicts.
8. Self Knowledge and Awareness : A good leader knows their own strengths and weaknesses and are able to view their behaviour objectively and also reflect on their own practice. They need to both demonstrate the ability to acknowledge feedback but also to act upon that feedback and make changes where necessary.
9.Integrity : Integrity is vital in any leader and would appear in a list of leadership qualities, leaders need to be trustworthy in order for others to follow them.
10.Communication : A high priority in any list of leadership qualities is communication; leaders can communicate their ideas to a diverse workforce and adjust their style in meeting the needs of the people they lead.
1. Physical Features : In order to lead a group , a good leader must be mentally as well as physically healthy.
2. Vision : A good leader must have a clear picture of the objectives and goals of the organisation , team and individuals within it.
3.Clear Strategy : They also need to have a clear strategy of how they will achieve these objectives, and the ability to form a strategic plan.
4.Ability to Make Decisions : Good leaders show strength in making difficult and unpopular descisions . They have confidence in their own ability and strength of their own convictions. A good leader understands that in decision of their part waste resources denies the organisation opportunities.
5.Risk Taking : Leaders must have the strength and courage to act in business situations where they are not guaranteed success. Agood leader is willing to risk failure.
6.Ability to motivate others : Its is the most important qualities within a list of leadership qualities. A good leader articulates their vision to others, persuading them of the worth of their ideas. A leader inspires people in working towards the objectives of the organisation as well as ensuring that they achieve their personal goals. Pushing their individuals to achieve and develop for the benifit of themselves and the organisation as a whole.
7. Build Teams : Alongside motivation leaders build teams ensuring that they draw the best from each individual and the team as a whole , they coach teams to ensure collaboration , consesus and resolve conflicts.
8. Self Knowledge and Awareness : A good leader knows their own strengths and weaknesses and are able to view their behaviour objectively and also reflect on their own practice. They need to both demonstrate the ability to acknowledge feedback but also to act upon that feedback and make changes where necessary.
9.Integrity : Integrity is vital in any leader and would appear in a list of leadership qualities, leaders need to be trustworthy in order for others to follow them.
10.Communication : A high priority in any list of leadership qualities is communication; leaders can communicate their ideas to a diverse workforce and adjust their style in meeting the needs of the people they lead.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)