Relationship Management

Relationship management is just as important for small and medium sized enterprises as for big corporate giants.  It is at the heart of good business, ensuring you keep your customers.  When your customers discuss dealing with your company you want the tone to be flattering as this will attract new customers and build your business’ [...]

Is it time to review your internet marketing campaign or strategy?

If you are wondering why you should consider reviewing your current digital marketing strategy then ask yourself the following questions: Is digital marketing an integral part of your wider marketing strategy or has it been ‘tacked on’ to your previous marketing plans? What percentage of your customers come from the internet? Is your website a [...]

Strategy and objectives for e-marketing

In order to effectively plan and deliver an e-marketing campaign it needs to be set within the wider marketing strategy for your business.  The approach you should take for an e-marketing strategy is broadly the same as any marketing strategy. First define what you want to achieve through a set of objectives then apply your [...]

Starting a Joint Venture

Unfortunately, many people in business think joint ventures are only for the big companies. McDonald’s can do those movie tie-ins with the big Hollywood studios, for example, because they have enough customers and marketing power to make most companies eager to work with them. But what if you’re a small business? How can you get [...]

Letting Your Staff Do the Marketing for You

Sometimes our best marketing assets are right under our noses, but we just don’t see them. That’s the case with your staff. Sure, they provide a good experience for your customers or clients and that’s important. But they can be a valuable asset in other ways, too. Upselling & Cross Selling Whether you run a [...]

Twitter & Creative Marketing: Two Success Stories

As with most social media, Twitter has become an increasingly popular marketing tool for businesses. The service has millions of users all over the world so it’s not hard to understand why making use of tweets could be a great idea for building a brand or reaching new audiences. However, many companies have struggled in [...]

Why You Need a Mailing List (or What to Do with the One You Already Have)

Mailing lists sometimes don’t get the appreciation they deserve. In reality, they are the backbone of your marketing efforts, especially when you are trying to build loyalty and increase spending among your current customers or clients. There are plenty of good ways to build your own mailing list. You just need a reason for people [...]

Why Your Small Business Needs a Referral Program

Word of mouth marketing was once thought to be the only type of marketing a business needed to be successful. We all know that isn’t true. This type of marketing in which customers tell one another about your product or service to inspire them to also buy your products or services does work but isn’t [...]

Storytelling as a Marketing Tool

Marketing Monday Tip of the Week: Start Telling Stories! Storytelling is an actual marketing tool and a very powerful one today in use by the largest corporations and not limited to them. Giants such as Virgin and Kodak utilize it well in their campaigns and neither is storytelling fiction or false testimony. Instead of fables [...]

5 Tips for a Successful Marketing System

Marketing Monday Tip of the Week: Fine Tune Your Marketing Action Plan! What few small businesses truly respect is the fact that marketing is a system. It is not a campaign or a single advertisement but instead a process.  Before any campaign can be successful there must be an understanding of the system and the [...]

How to Get the Maximum Benefits from Social Media Marketing

Marketing Monday Tip of the Week: Always have a Plan! Social media marketing sounds like a great idea, and it is but all too often small businesses enter into the marketing venue without any particular overall strategy. What that means is that they either hit it lucky (seldom) or they waste time and effort and [...]

Marketing Lessons from a Victoria Secrets Model

Welcome to the kickoff of: Marketing Monday! Carol Perkins, a former Victoria’s Secret model, started Harry Barker (famous for its eco-friendly products for dogs and cats) at a time when she had nearly nothing. She’d had brain surgery to remove a tumor and was unemployed. (That kinda sucks, don’t you think?) Now, thirteen years later, [...]

4 Tips to Small Business Marketing on a Shoestring

So you are a small business. If I ask you what your marketing budget is – does your answer sound like: “What marketing budget?” If that’s the case (or if you said, “pretty small”…) you need a dose of guerrilla marketing – or marking tips for a shoestring budget. Following are some tips that will [...]