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Digg it UP - What's Next? A Guide to Marketing Your New Business
I remember, as a child, raptly watching a Saturday morning adventure TV show where the hero was captured by the “bad guys” who gave him the “Ancient Water Torture” in order to extract secret information. Seems our hero was tied down while an endless amount of water was dropped on his forehead, drop by drop, until he would capitulate and divulge the secrets. Of course, the hero managed to miraculously extract himself “just in the nick of time” and save the world as he did every Saturday morning.Today the “Ancient Water Torture” is still in use. It is an effective technique employed by mass marketers. They drip, drip, drip the same information in the same “voice” over and over until we, as consumers, can never for
Highlight your Benefits
Most customers will focus on the value and convenience of choosing your product or service, before they will consider the actual features of that product or service. Therefore, it is important fo
At APconnections, our flagship product, NetEqualizer, is a traffic management and WAN optimization tool. Rather than using compression and caching techniques, NetEqualizer analyzes connections and then doles out bandwidth to them based on preset rules. We look at every connection on the network and compare it to the overall trunk size to determine how to eliminate congestion on the links. NetEqualizer also prevents peer-to-peer traffic from slowing down higher-priority application traffic without shutting down those connections.When we started the company, we had lots of time, very little cash, some software development skills, and a technology idea. This article covers a couple of bootstrapping pearls that we learn
Know & Understand your Customers
Find out or decide who your customers will be. Then find out as much as possible about them. Consider the needs of customers, and make sure your business or product fulfils those needs. Look at factors such as where they live, their age, their gender, how much they earn, their interests and pastimes. Detailed knowledge of your customers will help you to be more precise in your marketing.
Reach your Customers
There are many different types of media out there. Choose and use a media that you know will reach your target audience, and is preferred by them.
Consider approaching newspapers and magazines if you feel you have a good story, ideally involving a reference to your business, a planned event, or a special offer. Convey a message that will be of value to the reader and editor – this will promote interest in you and your business/product at the same time. Avoid blatant advertising.
If you are limited to, or looking to target local audiences in a specific geographical area, consider producing flyers and placing adverts in shop windows.
Television and radio advertising are the more expensive methods, and are designed to reach audiences on a mass scale. However, the returns are normally very small in comparison to the expense.
Highlight your Benefits
Most customers will focus on the value and convenience of choosing your product or service, before they will consider the actual features of that product or service. Therefore, it is important for
As a small business, trying to play the low price game is a losing strategy, yet ironically that is the strategy so many small business owners start out with. This is a fear based strategy which is the first sign that it is the wrong one for small businesses. A flourishing business does not operate with a fear mindset. It runs on a plan of positive self expectancy and of wealth creation and charges full price for its value. By utilizing the following six steps your company can start to flourish too by maximizing your profit margins and not succumbing to the temptation of useless and many times dooming price cuts.1. Don’t be afraid to charge what you are you worth. The old saying, “You get what you pay for,” is
Reach your Customers
There are many different types of media out there. Choose and use a media that you know will reach your target audience, and is preferred by them.
Consider approaching newspapers and magazines if you feel you have a good story, ideally involving a reference to your business, a planned event, or a special offer. Convey a message that will be of value to the reader and editor – this will promote interest in you and your business/product at the same time. Avoid blatant advertising.
If you are limited to, or looking to target local audiences in a specific geographical area, consider producing flyers and placing adverts in shop windows.
Television and radio advertising are the more expensive methods, and are designed to reach audiences on a mass scale. However, the returns are normally very small in comparison to the expense.
Highlight your Benefits
Most customers will focus on the value and convenience of choosing your product or service, before they will consider the actual features of that product or service. Therefore, it is important fo
The one ultimate reward that counts for any business organization is improvement of bottom line profitability and the return of satisfied customers. This end result must justify all the initiatives taken by upper management. Upper management utilizes a tool called “cost of poor quality (or ”COPQ”) as a barometer for evaluating six sigma projects. Apparently, it is the only way to get upper management to accept six sigma. The upper echelons of corporations have come to realize the importance of six sigma for its tangible economic benefits.understand the value of upper management support for quality/process improvement top down fully, when you learn that management does not realize the importance of investing that ex
There are many different types of media out there. Choose and use a media that you know will reach your target audience, and is preferred by them.
Consider approaching newspapers and magazines if you feel you have a good story, ideally involving a reference to your business, a planned event, or a special offer. Convey a message that will be of value to the reader and editor – this will promote interest in you and your business/product at the same time. Avoid blatant advertising.
If you are limited to, or looking to target local audiences in a specific geographical area, consider producing flyers and placing adverts in shop windows.
Television and radio advertising are the more expensive methods, and are designed to reach audiences on a mass scale. However, the returns are normally very small in comparison to the expense.
Highlight your Benefits
Most customers will focus on the value and convenience of choosing your product or service, before they will consider the actual features of that product or service. Therefore, it is important fo
No two grants are exactly the same. The geographic locations of the applicants vary. Some grants are international, some are national, and some are local. The application deadlines vary. Some grants are offered annually, while others are offered quarterly. The number of times that you can apply may also vary. You can apply for some grants several times, yet some grants will only fund you once. Despite these differences, you can significantly increase your chances of securing grant funds from various types of funding sources by adhering to the following guidelines:1. Be sustainable. Sustainability is one of the more recent buzz words in grant writing. In the past, some programs were dependent upon the same funding so
If you are limited to, or looking to target local audiences in a specific geographical area, consider producing flyers and placing adverts in shop windows.
Television and radio advertising are the more expensive methods, and are designed to reach audiences on a mass scale. However, the returns are normally very small in comparison to the expense.
Highlight your Benefits
Most customers will focus on the value and convenience of choosing your product or service, before they will consider the actual features of that product or service. Therefore, it is important fo
1. Put everything in writing – contracts, policies, procedures, actions agreed, meeting notes, etc. etc. You may have to sacrifice a few minutes now, but believe us, it will prove time well spent if it avoids any doubt at a later date.2. It doesn’t pay to be nice! No, we don’t mean that you shouldn’t be friendly, polite or treat your employees well – just don’t make exceptions or excuses on the basis of wanting to “be nice” to them. It is a sad but only too often seen scenario, that in letting someone get away with being late one day, this opens the door to them being late each week; that by paying full sick pay to your star performer you’ve created a precedent for paying everyone else; and that by turning a blind e
Highlight your Benefits
Most customers will focus on the value and convenience of choosing your product or service, before they will consider the actual features of that product or service. Therefore, it is important for your marketing campaign to concentrate on selling the benefits, before the features. Features are best marketed when linked directly to a great benefit.
For example, a small business selling their own brand of home computers would make a greater first impact by focusing less on features such as 2.3Ghz processors, 1GB RAM, 100GB Hard Disk, and 128MB Graphics cards, and focus more on the benefits of ‘faster performance’, ‘ideal for multitasking’, ‘plenty of storage’ and ‘great for games and photo editing’.
Use the Internet
Of all the available mediums, the Internet puts businesses on the most equal footing. Your image and appearance on the Internet represents your business – this can be understated and straight-to-the-point, or it can be flashy and highly interactive. It is best that it matches your style of business, but you are not restricted if you wish to invest in making a big splash.
The Internet should be used to support your other forms of marketing, unless your business is specifically suited to the online market. If you are able to create a website for your business, do so as soon as possible. If you cannot do this yourself, pay for someone to create one for you, as it will be a worthy investment if used correctly.
Use other methods, such as joining newsgroups or forums related to your business or product, sign up to business networking communities, give free advice and answer questions. It will attract others to
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