Category: Marketing
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Revitalize Your Business Market Lifecycle With Inflection Point Testing
In the dynamic landscape of business, understanding and navigating through various stages of the business lifecycle is crucial for sustained success. A key aspect in this journey is recognizing and responding to inflection points — moments that signify a significant change in the business environment. These changes can be sparked by various factors, such as…
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The Art Of Achieving Product-Market Fit Before Scaling Your Startup
For startups, achieving product-market fit (PMF) is like a ship finding the current that will carry it swiftly forward. It’s a crucial step in validating that there is a market for your product and that the market is willing to pay for it. But reaching PMF is no small task, and many startups veer off…
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Understanding Your Customers Is The Key To Successful Branding
In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, the importance of knowing who your customers are cannot be overstated. Consumers have become increasingly discerning, seeking products and brands that align with their values and reflect their identities. As the world becomes more interconnected through social media and global trends, companies must navigate the delicate balance of staying…
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The Importance of Properly Tracking Digital Marketing Dollars
Digital marketing has come a long way from its early days of banner ads and pop-ups. Today, it is a complex and multi-faceted discipline that encompasses everything from social media and content marketing to search engine optimization and pay-per-click advertising. As digital marketing has evolved, so too have the tools and techniques used to track…
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How To Test Your Startup Idea With A MVP And A Landing Page
Are you an aspiring entrepreneur looking to test the waters with your new business idea? Do you want to know if your product will be accepted by the market before investing a significant amount of time and money? If your answer is yes, then creating a minimum viable product (MVP) and a landing page might…
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From Bud Lite To Backlash: The Importance of Customer-Centric Marketing
In today’s rapidly changing market, understanding who your customers are has become a critical aspect of successful brand management. Consumers are no longer passive participants in the marketplace; they now seek products that reflect their values and beliefs. This shift in consumer behavior has compelled companies to take a hard look at why customers choose…
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Mastering The Art Of Pricing: Strategies For Profitable Product & Service Pricing
Crafting the right pricing strategy is a fundamental element for the success and profitability of any business. However, pricing is not a one-time task; it requires ongoing efforts and adjustments. As you establish your new business, you will likely need to fine-tune your prices until you find the optimal formula that boosts sales and profits.…
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The Importance of Using A Unique Selling Proposition (USP) To Get Noticed
In the past, I have posted about how every business wants to stand out from the competition and make an impact on their target audience. But with so many businesses vying for attention in the marketplace, how do you make sure that your brand is the one that gets noticed? The answer lies in your…
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Mastering Demand Generation: Aligning Content To The Buyer’s Journey For Retaining Buyers
In today’s competitive business landscape, not all marketing content is created equal. A one-size-fits-all approach simply does not work anymore. To truly engage buyers and nurture them towards conversion, marketers need to align their content with the buyer’s journey. This means understanding the different stages of the buying process and developing content strategies that meet…
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Niche Down To A Market Of One
In today’s fast-paced world, businesses are having to adjust to a transformed customer base, with clientele possessing instant access to more information than ever. This shift can benefit both parties, ideally helping to minimize frustration or delay. An informed customer experiencing clear cut and transparent communication is always the end goal. But who is that…
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How To Measure Real Sales Success During Inflationary Periods
In recent years, many businesses have been reporting an increase in sales revenues. However, the truth of the matter is that this increase may not be as significant as it appears. The reason behind this perceived growth is often due to inflation and the rise in prices, not actual sales. Inflation can cause the value…
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Unlocking Business Growth: The Importance Of A Solid Customer Acquisition Strategy
In a previous post entitled “Calculating Your Customer Acquisition Cost: A Step-by-Step Guide to Understanding Your CAC”, I discussed how to go calculate a customer acquisition cost (CAC). In this blog post, I want to delve further into why having a customer acquisition strategy is critical to scaling a business. A customer acquisition strategy is…
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Strategies For Self-Publishing Success: Hard Work And Dedication
Over the years, I have heard a lot of things about self-publishing. I have mentored several authors and they all say it might be a gold mine but it requires a lot of work. Here are some key factors to consider if you’re looking to achieve success in self-publishing: Self-publishing success requires hard work, dedication,…
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Creating A Customer-Centric Experience: Understanding & Meeting Customer Expectations For Business Success
In the past I have written about the importance of a human resource (HR) philosophy that focuses on communication and expectation. This type of HR philosophy is centered around the relationship between the employer and keeping a satisfied employee. This same type of relationship philosophy is important to have for a business and it’s customers.…
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Tips To Boost Your eMail Marketing Performance
New challenges like inflation and labor shortages have left small businesses lacking the time and resources to maintain a robust marketing program. A recent survey found that 69% of business owners handle all of their company’s marketing responsibilities. Email marketing technology has quickly become a necessity for businesses looking to keep pace with the competition.…
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Document Your Sales Process
I have been asked, “Why do I need a defined sales process?” My answer is you don’t…unless, of course, you: A defined process makes it easier to test ideas for improving sales results. A defined sales process with conversion rates can allow you to quickly generate, pipeline and revenue reports. For example, if you have…
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Scale Your Business Using Retention & Endorsement
During a recent mentoring session, I was asked how can a business scale in today’s climate? For a business to scale, consider the following fact…studies show it costs five times more to sell to a new customer than to sell to a returning customer. So, instead of focusing all your attention on gaining more leads,…
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Aligning The Marketing-Sales Process For Profit
During the pandemic, small business weaknesses were exposed. Many failed because they did not align their marketing and sales functions into an integrated process. By this I mean that marketing, the sales personnel and all of the company employees must work together in the areas of strategy, tools, and customer acquisition to maximize the business…
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Put eMail Into Your Marketing Strategy
There’s an old saying in online marketing: “The best time to start an email list was two years ago; the second best time to start is now.” Email, SEO and blogs continuously outperform their social media counterparts. According to several studies, about 58% of consumers check their email first thing in the morning…64% of small businesses…
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Calculating Your Customer Acquisition Cost: A Step-by-Step Guide to Understanding Your CAC
Recently while mentoring, a business owner asked how to calculate the customer acquisition cost (CAC) and customer lifetime value (CLV). CAC is the cost incurred in acquiring a new customer. The first step to creating a customer acquisition strategy is to understand your customer acquisition cost (CAC). CAC is the cost of acquiring a new…
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The Search For A Product – Market Fit
Entrepreneurs basically have two options to get an answer on the viability of their product/service before attempting to carve out a new market for it. The true test of viability isn’t whether or not the product offering works for the intended purpose. It’s also not whether or not you can sell it to a customer.…
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Market Strategy Implementation Requires Supporting Tactics
Over the past years, the economy has taken a major digital shift that has impacted the way businesses connect and interact online with their customers. All company communication, sales demos, & business meetings have turned mostly virtual with remote and hybrid work environments. This digital shift has also shaped the consumer expectations of all businesses.…
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How To Establish Pricing For Your Offering
I am often asked how to establish a product/service price. Here are some background thoughts: Even with these thoughts in mind, determining the price to set for a product or service can be challenging if some historical price and demand data is not available. So be sure to considered the following questions when setting a…
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Revenue First Sales Startup Strategy
One of the best ways to achieve entrepreneurial success is to anticipate and correct problems associated with achieving sales traction by looking at your sales process before starting your business. Regardless of who will be selling your product offering or how it’s going to be sold, be sure to spend time developing a coherent sales…
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Thoughts On Business Startups
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, just under 5 million new businesses were launched between January 2021 and November 2021—an increase of 55% compared to the same period in 2019. Most of these new companies are being launched by first-time entrepreneurs. A recent survey released by Digital.com reveals that 32% of Americans planning to start…
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Evolving Markets Implies Changing Strategy & Tactics
Business conditions keep changing: successful new products attract competitors; more legacy brands are moving to D2C; businesses within every industry are adjusting to a transformed customer base; consumers are rejecting “stuff” in favor of experiences. We’re already in the middle of the most disruptive decade yet. Business owners have to be ready for whatever comes…
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Startup Brand PR Strategies
Are you starting a new business or looking to grow an existing company? If so, then it’s helpful to learn how to work with traditional media and online press outlets in order to maximize the power of coverage. And while there are standard PR strategy basics that are handy to know, one of the best…
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Facing An Inflation Price Increase Decision?
In the past, I have talked about adopting a pricing strategy that aligns your business value proposition (VP) with your cost of goods sold (COGS). In other words, set pricing by ignoring your competition and focus on customer value. By focusing on the value to the customer (removing their pain point), you immediately take the…
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Is B2B The Right Distribution Channel Fit?
The 4 Ps of marketing are Place, Price, Product and Promotion. By carefully integrating all of these marketing strategies into a marketing mix, companies can ensure they have a visible, in-demand product or service that is competitively priced and promoted to their customers. Lately, I have had a lot of questions about one of the 4 Ps…Place.…
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Marketing Analysis Math – Don’t Freak Out
In its simplest form, business is math. If the unit economics work in a businessʼs favor, then the business will succeed, otherwise, the business will fail eventually. Even if youʼre math-phobic, there are a few essential metrics that you should know to better serve your business. I know, there might be others who are able…
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Human Resource Inflection Point Testing
In past blogs, I have discussed how businesses should always begin with an idea that is tested to see who will buy, for how much, and whether the exercise can be repeated. Small businesses must retain this way of marketing, constantly testing new offerings to new segments while the company continues to market the things…
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How To Build Customer Loyalty
Customer loyalty has become a necessity for the growth and longevity of a business. However, many businesses today have adopted a transactional rather than a relational experience for their customers. Companies seem to have forgotten that without customers, there is no business. Over the years, I have learned from professional experience what it takes to…
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Think Hourglass – The Buyer’s Life Cycle
In the past, I have blogged about the importance of understanding the buyer’s journey and how it relates to the marketing/sales funnel. Have you ever thought about how to change that funnel into an hour glass shape by focusing on retaining customers? First, let me quickly review of the buyer’s journey — sales funnel concept:…
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Build Your Brand Recognition
For a small business, it can be very important to have a brand name everyone recognizes. People identify businesses in terms of the brand that the business has been able to create. You better define how your business is unique or more valuable than the competition because if you don’t do this well, your customers…
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2022 SWOT Analysis – Marketing
Consumer expectations are perpetually shifting, and while there’s been some pretty dramatic evolution since the pandemic arrived, fundamentally, this is nothing new. When it comes to shopping, especially online, today’s consumers have one powerful tool at their disposal: choice. It’s driving their decisions about everything from where they shop to who they buy from to…
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Distribution Channel Assessment Worksheet
When it comes to determining a distribution strategy for your business, the problem you’re really solving is, “what is the best way to get my product/service to my customers?” To answer this, there are a several important factors you must be considered but first you must understand the fundamental differences between distribution channels. At the…
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Common Startup Branding Mistakes
Being an entrepreneur and launching a brand isn’t easy. It takes a lot of skill, hard work and usually a little luck. When it comes to branding decisions, sometimes one bad mistake can derail even the best idea. To be sure, this doesn’t happen to you, make sure you avoid making any of these six…
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Should You Sell Through A Distributor
There are many reasons why a company might use a distributor as a channel to market. For instance, some companies need to increase market share and simply lack the sales competencies to capitalize on opportunities. Sometimes companies have a solid product offering, but lack the ability to get that product to market. Yet, sometimes companies…
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How To Integrate Sales & Marketing Strategies
Your Sales and Marketing strategy is your plan for reaching, engaging, and converting target prospects into profitable customers. It’s the charter that guides Marketing and Sales in their daily activities, helping them clarify shared objectives and how to achieve them. Without a strategy, all your Marketing and Sales activities and tactics might be for nothing.…
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Set Your Marketing Program Up For Success
You can’t run a successful business without marketing it. And while in today’s constantly changing landscape there is no “right” way to market, there are ways that will be optimal for your industry. The trick is finding these tactics. Strategies that work for another industry may not necessarily work for yours and vice versa. Even…
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Thought Leadership Vs Content Marketing Tactics
Thought leadership is getting a lot of attention among those aiming their marketing to increase brand recognition. So does content marketing, which is often touted for its ability to create top-of-funnel and marketing-qualified leads. So what are the differences in these two marketing strategies? Here are some thoughts to contemplate. Content marketing is top-down; thought leadership is…
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Pandemic Inflection Point Testing
Businesses begin with an idea that is tested to see who will buy, for how much, and whether the exercise can be repeated. Small businesses must retain this way of marketing, constantly testing new offerings to new segments while the company continues to market the things that make them revenue today. As the business collects new…
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Content Marketing Mistakes
Currently content marketing is one of the smartest investments a small business can make, especially if you are in the early startup stages. Content marketing is a way to provide your potential customers with informative content to questions they seek. According to a 2020 Hubspot survey around 40% of marketers say that content marketing is…
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How To Start Selling Digital Products
Despite fluctuations in the economy, eCommerce continues to flourish – and with technological advances expanding the use of online communities and bringing digital media consumption to the mainstream, it’s no wonder that digital products are still on the rise. Digital products have become so pervasive that nearly all of the top professional bloggers, speakers, and…
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Effective Sales Process Management
How do prospects decide to purchase your product or service? Does a single decision maker find a product or service and buy on the spot, or does s/he go through many steps and approvals first? Perhaps there are multiple people or departments involved in the decision, each with their own needs? Your sales process management…
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Why Direct-To-Customer Succeeds or Fails
The term Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) refers to companies that make products and sell them to consumers, usually online but some in their own branded stores, avoiding traditional multi-brand retailers like department stores. One example is Warby Parker (I just bought glasses from them) but there are many others. The concept is simple: sell the product to…
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Price/Value Strategy Entrepreneur Mistake
Pursuing a high or premium price strategy is frightening and risky, but for many companies, it is the best option. Recently, I mentored a business who is producing a high quality product that clearly differentiates from their competition. The company’s pricing strategy was to undercut their competitors in order to get a foothold in the…
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Causes For Low Sales Generation
When I started my first business, I was not envisioning an overnight success with orders pouring in night and day. Nevertheless, I was expecting some growth and hoped it would increase consistently as I built the company brand over a period of time. I spent considerable time and resources planning the marketing campaign and reaching…
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Grow Your Sales Pipeline
How do I get more leads? This is a common question posed by many consultants, entrepreneurs and organizations. Depending on your industry, the question may be even harder to answer these days. Creating engagement content that creates a lead magnet (free content given away in exchange for your audience’s contact information) is one of the…
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Brand Management Strategy
A branding strategy is essentially a roadmap for how you’ll develop and communicate your brand identity to customers. It involves defining who your target audience is, what type of branding content they might want or need from you and where they can find it (including social media channels). It’s about coming up with relevant brand values…
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Website Design Thoughts
Business owners wish to impress clients and prospects with their website design, and rightfully so. But today, your visitors want functionality and ease. Within seconds of downloading your page they expect to know who you are, what you have to offer, and how your offer of products or services will solve their “problem”. Fancy, over-designed…
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Inconvenient Truths About Content
Content marketing is, without a doubt, the most over-hyped and least-understood marketing tool for entrepreneurs and small businesses owners. And it’s certainly not the panacea it’s been made out to be. The interactive web (social media, blogs, videos, etc.) has made content marketing relatively easy and inexpensive. And therein lies the rub. As with entrepreneurship,…
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Common Sense Sales Strategy
As companies focus on content creation and delivery, the marketplace is being flooded with high-quality information. In fact, most of the companies I mentor have reported they are lost in a maze of options, choices and noise. The problem buyers (especially B2B) see is that there is too much high quality content information and that…
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Digital Ad ROI Measurement
The effectiveness of digital ads is wildly oversold. A large-scale study of ads on eBay found that brand search ad effectiveness was overestimated by up to 4,100%. A similar analysis of Facebook ads threw up a number of 4,000%. For all the data we have, it seems like companies still don’t have an answer to…
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Online Marketing or Spamming?
Online Practices Marketers Need to Leave in 2020 Doing these five things doesn’t make you a good marketer, it just makes you a spammer. Some things are better left behind in 2020, and that includes certain social media practices. Lately, there is a lot of talk about the dangers of social media and the addictive…
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Key To Writing A Marketing Message
The key to market messaging is to write in reverse. Writing in reverse is simple: You have to reverse the roles of the writer (you) with the recipient (your audience). Think in terms of the outcome wanted by the reader. For instance, never tell the reader how to feel. Instead use evocative, concrete words that…
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Content & The Sales Funnel
Some content is designed to engage those at the top of the buying funnel, some to continue the conversation with the buyer & nurture leads in the middle buying stages & some is for sales to convert prospective clients into buyers. This is applying content specific marketing to the old “Sales Funnel — Hook; Story;…
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Demand Generation
Get more referrals Did you know B2B prospects are four times more likely to close when referred by someone they trust in their industry? The key to getting more referrals is to build trust with your existing clients. Since the year 2020, we can’t afford to leave these relationships untapped. Asking your clients for referrals…
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Testing Your Marketing Strategy
In business, what gets measured gets managed…that’s especially true for marketing. It’s important to test your marketing strategy — you won’t know if you’re on the right track until you take the time to analyze the results of your efforts. Your marketing is the link between your product & your customers, so don’t treat it as an…
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Difference Between Markup & Margin
Markup is a term you hear tossed around from time-to-time…such as “that store really marks-up their products” but what does that actually mean? A markup is, technically, the amount thatʼs added to the cost of a product to derive the selling price. For example, a cheese retailer that wants to have a minimum of 50%…
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Become An Affiliate Marketer
An affiliate marketer promotes offers or products that relate to them and/or their interests. They often appear very organic, and most likely, you won’t notice that it is a promotion at all. Whether you are aware or not, you’ve seen affiliate links everywhere, from social media influencer’s subtle or not so subtle product promotions to…
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Paid Social Marketing
There are two kinds of social marketing: organic and paid. With audience demographics and interests becoming more diverse than ever, paid social marketing is an efficient way to target customers with demographics and interests that align with your business. It’s considered best practice to invest in social marketing at least in the beginning stages of…
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Bootstrapping Public Relations
Do-It-Yourself PR campaigns are difficult when bootstrapped, but still doable with the right strategies. The startup life is nothing short of an adventure that is made of a series of mini-quests along the way. Those quests become increasingly difficult to complete when operating in bootstrapped mode, which forces entrepreneurs to do more with less. The…
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Sales Process Steps
Any successful sales process is not based on how you want to sell; rather, it’s a reflection of how your customers want to buy. Over the past year, customers’ buying behavior has changed dramatically, so it is vital to tune, adapt or rebuild the sales process to reflect that change. One of the most significant…
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Applying Technology To Sales
Understanding the role technology can play in recovery and growth this year, sales leadership needs to consider taking a more holistic digital first approach. As more people adopt a digital mindset and use technology for almost everything, sales teams have to engage with customers in a relevant digital way. Making this shift lets sales leaders and…
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Think Inside Out To Avoid Branding Mistakes
It doesn’t matter how well you use marketing to tell your story if you miss what makes that story real. I still remember pre-pandemic when I went into a small coffee shop that served gourmet coffee, tea , artisan sandwiches, and gelato. There was a case with fresh-baked pastries, and it smelled like, well, gourmet…
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Sales Process Steps To Success
Any successful sales process is not based on how you want to sell; rather, it’s a reflection of how your customers want to buy. Over the past year, customers’ buying behavior has changed dramatically, so it is vital to tune, adapt or rebuild the sales process to reflect that change. One of the most significant…
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Branding Mistakes
Being an entrepreneur and launching a brand isn’t easy. It takes a lot of skill, hard work and usually a little luck. When it comes to branding decisions, sometimes one bad mistake can derail even the best idea. To be sure, this doesn’t happen to you, make sure you avoid making any of these six…
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Building Digital Customer Trust
As a long-time business executive and mentor to entrepreneurs, I see a definitive shift away from customer trust in traditional business messages, and the executives who deliver them. People no longer trust scripted messages and marketing “speak”. Today’s digitally distracted consumer is led to trust only things that they see with their own eyes. They…
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Marketing – Buyer Journey Map
What is the buyer’s journey? The buyer’s journey describes the process your buyers go through as they become aware of a problem, evaluate potential solutions to their problem, and ultimately decide on the specific solution that’s right for them. In marketing terms, reduce this down to three stages: awareness, consideration and decision (some call this…
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Sales Forecast – Backbone of the Business Plan
The sales forecast is the backbone of your business plan. People measure a business and its growth by sales, and your sales forecast sets the standard for expenses, profits and growth. Usually, sales forecasts are based on past sales data, industry-wide comparisons, and current economic trends. It is easier to come up with a sales…
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Message Integration
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, is such a cliché that it has spawned its own cliché: If it ain’t broke, break it. Unfortunately, that’s just what many companies do unwittingly to their branding programs, playing into the hands of public enemy No. 1 in today’s marketing environment: fragmentation. More and more television networks,…
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Modern B2B Buyers
In a world of information overload, overwhelmed B2B buyers face a crisis of confidence as they struggle to make large-scale purchase decisions. Here are some buying realities for sales leaders to anticipate and respond to customer. Customer satisfaction doesn’t drive growth The approach to provide “above and beyond” service doesn’t pay. Research finds that customer satisfaction…
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Conducting Market Research
You may have a great idea for a product or service, but before you go any further, first make sure there’s a market for it. So you have a great idea for a product. Or perhaps you have stumbled on a service that isn’t being offered by anyone else but one that you think is…
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Sales Funnel Content Checklist
A well-structured client acquisition process which runs across multiple communication platforms; Use metrics to guide the optimization of your funnel so you can hit your business KPIs (revenue and clients). The success of a digital advertising campaign depends on a variety of factors from targeting the right audience to converting them into customers. If you…
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Pricing Strategy for Products or Services
Properly pricing your product or service is key to your business’ success or failure. Smart pricing strategy starts with understanding the market price, which is the average price charged by all your competitors & the price at which their product or service is generally valued in the marketplace. You can then choose to charge a…
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Digital Sales Funnels
Digital Sales Funnel…A process comprised of a set of steps from the beginning of getting traffic to a landing page to the end till a part of that traffic makes a purchase…sales funnels differ across different business types…there is not a one-size-fits-all approach to funnels: B2B; Online Education; eCommerce; Subscription business. The key here is becoming…
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Marketing Failures During the Pandemic
During the pandemic, small business weaknesses are being exposed. Many small businesses are failing because they have not followed an integrated marketing/sales process. By this I mean that marketing, the sales personnel and all of the company employees must work together in the areas shown below such as the strategy, tools, and customer acquisition. Your…
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Pay Per Click Budget
Approximately 65 percent of all clicks made by searchers who are ready to make a purchase go to paid advertising (i.e., pay-per-click ads). So, what should you spend on PPC (pay-per-click or paid advertising)? This is a question many businesses ask. Regardless of whether you are starting out with PPC, launching a new strategy, or…
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Brand Loyalty And COVID
COVID-19 has already tested our patience, our focus, and our compassion. Now it could be testing our allegiance as well. Two recent studies show that U.S. consumers are shifting their loyalty to certain brands as the pandemic continues. And that has marketing departments scrambling to adjust how they connect with their audience. A July report…
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SWOT Analysis: Marketing Opportunities And Threats
The National Retail Federation found that 83% of shoppers say that convenience is a bigger priority now than it was five years ago, with online shoppers feeling even more strongly. They have a price they are willing to pay for features they deem to be most convenient, whether that be speedy delivery, a short time…