I have been speaking to several people during November about how they feel business has been so far this year.
What has emerged is encouragingly consistent: from London to Glasgow, people have told a similar tale. Their story is that things have picked up during 2013, and that since August in particular, there has been a marked and noticeable improvement.
This is across several sectors and many different sizes of business.
Is that an experience that you have had? Are you noticing a difference in new business enquiries, more orders from existing clients and a general optimism from staff and customers?
If so, here are 5 actions to take to make the most of the situation:
Protect your existing customers. Your customers are key to expansion and growth in 2014. So, make sure you stay in touch with them via newsletter, e-mail, phone or in person. Make sure there is no doubt in their mind how much you value them and how important they are to you.
Plan out a new business drive for 2014. Where have your new customers come from? How have they found out about you? What sectors did they come from? Make the most of the knowledge you have gained from winning their business and put it to good use to win more customers. If you have areas of marketing that have been working for you in the past few months, invest more time and effort into those areas.
Are there marketing areas that you have neglected over the past few years? Is your website outdated, have you not updated your blogs for a while? Have you never got around to investigating the most appropriate social media areas for you? Now is the time to make sure that you are up to date online so that you don’t put off any new business enquiries.
Look at how successful your conversion process is. It’s great having more enquiries coming through, but how many are you actually converting into business? Look at the processes you use to keep a record of enquiries and how successful you have been at turning them into clients. What techniques are you using and what techniques could you use to speed up this process?
Finally, if the economy is set to get better over the coming months, ask yourself if you are ready to take advantage of it? Are you geared up (or can you get ready) to take advantage of an increase in orders? If you are currently operating at full capacity, how will you cope with extra orders? By creating spare capacity within your business, you will be far more inclined to operate a growth mentality than if you are subliminally telling yourself ‘we can’t cope with any more work’.
If you would like a free no obligation overview of your current marketing activity, The Ideal Marketing Company offer a 1 hour no obligation meeting to discuss what you are currently doing and to suggest low cost marketing ideas to help you achieve your objectives in 2014.
Call Alastair on 01858 374 170 or e-mail info@idealmarketingcompany.com for more details.
