A recent report has shown that 36% of SME’s have identified a gap in sales and marketing skills as restrictive for their businesses growth. The 2013 Albion Growth Report suggests that one in six businesses have identified a skills gap in the areas of sales and...
ONE OF THE great advantages of direct marketing is that you can test out different headlines, approaches, offers and in fact anything else to see how you can fine-tune and improve it. If you have a direct mail letter which is currently generating a five per cent...
WHEN TIMES are good, the phones are ringing and the e-mails are flying in filled with enquiries – who needs to ask where a new customer heard about you? Well actually you do. It is just as important to enquire during the good times as the difficult times. When I speak...
LOOK FOR additional products and services that you can offer to your existing clients. If you already have a range of products that are useful to your customers, it can be easy to think that this is all they will want to buy from you. You know your place in the market...
HOW MANY people are connected with your company? It may just be you, or you may have hundreds of people who work in different capacities. You may also have a number of suppliers, from a bank manager to a part-time bookkeeper. While you may have some people whose...
If you are thinking about your marketing and PR activity at the start of the year, here are a few questions that you might want to think about... Do I want to grow my company in 2013 and if so why? What did I do right last year? What could I have done better in 2012?...
Thank you so very much for the excellent service Hail-Safe has received from The Ideal Marketing Company. As a new-starter business with all the usual set-up costs, I had to think long and hard about whether I could justify yet more expense for marketing; especially...
Predictions of an economic slowdown or even a full blown recession have been rumbling for months. For the business owner this inevitably means a time to re-evaluate budgets and tighten up on spending. The first casualty in a recession is often the marketing...
Here are some more ideas on how to create a sucesful newsletter 1. Why not highlight a new trend that is developing in your (or even better your customers’) market? Again, this gives you credibility in the eyes of your customers. Note that, whilst it’s OK to...
Here are another 5 ideas on how to create happy customers... 1. Sort mistakes FAST. We all make mistakes and errors happen. One of the ways that a customer judges your business is how quickly you accept that you have made a mistake and how quickly you sort it out. If...
If you like this, you'll love the Ideal Marketing Minute
