Trust me when I say there is nothing fluffy, cute or pretty about marketing. All these things are intangible. Marketing is tangible. It’s about facts, figures and evidence. It’s about the truth.
Last year I wrote about value oppositions, and overlapping needs and benefits. It is important to understand your own benefits, your customers’ needs and the benefits of your competitors to find your market niche.
A few blogs ago I wrote about the Strategyzer Value Proposition Canvas. A very useful model, as is the Business Model Generation Canvas. The only element that seems to be missing is the competitive one.
With Sports Direct and BHS in the news recently, I was reflecting on the relationship between employee engagement and business reputation with Elizabeth Judson, Head of Employment at Jolliffe & Co. LLP. How a business deals with customer complaints has an obvious impact on customer engagement and brand value. How a business deals with, or […]
I was discussing the plan-do-review cycle with David Ashworth of Flintloque the other day. The plan-do-review cycle is a classic continuous improvement model used in many business disciplines, not just marketing. David commented that he saw the model as spring not a ring.
International standards have been around for many years. Some small businesses find them invaluable, enabling sales and providing a point of differentiation; ISO 9001 (the quality standard) and ISO 13485 (the medical device standard) being two examples.
A great deal of marketing revolves around marketing planning. Writing down all you have learnt about your business, your customers and your competitors and how you fit into your marketplace and how you are going to make more profit from your products or services is a vital part of a successful business. Yet many businesses […]
Features and benefits are often a nutty problem to crack. Marketing always sells on benefits not features. Sometimes that’s easier said than done.
I’m a great believer in writing down your goals or in my field, your marketing objectives. For three reasons:
I often ask businesses what are the marketing challenges they face. It’s always interesting to get a business’s perspective and compare that with my own. I tend to work with small SMEs who don’t have a marketing manager or director. For them the main challenges tend to be: