Creative Marketting ideas

1. Create relevant content on your website. Blog categories or an on-site article directory are excellent for this.
2. Publish articles in trade or local magazines. Most people think published work is more valuable than a simple blog post, and articles cost less than advertising in the same magazine.
3. Reuse content. If you have great content but no one is consuming it, repurpose it. Blog posts can be collated into an ebook, a webinar recording could become a subscriber-only video, a magazine article could be reprinted and distributed as a booklet…the possibilities are endless.
4. Try article marketing. Publishing articles online creates good backlinks to your website, shows expertise, builds credibility, and more. It’s also relatively affordable and easy to outsource.
5. Write a book or ebook. Books have more value than most other types of content and establish your expertise. You can sell them or offer them for free in exchange for email addresses.
6. Sponsor a local sports team. Send out a press release or feature article and get your logo on the team uniforms. This makes you a valuable community member and builds awareness.
7. Speak at seminars and teach workshops. You’ll get publicity from marketing the event and from the event itself.
8. Enter business award competitions. If you win, you get a badge on your website and a lot more sales. Even if you don’t win, you can still get lots of publicity if you place high enough and broadcast your participation.
9. Create your own business award competition. If there isn’t a competition in your industry or there’s no way you can compete in one, hosting your own unique competition creates buzz as other businesses scramble to win your award.
10. Host free events. Reporters are always looking for a good story. Give them what they want and get some free publicity by hosting a free event. You’ll get more response if there’s food or freebies involved. Use this list of 109 ways to get media attention to make the most of any event.
11. Network at your local Chamber of Commerce. This is a classic marketing idea for small businesses because it can yield big dividends. Association with the Chamber will make your events more credible, and you can find new partners or clients, or discover opportunities to teach or speak.
12. Join associations and use the provided resources, including local networking events, online forums, and job boards.
13. Build a referral network. Referrals and word of mouth are the most powerful advertising, so build relationships with professionals and other businesses you would happily refer your customers to–and who can send referrals your way, as well.
14. Make partnerships for co-promotion. Several related but non-competing businesses working together on a promotion can afford bigger ad space, better prizes, and other advertising expenses.
15. Be a people person. Never stop networking, follow all leads, and participate in conversations wherever you find them. Don’t be afraid of the phone, internet, email, or face-to-face meetings.
16. Send handwritten holiday, birthday, or thank you cards to past and current clients, valued partners, vendors in your referral network, connections who have helped you–everyone you can think of. This is a low-cost and unique marketing idea for small business, but many entrepreneurs have reported its effectiveness.

Read More

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETTING

Social media marketing refers to the process of gaining traffic or attention through social media sites.

Social media itself is a catch-all term for sites that may provide radically different social actions. For instance, Twitter is a social site designed to let people share short messages or “updates” with others. Facebook, in contrast is a full-blown social networking site that allows for sharing updates, photos, joining events and a variety of other activities.

Why would a search marketer — or a site about search engines — care about social media? The two are very closely related.

Social media often feeds into the discovery of new content such as news stories, and “discovery” is a search activity. Social media can also help build links that in turn support into SEO efforts. Many people also perform searches at social media sites to find social media content.

Read More

Types of Marketing

Marketing is a strategy used by companies to communicate with the consumer and make him knowledgeable about the various features of their products and services. It is an essential part of attracting the target buyers to a particular product, and companies use various innovative or tried-and-tested techniques to stay ahead of their competitors and make their place in the market.

• Affinity Marketing -  Also known as Partnership Marketing, this technique links complementary brands, thereby creating strategic partnerships that benefit both companies. While one adds value to existing customers by generating more income, the other builds new customer relationships.
• Alliance Marketing - Here two or more entities come together to pool in their resources to promote and sell a product or service, which will not only benefit their stakeholders, but also have a greater impact on the market.
• Ambush Marketing - This strategy is used by advertisers to capitalize on and associated themselves with a specific event without the payment of any sponsorship fee, thereby bringing down the value of sponsorship. It has sub-categories like direct or predatory ambushing or indirect ambushing by association, to name a few.
• Call to Action (CTA) Marketing - CTA is a part of inbound marketing used on websites in the form of a banner, text or graphic, where it is meant to prompt a person to click it and move into the conversion funnel, that is, from searching to navigating an online store to converting to a sale.
• Close Range Marketing (CRM) - Also known as Proximity Marketing, CRM uses Bluetooth technology or WiFi to promote their products and services to their customers at close proximity.
• Cloud Marketing - This refers to the type of marketing that takes place on the internet, where all the marketing resources and assets are transferred online so that the respective parties can develop, modify, utilise and share them.
• Community Marketing - This technique caters to the needs and requirements of the existing customers, as opposed to using resources to gather new consumers. This promotes loyalty and product satisfaction and also gives rise to word of mouth marketing among the community.
• Content Marketing - In this case, content is created and published on various platforms to give information about a certain product or service to potential customers and to influence them, without making a direct sales pitch.
• Cross-media Marketing - As the name suggests, multiple channels like emails, letters, web pages etc are used to give information about products and services to customers in the form of cross promotion.
• Database Marketing - This utilizes and information from database of customers or potential consumers to create customized communication strategies through any media in order to promote products and services.
• Digital Marketing - This strategy uses various digital devices like smartphones, computers, tablets or digital billboards to inform customers and business partners about its products. Internet Marketing is a key element in Digital Marketing.
• Direct Marketing - This is a wide term which refers to the technique where organizations communicate directly with the consumer through mail, email, texts, fliers and various promotional materials.
• Diversity Marketing - The aim of this strategy is to take into account the different diversities in a culture in terms of beliefs, expectations, tastes and needs and then create a customized marketing plan to target those consumers effectively.
• Evangelism Marketing - It is similar to word-of-mouth marketing, where a company develops customers who become voluntary advocates of a product and who promote its features and benefits on behalf of the company.
• Freebie Marketing - Here a particular item is sold at low rates, or is given away free, to boost the sales of another complimentary item or service.
• Free Sample Marketing - Unlike Freebie Marketing, this is not dependent on complimentary marketing, but rather consists of giving away a free sample of the product to influence the consumer to make the purchase.
• Guerrilla Marketing - Unconventional and inexpensive techniques with imagination, big crowds and a surprise element are used for marketing something, a popular example being flash mobs.

Read More

Business Skills

There are some skills you just can't do without as a business owner. As you build a team, of course, these responsibilities will filter out to people who specialise in them. But you will always benefit from having a grounding in each, and it's likely that in your early years you'll be doing most of the work yourself anyway.

Grasp of finances

• You can't escape numbers in business. You don't need to be an accountant by any means, but you do need to be able to grasp balance sheets, profit and loss sheets, and do basic bookkeeping.
• You have to be able to understand business models and pricing if you're going ot make a business work.
• Remember you can get an accountant to do the fiddly stuff. But even with an accountant on-side, you need to know what's going on too. It's your business and you would be very foolish to leave its most vital workings entirely in someone else's hands, however much you trust them.

Communication

• Communication covers everything from negotiating without damaging a relationship to coming up with a strong PR plan to encouraging people into your shop to boosting staff morale.
• You need to be able to communicate effectively with suppliers, employees, customers and investors.
• When you're starting up, you also need to communicate your business idea with passion and clarity to investors, banks, clients, customers, potential commercial partners - and anyone else you want to hear about your business.
• A good business-owner is polite and persuasive, calm and controlled, likeable and enthusiastic without being angry. They avoid jargon and keep it short and simple.

Negotiation

• It's not absolutely essential that you can drive a super-deal, but it'll certainly help your business' health if you're happy to have a bit of a barter.
• The better at bargaining you are, the more profit you'll make, and the better your business will grow and thrive.
• If you're not used to bargaining, get into the habit of asking for extra whenever you buy or order something from day-to-day - this may sounds silly, but getting into the habit now will shape your approach to business when you start up. It'll also show you can almost always get something extra or changed to how you want it if you just ask.
• The best bargaining is done with a smile. Charming your way to a great deal is far, far more effective than shouting resiliently. And always be polite, even when you're being firm.
• Read more in our smartbite on how to negotiate.

Organised

• Managing budgets stretching years ahead takes careful planning, and you need to be organised enough to handle it.
• You also have to have a positive and efficient approach to admin - of which there will be loads.
• Being scatterbrained about tax deadlines and bills and chasing payments is enough to kill a business. You've got to be on top of things at all times to make sure the money's coming in and out at all the right times.
• You also need to manage stock, invoices, day-to-day tax issues, and people - whether that's staff, cleaners, suppliers or contact databases.
• There are lots of legal and tax obligations a business must fulfil, and you need to be organised enough to deal with them to avoid fines and unnecessary complications.

Leadership

• Most businesses aiming to grow will take on employees at some stage of their developments. That means that unless you plan to be a one-man-show forever, you need to have good leadership skills.
• Knowing the boundary between employer and employee is crucial - you should be liked but not overly friendly, able to maintain authority but also inspiring, encouraging and understanding.
• You need to be able to recognise people's talent and use that to the business' advantage.
• Have regular assessments and progress chats (at least every six months) to make sure you employee is happy and that you're enabling them to develop - people work hardest when they're happiest.
• Read up on leadership techniques - there are hundreds of books on the subject in any mainstream bookshop or library.

IT

• You're almost certainly going to need a grasp of IT if you run a business. People get by without, but it's easier to just learn some basic skills to speed everything up in the future than plough on doing everything on paper.
• Using spreadsheets makes accounting and budgeting infinitely easier and more organised.
• Having a website for your business and being able to update it can be an invaluable marketing tool.
• You can also exploit social media to your advantage to gain more customers and build your brand

Read More

Important Things for a Business Development

New business development concerns all the activities involved in realizing new business opportunities, including product or service design, business model design, and marketing. When splitting business development into two parts, we have: ‘business’ and ‘development’. The first things that come into mind when looking at business are: economics, finance, managerial activities, competition, prices, marketing, etc. All of these keywords are related to risk and entrepreneurship and clearly indicate the primary scope of the term ‘business development’. Development is very abstract and can be linked with some of the following keywords: technological improvement, cost reduction, general welfare, improved relations, movement in a (positive) direction, etc.
In the traditional definition of Business development, Business Development is mostly seen as growing an enterprise, with a number of techniques. The mentioned techniques differ, but in fact all of them are about traditional marketing. The main question in these issues is: how to find, reach and approach customers and how to make/keep them satisfied, possibly with new products. (Kotler, 2006) Since this definition is limited and lacks some essential factors in business developing, a complete new definition of Business Development will be introduced. Of course, the theory on “traditional” marketing is still correct and can be adopted from the old definition. When supplying a solution, it is important to focus on the total offering you give instead of only focusing on the product or service.

Read More