No business can afford invisibility, which is why the way a business markets itself and how it plans its sales are vital to its development and growth.
Brand building can be a powerful growth strategy for businesses of any size - large, medium, or small. The key is to understand what it is you do best and to use brand awareness to communicate that message repeatedly across your target market.
Do you know what products or services your competitors are selling, how they are promoting them, what prices they are asking, how customers or clients are relating to them, and what they have planned for the future?
Direct marketing involves targeting individuals, preferably by name, with information about your product or service. This can be achieved through mail shots (conventional and e-mail), telephone calls, door-to-door sales or face-to-face contact.
A marketing audit enables you to review your company's strengths and weaknesses, priorities and market segments, internal make up and personality as a basis for developing a successful marketing strategy for the future.
Small businesses often do not know how much to spend on marketing. Decisions on expenditure are made on a 'whatever we can afford at the moment' basis, which among other things means that the marketing budget is the first to be squeezed when times are hard.
As from May 2008, a set of new rules, aimed at protecting people from unscrupulous businesses, came into effect in the biggest overhaul of consumer law for 40 years.
From the point of view of business, the media’s insatiable quest for the new and newsworthy represents something of an opportunity; an opportunity for free and extensive publicity.
