20 Marketing Ideas To Stay Ahead In Business

3 Comments[Author: Success Mindset Category: Marketing Strategy ] Marketing ideas for your small business can help in attracting the clients on a large scale. In a small business, commercializing at times can really be a very daunting task. There are some ideas which could help you in grabbing the clients. You need not implement all these ideas at a time. Use one idea each day and take a massive action on that.
1. Business should be branded clearly: The business logo or the name should identify the

ultimate benefit that you would be offering. It should be short, simple and memorable.
2. Be seen in the right place: You need to first identify the target customers. The

advertisements should be based on these target customers.

3. Share your knowledge: Speak out on the business and the products that are being

offered. This piece of information may be really valuable for the clients.
4. Word of mouth: It can definitely be a most important marketing tool. Customers should

leave you with 100% satisfaction. They should be content with the services offered.
5. Look into the competition: You can use a mystery shopper to find out the exclusive

things and strategies the competitors are employing. You can check out their websites as well.
6. Offer discounts: Discount vouchers would really help in this case. Clients immediately

get attracted when they come to know about any discounts that are being offered.
7. Give-Aways: You can always give a free sample product to the customers. You can link

these products with the purchase.

8. Linked purchases: Snap a deal where the customer on purchasing a particular product

gets the other product at a reduced rate.

9. Reward schemes: Issue cards to the customers. This card has to be stamped every time

the clients make a purchase. Full card entitles the customer for a discount or free product.
10. Competitions: Run competitions and give exciting prizes to the winners. You can offer

the product of your business, which does not cost much.

11. Open house: Invite regular and potential customers to the party and test the latest

products that are on offer.

12. Get into online booking service: If you are in a hospitality industry, you can use this

service to capture the attention of the travelers.

13. Survey: After the purchase, ask the customer to fill a small form about his experience

with the business.

14. Collect business cards: You can collect these cards at the cash desk and offer monthly

draws. Give prizes to the lucky ones.

15. New image party: Invite everyone when you beautify your premises. 16. Professional brochure: The leaflet should not be unprofessional. Look for spelling and

grammatical mistakes.

17. Error free website: Your website should be devoid of any errors. 18. Superior telephone service: Calls should be responded within 3 rings. The answering

machine should be really professional.

19. Community visibility: Contribute to the community and gain a positive and a good

reputation.
20. Get involved in events and activities: Take part in charity events and increase the

popularity of your business.

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Marketing Strategies Required To Be The Best In Business

Add a Comment[Author: Success Mindset Category: Marketing Strategy ]

Marketing strategies should be plain and clear. This is the most crucial aspect for any business to succeed. Though it does not guarantee you success, but the chances of profitable growth are quite high. The marketing strategy that you adopt should always be flexible. Flexible approach helps in countering the unforeseen circumstances. The 5 steps of building a very strong marketing strategy are: 1. Understanding your strengths and making your weaknesses irrelevant Spend some valuable time in getting the SWOT analysis done. SWOT here refers to the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to a business. Conduct market research with the present clients to get a brief idea about your reputation and standing in the market. Email survey would help you in this regard. One has to be ready for praise as well as criticism. Strengths of your business might include:
Unique product features Specialist knowledge Flexible service Personal service

Always work on your strengths. Your weaknesses should not be evident at all. 2. Segment your market Small businesses generally fall into this trap. They think that their service or product will appeal to each and every individual. They do not segment the market with the fear that if they exclude some groups, it might limit their opportunity. Focus on the group who are a perfect fit to your products and services. Do a market research and identify the needs of that group. Based on the findings, try to develop effective marketing strategies. If you target a particular group, then the chances of succeeding are quite high. 3. Write down the marketing plan Once you get an idea about your strengths, target market and the market opportunity, you write down the marketing plan. Marketing plan will put your strategy in place. It also helps in formulating the actions required to make you achieve your goals. It will make your dream into a reality. The marketing plan should be

Specific Measurable Realistic Achievable Time-based

The marketing plan should be reviewed regularly because changes in the market are inevitable. 4. Decide on the tactics to be adopted Now you have to consider as to how you would reach your target market. The options are many. You can sell it directly or through a channel or with the help of a retailer. You can communicate your message to the customers through direct mail, public relations, and telemarketing, point of sale and online. Using several communication channels generally works well, but one has to stay disciplined or else you might burn up your budget. Finally, the channels you select must always be dictated by the target audience. 5. Measure your onward motion and refine Marketing is not at all a rocket science, but you should be able to get a fair picture of the happenings and the impact of the strategies in marketing. To measure your success, you can always ask the new customer as to how they have heard about the business. Once you track the potency of the present strategy, then you can focus on the future as well.

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7 Reasons Why Perfectionism Is A Barrier To Your Success

4 Comments[Author: Success Mindset Category: Success Mindset ]

Whether it is your business where you want to succeed or your personal life, your primary belief is that you need to attain perfection. You have been taught in school that you need to be perfect if you want to be recognized as a grown up. Heres a look at why perfectionism is the most damaging attitude to success.
1. Unrealistic expectations: If you are perfect, your business will make you a multimillionaire within a year. You might think that all the millionaires and billionaires of the world were just perfect and they always knew what they were doing. The truth is most of them floundered for years before being so successful. When you want to be complete in every aspect, you tend to set goals that are not humanly possible to achieve. When you fail to meet your goals, you lose confidence. 2. Make no mistake: Most of your success in life comes through the trial and error method. Have you seen somebody become a millionaire through his website? You probably are in awe of the person and desire to be perfect just like he is. It is too bad that you cant see how his website looked at the beginning. In all probability it was as bad as it could get. Successful entrepreneurs, whether online or otherwise, have succeeded only after they failed a dozen times and learned through their mistakes. Wanting to be perfect means that you are not really prepared for mistakes. If you dont make mistakes, you dont succeed. See how perfectionism is the exact opposite of success? 3. Seek no help: If you think you are perfect, and you let people know about it, you cannot ask for help. After all, perfect people know everything, and dont need any help at all. The fact however is that you are not perfect and you need to ask a lot of questions to succeed. Again, your perfectionism impedes you from getting the right answers and succeeding. 4. Planning: If you have a perfect plan for your business, it does not need any changes. The fact however is that external circumstances change and you need to adapt accordingly. If you have a perfectionist attitude, you wont be able to change your plan quickly enough, and you will always end up on the wrong side of success. 5. No change: When you aim to be perfect, you set out on a rigid path with meticulous plans in place. You chalk out every minute detail. If even one of these details does not seem to be coming to reality, you believe you are a failure.

6. Future focus: When you imagine a perfect future, you always lose focus on your present. Perfectionism leads to procrastination. You fail to realize that your future success depends heavily on hard work in the present. 7. Lost in detail: When you picture a perfect result, you will be confused by how to get the details right. You start focusing on the small, needles details and lose the big picture. Where do you want your business to be in the next 2 years? This is what you should always be looking at, but it should be compounded with smaller goals for every month. Perfectionism lets you get lost in the details, which will always lead to failure.

Remember, perfection is pretty much a myth. The day you become perfect, you will no longer grow and enjoy your life.
10 Steps To A Downright Killer Marketing Strategy Add a comment 4 comments to this article 1. Juzer Rangwala September 20, 2011 at 6:46 pm

While agreeing to quite a few of the comments made by Ms.Mirza, I would not agree to one point focussed by her that if you initially do not fail, you do not succeed. Many a big conglomorates is run in-house by family and is coined as family business, which over decades and decades are successful and if a new member of the family is inducted it is not that he/she fails rather he/she takes the reins in such a manner that acceleration towards success starts from day one. The fact that one looks out for perfection in all that he undertakes itself is proof enough that it is not a myth but a reality which sees one in the eye so that imperfections are weeded out. Well these are my simple views on the subject which I wanted to put forth.

mportance Of Plans And Strategies In A Successful Business Campaign

Add a Comment[Author: Success Mindset Category: Business Success ]

Marketing plan and strategies can help in building your overall profile, size, influence and the ability to leverage. This marketing plan can be developed only after doing some intensive research. Pilot study before putting up any plan and strategy would really be very useful and beneficial. Let us take a look at the eight steps that is required in developing your plan and building an effective marketing strategy. 1. Execute summary: There should be a quick run down of the synopsis and the overall commercializing plan. This will help you and others to identify the key and the important points. The summary should always be followed by the table of contents, so that the readers can find more particulars about each and every minute aspect. 2. Identify the current situation: Look at the present nature of the market. Just know about the competitors in the market and learn about the product that you are putting up in the market. Include data on performance and consider these aspects.
What are the performance indicators? Are you gaining something or slipping back? If you are slipping back, can it be fixed with better marketing? What they need? What they think? Where they stand?

Also include data relating to your stakeholders and consider the following things

3. SWOT analysis: Do a thorough SWOT analysis. It stands for strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats in the business. This would really help in countering any situation that you might probably face in the near or the distant future. 4. Marketing goals and issues: After the SWOT analysis is done, work out on the issues that you might have to focus your program and plan around. The issues should be listed out and your marketing plan should address these issues. Strategies and goals help you in achieving the desired marketing plan. 5. Marketing strategy: Strategy is nothing but the basic logic of, how you will achieve your goals and objectives. The target market should be outlined and your strategy should always revolve around the 6ps. Those are people, price, product, positioning, place and promotion. See as to how your strategy could be based on the 6ps. 6. Action plans: Every marketing strategy should be broken down to specific action plans. Action plans means what you would be doing to meet the targets and the objectives. The plans should specify:
When will it be done How much will it cost

Who is responsible

After this, make a detailed plan and follow it. The marketing activities should always coordinate with the other activities. 7. Resources required: Marketing plan requires resources like money, people and technology. After determining the required resources, go ahead and finalize the marketing budget. 8. Monitoring: Careful monitoring of the present marketing plan is very much important. It plays a crucial role. Review the status for every month or every quarter. Determine if the plan and the strategy are really working out or not. If not, do the required modification wherever necessary.