Your sustainable competitive advantage (SCA) Part 1
Fundamentally, no matter what its product or service, every business wants to increase sales and improve its profit margins. To support this, a business has to define its sustainable competitive advantage (SCA) – its capabilities, competences or products – that enable…
Are you the only one?
Here’s a challenge: if you had to fill in the following blanks, what would you put? My brand is the ONLY____________________ that ____________________. Put your area/sector such as deli or dealership or accountancy in the first space and then what makes you ‘the only…
Make an obligation to teach what you know
Recently, I’ve been listening to Stephen Bartlett – ‘The Diary of a CEO – The 33 Laws of Business and Life’ which is well worth listening to, I would recommend it to anyone developing a business. He talks about a lot of things and the first 2 laws have really…
Fonts and Colours are important 2
In the previous blog post, we referred to our marketing tactics course in which we talked about brand, it’s importance, how you need brand to assess each and every touch point between you and your customers, and how your brand has to be consistent. This led us to…
Embrace the chaos – Part 1
When we are delivering our Business Strategy course – specifically aimed at SMEs and startups – we talk a lot about strategy. What it is, how it works, and what to expect. We talk about it as a process conisisting of: Where am I now? Where do I want to be? How will I…
Your hedgehog
It’s likely that your business relies on offering various products or services to different customers. And hopefully, you’re doing pretty well at it. But what about your hedgehog? Based on the ancient Greek parable of The Fox and the Hedgehog in which the fox,…
We need to remember why we forget.
One definition of memory is ‘the ability to remember information, experiences, and people’. Sounds simple, and yet it’s not. A simple overview is that verbal short term memory stores elements that can be expressed through spoken language and visuo-spatial short term…
Extra Thoughts – Number 2
Extra Thoughts Think about how you gain your customers’ attention. What do you do now to make people notice your business? Because without gaining people’s attention, all your other marketing is a waste of time. The best content, the best social media, is a waste of…
What is marketing – Part 7 – building a relationship.
Remember that the key point of going on a date is to start building a relationship. Usually, to do this, you have to be: Interesting. And interested. This is key. You have to be engaging, funny, informative etc. but above all you have to be interesting to, and…
Stop trying so hard
We’ve all suffered last-minute nerves before public speaking events, business presentations, interviews, exams, the list goes on. You’ve done your preparation, you’ve got the answers to questions, and you absolutely know that you know your stuff, and yet, no matter…
What is marketing – Part 9 – why people fall out of love, why they stop loving us.
Ok, next step, lets think about from the opposite angle – why people fall out of love, why they stop loving us. Think of a TV program or series you loved. You watched every single episode without fail then for some reason you stopped and never got to the end. Or…
What is marketing – Part 8 – the ‘gorgeous’.
You’ve got people to love your company but how do you make it last? Once someone loves you, how do you keep them loving you? And once someone loves your company, how do you keep them loving your company? So yes, we need to create love for our company, but aren’t there…
Do more and less
This is an exercise we do with all of our coaching and mentoring clients. It’s one of the areas we talk about when we’re talking about time. Time being one of the 6 main areas that every small business and startup – in fact every business or anyone in business – has…
Our Strategy Business Model for SMES
This is the business model we use when we are discussing strategy with any SME, or startup. It covers the 6 main areas that every business has to master to really succeed. It’s represented as an atom, with destination as the nucleus, and the other areas orbiting…
Embrace the chaos – part 2
If there is one undeniable law of the universe it’s that entropy always increases. Entropy – or chaos – is the natural state of everything. Order and structure have to be forced in, created, managed. When it comes to the end of time, the universe should be a smooth,…
What are my New Year resolutions – and why am I telling you?
I have a number of New Year resolutions which I thought I’d share with you and of course, there’s a Marketing reason why I am… I am going to do at least two stand up open mic poetry nights. (The only person you know who is so modest that after writing a few poems…
What is marketing – Part 6
Marketing is like having a date We’ve all been on a date, whether it was pre-planned or spontaneous. It’s something we can all relate to, and we know what we’re ‘supposed’ to do. Imagine that you’re going out for a first date or to meet someone tonight. The objective…
What is marketing – Part 5
Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action If you have ever studied marketing, you might remember the standard marketing model of AIDA: Attention Interest Desire Action Get people’s ATTENTION. You make sure they notice you. You demand their time. Then make them…
What is marketing – Part 4
Now let’s look in more detail at marketing, starting with the basics. Look at the list below, think about each one, and then tick which you think is NOT a marketing decision. When I say marketing decision, I don’t mean a departmental decision in a larger company, I…
Your A, B, C and D players
We do an exercise with all of our coaching clients enabling them to look at their staff (we also do the same or similar with them about themselves – a bit of self reflection that goes a long way). Most businesses with staff have a mix of high performers and less high…
Extra Thoughts – Number 1
Through working in a business we all learn things, pick up ideas, and absorb concepts. What might you have learned over the last two years? Spend 10 minutes thinking of at least three things you have learned/do differently/will improve your business. For me, it was…
What is marketing – Part 3
Let me give you an example: Imagine that you’ve always wanted to own a restaurant and even though you really don’t have the experience, the knowledge, or the capacity to make it work, you still desperately want to do it. You are, however, a brilliant chef. You cook…
What is marketing – Part 2
So what is marketing actually? Marketing is where your business and your customers cross over, meet, and interact. One definition of marketing is: The delivery of a product or service to a customer, at a profit. So, to ‘do’ marketing, you need to offer a product or…
What is marketing? – Part 1
Just one thing If you remember nothing else from this section remember this: Marketing is a process driven, deliberate activity. It is not the events you do, the ads you place, the lovely brand logo you have developed, they are part of it, but they are not it. Every…
Fonts and colours are important
We recently ran a marketing tactics course for small business and startups and the first part focuses on brand – how your brand is important and how you need to assess each and every touch point between you and your customers to ensure that your brand is consistently…
Hard to read, hard to do
Scientifically, the more difficult something is to read, the more difficult we perceive it to be. The difficulty could be a font style which is demanding to read, small unclear print, or even an unfamiliar letter combination that makes a word difficult to say, but the…
What are your 3 to 4 brand words, and why should you spend time on them?
Your 3 to 4 words are the words or phrases that you use to define your brand. They are vital, because if you don’t understand your own business, and your own brand, then how can you present it effectively to your audience? The words need to reflect what the audience…
What are marketing territory maps and why do they matter
A territory map is a way of representing the space you own in the minds of your consumers. It is the way you present yourself and your business to your audience. It is a quick and easy way to benchmark your activity and focus your mind. Traditionally, a sales…
The impact of post-literacy
These days, consumers understand and communicate with brands so much through technology and multimedia that it could almost seem that they are post-literate. That for modern consumers, words don’t matter all that much and that literacy – the ability to read and write…
Marketing maturity? What, how, and when?
A recent study by Heinz Marketing and Integrate has looked at the how and why of marketing maturity in an environment driven by consumers. As consumers are increasingly somewhere on a spectrum between digitally fluent or at least more digitally astute, businesses need…
Using old style media, new style
When the BBC and Netflix collaboration, Dracula, aired in 2020, it was inevitably loved by some and less by others but generally, reviews were favourable. Written in 1897 by Bram Stoker, it’s a well-known story which has been dramatised many times, so how did the BBC,…
Retention or acquisition?
Should your marketing focus on retention or acquisition? It’s a tricky one. The last couple of years have inevitably focused on customer retention as many businesses have been fighting to survive. As we come up for air however, thoughts are turning towards new…
Aim for what’s reasonable
Despite a lack of formal training on how to be a good leader, it’s a role many people acquire at some point, yet often do so with no direct intention. Either way, once acquired, the requirement to guide, motivate and inspire people to achieve a shared vision remains….
Personalisation counts
Using a data-based approach to tailor a personalised offer to individual prospects by using data, can encourage them to purchase. The trick is how you define personalisation and what form it takes. Of course, it’s not like buying a made to measure suit – no one could…
So, what are the 4 golden questions?
This is a technique shared with me by Ian Kinnery, an exceptional business coach based in the North East. We run a business book group, and every month we attendees are ‘made’ to read a book that we wouldn’t normally read. Because we’re all quite experienced in…
Losing clients
It’s fair to say that in a way, the day you get a client is the day you start losing them. There is a scene in Mad Men – a drama about one of New York’s most prestigious, high-pressure, Madison Avenue advertising agencies, set in the 1960s – in which they have won a…
The Consistency Principle
Continuing the TV theme of the previous blog, why did my wife and I watch ‘Raised by Wolves’, all the way through to the end, when we started thinking it wasn’t that great after about 2/3 episodes? More recently, we watched ‘Losing Alice’ on Apple TV. Originally it…
Why don’t they love you any more?
So, why do people stop loving your product? When I was 13, the TV show I loved above all others was…wait for it…Blake’s 7. I never missed a week, and my devotion was total – until the final episode in which the main characters were killed off and I was very upset! At…
The real value of values
In our latest business book group, we got around to discussing the value of an organisation’s values. Now, everyone in the group felt that they had a clear set of values, and very much tried to stick to them. In business, they knew how they wanted to be, how they…
Why do people look down on comics?
Nowadays, when you say you like comics and superheroes, fewer people roll their eyes than they used to. But even today despite their widespread appeal, some – especially adults – look down on people who still like comics and perhaps even perceive them as childish. But…