Your Best Marketing Strategy
With so many choices available for marketing, how do we know what is the best investment for us? Well, there’s one marketing choice that is a great investment for everyone, no matter what type of business you’re in. What is this magic method? Superior customer service.
You may be wondering how customer service relates to marketing. Well, I believe everything we do when we interact with our customers is sending a message about how important we believe they are and how much we want to work with them. It is letting them know how well we can meet their needs – and isn’t that really what marketing is all about?
We’ve all heard it said that it is much less expensive to keep a customer than it is to get a new one. Well, it’s true in every business. So, given that we know it is less expensive (not to mention easier) to keep a customer than it […]
Stop focusing on getting more done? You may be thinking, “That’s just craziness! How can I accomplish my goals and increase productivity if I don’t focus on getting more done?” Well, we often spend so much time packing more into our days that the truly important work doesn’t ever get done. So, instead of focusing on getting more done, a more effective strategy is to focus doing the things that lead to success.
Business owners often approach me about coaching their problem employees. They want to make them do coaching to fix their weaknesses and bring them up to higher levels of performance. While this can occasionally be effective, more often than not there is only moderate improvement with this approach.
There are three general categories of marketing that form the “Marketing Triangle”: Active Marketing, Passive Marketing and Follow-up. It takes a commitment to all three categories to have a truly effective marketing campaign. How much emphasis you place in each category is determined by the type of business you have, as well as the stage your business is in. When you are brand new in business and working to get customers NOW, your approach will be different than when you are in an established business looking to gradually increase your customer base.
“They just won’t listen to me!” is a cry that I often hear from employers, significant others, parents, etc. What I have found is that when these same people commit to listening to the very folks they are frustrated with for not listening, magic occurs.
A young man was talking to his grandfather one day about his dilemma in deciding whether he should continue on his current path of pursuing his dreams even though the future was uncertain. He described his feeling inside as one of two dogs fighting.
With the new year rapidly approaching I find that many people are starting to think about New Year’s Resolutions and goals for new year. For some, this is a joyful experience and for others it is a painful one.
One way to become more profitable is to spend most of your time on the activities that make you money. But, what about all that other stuff you’re doing? There are three choices for handling tasks that are more profitable for you not to do: Elimination, Automation or Delegation.
When I decided the last month to begin hosting a discussion group at my home on ‘Voluntary Simplicity’, I really didn’t know what I was in for. I naturally tend to lead a pretty simple life. So, I thought that it would be a fun way to spend some quality time with my friends, learn about them on a deeper level, and, as a bonus, I would probably pick up a couple of interesting ideas.