Marketing For Power Packed Business Growth

In the age old race to do business we're all guilty of doing stuff to get clients regardless, almost, of whether you can work together profitably for both of you.

Alternatively, a business decides that, "Hey, marketing is a doddle I can do it all myself". That is absolutely true. However, two things stop a business taking this approach. Firstly, lack of time to get the required knowledge and keep up to date with the latest stuff. Secondly, as soon as clients appear the focus shifts to delivering the goods or services.

That means a business grows, if it grows, with a series of precipes when the sales have dried up and more marketing needs to be done to get the customers back!

In that scenario marketing is not a strategic element of the business.

In marketing there are lots of tactics that people are able to try. They include viral marketing, email campaigns, advertising, publicity, seminars and many others, including variants.

It's rather like having a ladder, where the tactics are the rungs. The rungs get you to the top of the ladder. The only thing is if the ladder is propped against a wall over which there is some dung all you get is dung. If it's propped against wall over which there is a hill of gold you get the gold! So it's not the rungs, or tactics, that are important but the decision as to which wall to prop your ladder against. That decision is an example of strategy!

Ok. You're not stupid you know what strategy is. But... Do you do it?

Without it you don't know where you going. So you could end up going nowhere. Interesting, eh?

It's suprising how you can suddenly miss the research you do on the Internet.

It's 2am in the UK now and I've been looking at a couple of sites after several days of seeing clients.

Interestingly enough I went to a seminar entitled Q-Bex put on by the Quantum organisation in Knutsford, near Manchester. I was very underwhelmed. Everything they were teaching about marketing appeared to be straight out of a Jay Abraham seminar. Don't get me wrong I use Jay's principles myself but I don't believe you need to make them appear as your own.

One of the things that got me was that they over-elaborated Jay's 3 ways to get customers and turned it into 7. That meant that the simple formula that Jay demonstrates for estimating the effect of a change on the bottom line is changed to massively increases the impact of change on the bottom line.

Anyway, enough of the rant. I love Jay's ideas and try and extend them with my own creativity, but not by making them more complex!

Video Center

To keep up with the latest trends in Internet marketing I tend to join a lot of lists.

I get many invitations to attend webinars from these lists. For those who are unsure Webinars are basically phone & internet based conference calls where numbers of people are taught marketing and other subjects.

One of the ones I went for was a Frank Kern one.

After the call we got this page of information. When I first looked at it I thought, yes I know all this.

But hey, I decided to go take a look anyway.

I'm glad I did as I picked up one or two tips that I hadn't known.

These videos will really help people to market products and services that people want.

Have a look yourself, see what you think.

Be seeing you.

David Ogilvy Quotes

There we go it does help to get the quote for the right person. Instead of searching for Satchi I should have been hunting for David Ogilvy! A great man who knew what tru business growth is all about. Getting great people to commit to your organisation and to your vision and to go beyond those bounds.

Jake's Quote of the Day Archive!

I was looking for a quote by Satchi to update my web site with. It's the one about always recruiting people who are better than you. I came upon this excellent site. I found some of the quotes were very touching. Particularly the ones about the impact you can have on your own children and people you know and work with without realsing that impact.

When I think back over the last 2 decades of business life I know that what I've done has been shaped by my childhood and the great (and one or two not so great) experiences I had there. The great experiences include having total freedom to roam all over the area where we lived. To ride my bike wherever I liked and knowing that my dad would collect me if I strayed too far (once having gone twenty five miles and running out of steam to get back against the Lincolnshire winter winds!). To have lived in other countries and seen their people and culture close up. To have been schooled in around 14 different schools and 14 different sets of friends! So yes some of those quotes resonate.

Check it out I know you'll find the same experience.

Enjoy!

Your Business Growth

I love Peter Drucker's comment that marketing and Innovation are the two most important parts of a business. Note that he doesn't include sales there at all!

Obviously sales is very important. But without marketing how do you know who to sell to, how much to sell it for and what you can sell them more of, or differently?

Deming is another who's philosohpy and principals I share. An article from the Los Angeles Times shows his importance as one of 50 people who most influenced business in the 20th century.

The more I think about business growth the more I'm convinced that many companies don't know what the phrase means.

You can understand why though. How do you measure business growth?

Is it growth in terms of employee numbers, locations, office space, internationally, turnover, staff, projects, products or almost anything else you care to think of?

I believe the true measure of growth is increased profit. Many businesses use turnover to measure growth.

Peter Thompson tells a story, which may be from somewhere else, that goes like this:

"It was a lovely summers day in Mexico. Two businessmen spotted an opportunity to market some freshly picked melons they'd just bought. So they took their lorry load of melons and parked it at a convenient and highly visible spot on the road into town. At the end of the day they'd sold every single melom. Success! One turned to the other and said 'we've sold every melon we had but we only got what we originally paid for them'. The other said we'd better bring two lorry loads next time'."

As this story shows they had great turnover but no profit!

Acorn Service is aimed at helping businesses to grow their profits. I'm the Managing Director and I use the Internet extensively to find new ideas, or to spark my own ideas to create new growth strategies and tactics.

My intention is that this blog will follow me round the Internet and as I find useful sites I will Blog them. firstly so that I can remember what they're about, secondly so you get a chance to see what if there are sites you could use too.

I'm currently getting a forum added to my web site , so I've been looking at other marketing sites for ideas. Probably one of the better ones that I've seen is Willie Crawford's

Until next time, adios!