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Tuesday, March 19, 2013

5 Ideas to grow your business… Starting now



marketing ideas

1: Study the gold dust around you

If you find yourself reading a marketing email or mail shot today, stop! You have somepotential gold dust in front of you. Examine it and look for what it was that compelled you to open it. Then, think about what caused you to start reading it.
Finally, consider how you can make your own marketing more effective, by incorporating what you have just learned.

2: Offer something spectacularly exclusive

Think about offering an elite or exclusive version of your services. There will always be a market for exceptional service and gold-standard products. It’s an extremely profitable market, too.

3: Never underestimate the importance of the human touch

So much of what we do today can be automated, from Facebook updates and tweets, to auto-responder emails. Whilst there is a place for some automation, you can’t automate your way to success.
Business is all about people and your competitors are forgetting that. You can gain a huge advantage over them, if you look for opportunities to interact with people. Keep it as human as possible. Never automate anything, unless it’s essential. The cost in lost business can be staggering.

4: Let people Pick Your Brain, commercially

If you get people asking you for free advice and you place any commercial value on your time, consider offering a Pick My Brain service. It has 2 enormous benefits.
  1. Those who were purely intent on grabbing a freebie from you will vanish. The second they know there’s a fee, they go and look for another victim.
  2. It can prove to be an extremely valuable service for those who really do value your advice (and for you too).
Business is all about mutually beneficial relationships – not greedy people taking advantage of your expertise for their own selfish reasons.

5: Motivation alone is not the answer

When your business is heading in the wrong direction, you don’t need motivation to speed you up. You need guidance to get you on the right path. Working longer hours in an under performing business, just means you will go broke, faster. No matter how fast you row your boat in the wrong direction, you will still get lost.

What about you?

Do you have an idea, which you’d like to add to that list? Share your thoughts with a comment.

About The Author: Jim Connolly has worked in marketing for 24 years and had his own successful marketing business since the mid 1990's. Jim is known worldwide for his ability to help small businesses make massively more sales and boost their profits. Although Jim now works exclusively with small businesses, he has worked with people from some of the best known companies in the world. These include; The BBC, Disney, Rothschilds, Mitsibishi, Hewlett Packard, Edelman and AWD PLC plus many more. To see how he can help your small business, visit his blog atJim's Marketing Blog.