Small And Medium Size Business Expansion.
Let us say you have just moved into a business development position from a sales or marketing background. Normally, big enterprises provide their employees with training and orientation. Small and medium size companies, on the other hand, usually lack such processes. If you find yourself confused about what to do, read on. If you are one of those people who still want to know what it means to be a business developer, please find the time to read this.
Branding
There should be consistency in the communication theme that governs the all aspects of your brand. Whether online or offline your brand must reflect integration.
To ensure that your company is presented with one cohesive, unified and professional image, create and implement the below in compliance with your brand guidelines:
- Branded Folder
- A unified presentation template-make sure all employees use it
- Branded CD’s
- Generic Company Brochure
- Company Profile
- A unified company signature for emails- make sure all employees use it
- Product Catalogs
- Customer testimonials
- Press Releases
- Short 1-3 minute promotional videos for the company, its people and products be used on multiple social platforms such as the reception area of your company, YouTube, exhibitions, etc.
Research
Researching for local contracts, bids and opportunities of cooperation with other companies that your company can take, is a good way to increase your channels of revenue. Subscribing to industry related databases, forums and blogs can be of great value to you, as they provide detailed information regarding all projects and businesses within your area from concept to execution. Doing this will save you plenty of time that is normally consumed in collecting information. This will also vastly reduce your market intelligence efforts. Use them wisely as leverage over your competition. You may read about this in detail in my blog Business Development – Effective Strategies.
Performing market research is highly important to understand your company’s current position and determine where it is headed. Perform research about the industry you are in, the geographical area you cover and the market segment you are targeting. There are many readymade reports about the industry, market and country available over the internet that can be useful for you. They inform you about market trends and values. You can then calculate your market-share out of the total market value.
Advertising
Field Study- looks at how advertising impacts sales in numbers, like examining what happens to sales of a company’s products when advertising is increased or decreased by a company.
Lab Study – this basically means using artificial situations to evaluate advertising more effectively, by getting around the confounds imposed by nature. This allows the marketer to control sources of influence, sacrificing the use of real consumers in real settings. An advertising firm may hire people to come in and participate in such research.
Run frequent social media promotions. They have certainly proven to be more successful than coupons sent in the mail. These promotions can not only be run more frequently than sending coupons, they are more whimsical and engaging form of campaigning. Run games and quizzes and offer freebies to customers to earn more followers.
Putting up a blog or a fan page on one of the social media platforms will not ensure visitors. They sense that the flow of conversation is only one way. Experts claim that not being responsive and not participating in discussions or acknowledging comments is a sure-shot way to kill a community. Most companies that really care about the opinion of their customers, are constantly involved in the feedback and comments process, or even outsource the work to another company that can manage it for them. It is important to get involved with the customer, reader, fan, or whoever your target audience is.
One of the most surprising things when you look at small businesses is how many of them don’t have a website. You would think that in this day and age everybody would know how important a website is for all businesses. Clearly that is not the case. Any business that does not have a website is missing out on one of the most powerful marketing tools available to them. If you are a small business owner reading this article and wondering how to get a website for your business, contact HyperEffects. We are the answer to all your website creation and maintenance issues and queries.
