Marketing and Sales
In business you need customers, sales and orders. Marketing isn’t solely about achieving this result. It’s also about retaining those customers and getting repeat business. In order to achieve that you must know your customers well.
- What do they want, need and desire?
- What benefits are they seeking?
- What problems do they need solving?
Marketing is a way to look holistically at your entire business. You must define who your customers are and what their core needs are to ensure your marketing offers appeal to those needs as your business grows.
With this in mind you can see that marketing includes everything that you do in your business life - all day, every day. Everything from e-mail and telephone answering to product and delivery – all of this will affect the way your customers, potential customers and partners view your business. Marketing is more than advertising, PR, literature or events, it is about creating a customer experience and ensuring your company delivers a clear value proposition.Because, how people perceive your product, service and brand will directly affect your profits.
You needn’t have big budgets to effectively market your business. By putting yourself in your customers’ shoes you can develop more targeted, specific and relevant campaigns to achieve results. If you know what they want, it is far easier to express that in your marketing messages. If you know who they are, it is far easier to get those messages in front of them by targeting the right mediums.
Useful Planning Tools
A Guide to Writing a Marketing Plan by Scavenger.
Find our more in our articles section
Planning a Social Media Strategy
Planning a Social Media Strategy by social media expert, Joanne Jacobs 
When the financial services sector make public claims about their intentions to mobilise social media to improve their service offering, you know that social media is no longer a mere fad. On closer inspection, the actual tasks for which the sector plan to use social media are for cheaper, more direct customer service and monitoring of investments and competitors in the market, so the actual deployment of social media is not terribly innovative, yet it is decidedly effective for their purposes. But what's crucial about this kind of public announcement is that it indicates the maturity of social media as a measurement tool for real-time changes in the marketplace, affecting stock prices, public reputation and customer loyalty.
Of course the problem with the strategies being presented by many organisations adopting social media is that they assume
Writing copy that sells
Words are powerful things. The best salespeople are blessed with the gift of the gab. A three-word slogan - The Real Thing, Just Do It, Every Little Helps - can help generate vast global sales.
Small businesses tend not to pay much attention to the words they use. They should. Good writing can make a huge difference to your company profile, the way people relate to your business and, ultimately, whether they buy.
While your business can't hope to match the marketing clout of the multinationals, you do have one huge advantage: you're actually doing something worthwhile. That means people are more likely to be receptive to your message.
Presentation Techniques
Brush up on your Presentation Techniques
Top Tips by Steve Lea 
In a recent survey conducted; it was found that death was a persons second worst fear. In fact public speaking ranked top in this list and for good reason. Nervous shakes, sweaty palms and the continuous use of 'erm' and 'like' are all signs of a lack of confidence and panic.
Here at Striding Out we aim to provide practical tips and information on how to combat your weak points and succeed in the hectic world of business.
Engaging Your Audience
- Use a multi-sensory presentation
- Remember to smile
- Research your audience
- Pause points for digestion
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Make it different and memorable
Marketing Strategy Outline
Position your product and service effectively in the market place, using our simple guidelines for developing a marketing stategy.
Check out Suzanne Cleal's 5 point plan below...
1. Customer understanding
Define customer needs - Define customer – segmentation and targeting - Understand customer behaviour – product/service usage, buying habits, price sensitivity
2. Market understanding
Define the market...
For new products – undertake market research, understand the market size, look at your market entry strategy and how to test your market.
For existing products – understand your market share and scan the market and continually undertake a competitor analysis
Managing Customer Relationships
By Alex Ormandy, http://www.webevolve.com/
Strong Relationships are essential when 80% of your business will come from existing clients, so how to engage and manage customers in the most effective way. Here are some top tips for you to follow below:-
Customers will return if...