INTELLIGENCE IN BUSINESS
“BizBox” – Is it a brochure, a flyer or a sales kit? Often at BrandMoxie we have a client who comes to us asking for a ‘brochure’ without a clear strategy on what the piece of marketing collateral is intended for. Here we offer insight on how to fine tune your marketing collateral to fit your specific business needs. Usually marketing literature are required to help a customer make a buying decision. Because the development of such material can be costly in design, content creation and production, it is important for the business to determine the kind of ‘collateral’ required to achieve the specific business goal (which is almost always to convert a potential customer into a real customer). The “Hand Out and Leave Behind” Brochure As the name suggests, this is the brochure that you leave behind after your contact with the prospective customer. This brochure provides a good outline of your products and services and with it the specific benefits it offers the customer. It is important that your copy is punchy and has a clear ‘call to action.’ It also has to be relevant otherwise your ‘leave behind’ brochure will probably be left behind in the garbage bin! The “In Response’ Brochure This is the brochure that you send when someone is interested in your product or service and you want to provide information that could help them make a buying decision, basically to take them to a ‘stage two.’ This brochure should list all the strong benefits and features to persuade the customer, and hopefully close the deal. The Catalogue This is ‘brochure’ that is a listing usually in photos and prices. It is important that the catalogue does justice to the products otherwise it is best that it should be produced at all. So the quality of the photos and printing are immensely important to market the products. Such catalogues can be expensive to produce, and distribute, if they have many pages. These days ‘catalogue’ dependent businesses produce small printed versions and ask customers to browse more expanded online versions. The Point of Sale Flyer This is usually located strategically at retail points, and usually come in the form of a quick and brief read – often a flyer – to help the customer progress towards the buying decision as they come close to the ‘buying window.’ Or it is something the customer may scan over quickly and take with them to read at home. For the flyer convenience, visibility, attractive design and brevity of copy are all important. The Direct Mailer Sometimes a marketing strategy calls for a direct mail campaign, and this...
GROUPON, COBONE, GONABIT…SHOULD YOU USE THEM TO MARKET YOUR BUSINESS?
At BrandMoxie we work closely with entrepreneurs and SMEs in exploring new, affordable and efficient ways of marketing. Many of our clients face shrunken marketing budgets and slowing business cycles, and recently more and more have been seeking our advice on whether they should run marketing programmes through group buying websites such as Groupon, Cobone and Gonabit. These entrepreneurs see their competitors selling their services this way and wonder if it makes sense for them to do it as well. So for all of those who have asked us and wondered, read on…. As a business owner you scratch your head and think that since everyone is using group buying websites, then they must work. They work beautifully – with almost no caveats – if you’re the consumer. As customer you’re getting great value deals and promotions at lower price thresholds than ever. But – if you’re the service provider you have to assess the opportunity carefully before jumping in. Consider the business model: your service is offered for a limited time, to an unlimited number, and usually becomes active when a certain number of people join the deal. The powerful marketing catalyst is that it gets all those interested in ‘the deal’ to aggressively push the offer to friends and family. So the consumer gets a great deal, you make new sales (without spending money for marketing), and the group buying site gets its margin. Perfect win-win, right? Well, not always… The big advantage that these services offer a business owner is that they can build awareness about the company (and the offer) through their mass mailings. Groupon, for instance, sends their ‘Deal of the Day’ in the US to a subscriber list of 70 million customers! All the group buying websites require you, as the business owner, to offer a big discount over your usual price, and to pass on a sizeable margin, to the group buying site as its commission. The idea is that you would make less money per sale, but you make more on volume, and you win new customers as well. Where can it go wrong? For one, the discount you have to offer can sometimes be so steep that it cuts too much into your profit, and may ultimately not be worth it. That’s especially if you’re already on tight profit margins. If your profit margins are wider then you may be able to sustain offering the service at hefty discounts, in exchange for the promise of future returns. Clearly the advantage may be better to you if you’re a service business, such as a hairdresser, as opposed to a product provider,...
2 Minute Talk with Sultan Saeed Sultan Al Darmaki, Owner and Managing Director of the Al Darmaki Group
Topic: Managing staff 1) What key personality traits does an entrepreneur need for a successful business? Persistence: Never giving up no matter what mistakes you made or what you go through Open-Mindedness: Always listen to your employees, customers and other companies because there is always room for more things to learn and more improvements
2 Minute Talk with Hermoine Macura, CEO of Straight Street Media
Topic: Leaving full time work1) Before leaving the security of full-time employment, what should a new entrepreneur consider?
2 Minute Talk with Melissa Rancourt, Managing Director of Greenlight
Topic: Managing projects 1. Why is it important to put a strong plan into place before commencing a project? When a project lands on your desk, we often feel the urge to jump right in and immediately get started with the project steps. However, what we find is that projects are often more complex than they may appear. Also, it is common that the scope and objectives of the project may be understood differently by the project manager, the team members, the employees in the company the leaders of the organisation. This is the reason why it is necessary to really take the time to plan out the project well before getting started with the first step. In fact, we can’t emphasis this enough – the project planning phase takes some time and needs detailed thought buy-in from all stakeholders. Put the scope of the project down on paper. Get the agreement from the senior leadership who has oversight on the project. Ensure that you understand the relation of the project objectives and how it relates to the strategy and vision of the overall organisation. Decide ahead of time as to the project monitoring tools and communication methods you will use to maintain your project and involve your team. These are all elements of a strong plan that can be thought through before the action plan begins. 2. What are the keys to successfully managing a project? The first key to success in a project is to in fact, define what success is. I find that it is useful to bring the project team together and ask everyone, “What will be our signs of success during and after the project is completed?” This exercise can help detail objectives further and to bring out the intrinsic success factors that may align with both personal and organisational goals. The second key to success in a project is to communicate, communicate, communicate – in other words, you need to ensure that everyone who is impacted directly or indirectly in the project always knows the status of where things stand with the actions, budget, timing and issues. Communication needs to be clear and concise and targeted to the appropriate audience. The last key to success to mention is to plan for the worst, strive for the best. It is often the case that identifying and managing the risk to a project (and there are always, always risks to any project) is not identified until a problem occurs. A good project manager and a good project team will have had an exercise early on in the project to identify all the potential risks, determine...
