business marketing Archives - Uno Deuce Multimedia

Guest Post: Ready for Growth? 4 Ways to Expand Your Business Marketing Efforts

Finding new avenues for marketing your goods and services is certainly one way to go about expanding your marketing outreach, but have you considered actually offering a greater diversity of goods and services? For as simple as this marketing strategy sounds in theory, understanding your customers at a deep enough level to know what they’ll want in the future can be challenging to say the least.

Conduct Market Research

You might have been able to see where this was going: to be more sure-footed about whatever marketing direction you take next, consider doing market research. Market research is all about uncovering more information on what your customers’ preferences and their needs. Sometimes only market research can uncover what customers truly want since the product that will fulfill their future needs hasn’t been invented yet!

Tap Existing Customers

You shouldn’t feel bashful about asking your current customers what they like about your current lineup of products and services in order to inform tomorrow’s product lineup and marketing outreach. It’s much more economical to sell trusted and newer products to current customers than go through the ordeal of wrangling new customers into the fold. In other words, marketing to current customers can have a much higher return on investment for your company.

The good news is that you’ve already established rapport with these customers and know a lot of information demographically about them. They might even be willing to share with you what they’re looking for out of your company!

Embrace New Marketing Technologies

The internet is a veritable treasure trove when it comes to expanding our marketing outreach. Between paid-per-click advertising, search engine optimization, and email marketing campaigns the only limitation is the depth of information that you have on your prospects and customers and your willingness to experiment.

You might also want to explore local search engine optimization and app development services in order to capitalize on the fact that your customers are largely online in terms of exploring your product lineup, connecting on social media, setting up appointments, and making online purchases.

Expand into Fresh Markets

The great thing about marketing in new territories is that you don’t necessarily have to open another brick-and-mortar location to be effective. You can use search engine optimization and social media marketing to your advantage and tailor your marketing to a brand-new demographic of customers. Fresh segments, niches, and locations can be extremely exciting. It’s all about bringing more customers into the fold.

Emma Sturgis

Emma is a freelance writer based out of Boston, MA. She writes most often on health and education. When not writing, she enjoys reading and watching film noir. Say hi on Twitter @EmmaSturgis2

Guest Post: Proactive Business: How to Self-Audit Your Company to Stay Ahead of the Market

Business today is more competitive than ever before. With the innovations taking place in every industry of today, you need to be sure that your company is staying ahead of the curve. By checking up on your company’s performance, you won’t have to worry that you’ll fall behind the market and lose out on customers, followers, and sales. Learn how to self-audit via the tips and tricks below so you can experience more growth and profit in your market:

Getting Financial Assessments Done

Finances are the lifeblood of any business. Without knowing your cash flow, projected expenses, and revenue numbers, you are not able to plan for the future. That is why it essential to get key insights into how your financial department is running and ensure that you’re hitting the benchmarks that your company needs to keep running. If you are in the tri-state area, for instance, you might consider utilizing an NJ financial benchmarking service, whether from sites such as rmrwealth.com or other popular financial management and advisory services to get a better picture of your financial realities. Keep an eye on your number trends and utilize the insight of professionals to make sure that your revenue is maintaining the right trends to growing your business.

Marketing Practices

If you are not marketing appropriately, then you are missing out on opportunities to grow your company. Marketing is what brings in new customers, as well as develops brand loyalty among retained customers. With the technological innovations in social media and other internet-related marketing opportunities, you need to do regular audits to stay ahead of the trends. You don’t want to expend resources into a marketing campaign that is using outdated methods, or you’ll risk losing out on the majority of consumer access. Make sure to have A/B testing and other marketing automation software in place so you can audit yourself easily.

Workplace Structure

You might feel like you have a great workplace culture. However, this is a very hard thing to monitor from the manager’s seat if you aren’t working to see things from within the day of the average employee. If you want to audit this part of your business and ensure you are producing the kind of culture that makes employees happy, you should consider bringing in a consultant. A professional is key if you want to understand where your culture is at, where it needs to be, and how to get there. This is important to avoid excessive turnover in your employee retention.

Communication Methods

In today’s day and age, you need to communicate clearly, effectively, and with lightning speed. This means keeping close contact with investors, maintaining ease of communication between internal departments, and ensuring that your customers have the access they need to your sales, marketing, and customer service. However, if you have certain blocks in your communication, it is hard to tell without auditing. One way to review your progress in this fashion is to set up communication channels that track your metrics like time of response, customer resolutions, and other key performance points. Many firms will run free audits on your customer contact methods while promoting their own sales software, whereas other professionals can be hired to run regular audits and provide solutions.

If you want to be successful in the business today, it requires a lot more than wishful thinking. You are no longer just competing with the company around the corner. Not only are you competing with other companies in your local market, but all around the world. Keeping track of where your company is and where it needs to be is important if you want to stay at the top of your industry, and audits should be conducted yearly to accomplish this.

Meghan Belnap is a freelance writer who enjoys spending time with her family. She loves being in the outdoors and exploring new opportunities whenever they arise. Meghan finds happiness in researching new topics that help to expand her horizons. You can often find her buried in a good book or out looking for an adventure. You can connect with her on Facebook right here and Twitter right here.