10 Effective Ways To Reduce Your Business Costs

1. Barter

If you have a business you should be bartering goods and services with other businesses. You should try to trade for something before you buy it. Barter deals usually require little or no money.

2. Network

Try networking your business with other businesses. You could trade leads or mailing lists. This will cut down on your marketing and advertising costs. You may also try bartering goods and services with them.

3. Wholesale/Bulk

You'll save money buying your business supplies in bulk quantities. You could get a membership at a wholesale warehouse or buy them through a mail order wholesaler. Buy the supplies you are always

running out of.

4. Free Stuff

You should try visiting the thousands of freebie sites on the internet before buying your business supplies. You can find free software, graphics, backgrounds, online business services etc.

5. Borrow/Rent

Have you ever purchased business equipment you only needed for a small period of time? You could have just borrowed the equipment from someone else or rented the equipment from a "rent-all" store.

6. Online/Offline Auctions

You can find lower prices on business supplies and equipment at online and offline auctions. I'm not saying all the time, but before you go pay retail for these items try bidding on them first.

7. Plan Ahead

Make a list of business supplies or equipment you'll need in the future. Keep an eye out for stores that have big sales. Purchase the supplies when they go on sale before you need them.

8. Used Stuff

If  your business equipment and supplies don't need to be new, buy them used. You can find used items at yard and garage sales, used stores, used stuff for sale message boards and newsgroups etc.

9. Negotiate

You should always try negotiate a lower price for any business equipment or supplies. It doesn't hurt to try. Pretend you are talking to a salesman at a car lot.

10. Search

You can always be searching for new suppliers for your business supplies and equipment. Look for suppliers with lower prices and better quality. Don't just be satisfied with a few.

Regards Mark 

Integrated Marketing  Copyright Mark Wheatley 2010 All Rights Reserved

Image by Yann Ropars via FlickrHow to measure your inbound marketing 


This post is on our new Blog check out the link below and find out more.


Ideas on what to measure with your online marketing and social media http://bit.ly/neQAfk

How To Ensure You Generate Enough Business For Your Website

Apart from pay per click advertising, search engine optimisation, exploiting social media such as LinkedIn YouTube Facebook etc. What else can you do to ensure you generate enough business for your Website?

Perhaps a better question is what should you do to generate enough business in total?

Smart online marketers; combine both online and offline marketing tactics and strategies to generate leads and sales for their businesses.

Then you are into a whole realm of different possibilities.

A great place to start is to work backwards from your annual sales objective.

How much turnover do you need at your average margin?

How much of your business is repeat business?

What is your average sales value?

How many customers stop using your services a year?

How many referrals do you generate?

These types of questions feed into your sales plan, which is concerned not only in answering them, but with the number of new leads required, to meet your annual objectives taking into account how many enquires you convert into sales; your closing percentage.

This could be via salespeople or on your website the same principles apply.

When you’ve figured all of this out, you will be in a position to know; how many leads a week, a month, a quarter you need to keep your business viable and hopefully growing.

When constructing your lead generation plan, some common situations to avoid include;

Having your ‘eggs in too few baskets,’ this is having too much business with too few customers or clients. The acid test here is; if you lost one or two of them what would happen to your business?

Not having enough lead generation methods in play - For example you rely on Pay Per Click and don’t do much else. More competitors enter the market, the price goes up of the Pay Per Click, followed by the quality and volume of leads go down. What would happen to your business, if this was your only lead generation strategy?

Spray and pray lead generation - Do a bit of everything and hope something sticks. This can be a very expensive way of marketing, it normally occurs when a business owner has not developed a marketing strategy, which should include a lead generation plan. All marketing can be and should be measured with returns on investment monitored.

Ineffective lead generation - This can occur when any of these situations are wrong; the message, (which could be the sales copy and the design) the offer, your USP (unique selling proposition), the correct medium, the target audience (The quality and responsiveness of the list).

Just one element being wrong can result in ineffective lead generation for example; if you have the best design, great product, a good offer and great sales copy, but you select a bad list, then it all starts to unwind.

Often when business owners suffer from ineffective lead generation, we hear comments such as ‘direct mail does not work, we’ve tried it,’ or ‘email marketing is a waste of time, it’s the spam filters,’ or ’nobody clicked through the website.’

There are plenty of examples of companies that use either of these mediums and make them work. Their lead generation efforts, using these methods are successful, because they have people that work for them, with the right skills.

I hope you’ve found this brief article thought provoking. If you’re not generating enough leads now to meet your sales plan, what’s been covered should help you pinpoint potential problem areas to avoid.

Beyond that, further help can be provide by our inbound marketing services at Integrated Marketing  who can help you put together strategies and provide agency services to work with you to generate more leads and sales. 

Should you wish to consider outsourcing parts of your lead generation strategies or explore how we can help you with practical ideas, call us during normal business hours on 01623 720022.

Take Care 




Regards 


Integrated Marketing  Copyright Mark Wheatley 2010 All Rights Reserved

If you don't tell them how will they know?

I was talking with a web business the other day that got some great products, web based applications.

Most of their business was gained via networking, and selling,  which is great, but they weren’t getting much business off the site.


The products were really useful, I cannot tell you too much, because I don’t wish to reveal the identity of the company. The problem was the sales copy on their website. For example, it was silent on the free offer that they were running and it did not tell the reader much at all.


These were a few pointers that I went through with them, about sales copy.


There should be a headline to draw the reader into the copy.


The copy should answer the question 'What's in it for me from the reader or listeners point of view.'


When you write copy put yourself in their shoes, asking yourself questions such as; why should I care to read this, how will this product or service  benefit me? What do I need to do to take advantage of this offer, what problems does this product or service solve for me? How will it make my life better, more enjoyable easier, more fun? Are these people genuine is it worth building a relationship with them?


Does the copy explain the features and benefits of the product or service?


What will your call to action be? (Fill in the form, the coupon, sign up for the teleseminar, webinar, call the special number etc).


These are a few of the questions that I would focus on when writing sales copy. These same principles and questions apply tor a website, email, brochure or a script, for a video or audio.


Testimonials should echo what's being said and ideally (for business products and services) denominate the benefit, in terms of time saved, money saved or money made. ROI is useful as well.


Before and after is another useful concept to use.


If you don’t explain or demonstrate what your product or service is about, don’t expect many sales.


If you need help with sales copy you have my details.




Take Care 




Regards Mark 




CONSULTING RECRUITMENT MARKETING SALES


MARK WHEATLEY associates provide business improvement services to help businesses and practices increase sales and profits. Services include Sales and Marketing Recruitment, Marketing Consulting, other Marketing Services, Sales Consulting and Performance Improvement.  They are based in Nottingham in the East Midlands UK.

A results driven approach to your business success


http://www.wheatleyassociates.org/ Copyright Mark Wheatley 2010 All Rights Reserved

Reduce your working week

Do you want to reduce your working week?

Or do you want to simply want free up more time 'to work on the business.'

If you are time pressured at the moment, I want to give you one way of lifting some of the pressure that you might be under.

The only condition is, you have to be prepared to change something yourself to free up some time. 

The trick is leverage; how do I leverage myself how can I automate, how can I get other people to do my work? People that might work for you that you employ or independent contractors that work for you.

Concentrate your efforts on where you add the most value, outsource or train other people to complete the tasks that are low value which are stopping you doing the work where you make the most profit or value added to your business or organisation.


Take Care

Regards Mark

Integrated Marketing  Copyright Mark Wheatley 2010 All Rights Reserved