Developing Your Market Positioning Strategy
Give Your Marketing Strategy a Solid Foundation How do you create strong brand positioning in your market? By developing a market positioning strategy. Marketing strategy can be intimidating. You understand sales, of course. But marketing? Why do you do it, and what’s it really for? And how do you write a positioning statement? Why you need marketing Marketing is one of the most powerful tools your business has. In the long term, it determines your success. It creates awareness, boosts reputation, and helps to develop and maintain demand. Marketing informs your customers about what you do, for who, how, and why. Without this, there will be no sales to make. When you have a … [Read more...]
How to Specialize Your Agency
How to Unlock the Advantages of Specialization in a Service Firm In the start-up world, there’s an obsession with finding your product-market fit -- that point where you find the right mix of features, benefits, pricing, and marketing messages that capture the needs and desires of your target market in a way that makes them come toward you, that makes closing deals easy. It sounds like a miracle, but I’ve seen it happen for creative agencies and service firms too. When they start out, they build some momentum, but then growth stalls. Some agency owners keep grinding on trying to push their way through it. Others pivot and innovate a new way to offer their services -- … [Read more...]
The Market Segmentation Process for Agencies: Strategies for Success
Like an Orange, Your Market Is Full of Juicy Segments When you see a marketing message that feels like it’s written directly to you, you are experiencing the value of Market Segmentation. When you segment your market, you can create messages and offers that are more targeted. As a result, people will respond more, your lead attrition will be lower, and the amount of work and effort you and your team have to do to land the sale will shrink. In short, segmentation is key to achieving your full potential of growth and profitability. In this article, we look at a few of the many benefits of employing marketing segmentation strategies and a simple process to start segmenting your … [Read more...]
Service Market Fit: Product Market Fit for Professional Service Firms
Are you searching for the pivot point that will transform your sales, but not sure what that looks like, never mind how it will happen? There’s a lot of talk about “product-market fit” in the start-up world -- that point where your product offering matches closely with the needs and aspirations of your ideal target market. When that happens, things change; your ideal clients buy more quickly, they share your solution with others, clients start coming to you instead of you always going to them. That same thing can happen with your creative agency or service business. Are you finding it hard to land clients? If folks aren’t lighting up when they hear … [Read more...]
How to Specialize Your Agency
How to Unlock the Advantages of Specialization in a Service Firm It can be difficult for small businesses to shift to a paradigm that will explode their growth. It’s hard to let go of what has got you here. Everything you do is the foundation of your success, right? That may be true, but it doesn’t mean that it is what will take you to the next level. It’s now time to discover what will drive your revenues forward, by unlocking the advantages of specialization. What is specialization in business? In our previous two articles, we’ve discussed product market fit and the segmentation process for agencies. Specializing your agency will help you to focus not only on the … [Read more...]
Most Common Hiring Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
Red Flags and Solutions to Get Your Hiring Process Back on Track Bad hires caused by common hiring mistakes. So easily avoided, too. Are you guilty of making them? If you are, how do you avoid them? In this article, I examine the top 10 hiring mistakes employers make. You’ll learn how to spot them, and how not to make them – the red flags and solutions that will take your hiring process to where you need it to be. The cost of making a bad hire There’s a great piece of research by the National Business Research Institute (NBRI) that details just how costly a bad hire is. They have calculated bad hires to cost as much as $300,000, depending on the seniority of the hire you make. A bad … [Read more...]
The Foolproof Hiring Process Checklist
Steps That Deliver Consistent Recruitment Results I’ve developed this hiring process checklist for businesses who have consistently hired the wrong person in the past, and for those who are hiring for the first time. If you have never made a bad hire yet, then congratulations – you’re already using this hiring template. I’ve spoken with hundreds of business owners and heard hundreds of hiring horror stories. Managers who have only made a handful of good hires in all their time of recruiting for talent. Others who rely on luck, hiring as many candidates as possible in the hope that one works out. This checklist for hiring employees takes the guesswork out of … [Read more...]
The Definitive Guide to Recruiting Creative Talent
Hire Creatives with These Executable Tips You need a creative hire. A designer, writer, artist, etc. An employee who will help you develop your brand and sell your services, doing the creative work that you have never mastered. But something is holding you back. You find the idea of hiring creative talent more than a little daunting. You won’;t find them in your usual networks. They speak a different language. How do you critique their work when it’s not in your sphere of expertise? 7 Tips for hiring creative talent Whether you need a copywriter to develop marketing material, a content writer to make your website pop, or a designer to create eye-catching websitesbrochures (plus a host … [Read more...]
4 Foolproof Steps to Hiring
Your Checklist for Hiring Employees Into Your Small Business To grow your business, you will have to hire people. There’s only so much you or your existing team can do. The problem is that you find hiring employees more than a little challenging. If the hiring process leaves you frustrated and fearful that your chosen candidate will turn out to be a failure, you’re not alone. I’ve had hundreds of business owners tell me their hiring horror stories. Others become so frustrated that they take potentially calamitous and costly hiring steps. Here’s a couple of examples: One executive told me that he has practically given up trying to predict who will be a … [Read more...]
4 Foolproof Steps to Hiring
Your Checklist for Hiring Employees Into Your Small Business To grow your business, you will have to hire people. There’s only so much you or your existing team can do. The problem is that you find hiring employees more than a little challenging. If the hiring process leaves you frustrated and fearful that your chosen candidate will turn out to be a failure, you’re not alone. I’ve had hundreds of business owners tell me their hiring horror stories. Others become so frustrated that they take potentially calamitous and costly hiring steps. Here’s a couple of examples: One executive told me that he has practically given up trying to predict who will be a … [Read more...]
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