Basic Market Research for Small Business
Market research is not just for the big corporations. Small and medium-sized businesses can also conduct market research with relatively little expense. All that is required is a carefully structured, properly targeted approach to obtain invaluable market information....Effective Marketing for Your Company Uses Market Research
A large part of effective marketing is analysis. Effective marketing involves understanding the product or service you sell, its unique features, its strengths and weaknesses. It involves understanding your customers, their values, habits, needs, likes, dislikes and...Ethically Gathering Competitive Intelligence
It’s not just your own product or service which determines the success of your small business – what your competitors offer is just as important if you are trying to establish a profitable company. So, it is important that you know as much as possible about your...Everyone Wins with a Customer Advisory Board
Customers are the lifeblood of any business, but too many businesses don’t involve their customers in planning for the future. Unless management knows what its customers think – about the business, about the service levels, about the products and about the way their...Gen-X is Getting Older
Terms like “Gen-X” and “Gen-Y” are often used without knowing exactly what group is being talked about. It’s generally accepted that Gen-Xers were born between the mid-1960s and the mid-1970s, meaning that they’re now in their thirties and many are approaching a...
Generations, their Profiles and How to Connect
Keeping an Eye on Your Competitors
Very few businesses have a monopoly, as almost any product that is worth buying or selling will generate competition. But you need to have a detailed understanding of the products and services offered by your competitors, given that strong competitors could poach some...Metrics and Marketing
Metrics are an essential element of modern marketing. The numbers related to the processes of a business can be useful in a variety of ways, and one of their most important uses is measuring the success or otherwise of a marketing plan. Even small businesses can now...Of Needles and Haystacks: Successful Internet Searching – Part I
To try and attract just the information you want means appreciating 4 broad areas: 1. How to construct a question 2. How search engines work 3. How to evaluate what you find 4. When to call it quits, (or not even bother starting!) and look for an alternative source...Of Needles and Haystacks: Successful Internet Searching – Part II
In Part I we considered how to frame effective questions, and looked at the way search engines worked. Next we need to consider how to evaluate your findings, and when to pays it consider seeking out alternative information resources. Evaluating Your Findings...
PC World’s Google Shortcuts, Tips and Tricks
Spot the Trend and Get Ahead
Trend-spotting is big money these days. If you can spot the “next big thing” you could be among the first to cash in on it. What’s even better is that you don’t have to spend a lot of money to know what’s about to happen. Big companies increasingly gear themselves for...
The Big “If” in Conducting a Client Survey
The Consumer Shift to Value
Retail environments around the world are changing. The change is structural and irreversible, and it’s based on a shift to value as a purchasing goal. Retailers that offer what the consumer perceives as value will come out on top; those that can’t compete in this...What a Business Can Learn From Its Customers
Executives from departments that don’t normally have interaction with customers — IT for example, have learned that getting the customer to tell them what the business should do makes it much easier for the business to justify the costs of doing it. As one member of...Writing Questionnaires That Work
Being able to write a good questionnaire is essential if you’re going to become involved in business development or conduct research for your firm or for a client. You might already know the questions you want answered, but getting the right answers in a useful format...
Chris’ combination of academic credentials, career experience and temperament ideally suit his calling as a business development advisor. Clients say he has a mind for business and a heart for service.