Why Market?

Against fast-moving economic and market backdrops, we understand it can be a challenge to balance needs and demands of your clients. Here are a few simple marketing techniques to help your business to thrive in any environment.

  • There’s more to marketing than advertising and promotion – marketing helps you to structure your business effectively
  • There are three fundamental factors that can help improve your business productivity: what you offer; who you offer it to; and how much to charge.
  • All clients are important; however, if you can identify your most significant clients, you can organise and prioritise your time 

Q. The difference between marketing and advertising

A: Marketing is not just about promotion, and advertising your business through various media channels in an attempt to attract new clients. Instead, marketing is more about re-structuring your business to find the most effective way of making a profit.
 

"Marketing is more about re-structuring your business to find the most effective way of making a profit."

 

Q. So what does this involve?

A: Optimizing the productivity of your business involves three key, fundamental processes. These are: what to offer (how good is the product you’re trying to sell), how much to charge (walking the fine line between a bargain and pricing yourself out of the market), and who to offer it to (in laymen’s terms, what kind of clients are buying what kind of products).
 

Q. Okay fair enough, but how can I put this into practice?

A: If you try and enact these three processes, you’ll inevitably realize that 80% of your profit comes from just 20% of your clients – you’ll be shocked to see just how much time you spend with clients who offer no payback.

Now hang on a minute…

Obviously all clients are important, but there are a number of efficient, time saving measures that can be put in place to help you handle these smaller clients, giving you more time to focus on the big spenders. How about agreeing a retainer fee for a basic service level, or hire a junior to look after them? Or maybe you only contact them via post from now on? Once you’ve done this, you can see what those most valuable clients have in common (life stage, income, profession etc), and focus your business on collecting more of these types of people.
 

Q. So what’s the risk?

A: Of course there’s going to be a fall out, but surely all businesses have to adapt to survive in this post-RDR world? For those clients who do leave you, you’ll gain several hours which you can then put into the more successful part of the business, finding new clients who are more in-line with this new structure, and benefit you in the long run.