Brand Leadership | Teik Oh

Marketing Plans – Why and How?

Nov 08 2016

Do you need a Marketing Plan?

You run a small business, surely not? I mean, you’re not Amazon, but customers come in don’t they? They find you, and sometimes they even refer their friends to you. Sales are ticking along smoothly, why would you need a marketing plan?

Well, let me ask you: could you improve your sales?

When you started your business, what was your dream? Is your business shaping up that way now?

If you are honest, most of you would say that in your “dream” your business was running a little better than in reality, right? Let’s face it, how many of us “dreamt” of being middle of the road?

Yes, you do need a marketing plan or you are just cruising. If you don’t market, you’ll end up floating with the tide, not going where you want but going where it takes you. Is that the way to grow your business?

A marketing plan need not be this expensive, consultant-led exercise that you don’t understand. Why don’t you use your knowledge of your own business to design a targeted set of marketing activities that will reach out to your ideal customers?

Here’s how –

Here are the seven easy steps again:-

Get to really know your product or service from the viewpoint of your customer. What are the benefits that it gives your customer? What needs does it fulfil?
Get to know your ideal customer. Where do they come from? What’s their profile? Why do they need your product? What are their personal traits and emotional triggers?
Set up your whole business, not just your product, to meet the customers’ expectations. How do they like to receive your product? What happens after sale? What responsiveness must you have? Do they like the experience gift-wrapped or just off the shelf?
Utilise the right pricing strategy – make money, but set your price so that it attracts the customer. Should it be priced as a luxury category or a cheap one? Do you price for the unique experience or to compete?
Choose the appropriate marketing activities. Are they appropriate for the stage of the sales funnel you are pitching at? Are they appropriate for your market and the characteristics of that market?
Schedule the campaign. Build your marketing activities so that they reinforce each other, not some random set of happenings.
Put it together, and while doing so, make yourself accountable with inbuilt monitoring and measurement systems.

If you want to know more, click here to read about my SMART Marketing Planning system.

And don’t forget, get over to the website and post a comment on your experiences in marketing your business. While you’re there, subscribe and I’ll make sure that you get more free tips, ideas and tools to grow your business sent to you every week.

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What Makes a Business Resilient?

Oct 04 2016

As an entrepreneur and small business owner, I know that you want to build a long term business to give you a great life with your loved ones, and to provide financial freedom and independence. In order to do so, the business you are creating needs to be resilient – resilient to bad fortune, bad times, strong competition, unpredicted hardship, and everything else, right?

So what makes a business resilient and how do you create such an ecosystem in your business?

Let’s get straight into it – in this video I give you the three characteristics of resilient businesses that I have distilled from over 35 years of working with small businesses and resilient entrepreneurs all over the world.

I truly mean it when I say that in my experience, all over the world and under any adverse conditions, the entrepreneurs and small businesses I have seen ride the bad times and not just survive but improve, are those who have those three characteristics. This means to me that they are common characteristics you need to have, wherever you are, facing whatever situation, in whatever business, selling whatever product or service!

If they’re common characteristics then learn from others and use their formula.

If you want to know more about how to grow your business into that long lasting dream, go to my website and see all the free tools, ideas, systems and downloads there.

You might also want to get my free download “Entrepreneur’s Business Health Checklist”, just click here.

Are you reading or watching this on one of my social media channels or from an email forwarded to you? Then you’re missing out on getting these free systems and ideas to grow your business delivered directly to your inbox every week. Click here to give me your name and email and I will send them out to you every week, for free.

PS Like you I hate spam so I guarantee you that I will never sell or give your details to anyone else!

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How to Win Customers’ Hearts and Minds!

Jul 05 2016

In marketing language, today’s customers are less “sticky”. In everyday tongues this means that today your customers are more choosy and hesitant!

They have access to a heck of a lot more information about your products and services, and those of your competitors. The modern economic situation means they may be more hesitant when they are buying more discretionary stuff – sure they still buy food, but they may have cut back on eating out.

The best businesses have beat this trend by having outstandingly loyal customers. The best businesses have won over their customers’ hearts and minds and have won the psychological trust war. How do you do this too?

Watch this video for the 5 psychological tactics to win your customers’ hearts and minds.

I’ll summarise them for you here:-

Highlight long term value;
Use groupthink;
Focus on suitability not price;
Create a sense of urgency; and
Build the collective experience.

I’d love to hear how you build customer loyalty – click here to post a comment on the 3 top ways you build customer loyalty.

If you’re reading and watching this in one of my social media channels, guess what? You’re missing out on weekly new updates that can grow your business – why not sign up here to get these updates delivered directly to your inbox (and hey, I hate spam so I promise never to sell or give away your information).

I’ve also been getting comments from my social media channels that tell me there are a lot of followers who aren’t in business yet but are thinking of starting their own business – well I have good news for you. I’ve created a new online training course especially for you called “How To Start Your Own Business”. In 5 lessons, you will be taken through how to get yourself personally ready to start a business, how to prove your business concept, how to design every component of your business into a business model that fulfils your dream, how to create your business plan, and finally what to look out for in tax and business registrations, agreements, and how to choose good advisors.

Click here to purchase the course for only $97 AUD!

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Set The Right Price

Jun 28 2016

This is probably the question I get asked the most, especially for first time startups: “What should I charge for my service or product?”

Let’s start with the obvious – you should charge a price that makes you a profit or that is a fair reward for your efforts.

Okay, now that’s out of the way, your pricing schedule is an important part of your business, its branding, and your marketing. You can set loss-leader prices, attracting people to your site or store, so that they can then see all the other stuff you offer. You can set premium prices, distinguishing your quality or scarcity from your competition. You can set a price based on your skill – doctors have to attend many, many years of medical school to accumulate skills you and I cannot hope to have. You can set a price based on experience – an experienced plumber can resolve your plumbing problems in half the time and twice as well as one just starting out.

Watch this to learn about the 5 factors that determine how you should be setting your price.

Here they are again:

Supply and demand
The niche
Perceived Value
A high return on the customer’s investment
Customer satisfaction

This is where the fun starts after you’ve watched the video – click here and comment on how you set your price.

I have also prepared an Entrepreneur’s Business Health Checklist for you to check off the 6 key result areas for your business – click here and give me your email to get the download.

Now if you are a budding entrepreneur thinking about starting your own business, I hope reading and watching my blog and video posts are helping. But maybe not! Maybe they are just adding to your overwhelm about “Where do I even start?”

If that’s the case I have created an online training course especially for you. If you are a first time entrepreneur, or you have a great idea for a business, or if you’re working for a corporate but think you can do it better – this is the training course you need.

It’s called “How To Start Your Own Business” and in 5 online video lessons and 10 downloadable worksheets and information sheets, you will be taken through a step by step process to get yourself ready, test your idea in the market, design your business model, plan ahead, and take care of all the little legal and other details before you open your doors. It will clarify everything for you! As an online course you can take it at your own pace, and it is available to you forever for a one time payment.

Click here to get the course for only $97 AUD!

Comment 13

Good Business or Great Business?

May 31 2016

I was talking to a client recently when he mentioned that he had been reading my posts in my blog and thought that while they were interesting he didn’t need to know all the stuff I wrote about planning, marketing, and organising people. He said he thought he was a good business man, in his words “not brilliant but I know my stuff”, because he had learned how to run his business through experience.

Now let me set the scene. Let’s call him Will.

Will is not an old business person dyed in the wool in the old ways. He’s in his early 40’s and while he struggles a little bit with tech, he uses the internet a lot to research and find new suppliers and markets. He’s not what I’d call conservative and he has run his business successfully for over 10 years.

What do I mean by “successfully”?

Well, it’s a small business that supplies raw product to manufacturers. It’s not a big market so Will keeps his small customer list happy and has only lost customers when the customers have gone out of business, never through dissatisfaction. As a small business with a small customer list Will doesn’t care about brand – he just makes sure his product is of the right quality. He was caught out once when he bought in a cheaper product but as it failed in use he withdrew it quickly. Will only employs three people, they are labourers and work part time so there’s no real need for organisation charts and detailed job descriptions, they do what he tells them to do as he needs them to do things. He calculates a more or less fixed margin to his inventory so that a percentage is attached to his purchase price – up to a point where he can decide to reduce the margin to larger customers or more popular products, which he has had to do several times when he was asked to.

And Will makes money. Over the 10 years he’s probably saved over a million.

So what’s wrong with that? That’s pretty successful huh? Read More

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Increase your sales through a highly focused marketing plan!

SMART Marketing: In this book, the owners of a small business are led through the SMART Marketing 7 Step Process to produce a marketing plan targeted at their most desirable customers. Any business can use these principles and in 4 to 6 weeks implement a plan to get them through the door! Find out how...

The SMART Marketing Workbook: Companion to “SMART Marketing”, this workbook sets out the SMART Marketing process in 7 workshops for you and your staff to complete questionnaires and templates that at the end, form the marketing plan you need to sell your REAL product to your REAL customer! View now...

Category - Brand Leadership

Get FREE weekly ideas to grow your business

Marketing Plans – Why and How?

What Makes a Business Resilient?

How to Win Customers’ Hearts and Minds!

Set The Right Price

Click here to get the course for only $97 AUD!

Good Business or Great Business?