Sales and marketing

No business can afford invisibility, which is why the way a business markets itself and how it plans its sales are vital to its development and growth.

Brand awareness: making your mark

Brand building can be a powerful growth strategy for businesses of any size - large, medium, or small. The key is to understand what it is you do best and to use brand awareness to communicate that message repeatedly across your target market.

The value of a marketing plan

For marketing to be effective, whatever the size of the business, it is important to work to a plan.

Assess your competitors

Do you know what products or services your competitors are selling, how they are promoting them, what prices they are asking, how customers or clients are relating to them, and what they have planned for the future?

Direct marketing

Direct marketing involves targeting individuals, preferably by name, with information about your product or service. This can be achieved through mail shots (conventional and e-mail), telephone calls, door-to-door sales or face-to-face contact.

Growing the top line with a marketing audit

A marketing audit enables you to review your company's strengths and weaknesses, priorities and market segments, internal make up and personality as a basis for developing a successful marketing strategy for the future.

How much to spend on marketing?

Small businesses often do not know how much to spend on marketing. Decisions on expenditure are made on a 'whatever we can afford at the moment' basis, which among other things means that the marketing budget is the first to be squeezed when times are hard.

Sell benefits not features

Before selling your product or service you need to establish what makes it sellable and unique.

SWOT analysis - look before you market

It is one thing to be aware of all the things you should be doing; it is another to find the time to do them!

Distance Selling Regulations: an introduction

With more and more businesses now selling online, it is important that they bear in mind the rules that govern what is known as distance selling.

Advertising: complying with the rules

As from May 2008, a set of new rules, aimed at protecting people from unscrupulous businesses, came into effect in the biggest overhaul of consumer law for 40 years.

Promote your business: PR

From the point of view of business, the media’s insatiable quest for the new and newsworthy represents something of an opportunity; an opportunity for free and extensive publicity.

Promote your business: advertising

We are surrounded by advertising in our every day lives. Viral online campaigns infiltrate the internet.

Promote your business: marketing

Marketing, simply put, is the action of persuading customers to identify with and then to buy a firm’s goods or services.