The New Year and back to marketing basics

 As we just finished up the first week of 2011, there is a huge amount of drive and excitement.

Many businesses are going back to the basics.

You see, over the last decade, business had been very easy overall and many business owners got pretty lazy with how they did business.

With our latest evolution of the economy or as some people call it, “The reset” business owners have been forced to take along hard look at how they do business and how they look at the marketing of their business.

Many businesses going back to the basics and simplifying the thought process of how they do business this year.

In order to survive in the coming years, businesses need to take a few things in consideration in order to get ahead and be successful.

Provide More Value
For quite a while you could get away with being “as good as” the next guy because there was a huge abundance of business as people spent more money than they really should have.

Now people are being much more careful about what they spend their money on and who they spend it with.

You have to change your position and show as much value as possible in order to stand out from the competition.

People buy from who they know, like, and trust
I’m sure you've heard that one before but it REALLY has come to play again in the recent year. You cant just sell someone because you have a product. You have to build the relationship with them. People are tired of just being numbers and not having a relationship with the companies they buy from.

It's era of the big faceless corporation is gone. If you want your customers to have loyalty to you, you have to have loyalty to them as well.

Become a category of one
If you want to stand our from your competition, you cant just be another “me too” business. You need to market your business to a tighter niche and separate you company from the competition.

What is it that makes you different?

You can't just shout that you have “Great customer service” and expect people to believe you any more.

Great customer service should be a given.

Who do you really cater to and help the most?
That is how you can niche down to find your perfect customer.

Be passionate about your business
People will see that you are excited and they will want to be involved. The more passionate you are about your products, services and the vision of your company, the more people will pay attention and remember who you are. They will want to be part of that passion and hence more likely to do business with you than the next guy.