Sharina, a reader asks: “What shall I do to make my business grow? Can you give me some tips on how to make my business earn more profit?” “If my business does not earn enough, will I still continue it, hoping for good times, or will I close shop?”
Sharina told me, by e-mail, that she is a Singaporean who lives in Hong Kong, and owns a store selling cell phones and cell phone accessories in Hongkong.
Indeed, as a management consultant, I am well aware that many businesses could not earn enough, while a great number go bankrupt. There are many studies that every year about 80% of new businesses die. Even existing enterprises collapse.
What are the reasons why businesses collapse and fail?
Well, the main reason is still the same year in and year out: lack of marketing strategies.
Sure, the market is there. People are buying products and services everyday to meet their needs and wants.
However, it is the lack of strategies or the inability of the owners of these failed businesses to sell to their target market, to their niche, that is the main cause of business failure.
I’m always saying that marketing is the most important function of business, because without a market there is no business. Thus, to make your business survive, you need marketing strategies.
To make your business grow, you need marketing strategies. To make your business profitable, you need marketing strategies.
The following are the five tested marketing strategies to help you grow your business and make it profitable.
1. What is your business? What is your business mission? Why does your company exist? What is its reason for existence? These are the basic questions. Like in any human situation, you cannot handle any business unless you know what it is for.
Therefore, you must know why you have put up your business in the first place. This is the first step in designing marketing strategies.
2. Who are your customers? Your business is to serve your customers to generate revenue and profit. It is important to have a niche in the market, that segment, class or groups of customers who need your products and services, and serve them well.
In the face of competition, having a market niche is a key to business success.
3. What are your Strengths and Weaknesses? It is necessary to know your strengths, for example, quality products and services, friendly customer service, good customer relations, competitive pricing, good location. It is also important to know your weaknesses, for example, lack of funds, limited marketing knowhow, poor promotion, etc.
Knowing your strengths and weaknesses can help you a lot in devising marketing strategies that work.
4. What are your Opportunities and Threats? Opportunities are those favorable factors outside of your business that can help you achieve your objectives, like increasing demand for your products and services due to increasing population, availability of funds for expansion.
Threats are those unfavorable factors outside your business that can hinder you from achieving your objectives, like intense competition, sluggish demand, economic downtown.
Knowing your opportunities and threats can help you devise marketing strategies that will maximize your opportunities and minimize your threats.
5. What will you do now? Having designed your marketing strategies, the best thing is to implement them. Take action. Your strategies are useless if you cannot implement them.
With the foregoing five basic marketing strategies as a guide, the rest is up to you on how to grow your business and make it profitable.
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