The World Business

Archive for January, 2011

There is no point of creating a marketing plan if you don’t know what you are going to do with your business. It is important to determine your business aims first so the marketing plan will be able to be formulated in order to approach the aim gradually. You can start it by determining the objective of your business from the short, medium up to the long term to be prioritized in every step you take regarding your business.

First of all, define your business’ mission. Your business mission should be recognized clearly by your staffs, colleagues, and customers so everyone who are involved in the business always know the main purpose, thus they can maintain standard service offered by your business to the customers. A good business that put the customer’s satisfaction as the priority will always perform good service and provide quality products. This be beneficial to maintain loyal customers and positive reputation which will lead to the increasing amount of customers.

Secondly, it will be better if in your product or service offer you can state clearly the advantages of your business compared to the competitor. For example, longer operation time, cheaper price, or better quality. It is important to remember that the business mission or statement is something that you have to maintain all the time. It is like a commitment that you have to keep in mind and implement in every aspect of your business so you can always get the faith and loyalty from your customers.

Naming your business is considered as branding. It is not always related to naming a product, but it actually refers to naming everything associated with your business which extends to intellectual property and trademark. This is why; legal advice is required to protect your brand. If you are ready to start it, here are some basic points you have to consider in branding.

Everybody knows that brand names should be meaningful. It will be better if the brand name carries meaning related to the business so the customers can associated it with your business and service directly after seeing the brand. Put yourself on your customer’s shoes and see how they will think on their first look to your brand. For a better result, test the brand name with the target customers.

It is also important to consider the international market if you are planning on spreading your business abroad. Seek for international meaning of branding words you want to use and the potential implication of the brand name. Since brand name is like a commitment that you have to maintain for a long time, make sure that it will be your final choice. It will take years to introduce the brand and build reputation to gain customer’s respect and trust. You will have to maintain the quality of your service, and showing your customers that you have steady quality. This means if suddenly you want to change it, you will have to start all over again to get back your customer’s confidence.

Formulating a good and effective marketing strategy is one of the most important things that you should do if you want to start a business and gain loyal customers. A good marketing plan means that your campaign is straight to the goal, approaching the potential customers and stand out among the competitors. To start the campaign, you will need to carry out a research involving market surveys, questionnaires, and customers’ feedback to formulate the right strategy to promote your business and beating the competitors.

The factors that you have to consider when conducting a survey are including the customer’s profile and mix which combined with your product’s mix. You also need to consider the latest trend and demographic issues which are including legal effects and future regulatory. Business owners should also consider the customer’s prescription on the product’s price and value besides considering the services needed by the customers regarding the product. After gaining the complete information, compare it with the competitors’ strengths and weaknesses to find out your superiority. It will be easier if you can convert the information and data gained into numerical format so you can conclude it easier through statistics.

The conclusion will be beneficial to formulate the best marketing plan to find the most effective method in attracting the customer’s attention and interest. You can also use the research result to improve the quality of your product, find the weakness and fix them all so your competitor will not use it to attack your marketing campaign.

Plan for customer service or customer service plan prepared by the company in order to evaluate the capability. The plan is used to identify strengths and weaknesses. In addition, it combines the demand and customer complaints to improve services and enhance the customer experience in the future. By collecting such information, the company learn about what aspects are its advantages and other aspects are still a weakness. Here are the tips:

* Selecting a customer service representative

Assign an employee to serve customers for customer satisfaction awake. Use a database or a proprietary program to record requests and customer complaints. Convey the problem clearly when entering your information and explain how the problem has been solved. As soon as possible reply to a letter of complaint and customer demand. Cooperation and efficiency to solve the problem can save money in the long term. Follow-up existing cases and monitor for the managers involved to avoid a more complicated problem occurs.

* Viewing from the perspective of employees

Conduct a survey to test yourself. Create a survey to get feedback from employees. This will not give a balanced opinion and give views on certain aspects of what consumers who need more intensive services. Ask questions about how to maintain customer satisfaction, provide examples of customer complaints, financial disputes or difficult buyers. Employees should pay attention to aspects of the weaknesses and strengths in customer service.

* Provide a survey on customers

Talk with customers. Use surveys to gather information from customers about all their experiences in the shop at your business. Ask questions about staff, products and convenience in shopping. Make the survey easy to answer and avoid repetition. Arrange in a ranking system in such a way and offer a survey in Indonesian and English, especially if there are some customers whose native language is not Indonesian.