It’s a statement that has finality but how much of it is true?
Small business marketing is dead and there are a number of reasons why. Here’s a few;
It’s fair to say that marketing strategies don’t work by themselves. You can spend thousands of dollars having a marketing strategy written for your small business, but if it isn’t implemented, it’s not worth the paper it is written on.
Australia’s skills shortage crisis shows no signs of abating.
According to the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, an incredible 43 per cent of skilled industries – based on 76 occupations continually assessed by the Department – have experienced skills shortages in the past 12 months.
Improving these statistics is one of the motivators behind Sydney-based business Get Qualified Australia. Established in 2010, the company has positioned itself as the country’s leading exponent of Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) through Skills Recognition – providing stepping stones to not only a higher skilled workforce, but greater career satisfaction among individuals.
Get Qualified Australia is the brainchild of Adam Wadi, born out of his own successful experience with RPL.
RPL was introduced in Australia via the AQF (Australian Qualifications Framework) in 1993 as a way of any individual’s pre-existing skills, knowledge and experience to be credited towards a formal, nationally-recognised qualification.
Adam came face-to-face with the process in 2005, when his practical background in hotel management allowed him to quickly and easily obtain an Advanced Diploma in Management through the Australian Business and Retail Academy.
“I was very impressed with how the RPL process worked,” he recalls.
“My years of experience in the hospitality and tourism sector were formally recognised, and my Advanced Diploma started the next phase of my career.”
With a new qualification under his belt, Adam moved into delivering training courses at hotel schools across Australia. His own positive experience with RPL led to him explaining and recommending it to his friends and colleagues in the hospitality industry, and in a short space of time he referred close to 200 people to the process.
His hospitality career was at its peak, but the entrepreneur saw a new business opportunity on the horizon.
“I saw the scope to partner with a range of Registered Training Organisations (RTOs) to offer people a substantial number of qualification options through RPL,” he says.
Adam was committed to remaining independent and, more importantly, offering a wider range of qualifications across a greater number of industries than existing companies ever before.
Get Qualified Australia’s credentials were evident from its inception, courtesy of partnerships with the Management Institute of Australia – to supply nationally-recognised training courses to candidates – and MEGT, a non-profit organisation that specialises in employment, education, training and apprenticeships.
Adam’s vision pioneered the early days of Get Qualified Australia. The company positioned itself as the country’s leading RPL specialist, but branched out to form partnerships with reputable RTOs to offer a variety of nationally-recognised qualifications through the RPL process.
Across time, Get Qualified Australia began to offer a detailed selection of personally tailored training, staff development and assessment solutions to meet the requirements of individuals and businesses.
Simply, the company is a ‘one stop shop’ that offers a range of educational, training, RPL and Skills Recognition services under the one umbrella.
Among the thousands of Australians to have benefited from GQ Australia’s services is Sydney’s Steve Rodwell, who completed a Certificate IV of Training and Assessment based on the RPL and Skills Recognition process. He now utilises his Management and business background as a Lecturer in Hotels Management and Marketing at the Intercontinental Hotel School.
From its inception, Get Qualified Australia recognised technology as a crucial way of targeting its audience, and implemented a number of online resources to make the entire process as straightforward as possible for candidates.
These resources included a secure e-Learning portal, offering a comprehensive range of learning and assessment options monitored by Get Qualified Australia’s RTO partners, and a series of YouTube tutorials to explain RPL in plain English.
More than three years later, Get Qualified Australia is the country’s number one RPL and skills recognition specialist. Adam and his team of qualified RPL Skills Recognition Assessors have underpinned the company with exceptional levels of customer service and tangible results.
Through its partnerships with RTOs, Get Qualified Australia now offers access to more than 400 qualifications across industries such as business, construction, information technology, transport and tourism – and there’s an even bigger picture in mind.
“We’re working towards getting 500 qualifications in the very near future, and 1,000 qualifications by the end of the year,” says Adam.
“There’s near limitless scope for what RPL can offer, from working towards a nationally-recognised qualification in a field you had previously never thought of pursuing a career in, to obtaining a Graduate Diploma to vastly boost your personal and professional development,” says Adam.
“We are proud of our status as Australia’s premier RPL and Skills Recognition specialist, and look forward to further developing our range of qualifications and tailor-made training solutions.”
About Get Qualified Australia
Get Qualified Australia is one of Australia’s leading RPL and Skills Recognition specialists.
Founded in 2010, the company provides a range of Vocational Education and Training (VET) services for local, national and international clients, in line with Partnership Agreements with Registered Training Organisations (RTOs).
Through its RTO partners, Get Qualified Australia offers more than 400 nationally-recognised qualifications in industries such as hospitality, business, construction and trades, information technology, transport and many more.
Get Qualified Australia utilises skills recognition systems developed in consultation with RTOs, VET stakeholders, Industry Skills Councils and key industry groups to offer tailored training, staff development and assessment solutions to individuals and businesses.
Yesterday at a breakfast hosted by Business Chicks, hundreds of women tweeted quotes from guest speaker Ita Buttrose.
The hashtag was #businesschicks and #itabuttrose. It’s impact was for all to see, as the event was trending somewhere in the social media sphere and people who had never heard of Ita Buttrose from all over the world, were joining the ‘trend’ and retweeting tweets related to her speech. Such is the power of a #hashtag and of course, my favourite social media platform, Twitter.
What is a hashtag?
Social media is the best marketing tool, which small business owners have at their fingertips today. It allows small businesses, which cannot afford to launch private online communities, communicate with consumers in a personal way for building better customer relation. If your business hasn’t started using social media, you are losing a great opportunity to promote your brand and thereby increase the sales for your business. The following top 6 social media tips for small business marketing will help to interact with online customers in social spaces and also guide you in developing and maintaining better relationships with the customers on social networks.
Plan your SMM approach
As with business strategy, you need to make a plan and stick to it to be successful. Outline the objectives as well as the steps you want to take apart from the tools you’ll need for meeting your marketing goals. Your plan must outline how your small business is going to integrate SMM into the existing marketing approaches. Some of the social media-specific issues, which you’ll need to think about:
- Assigning the regular tasks and updates to an employee with social media and marketing experience
- Deciding on who is going to create profiles and accounts and who are going to have access to the accounts
- Selecting the tools, which will help systematize the SMM method and finding social analytics tools to help track success
- Reviewing your small business marketing approaches and determining where a development in the social media will be beneficial
Find your potential customers
With so many social networking channels available to customers, it can be tough to select a social networking platform for your business. Before creating accounts in Facebook or Twitter to start your marketing campaign, conduct a thorough research to find where your consumers already congregate over the web. Usually it takes less effort and time to join consumers where they’re in comparison to creating a number of accounts and profiles in hopes that clients are going to find you.
Schedule daily time
You need to give regular time to your customers on social media. Schedule enough time every day to communicate with customers, monitor conversations and send new messages.
Be a professional
Social businesses in order to communicate with customers need to be an expert in social media platforms. For example, small businesses can join the communities where they already have their customers and start answering questions and giving advice. Always remember one thing—never pretend to be a consumer while participating in social discussions. Let people know you are an entrepreneur.
Listen
When you are marketing your brand in social media, you should stop broadcasting on your products/services and listen to what your consumers want to say. You can build strong social relationship with your consumers when you learn to listen.
Be social
A small business should have good conversation skills and must respond quickly to people. The main point of social networking is conversing and customers are going to get bored if you do not take part in the social flow. Just like offline conversations, you must ask direct questions to your customers within the social group to make them feel important.
If you follow these tips, you will start to see social media making a big difference to your business’ online presence.
Author bio:
This article was written by Adriana Sopi, a business consultant who helps small businesses grow. The writer has even written many articles on 8a certification; and other SBA 8 a certification, which help small businesses get an access to federal contracts.
Travelling from Milan to Australia via Dubai on Emirates the other day, I noticed this billboard. Literally, hundreds of people looked up at it and stared. Amazing impact. What do you think?
I have a conspiracy theory relating to the latest blockbuster novel “50 Shades of Grey”.
If you have spent any time at all reading any of the three novels in the series, you would realize that other than a basic storyline, it is all about porn. Albeit soft.
1.5 million people have already read this book. I have read it. My friends have read it. It is addictive and completely trashy, but let’s face it – women love this type of stuff. Look at how successful Mills and Boons was and still is.
My theory though, having read two of the New York Times Bestseller Trilogy series, that the book was commissioned by a large chain or perhaps online sex store. Bare with me as I explain…
There is little storyline other than the fact that there is three families in the Trilogy and the main characters are Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele. At least nine-tenths of each book is just about sex and in particular, S&M.
50 Shades of Grey Trilogy
The books are not even particularly well written but their descriptive blows on sex with whips, blind folds, kinky toys and alike is like opening a window for housewives around the world to get excited about sex again and go out and try a few different positions with the aid of a few toys.
Adultshop.com has recorded a 40 percent increase in sales. Any shop selling grey ties, has without doubt, sold out. And sex shops around the globe are selling out of any props or toys discussed in the 50 Shades of Grey. This, I believe, is no accident. On top of that, the twitter accounts for Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey are followed by millions and if you follow them, they will follow you back. If you ask them a question, they will answer in character.
It’s marketing. Now, I could be wrong, and a genius marketer may not be behind it, but I really doubt that that is the case.
No different to episodes in sex in the city about the “rabbit” or any other shoe or dress design that Carrie saw fit to wear, a product can sell out just by a sheer mention on television, in a movie, online and in books.
Do you think that 50 Shades of Grey is a commission or a naughty author obsessed in S&M?
As I sit typing on my keypad, I am thinking about whether or not it is at all possible to ‘have it all’.
When I look out at some of my friends, no matter how successful they are, they still have things in their lives that they want to improve or put more effort into. Relationships usually being the staple amongst those who realize that no amount of business success will ever supercede what you can achieve personally.
I have had an amazing month in so many ways and personally, I have grown more than I could ever imagine.
I won’t deny that I want it all, but I have become more realistic in realizing that that is not possible. You can’t have it all – at the same time. It’s impossible and those who say that you can, are either living a short-lived fantasy or are hiding what is really going on behind closed doors.
Business has always been a challenge for me. I am not a natural people person and stress overtakes me more times than I care to admit. I worry about and analyze things that don’t deserve the effort that I put into it.
I procrastinate, often leave great ideas unfulfilled and sometimes need to have a better poker face.
Today, I am reminded yet again why start-ups fail.
I met with a lovely couple a few weeks ago who wanted to open a retail store. They have a dream to work for themselves and the wife wanted to be in fashion.
They are new to the market and have never owned a fashion outlet, but they both have passion and are determined to do it.
I asked all the normal questions;
- Have you done market research?
- Who are your competitors?
- How will you differentiate yourself?
- What location will you open in?
- Do you have a business plan?
- Have you looked at product and through research identified what will sell to the surrounding target audience?
- What will your price point be?
And the questions went on and on. Many could not be answered.
My immediate reaction was to encourage them to do their due diligence. To develop a business plan and do market research.
hope they prove me wrong.
Even though they are both really nice people, my gut tells me that they will open a store and fail. I really hope they prove me wrong.
Start-ups fail for many reasons. Some through no fault of their own, and others because the buddying entrepreneur has not done their due diligence and were acting on a whim.
Starting a business is not for the faint hearted particularly if you take the steps to sign leases for premises and hire staff. It can not only cost you a lot of money, it may even cripple you.
10 Reasons Why Startups Fail:
- Market: No market research into viability of selling a product or service to a market segment.
- Economy: Economic downturn directly affects your business (i.e. retail)
- Business Model: No investment in developing a business model or ignoring the obvious when developing your business model that is too much about ‘you’ and not enough about your market.
- Capital: Running out of money, cash flow problems and being undercapitalized to start off with. Short cuts along the way may mean that your brand is impaired.
- Too much focus on you and not who you are trying to sell to: Entrepreneurs who name a company after something that means something to them, but nothing to their customers. They pick colours and store fitouts based on what they like, not what the market is looking for.
- No point of differentiation to competitors: Going into an over-saturated market with the same copied product and trying to make it work will be a disaster.
- Location: Location is king – if you cheap-skate on location, you may find that you set up shop where no-one will find you. The result will speak for itself.
- Pricing: No real pricing strategy and not enough investigation into the figures. Make sure that you know when your business will break even, what your costs are to run your business and what your plan is upfront if you don’t get enough sales in the door at the start. If you price your product competitively and find that no matter how much you sell, you can’t make a dollar – yet your competitors with greater buying power are making a killing – then you need to reconsider your pricing and product strategy.
- Ignorance: Contrary to the saying, ignorance is not bliss. If you are ignorant about running a business and making it profitable, chances are you are going to fail. This is not a game of monopoly. This is real life, with real money and real responsibility.
- Listen to those who have been there and done that. You will get pearles of wisdom from people you least expect. The greatest business success stories come from people who have learnt to listen.
And… two extras for good measure which are the most important of all…
PRODUCT: Do your research. Make sure you are not starting up with a product that has no chance of succeeding in the market. Make sure that there are people in the market that would want your product. Don’t compete head to head with industry leaders with no point of differentiation. Ensure that your product is quality, professional and represents your brand.
MARKETING: Develop a brand that resonates with your target market and then develop a marketing strategy to make sure they all know you exist, what you do, where to find you, why they should choose you over others etc.
Did you start a business that failed? Share your story with me on msmith@marketingeye.com
A goal for Marketing Eye is to improve customer satisfaction in the next 12 months.
It takes so much effort and money to acquire a customer, that by investing back in their satisfaction, we will automatically improve our bottom line and create greater brand loyalty.
To do this though, you need to create a “shift” in the way people think in your organisation. That is easier said than done.
Randall Stephenson became CEO of AT&T in 2007 and his first port of call was to create a shift in thinking across the entire organisation.In the past the company had been focused on their wireline business, but he wanted everyone to shift their thinking to the future, which was wireless. “That’s where the growth is,” he said. The new strategy was to “Mobilize everything” and so he went about communicating this shift to all the employees, stakeholders and customers.
Marketing Eye’s shift is to create content to drive connections. Our aim is to connect our customers to their customers through content. Now this may seem simple, but it isn’t as easy as it sounds. Marketers in consultancy firms believe that they write a strategy and they implement it. That’s how to get a pat on the back after the year-long contract with one of our clients. To do what you say you are going to do and to deliver every element of the marketing strategy ontime and within budget.
Well, that’s no longer enough. Ultimately clients are looking to connect to their clients in a meaningful way. By understanding that connection underpins marketing results, marketing consultants can refresh the way they work with clients and create more meaningful and sustainable client acquisitions.
Creating a shift with clients and communicating the value in the shift is also a challenge. Clients have the same mindset as marketing consultants. They want a marketing strategy, and then once that has been agreed upon, they want it implemented.
If we go to the client and take them back a few steps and talk about “content driving connections”, we are immediately creating a situation where the client says, “I thought that is what we are doing” or “that sounds like marketing bulls***”. Both are true in some ways. Marketers, like their PR and advertising counterparts are renowned for putting a “spin” on everything that they touch, but the truism of “content driving connections” is positioning companies to think about how their content interacts with their target audience.
For instance, Marketing Eye has a twitter account. Actually, we have two. We communicate on that Twitter account any new blogs we have written, positions open at our firm, client achievements, and we retweet interesting stories. We put content out there for the world to see. Our blog, is content. It shares the story of an entrepreneur with a big dream who has ups and downs and sometimes has to move cross-ways. The marketing blog also shares information on marketing and sales, in which the company specializes in. A loyal following ensures that the blog drives Marketing Eye to number one on Google for keywords that are essential to our business without costing money for adwords or sponsored links. Ultimately, by writing a blog daily, we save money that our competitors pay out for advertising on Google and re-invest that money back in technology to ensure that we work harder, faster and smarter for our competitors.
Content is driving the future of Marketing Eye. Full stop.
The issue is convincing the “financial planning firm” or the “logistics company” that they need to re-think their strategy to create more meaningful content, that resonates with their target audience and creates a connection. Not just for today, but also for tomorrow.
While marketing strategies work if they have the right strategy and are executed according to the plan, marketing consultants need to take one step back when developing their marketing strategies in 2012 and say, “how does content drive the connection” between the client and their clients? What content is needed and how often does content need to be populating the minds of the target audience?
Have you changed your marketing strategy for this financial year?