Beat The Recession – Invest In Consulting

The economic recession may be the best time to invest in consulting, if you do it the right way. Most people are not looking to spend additional money now, but if you hire a consultant who gets paid when you get results, you have absolutely nothing to lose. In fact, you could end up a winner, by creating a lean, mean business machine which can react quickly to new opportunities as they arise. Here are some of the ways in which investing in consulting can help you to ride out the recession.

Don't Flash The Cash
There's never been a better time to control your cash flow. Is the right amount of money coming in each month? Have your expenses spiralled out of control? Are your suppliers being less flexible than they were, putting the squeeze on your bottom line? Hiring a business expert who offers consulting services will help you to identify strengths and weaknesses. The consultant will review your business and will help you to see where you can improve. Even better, the consultant will give advice on how to make those improvements, making your business much more efficient.

Promote Yourself
When you hire a consulting service, you may learn new ways of promoting and marketing your business. The consultant has worked with many businesses and has picked up information on best practices. That means there's a shopping list of options for you to select. Perhaps there are networking events in your niche that you should be attending. Maybe you need to make contact with new suppliers or potential customers. It could be that your website and sales brochure need an overhaul. All of these are services that a consultant can provide. They will expand your market reach, boost your market presence and give you a new look that will appeal to your customers.

Plan Ahead
Perhaps your competitors are being short sighted in closing down some services. This could be a good time to snap up a bargain so you are ready for the upturn. One of the advantages of consulting is that it helps you to plan for the future, starting from where you are now. You will end up with a feasible plan for the development of your business which will make it stronger and more effective. There are always new opportunities around; your consultant can help you to identify the right ones so that you can gain the most value for your business.

Summary: Is the recession getting your down? Inject some new life into your business by investing in consulting services

Tips to Market Your Business

The Internet

When I give business advice to a new client the first question I am asked is ‘How do I increase sales?’ My first consideration is to look at the competitors to a business. The usual first point of research for this is to undertake a search on Google and Yahoo. Not only looking at the organic listings, (these are the ones that appear on the left hand side) but also to look at the advertising businesses. I can gain a lot of useful information about the potential market place for a business very quickly through this.

Using freely available SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) tools allow me to view very quickly the basics of why a website ranks in search engines. After considering which of those appearing in the top pages of search engines are the main competitors, my next study is my client’s own marketing. Online marketing can be very quickly evaluated. Is my client’s website getting visitors? If so what is the conversion rate of visitors to customers. If there are low visits and low conversion, it’s then about looking for the reasons why. If you would like to know more about SEO tools and how to use them please email me through my website.

So what are the reasons for low visitor numbers? Quite often these are easy to spot. Low visits can be due to poor ranking. A key cause of this is poor use of content. What I mean by this is – think about a newspaper, some stories you will read some you won’t, what makes the difference? It is the same for a website it needs to be interesting and engage your visitor. As well as this the content needs to include words that your potential customers will be searching for. Quite a few websites have content that sometimes reads like an in house company magazine. Great for those in the know but could be totally negative for the searches that potential customers are inputting into search engines.

So how do you choose appropriate content? Again look at your competitor’s websites, with a few clicks of your mouse you can reveal what keywords your competitors see as important for them and then look to include these in your content. Although you need to make sure that these keywords are relevant today for your business.

So will you see a quick benefit?

You should do, although there is a bit more to SEO and content writing and website design. After completing these you are then at the mercy of search engines getting around to cache the website, but the quickest that I have had a website from completion to front page Google has been 6 days - so it can be done if you know what you are doing.

If you would like to know more about how my business advice can make that all important difference to your sales line, please do email me through my website.

Leicester Marketing Advice

Sales are up! What? Yes, although reports today, the 26th November 2008 are saying that UK consumer spending has dropped the most since 1995, the businesses that are using Jenkinson & Associates Ltd are showing increases in sales and increases to last year. How come?
The reason for this – simple really – it’s all about being a bit clever, putting yourself into the shoes of your potential customer and making sure that you are in their field of vision when they are looking to buy.
The opportunity for the small business increases as large companies reduce spend. A first budget to be reduced by large companies is the marketing spend – great opportunity! The other part of the equation is staff morale, as this declines for large companies the incentive to provide excellent customer service goes down - again a great opportunity! Match your product or service to when the customer is looking, make it easy for the customer to know what you do and how to get it and provide excellent service.
With our low cost creative marketing skills our clients are continuing to grow.

Gain the competitive edge in business marketing.

In times of economic downturn all sorts of problems land in front of directors and business owners, including sales declines, cash flows and cost cutting. For most companies marketing will be the key to survival, but probably at a reduced cost.

The use of email marketing and direct mail can be a cost effective way to continue to market the company’s products and services and seek out new customers. Both of these forms of marketing rely on the written word. At Better Writing: Better Business™ the company behind the online software that self-teaches employees the basics of English grammar and punctuation we know how important good writing skills are.

Many bosses say, according to research that they would not do business with businesses that can’t weed out grammatical errors, citing that the lack of good writing skills could well be a reflection of other weaknesses in the business.

‘I have reviewed the programme and think it’s very good’ HR Organisational Development Manager.

For the cost of less than a couple of pounds per employee per year, employers could easily improve the writing skills of their staff. Better Writing: Better Business™ is an online server based educational programme that staff can undertaken at their own pace, and learn at their desk.
No need for expensive off the job learning and as employers you will be giving your staff skills that could very easily give your business and company ‘the competitive edge’ for more information on this innovative resource please visit www.bwsbusiness.co.uk .

Individually Styled Wigs and Hairpieces in Leicester

I've just finished working for VH Hairpieces and Wigs in Lutterworth near Leicester. We undertook the development of their web site and undertake their online marketing and business advice.
They do provide a really needed service. VH Hairpieces and Wigs provides a caring and understanding service to people who are suffering from hair loss from alopecia or through treatments for cancer. Chemo - therapy treatment, unfortunately does have side effects and one of these can be hair loss.

For ladies who suffer hair loss either permanently or temporarily this can be very distressing. VH Hairpieces and Wigs give a confidential and private service either at their studio in Lutterworth, Leicestershire (just minutes from J20 of the M1) or a home visit can be arranged.

Part of the unique wig service, is once a wig or hairpiece has been chosen for comfort and general style, the wig is then styled and coloured to make it look natural. In fact many customers remark on how friends and family comment positively on the new hair style. More information can be found on the VH Hairpieces and Wigs web site.

Low Cost Marketing - How to increase sales

Many businesses are asking for help and business advice on how to improve sales and gain more customers. For most businesses at the moment it is about finding low cost and cost effective solutions to marketing their products and services. Some have told me that they have been talking to marketing and advertising agencies and finding that everything is possible at a price, a new logo or a new design for your brochure, you need to advertise, update your web site, you need to do a direct mail campaign etc etc. Does this sound familiar? And are you confident that all this will deliver a return for you? Marketing has changed. You don’t need to spend large sums of money in the hope that someone will see your message and more importantly act on your message- think about it- how many adverts do you respond to? When was the last time you rang the number on a glossy sales letter that came through the post? Wouldn’t it be great if you could get your product in front of a customer right at the time that they want to buy? This is where skilful use of the internet comes into use. This isn’t hard to do and doesn’t cost. All you need to do is to think a little creatively, with some simple steps: 1. How are my potential customers going to be looking for what I provide? 2. What messages will they want to see? Write an article about your product or service. Make it interesting to the reader and include keywords and phrases that you have considered in step 1 above. The use of keyword phrasing will be more beneficial. This is because as you have probably found that single and double word keywords are very competitive in search engine rankings. Once you have written your article you then need to get it published on the internet. There are many free Press Release web sites that allow you to easily submit your own articles. By following these two steps you could suddenly find that you are gaining the sales and new customers you want, all at very little cost. Does this work – Yes! Not so long ago I submitted an article through this web site and others for one of my clients, entitled ‘Got a problem floor.’ Within days the keywords ‘problem floor’ on Google came up with my article as the number one search and not surprising inquiries and sales for my client. The article has now dropped in ranking, but by continuing with fresh articles you can maintain an internet search presence that appears when your customers are looking to buy what you sell.