When it comes to marketing, some business owners have to work on a shoestring budget. In fact, deciding which marketing or advertising strategies will yield the greatest results for the least amount of capital is one of the toughest challenges facing small to medium enterprises. Thankfully, there are a plethora of unique marketing ideas that […]

Just as the human body loses its full potential without the five senses, so is a business without holistic brand management. We’ve all heard of brand management, it’s the business buzzword in the 21st century.

In order to find new potential customers it is important to know where these people are. Fortunately (or unfortunately if your business is not up to speed with modern online marketing trends) the overwhelming majority of people can be found on social media platforms; an observation that is statistically supported.

‘The customer is King.’ This statement is very true, considering that no business can survive without customers. If you have a product or service that no customer is willing to pay for, you don’t have a business. Period! So, this statement isn’t just a ‘feel-good’ slogan. It’s actually true; without customers, you would go out […]

In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald writes, “Personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures.” Similarly, a brand is the result of an unbroken series of consistent gestures, encompassing both what it does and how it does it.

The marketing industry is currently one of the fastest growing industries thanks to technology giants like Facebook, Google, Microsoft, IBM, and many others. All these companies might be situated thousands of kilometers away, but there is no doubt that they are disrupting every single business here in South Africa (whether we like it or not)

Remember when Louis Vuitton enlisted Jennifer Lopez to help sell its leather goods in 2003? Or before that, when Calvin Klein’s underwear ads featured Mark Wahlberg in the 1990’s? Celebrity endorsements have long been an advertising staple in the fashion industry, and while that has not changed, what qualifies as a “celebrity” and the way […]

You’ve validated your business idea, you’ve done your market research, and hopefully, you’ve registered your business name. Now it’s time for the fun stuff. If you’ve ever wondered how to build a brand for your business, you’ve come to the right place. Work through these exercises each day and in less than a week, you’ll […]

Contrary to what some may say, growing a business isn’t a blood sport. It’s not about killing the competition or winning at all costs. The fact is, successful competitors tend to meet on a more common ground, sometimes collaborating one day and bidding against each other the next.

I’ve made plenty of mistakes in my business career. Some mistakes were hard to avoid, but one of the biggest and most expensive ones could have been dodged by simply doing a little homework. I fell victim to a trap that plenty of entrepreneurs fall into every day: I fell in love with a product […]

Google currently processes over 40 000 search queries every second, and no other search engine gets close to that. I can guarantee you that a large proportion of those searches are related to finding or learning more about products and services, and that is why search engines are the perfect platform to help promote your […]

Read full article In this guide, I want to take the opportunity to explain to you exactly what SEO and SEM is and how it can help you take your business to a whole new level if done correctly

It’s no secret that social media marketing is disrupting the marketing world. In as little as ten years Facebook managed to connect 1 in every six people on the planet. In this guide, I’m going to explain to you exactly what social media marketing is all about and how you can utilise it to help […]

Customers are the lifeblood of every business. That’s why every successful business has mastered the art and science of attracting and retaining great customers by making them happy.

Eight weeks. That’s all that separated the launch of Apple’s revolutionary iPhone, on June 29, 2007, and Motorola’s next-generation Razr2 (pronounced Razr Squared) cellular telephone, on August 24. Before unveiling the successor to the Razr, which PC World magazine in 2005 ranked 12th on a list of the 50 greatest gadgets of the past 50 […]

We live in a day and age in which marketing and selling have become key determinants of success for any business, large or small. Large businesses spend millions of rand trying to ensure that their offerings are top of mind and easily accessible to consumers. As a new business owner with limited funding it is […]

‘If you build it, they will come.’That’s what I believed, when I was first starting out. I assumed that if I opened a business, customers would just show up—no major marketing effort required. Other entrepreneurs take the complete opposite approach, and treat marketing as if it’s the 1916 Battle of the Somme: they throw all […]

Are you deriving enough profit from your customers? No matter what product or service you’re selling, your CFO’s answer to that question will probably be ‘No’. Saying you will align your customer strategy to your profit goals is significantly easier than actually doing it – which is why so many consumer goods companies are wrestling […]

All the brilliant marketing efforts in the world – whether they be social media, email or advertising campaigns – mean nothing if you don’t know who your customer is, you don’t have a keen understanding of the market you are operating in, or know your competitors.

The popularity of a widely bought brand does not always sync with consumers’ perception of its value and luxury credentials, according to a new survey by the Luxury Institute. For its Luxury Brand Status Index series, Luxury Institute surveyed affluent women from seven of the world’s wealthiest nations to gain insights on which brands hold the most clout in terms of quality, […]

In their analysis of South Africans’ social media conversations, Crimson Hexagon, a social media analytics company, identified four key themes undergoing significant change – travel and hospitality, entertainment, fitness and sport and automotive.

In 1979, a young associate professor at Harvard Business School published his first article for HBR, “How Competitive Forces Shape Strategy.” In the years that followed, Michael Porter’s explication of the five forces that determine the long-run profitability of any industry has shaped a generation of academic research and business practice. In this article, Porter […]