Competitor analysis

The knowledge that gives you the edge

Understanding what your competitors are doing is vital if you want to expand your business. You're always selling and marketing yourself in relation to your competitors. Your customers always have a choice, and will usually compare you with your competitors before buying.

Looking at your competitors' sales and marketing materials, including their website, will tell you a vast amount about how they do business and most importantly how they win customers. It will also give you perspective, helping you look at your business more objectively.

Grow will help you apply this to your sales and marketing so you can position and sell yourself better than your competitors.

"If you know your enemies and know yourself, you can win a thousand battles without a single loss. If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you may win or may lose."

Sun Tzu - The art of war

Case study
Grow advised an up and coming digital media agency on their website redesign. We took a very careful look at the websites of their main competitors, looking at the good and bad elements of their design, copy and navigation as well as the clients they worked with. We fed these findings into their new and much improved website.

  

Email marketing

Cost effective communication that builds brands

Email marketing is a cost effective way to sell more to existing clients and build new relationships. With the cost of getting a new client at some six times as much as keeping an existing one, email marketing can be a cost effective way to do both.

Regular emails help keep your business front of mind, and they keep a dialogue going. They're also a great way to demonstrate knowledge and expertise and tell customers about your news and special offers.

Making it work for you and your customers

Your email marketing must be well thought out. Can you create enough content to do a monthly mailout, or should it be quarterly? What type of content will you use and how will you create it? Grow will help you create a long term email marketing campaign that is integrated with your overall marketing strategy.

Case study
Grow developed an email marketing strategy and design for a recruitment business. We created a templated structure so they could communicate in a consistent way, creating subject headings for them to write about.  We also recommended an email marketing programme.

The regular monthly mailout goes to an email list of 600 strong. Regular emails have helped cement the reputation of our client as a leader in their field, and has directly and indirectly bought in new clients.  

Referral marketing

Sharing for mutual benefit

Referral marketing is where companies refer clients or promote each other for mutual benefit. And done properly it can transform your business forever. The 3 main ways to do referral marketing are :

1. Referral fee marketing - pay for referrals

Find a partner who regularly works with businesses that need your services and offer to pay them a commission. You get regular referrals and they get regular commissions, e.g. a website designer pays a marketing consultancy for referring web design leads.

2. Referral fee marketing - get paid for referrals

Is there product or service that your clients would benefit from but you don't provide. If there is, Grow can help you find a provider that you'd be confident to recommend, e.g. an accountant gives referrals to a bookkeeper and gets paid for each referral.

3. Joint referral marketing - promote each others business

This is where two businesses recommend and promote each others' services to their own clients, requiring a much closer relationship - and there's no referral fee, e.g. a solicitor and an accountant refer each other business and recommend each other to their clients. Grow can create a referral programme that generates new leads for your business.

SEO + PPC

Helping you through the search engine optimisation minefield

SEO is the name for techniques that help your website appear higher in the list of search engine results. Getting onto the first page of Google and staying there for a particular search term is the holy grail of SEO marketing.

There's a lot of mystery about SEO, but in practise it's means carrying out a variety of activities that make your website rank higher in Google.

Think of SEO like your garden - it's best to take a long term approach, plan and do regular ongoing work, rather than having a big push then doing nothing for ages.

Simplifying SEO for better rankings

We work with several no nonsense SEO specialists to help improve your natural search rankings and we can manage your pay per click campaigns for you.

All of our specialists are chosen for their ability to deliver tangible results at fair prices. We only work with SEO experts who use ethical techniques.

After all, about 70% of the world's searches are performed on Google and they have to protect their reputation as the purveyor of honest search results. So it makes sense to employ only ethical SEO strategies.

Targeting

Identifying, talking to and closing the deal with the right people

Correctly targeting your potential customers is vital if you want to win the game of business. You must be clear about the size of your target market, how many businesses are competing with you, your resources, and how profitable it is to effectively sell into each target market.

Each target market you sell to may need it's own promotional materials.

Profitable targeting

Our years of experience in a range of sectors mean that we can help you define who your key target markets should be, saving you time and money and helping you sell into your most profitable target markets.

Case study
A web design company had taken on a business development manager with limited experience. They had bought a list of general contacts in companies with over 50 staff and were struggling to reach the right people. Grow turned this process around.

We looked at the key types of client sector the company had already successfully worked with, and used this as a starting point for developing a better target market to aim for - rather than generic lists.

They quickly developed a quality sales pipeline that has seen them go from strength to strength, winning several new clients in a few months.    

USP work

Only when you really know your strengths can you fully play to them

Your Unique Selling Points (USP's) are the bedrock for all your promotional activities.

There's no point being a great company that sells fantastic products and services if you can't communicate exactly what's so great about you and why you're better and different than the competition.

Helping you define what's unique about your business

We'll work together to really unearth and distill your USP's, because after all it's you who knows most about your business, your sector and your market. Then we'll help you communicate these USP's in all your marketing materials.

Case study
Grow worked with a niche printing company to hone their overall marketing strategy and develop their sales process and materials.

When we started discussing their USPs, the directors found it a struggle at first. But after some key questions (and a few cups of coffee) we got 11 unique selling points that set them apart from their competitiors.

We then used these USP's as the backbone for all of the printer's sales and marketing materials, including their website, brochure, sales emails and telemarketing pitch.   

Website advisory

Making your website work hard and get results for you.

Creating a website can be confusing - a jungle of terms - SEO, PPC, HTML... And while it's not hard to find a company to build you one, making sure you end up with a website that generates sales or enquiries and ties in with your overall marketing strategy isn't so easy.

Create an experience that engages, connects and closes the deal

A good website is about bringing together all the right components to create a good experience for your visitors.

The design and navigation must be clear, guiding visitors to what's important to them. It should engage, and create dialogue. The copy should reflect how you do business and your site must encourage people to contact you, buy your products, or give you their email.

How will people find your site? Do you need search engine optimisation? Should you be paying for pay per click. These are all questions we can help you answer - helping you create a brief for a website that works. 

Tapping in to the web's best talent

We work with a select group of web design companies and can recommend the right one for you, based on their skill, expertise and experience in your sector. We are also happy to work with your chosen website company on an advisory basis. Speak to us before you engage anyone to take on your website project.