Loading...
Answers
MenuI am trying to grow my market share without investing a large percentage of the profits. What is the best way to do this?
Hi all. I am the owner of a maintenance company in Ireland supplying 100 maintenance services all one one number. The website is www.360degrees.ie. We operate in Ireland and have been in business for 5 years. It is time to stop plodding along. We want to blow the company out of the water and become a national brand. Do we invest in a sales team, google ads, direct mail, facebook ads or is there is some low hanging apples that we don't see. If I get some leads I would be more than happy to pay for a professionals time on the phone. I am hoping there is a construction or another professional out there who has some of the answers to the questions we have as a company.
Answers
Having looked at your website, I'd suggest that an overhaul of your site is likely required prior to spending too much on new initiatives. I find the overall messaging of the site confusing and somewhat inconsistent with the description you've provided in your question detail.
I'd be happy to share my feedback in more detail with you and if you find that you agree with that feedback, provide you some simple actionable steps you can take to put yourself in good position to grow your company and take it to the next level.
There is no right answer to this question because it will be different for every company. To be able to develop a successful strategy, you have to get a good picture of where you're at now, what's been stopping you from growing bigger / faster and how do you want the company to grow. Once you have clarity over these points, you can start building a strategy and test the different scenarios.
Here are some of the questions you may want to get answers to before spending any money on sales people, ads, etc:
1. What is your bigger vision? What does it look like when you've made the company the way you want it to be?
2. What does success look like for you? How will you know you have achieved what you wanted to?
3. What problems do you solve? Who has these problems? How much is it worth for these people to get the problems solved? How big does it make the market? What are the different segments? Do your services cover all the different segments of these markets?
4. What are your current strengths and weaknesses? Where do you make most of your money? What are your least profitable activities? Where do you spend most of your money?
5. What has been stopping you from growing bigger / faster? What have been your most successful channel / initiative for growth? What have you already tried that worked / didn't work?
6. What are the opportunities in the changing world for your business? These changes can be social, technological, economic, environmental, political, legal or ethical.
7. How much money do you have to invest and what return do you expect? How much time can you give yourself to test different solutions?
8. What do your clients think of you? Why do they use your services versus competitors? How do your clients find you?
9. Who are your competitors? What makes them more / less successful? Why do their clients use them versus you? How do their clients find them?
10. What will you personally gain from having a more successful company? What's in it for you? How does it make your life better / happier?
I have helped several companies through this process. What's important to remember is that the answers will be different for every business depending on the industry, the environment you're in, your reality, etc.
Do you want guidance to develop a growth plan for your business?
Do you have a niche? What makes you different than all the other options in the market? Where are your sales coming from right now? Social media is good for lead generation if you're listening properly. The key is to generate thank you'd and wows so you can get yeses when you put out a call to action.
Related Questions
-
How can I get started using social media to help my startup?
The most important thing to understand is your audience, or rather your target customer. In the beginning, it can be a bit overwhelming to all of a sudden tackle half a dozen social media platforms and do them all well. Focus on just one or two platforms where you know your ideal customers are. For example, if you're building a saas product for techies, get your butt on Twitter and engage with anyone and everyone who's commenting on related hashtags or other Twitter-ers. Twitterites. If you're producing high-end physical products that look awesome in photos, post daily on Instagram and get people to oogle at your Instagram feed. Of course you should still claim your business name on all the platforms just in case, but focus on a few. Use tools like Hootsuite, MeetEdgar, IFTTT, and Zapier to help you automate some of the posting process. Just don't cheap out on your content ;)EM
-
How can I go about using social media outlets to attract new clients?
Hello, great question here. First of all you should understand that there is no 1 way and depending on who your audience is and what you sell the answer will definitely vary. A short answer however would be - engagement. Forget about likes and follows and shares are engagement, if you want to be a successful marketer you need to see engagement as conversations. The more conversations you can build around products the more you can rely on them to follow links or follow up on a request when you do make one. With that said, social media updates should be about what your followers want to see - depending on the social media - try to avoid being too pitchy on each post. My name is Humberto Valle, I have been a strategist for about 10 years now and have helped countless of entrepreneurs and businesses thrive through creative competitive strategy and marketing and I'm the co-founder of Unthink.Me. I hope my answer helps you a bit.HV
-
What are the best tools to use for growing social media reach?
Hi! Happy to answer this question. Initially, I'd ask "what are you tracking at present?" And "what are your goals?" Software wise, I love to use a few tools for Twitter. Hootsuite to schedule relevant content (and not all tweets should be scheduled--happy to touch on this more), Tweetreach to get a feel for impressions/influencers who HAVE been engaging (in my mind, impressions are KEY, more so than Follower count because hashtags can help you reach more people) and Sprout Social for a more in depth view of your Twitter analytics. Getting more visibility/followers: what hashtags are you using? How often do you acknowledge those who follow you (new followers vs existing followers)? Are you just sharing autoscheduled content and links OR are you creating conversations? Hashtags wise: find those that have a community already centered around them! *You don't want to "hashtag hijack" however, tags like #smallbiz #blogchat #_________ specific to your industry or ideal client's industry can go a long way. Other tools that people use to track community and engagement include Sum All, and Commun It https://commun.it/ Once you start tracking impressions (and monitoring growth vs plateaus) you can then go back and look at your content to see which posts generated the most response/engagement. Again, just want to emphasize that creating conversations and asking questions are great methods to do all of the things you are looking to accomplish.JM
-
What are successful social media marketing strategies to reach physicians?
I work extensively in the healthcare market. In particular I have quite a bit of experience marketing to MDs and other healthcare providers. And in my experience - that audience is not likely to be reached via social media. Medical professionals (particularly MDs) are mainly offline. Online business related activity is generally limited to reading journals and correspondence with other medical professionals. In fact - they have such a huge "target" painted on their back that they are very challenging to market TO at all. This is not to say that you can't be successful in working with them. Only that if you "target" them you're likely to get stonewalled. I'm curious why you are intent on reaching them in this manner (i.e. social media)? One of the main tenets I teach my coaching students is to find out where your market is... Not to choose a form of media (i.e. twitter, FB, etc) and hope to reach them there. You may have greater success (and waste less time/money) re-thinking your business model. I can certainly help with this if you decide to go in that direction. In any case - Best of luck!DB
-
How much is LinkedIn really useful in terms of job search?
some information related to success rate or similar quantification will be appreciated!
I am not sure of the specifics you're asking, it seems like a lot of technical data. This might help in your search for these statistics though: http://jobsearch.about.com/od/networking/a/linkedin.htm http://www.forbes.com/sites/nextavenue/2014/01/21/how-linkedin-is-thwarting-your-job-search/ http://mashable.com/2014/06/19/linkedin-job-search-app/ http://www.cio.com/article/2403150/linkedin/10-linkedin-tips-to-boost-your-job-search.htmlPM
the startups.com platform
Copyright © 2025 Startups.com. All rights reserved.