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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.
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I own a start-up for an app bringing people together for simple things of life in a secured and efficient way. How do I penetrate the market?
Take a look at how other companies with similar problem resolved it, for example: AirBnB, Uber, TaskRabbit and others. Every one of them, unless they were extremely lucky with timing, used a narrow geographic focus, approaching established communities and fulfilling demand for one side by hand for the first little while. In your case you can approach established organisations like universities, churches, foundations, volunteer organisations and the like to get people that would do things and do exactly the same for the other side. Initially you need to do it by hand until it starts going viral. Spreading the word through social media is great but it needs to be very targeted and approach people that can already find something in the application. If there are other organizations that do similar postings, for example if there are requests for volunteering on Craigslist, you can approach them to have it posted in your application. Narrowing on one geographic location is always easier in the beginning, because you can learn the area and all the players involved in the scene, and then maximise the output, expanding to new geographic locations when needed. It doesn't mean limiting your app, but just focusing your marketing efforts in one narrow location that can bring biggest output. Everything that I mentioned above can be applied to offline and online social marketing. Unfortunately there is no magic solution to your problem except for bootstrapping it in the beginning and finding communities that you can leverage with biggest social impact return. Good luck! Denis.DD
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How important is it to have a .com domain when starting up a business?
It's far less important than it used to be, because so many social media businesses are much more reliant on their apps than their desktop websites these days. Instagram launched (and grew fast) with the domain instagr.am, for instance.CM
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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
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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
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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
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