Whatever the government figures might say I feel there is a long way to go before the UK sees good times again, and they may never be as good as they were a few years back.

Many economists are predicting a long hard slog for businesses in the UK and to me it stands to reason that in a world that has been rocked to the core by the financial crisis things are not going to get easier for a long time.

In fact even if your business is doing well now do you have marketing methods in place to keep business rolling in or is your business just ticking over?

The term ‘ticking over’ refers to an engine not driving but just ‘ticking over’. So is your business parked up at the traffic lights? and will it be able to respond when the lights turn green? or are your competitors ready to jump ahead of you when the time comes?

At Aida Marketing we speak to a lot of business owners who say the following: –

‘we’re doing ok right now’
‘we have got enough customers’
‘we are quite busy considering…’

But what if business dropped off a little? would those businesses and maybe yours too, start to suffer?

In business if you are not going forward then you are surely slipping backwards.

If your business is doing well then now is a great time to go through everything you do on the marketing side and make sure it is ready for a sustained battle. Can you improve in any way? If so do it know rather than when it is too late.

If you feel you could not improve, then you are either extremely good at what you do, and in that case, nice one, well done, good effort, or your are deluded.

A good way to look at the marketing side of your business is to get a big sheet of paper and write down each and everyone of your marketing activities and then do a flow chart and follow each activity through ensuring you have a good solid procedure in place in each case.

For example let’s say you advertise in a Newspaper or Magazine. You could have an arrow leading to website enquiries, which then leads on to an automated email response, which leads on to a series of email responses, which then leads on to further follow up email special offers.

This is just for those advert responses that come via your website, when a person calls you on the phone from your advert the process could be: –

You take the name and address of the enquirer, you send them a brochure with a covering letter this leads on to a follow up phone call 3-4 days later to enquire about the possibility of a sale, if they do not buy then a second letter follows offering an incentive to order or a special limited time price and so on.

Depending on your business, your piece of paper may need to be extended as you discover more and more arrows leading from each component of your marketing armoury.

If you need any help with your marketing flowchart I hope you will give us a chance to help you. Call today on 01490 460239 or use the contact form.