You've just gotten started with a new business doing what you love to do as a solo entrepreneur. You want to do as much as you can yourself.
You read up on how to start a company and went through the steps. You have a business email, free website, and a Facebook page. You tried paying lead services to generate leads but got burned by companies that took your money and provided crummy leads. You feel like you have fair prices, are doing a good job, and have good word of mouth, but still not enough work is coming through the door, and you are just not making enough money.
You need help that gets solid leads, and doesn't cost an arm and leg. You need to carefully revisit prices, and start setting some goals, as well as learn to implement effective plans to achieve them. You also don't want to overspend and run out of capital or overwhelm your limited capacity for production.
You need a basic business system that doesn't cost much but enables you to answer phones, do estimates and invoices, accept payments, etc. without overwhelming you with paperwork so you can't get any actual work done.
You're starting a business that you plan to manage. You have carefully calculated a startup budget. You are planning to rent a building, purchase software and equipment, and hire employees, so you need to make effective use of the marketing portion of your budget in order to reach break-even as soon as possible.
To avoid running out of cash you need a marketing plan that gets customers starting on day one and doesn't waste your precious capital.
You plan on managing most things yourself but would like to outsource marketing. What you don't need is some slick marketer, whom you met over the phone, to rope you into a large contract and not deliver, leaving you with bills to pay and few customers.
You need a multi-faceted plan to overcome your lack of name recognition, offer deals that quickly attract, and quickly find people who want your kind of products and services.
You've been in business for awhile and achieved some growth, but seemed to have reached a plateau.
If seems everywhere you turn there are limitations: not enough time, not enough employees, slow cash flow. If you do more marketing you stress out your capacity to do good jobs on time and please your customers.
You are not getting paid by some customers and accounts receivable are piling up. Your margins are low, and you seem to always be doing call backs or remediating customer service problems.
Your online reviews have suffered, and you've noticed that the number of repeat customers is decreasing.
You need for your organization and systems to catch up to your early success. You need to focus on quality, productivity, employee training and retention. and profitability.
You need a marketing plan that capitalizes on the hundreds of satisfied customers you have already served, and to motivate them to make referrals.
Your business is still humming. You have employees who know what they are doing. They are so good that your competitors are starting to poach them.
Your margins are good, and you are still growing, but your sales growth is beginning to slowing as it appears you are reaching the limits of the local market for your products and services.
You need to take protective measures to face the threats you face. You may need to return more to your employees to retain them and attract new ones while you explore possibilities to sell in new markets. New markets will create higher level positions as you delegate more responsibility, open new branches, and give employees who have reached their potential in your current set up new challenges and opportunities to help you take the company to the next level.
Marketers everywhere want to rope you into a one or two year contract. Their sales people will promise you the moon to sell a contract, but then you get passed on to an account executive who says something very different.
Runnymede Media is committed to earning your business month after month. For most of Runnymede Media’s business services, you pay for the upcoming month only. If for some reason you don’t like what you are getting from us, you can simply stop service before the next month.
Some companies need marketing strategies to get more customers, while others need better customers, or repeat customers.
Other companies need sales strategies to increase revenues by improved closing rates, adjusting prices, or by adding new or recurring revenue streams.
Some companies need to improve their work and margins by becoming more efficient, focusing on the core strengths, outsourcing non-core activities, or cutting operating costs so they achieve better profitability.
The single biggest problem facing small business owners today is finding, training, and retaining people. Or that they don't don't know how to automate or outsource peripheral work to free themselves up for more core work.
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