Using Strategic Alliances to open new doors in 2011

Growing your business means spotting potential emerging opportunities and taking advantage of them quickly, before your competitors move in. It’s difficult to break into new markets, and a partnership can bring instant access to new customers.  If your company has the technical know-how; another company can have the resources to bring that know-how to market. This year there have been rumours of a collaboration of Skype and Facebook.  The partnership will include the integration of SMS, voice chat and Facebook Connect into Skype to make Facebook a central communications and messaging platform for its users.
The Skype-Facebook tie-up will prove attractive to businesses as much as consumers, because many SMEs already use Skype as well as Facebook and Twitter.  Even if this collaboration turns out to be just rumour, it points to a natural evolutionary step of bringing together community and communication technologies, this combination could become very attractive and useful to enterprises, as well as consumers.

Alongside Facebook and Skype, two global brands, BMW and Saab are also eyeing up a possible collaboration. After turning to BMW for help with an engine to power a possible revival of the Saab 92, it seems the Swedes at Saab could be returning the favour. Since Saab has a lot of experience with front wheel drive and BMW have confirmed that they would like to create such a model, the two companies could take the collaboration to a new level. The possible partnership between BMW and Saab could mean that their 92 model and the new BMW could share the same underpinnings.  The collaboration will revolve around the production of a tear-drop shaped car, which is inspired by the Saab 92 model, produced from 1949 until 1956. To keep the mystery and secrecy around this possible new model, Saab said in an official statement:

“We indeed are looking for alliance partners but no cooperation with has been confirmed at this time. A smaller Saab below the 9-3 is not currently in our business plan though it would be on our wish list”.

So will this collaboration be the perfect partnership or will it, like many relationships have a rough patch?

Strategic alliances, if thought about, planned and implemented properly can be the perfect tool to help a business generate new clients. However collaborations are not just for big global brands, SMEs can also benefit from collaborating with like minded companies who also want to produce a clear path for new business and future success.

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January’s Top Marketing Tips

Though Box is a new service that helps you get organised in 2011. This new tool may come in handy for those of you whose New Year’s resolutions were to become more organised and efficient.
Twileshare, the time consuming process of uploading a file to Twitter has now been improved with this new online app. It is a free web service that uploads your files and lets you tweet their shortened URL at the same time. Upload and share anything from images, documents, PDFs, eBooks and more.

View Marks is a browser add-on for Mozilla Firefox, for version 3.5 onwards. The add-on adds an icon to your Firefox’s address bar. Clicking on this icon presents a thumbnail view of all your bookmarks. Instead of looking for the bookmark’s title, you can immediately click the thumbnail icon corresponding to the bookmark you wish to visit.

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February’s Top Marketing Tips

  1. Kindle Lending Club is a website that matches lenders and borrowers of Kindle ebooks. To participate in lending and borrowing Kindle books, you must first register as a user on the site or connect with Facebook Connect. Any Kindle book that has lending enabled can be loaned by one Kindle user to another for 14 days. At the end of the loan period the title is automatically transferred back to the book owners Kindle.
  2. Google’s online store provides you with more than 3 million eBooks. From novels to textbooks, self-help books to cookbooks, the eBook categories cover anything. The best part is that many of the available eBooks are free to download.
  3. Money for Nothing by Seth Godin, master marketer, sums up the best way to drive traffic to your website (or store, or organisation, etc.). Read next month’s top marketing tips for more eBooks by Seth Godin.

 

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Be My Business Valentine

When we speak with businesses, the most common marketing objective they are focused on is bringing in new clients. The majority of resources are usually channelled towards the undoubtedly important activity of new business generation.
Whilst new business development is clearly a vital activity in any organisation, it is important that we don’t neglect or take for granted the businesses that you are already in a relationship with, your customers.

With Valentine’s Day on the horizon, we thought it was a great time to highlight the importance of taking the trouble to show your current customers that you care. Without them you wouldn’t be in business, so make sure they know how important they are to you.

Famously, it is 5 times more expensive to acquire a new customer, compared with retaining and satisfying an existing customer’s needs. At a time when businesses are looking to get maximum value from their marketing budgets, customer retention has to be high on your list of priorities.

It is essential to keep in touch with your clients on a regular basis. Regular communication builds and strengthens relationships, ensuring you will benefit from your customer’s business for years to come. If you are good at showing you care and delivering what they need, your customers will become advocates for your organisation, referring you to friends, colleagues and companies, generating the new business that allows your business to grow.

Taking the time to understand your customer, their business and environment in which they operate, is an essential first step in laying a solid foundation for a good client relationship.

Building and maintaining effective and rewarding relationships with clients has many benefits:

  • Customer relationship management (CRM) helps businesses gain an understanding of the behaviour of their customers and enables you to adapt your business operations to ensure that your customers receive the best possible service. (Visit our article on CRM software)
  • A close relationship with clients helps you to recognise the value of your customer base. The better a business understands its customers, the more responsive it can be to their requirements.
  • Combining your customer relationship management with your marketing can be a great strategy to maintain customer loyalty, interaction and long-term engagement. The more opportunities a client has to engage with your business the better, so make sure you open up new channels to interact with clients as they become available.

Below are our Top 5 ways to keep the lines of communication open and develop close relationships with your clients:

1. Social media is a cost-effective tool to keep your business in contact with your current clients. Use Facebook and Twitter to follow their latest events, news and articles, ‘like’ their wall posts and re tweet their twitter feeds.

2. When interacting with a client, communication is very important. Stay in touch with your clients through e-newsletters and e-shots. Send reminders about special promotions you’re running, notifications about new merchandise you’re stocking or newsletters about community events that you’re sponsoring.

3. Personal communication is key, call and meet with your clients on a monthly, if not weekly basis. Spend time learning more about their business. Find out what problems they have and how you or your network might be able to help them.

4. Run events and seminars for your clients, providing them with a great networking opportunity, as well as a chance to learn more about the services you provide.

5. Finally, send your clients direct mail campaigns to say thank you. A simple thank you card, box of chocolates or personalised gift can go a long way.

Everyone is out to win new business but make sure you don’t forget your current loved ones.

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Welcome to the TLC Business blog

18.01.10 New Beginnings
Welcome to the all new TLC Business blog, on what is officially the most miserable and depressing day of the whole year.

Not for us though! Here at TLC Business we are most definitely defying the winter blues. In fact, we couldn’t be more upbeat if we tried. We’ve just sent our lovely new business cards off to the printers, the new website is live and we’re raring to go!

It has indeed been a very exciting start to the New Year as we go full steam ahead with TLC Business – the reincarnation of The Lifetime Company’s TLC Office.

TLC Business has grown out of a desire to do what we do best and love most, and that’s marketing.

Our mission is to provide SMEs across Hampshire and the South with carefully conceived, innovative and results-focused marketing solutions that represent great value for money. The new team bring together a fantastic range of skills and experience, and everyone is full of fresh ideas and enthusiasm for the year ahead.

Over the coming months and beyond this blog will record what we’ve been up to and flag up any events you don’t want to miss out on. We’ll also share anything we’ve found particularly interesting or helpful and put forward our thoughts on all things marketing; the stuff we like, the stuff we don’t and everything in-between. We hope you find it useful.

Rebecca Pash, Marketing Manager, TLC Business

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Welcome to TLC Business

You may have noticed that TLC Office looks a little different now. We thought it was time for a change and hope you like the new look and feel.
The changes are more than just cosmetic though. TLC Business is now entirely focused on providing inspiring, innovative and effective marketing & design services to growing SMEs across Hampshire and the South.

Marketing is what we love, and what we do best, so the new focus makes perfect sense. For the last 5 years, we have enjoyed working with a broad spectrum of exciting and inspiring businesses on their marketing, and we are very excited about helping even more.

We have made some fantastic additions to the team, welcome Rebecca and Rob, who you will no doubt meet over the coming year. They bring superb marketing and sales experience with them, which will prove invaluable in delivering marketing campaigns for our clients.

Finally, you can keep up with what’s happening at TLC Business, marketing hints and tips, local events and more through twitter and our blog. We’ll keep you up to date with useful information that can help your business grow in 2010.

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