Blogs Will Change Your Business

Look past the yakkers, hobbyists, and political mobs. Your customers and rivals are figuring blogs out. Our advice: Catch up...or catch you later...

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excerpt from 13 Ways to Use Your Blog to Improve Your Sales Process

The numbers don't lie. But, here's some antecdotal evidence and examples of how I have used blogs to move my sales process along.

1. Subscribers Sell Themselves.

Sometimes, by the time I talk to one of our blog subscribers, they know what they want, know why they need it and know that HubSpot provides it. They are ready to buy. These people have typically struggled for some time trying to figure all this stuff out on their own, they've paid expensive consultants to do it for them; and/or they've struggled hobbling together a bunch of expensive solutions to accomplish the same thing HubSpot provides in one integrated marketing platform. These educated buyers have spent their time reading through the HubSpot website, reading and commenting on our blog posts, attending our internet marketing webinars, downloading our internet marketing kit and reading our online marketing case studies. Then, they usually request an internet marketing review of their website.

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Market positioning and public relations strategy session for businesses

"One-day market positioning session" for business start-ups
Mind Bullet Inc., a market positioning and public relations (PR) firm in the Philippines, introduces its "one day strategy session" aimed at helping predominantly start-up enterprises and companies position themselves properly in the market.

At the launching of its website, www.mindbullet.org, Mind Bullet leverages market positioning as it applies to new business. President and CEO Eero Brillantes elaborates. 'What we have done is to concentrate on key market positioning subject areas appropriate for start up businesses. With some preparatory time, a session would last a day with a measurable market positioning program as output. After the session, we present our strategic recommendations. After that, it all nurturing time spread over the period a program is being implemented. "

Brillantes emphasizes the need for proper positioning as necessary to roll out new business.

"Now more than ever, market positioning is a major activity for any new business to succeed or even become dominant in a market. As a process, market positioning encompasses certain factors essential to roll out strategies and launches. Identifying real value, actually owning key words and phrases in the consumers mind, and establishing consumer relationships based on human interaction is what market positioning is all about".

Brillantes mentions that a lot of new businesses spend so much resources on capital outlay and tactical marketing campaigns only to be frustrated.

"How many times have we seen owners of businesses spend on equipment, expertise, and marketing gimmicks which do not give real value. It just so happens others have spent on these also. The same equipment is bought. The same media-marketing mix are employed. Similar corporate philosophies and business models are cascaded throughout the organization. But if you look closely, a lot of spending go to expenditures which do not anymore provide the competitive edge needed to succeed. Many factors of competition are already at parity. Yet this type of mistake is common. "

For his part, Nestor Mijares, Accounts Director at Mind Bullet says that nothing beats owning real estate in the mind of consumers.

"With so much information out there, and a galaxy of options for consumers, how do products and services stand out if these are new? Owning a word or phrase and relating this with what is offered is the most powerful outcome of any in market positioning strategy. Done properly, positioning makes a product, service, or individual stand out in the crowded market place and even at times dominate . Pushing the envelope further, proper positioning opens up new markets."