Some Credit Crunch Tips For Business!

So I was minding my own business. Well actually trying to manage my own business when I received a mail from my Bank Relationship Manager asking if I could help her out. Imagine my surprise, it is most definitely me asking the Bank for help not the other way round! Needless to say I decided to do what was being asked of me and there are 2 versions in this blog. The first is the full article from HSBC and the second is the edited version of just little old me!!!!

I hope it helps someone!!!

Just Little Ole Me!!

Simple Economics

The Stock Market is in freefall, Consumer Confidence is low, House Prices are falling, Inflation rising, Marketing Budgets are being cut………..

Now tell me the odd one out?

Yep you guessed it, Marketing Budgets being cut. In an Economic downturn one of the first budgets to be cut (after Overtime) is marketing. Now has anyone spotted the mistake here? That’s right, if we want to increase market share, sales and ultimately profits we need to actually market ourselves more in a downturn thereby strengthening our position against that of our competitors who are not marketing themselves effectively. Perhaps we should look at the tangible side of marketing such as promotional merchandise, this way we can clearly see who we are strategically targeting. Of course a further alternative is to utilise a Gift with Order or an On Pack offer, this is where you up sell using the promotional merchandise as a ‘carrot’. There are many ways of ‘skinning a cat’ and we can go into greater detail or discussion if you wish to contact me directly on email simon@merchandisemania.co.uk.

The second part to this instalment is about budgeting. Now I don’t want to patronise anyone with this next statement, but effective budgeting is the one of the important key skills of the business world. I say skill, because the way finance teams are cutting budgets each of us is going from ‘Tesco Finest’ to ‘Tesco Value’ in terms of our marketing spend. How can we make the £££’s go further? If we liken the Tesco Products to Promotional Merchandise, there are many ways of making those £££’s go further. What we need from you are the number! The number of items you would like and the number you have in your budget to pay for it? Once we have this we should be able to come up with many different ideas and ways of using your numbers to satisfy your needs. Give us a challenge; I am sure we will come through for you!

Remember, the pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity; the optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

The First day of the rest of your life!!!

So there I was reading through a colleagues blog earlier today (http://paulsmania.blogspot.com/) when I found myself thinking, 'You know what Simon, you should really do one of those!' Then the panic, and the self doubt. What will I say, how will it sound, will anyone actually read it. After careful consideration I decided that none of that mattered and as part of my ongoing learning I would jump right into it.

So what the heck is all this about I here you ask, well simply put I will be imparting my, possibly useless, knowledge in the blog. Along with my business experiences, even down to the simple don’t try this at home type of thing. It pains me to say so, but I have made many, many mistakes in my life. Some have definitely been larger than others. My philosophy is that your gut is usually right, unless of course you had a serious curry the night before, so trust it and act quickly. If you don’t act, someone else will. This works in good times as well as in bad. An example within Merchandise Mania would be my missus, Lisa, coming up with the idea for Recycled Mania. This was specifically to provide services that were only available in a limited way from other companies. What it meant to our customers was that they could find leading edge environmentally friendly products from us, a good six months before the general market could get close. We were manufacturing fleece made from 22 plastic water bottles before 90% of the High Street stores. Of course the important thing from this for our customers was that they were way ahead of their competition in terms of creativity, and ethical accountability……Priceless!

Ok, so I guess the first one is at an end….keep checking back and lets see if we can learn together.