Archive for the ‘Sales and Marketing’ Category

The general purpose of market research is to provide the organization with relevant, accurate information about it’s consumers and the competitive environment. This benefits a company in many aspects of the business, and can ultimately save the company time, effort and money.

Benefit #1 – You get to know your customer
When first starting a business, or launching a new product, you first need to determine if there is a market for this product or service. This is where market research comes in. By completing surveys, collecting statistics and product testing, you will learn who will use your product, where they are, what they like, and where to advertise that will get their attention. Often if you test the product with your target consumer, you will discover ways that consumers use your product that you hadn’t even considered – which in turn builds your marketing and aids in advertising endeavors.

Benefit #2 – Referrals
In completing your market research, you will have developed a database of names, addresses and phone numbers. Not only are these people that participated in your surveys, these are your customers, and your sales people! After completing a survey if you were to send out a simple “thanks for participating” postcard, you’ll leave an impression with this consumer. Not only will this make them more likely to buy from you, either for the first time or again, but if your product is successful, they will refer friends and family to it. Word of mouth is a wonderful thing, and market research is another way to get your name out there.

Benefit #3 – Enhanced Products
Market research can help you to determine more about your consumer, but it can also tell you more about your product. What would your customers change about your product? Is the packaging keeping the product safe, and yet still appealing to them? Is there something missing from the instructions? Market Research can help lead you to product development, and continue to better your company and products.

Benefit #4 – You can save money!!
Market research can save you from making a poor investment. While market research is an investment in itself, spending the time to learn that no one really wants to use aerosol toothpaste isn’t such a bad idea. When you consider the costs of market research, think of it this way – You COULD pay whatever it costs for market research, OR you could spend the money to produce the aerosol toothpaste, it’s packaging, as well as put money into storage, shipping to stores, sales people to find the stores to distribute, and the advertising and marketing campaigns. Which do you think would be more cost effective? Saving yourself from a failed product launch, or dealing with the aftermath?

Remember to keep your market research on the priority list. Some things that appear to be good ideas, are easily rejected by the consumers, and can end up being very costly. While I personally have nothing against clear cola, the market likes what it likes, and brutally rejects what it doesn’t.

Today, I want to take a little bit of time to talk about the recent redesign of the Northbridge Consultants website and the importance of consistent branding.

A brand image is, in the most basic sense, everything that a person thinks about your company. So, if we were to take Tim Horton’s, for example, what’s the first thing that pops into your mind? For me, it’s fresh coffee. I also think of fast service, a (healthier) alternative to fast food, and (of course) hockey.

Brand identity is how you want a person to think about your brand. Brand image and brand identity are not always the same thing – usually the most challenging part of branding is making the brand identity and the brand image consistent.

So, now that we have a bit of background on branding, why did we redesign our website? The easiest answer is that we wanted to make it more consistent with the other marketing materials that we use, and to make the underlying messages across all marketing materials conform with each other. So the website had to reflect this too.

In order to do this, we made some changes to the design (the colour scheme, as well as streamlining the organization and appearance of the content being the biggest changes design-wise). But most of what we changed had to deal with the content itself – we’ve made it more readable. Each page was broken up into several smaller, more coherent pages. We’ve made the text less technical and easier to understand. And we’ve added content that we feel is important for those looking into SR&ED and other federal funding.

So, how would something along these lines help a company’s brand identity? In our case, we want people to think of us as an authority on SR&ED and federal funding. We want people to know that we are working with them to help them further their business. And we work towards putting those values in everything we do, whether it’s marketing materials, our seminars, or our face-to-face meetings with clients.

Because in the end, a company’s website is only one small piece of brand identity, and needs to work well with everything else your company puts out. As a whole, branding comes down to everything that is used to get in touch with your clients – newsletters and bulletins, customer service, the quality of your product and, of course, your service.

Hello Readers,

On Thursday, January 29th, 2009 Northbridge Consultants will be holding our very first free breakfast seminar, to provide a meaningful information session on the SR&ED program. There will be a free, fully catered breakfast  buffet, and the seminar is of no cost to attend.

The primary focus will be to provide a complete, thorough understanding of the SR&ED process, and how companies can use this to take advantage of Investment Tax Credits for work performed within Canada.

The seminar on January 29th will be held at the Cambridge Hotel & Conference Center, in the Dorset Room. The address is 700 Hespeler Road in Cambridge, ON.

Breakfast will be served at from 7:30am, and the seminar will run from 8:00am to 9:30am (with an intermission at the 45 minute mark to allow for a break). The Northbridge team will be staying after the seminar for you to approach us with questions.

The speakers at this event will include:
Sol Algranti, President & CEO of Northbridge Consultants
Ajay Sinha, VP of Operations of Northbridge Consultants
Gerry Fung, Account Manager with Northbridge Consultants
Ashley Demers, Sales & Marketing Specialist with Northbridge Consultants

also in attendance will be our special guest speakers:
Ken Lancaster, Tax Principal at MacGillivray Chartered Accountants & Business Advisors
Larry Vokes, Community Development Advisor with EMC Canada

To register, or for more information, contact:
Ashley Demers at (519) 623-2486 x 231 or ashley@northbridgeconsultants.com

You may also feel free to pass this information on to anyone you feel may be interested in attending.

Register soon, as seating is limited.

We hope to see you there!