Grant Stanley Consulting

In days gone by small business advertising was a simple task. You would call up either the local newspaper or the Yellow Pages, get a borderline-extortionate quote and then pay it. Advertising was expensive, but it was simple and, when done well, it worked. Today the opportunities for small businesses have proliferated and become much more targeted thanks to the internet, but with so many options available it can be difficult to decide which the best fit is for you. Ultimately, advertising is only worth the money if it drives people to buy your company’s products or services. So here’s a run through of the main opportunities you should consider investing your advertising budget in, in order to reach your target audience and generate leads for your small business: Google Adwords Adwords is the single biggest system for small business advertising. Google will display your website’s ad above results generated from particular searches. Choosing to display your ads against the r...

Innovators or Sheep? Have you ever notice that so many companies want to be visionary? Able to predict future products and services you need; but yet they also say they respond to market demand by being market-driven . Seems to me that’s an oxymoron. Can you be both market-driving and market-driven? To disruptively break free from reactive business strategy and accelerate the agile and pivot-able strategy, we need to understand the difference between market-driving and market-driven companies. In his 2004 book, “Marketing as Strategy,” Nurmalya Kumar characterised these two types of strategies. Market-driving companies rule the future – they push the envelope of possibility and consistently surprise customers by introducing unique value in exceptional brand new products and services. Market driven companies are doomed to fall increasingly further behind as they react to customer needs that will surely change by the time they deliver the ultimately out of date p...

This is a deviation from my normal genre of posting but relevant nonetheless. Whilst we compare the two contrasting theories of population growth, there are similarities in the business world that we can prepare for and prevent. The first is from Malthus, who was writing at the end of the 18th century. He believed that only bad could come from population growth. Population he said grows faster than food supply. This he said was because food supply can only grow arithmetically, for example, 1 then 2 then 3-4-5-6-7-8 but, population grows geometrically 2-4-8-16-32-64. Consequently, there is no way food supply can keep up with population growth. Therefore, population will inevitably exceed food supply. He then went on two say that there are two possible outcomes. Firstly, he said population could exceed food supply only to be positively "checked" (reduced) by famine, war, and disease.   Population exceeds food supply and is kept in check b...

Big Data. It’s a buzzword uttered by both industry experts and business professionals; a marketing term and industry description bandied about by techies and creative types alike. Everyone acknowledges how important it is and its unlimited potential in affecting how decisions are made in various areas of our lives. However, that’s all it has actually been thus far: potential . Big Data gives us the ability to gather and access data online, regardless of whether that information comes from open sources or behind layers of cyber-security. But we have yet to maximise this data and harness it to its fullest capacity. That will change in the years to come. Many say we are at a tipping point. The ubiquity of mobile devices, cloud computing, and digital technology permeating every aspect of our lives will affect how all these volumes of information will be used and processed. Here’s how 2015 will prove to be big data’s break out year. 1.        The De...

Video content is a growing commodity for brand marketers and investment in such content is continuing to grow, a trend that CSM’s Sales and Marketing director, Grant Stanley, predicts will continue throughout this year. In 2015, US consumers looking for information, products and services on the Internet will—for the first time—do more of their search queries on mobile devices than on desktop computers. Combined with the fact that YouTube will nudge Google into second place to narrowly become the number one search engine, it’s clear mobile and video will be front and centre of every marketer’s activities. The focus on mobile is underscored by a survey (The Advertiser Intelligence Reports, Wave 21) of approximately 2,000 marketer and agency decision makers conducted in July and August of 2014 by research firm Advertiser Perceptions. Among all respondents, 48 per cent expected to spend more on mobile advertising over the next 12 months while a mere 5 per cent indicated they would ...

What, another clarion call urging executives to fundamentally rethink their business models through digital technology? The business media have had no shortage of these. Many such bulletins focus on radically changing the nature of competition in an industry, as Apple did for music and Uber did for taxis. While there is certainly merit in questioning your business model, revolutionary business model transformation remains elusive despite the buzz. In our survey, a mere 7% of executives said that their company’s digital initiatives were helping them to launch new businesses. And only 15% said digital was helping them to create new business models. Why is that? Business model innovation is hard. But managers make it harder when they think about it only as radical industry reinvention. While revolutionary business model changes can be valuable, you don’t necessarily need to transform your industry. You don’t need to destroy your current business model. There is another way to make ...