4 Basic Marketing Principles

1.  Targeting

It’s better to have a single, well targeted bullet than to spray randomly all over the place. It’s more efficient and less wasteful – of both resources and time.

In practice this means getting to know your market and what they want and need (which may not always be the same thing). Then it means designing or adjusting your products appropriately.

     2.       Be in it for the long haul

Marketing works over time, and if you keep building on it, can go from strength to strength. It’s not

something you can just do a short burst of and then leave it forevermore. It should also have a many pillared approach, rather than relying too much on a single ‘prong’. Look at all the alternatives that are available to you, including: social media, website promotion, direct mailing, print advertising, networking etc.

   3.       Focus on benefits, not features

People don’t care that a car has a state of the art alarm system, they care that the car isn’t going to get stolen. They don’t care if they website is W3C compatible or future proof, they want to know that it’s going to improve their bottom line and not be a money sink.

In summary, don’t focus on the features of your products and services, focus on the tangible benefits they bring to your customers.

  4.       Be consistent and specific

Don’t try to be all things to all people, a constantly changing chameleon. By spreading yourself too thin, you’ll end up appealing to nobody instead. It’s better to decide what your brand represents, whether that’s based on your own intrinsic principles or what you’ve ascertained your market wants, and stick with it.

Click here to read about Chelsea Singh.

The 4 Ps of the Marketing Mix

You’ll sometimes hear business people talk about the 4 Ps, or the marketing mix. These 4 Ps are: Price, Place, Promotion and Product. Let’s look at each of these in a bit more detail.

The Right Product

The product has to have the right features and benefits to appeal to the customer and meet their needs. If there simply isn’t a desire for that product then the best marketing in the world isn’t going to sell it.

The Right Price

The price needs to be right from two points of view – the customer’s and the seller’s. From the customer’s point of view, the price has to be low enough to be affordable, but not so low it gives the impression of poor quality. The seller has to choose a price that will attain the optimum balance between sales volume and profit margin.

The Right Place

Products have to be in the right place at the right time. A good example of this is umbrellas when it’s raining and ice creams when it’s very hot. If the product isn’t there when the customer feels the need for it, it won’t get sold.

The Right Promotion

You could have the best product at a great price, and be in the right place, but promotion is still necessary to give that final edge over the competition and drive enough sales to make a product profitable. Promotion can take many forms and will usually have a multi-pronged approach.

Click here to visit the Chelsea Singh Investment website. 

Principles for Strategy

To fail to prepare is to prepare to fail.

But having a strategy is no guarantee of success. External factors are always changing and new information becomes available and the environment changes.

So what makes a successful strategy? Below are three principles that underlie a good strategy.

Keep it Simple

A good strategy will have a very simple objective at its core, that can be described in a single sentence and instantly understood, such as Steve Jobs’s ‘1000 songs in your pocket’ for the iPad. By having a clear centre, the strategy will be solidly grounded and anchored to this concept.

Be flexible

It’s a tricky balance to know when to stick to your guns and when to change tactics. But this is one of the most important skills you can have as a strategist, as no plans survive first contact intact. The strategy should have flexibility built into it, with some of the most likely changes in scenario accounted for.

Avoid assumptions

The biggest pitfall of strategies is making incorrect assumptions. When developing a strategy, you should question everything you think you know and make sure you get solid facts. Even better, make sure your strategy relies on as few assumptions as possible – that way it will be as strong as it can be. For more on this, look up ‘Occam’s Razor’.

Contact CS Investments for strategic consultancy service

Chelsea Singh on Leadership

Leadership is a key factor in business, but there are many different types of leader and ways of leading people. We all need leadership at various times in our lives, and we will turn to different people for guidance in different areas. Sometimes we need to be motivated to get up and go and make important changes in behaviour, and other times we might need a role model for some more personal reflection.

Some leaders are very charismatic and inspirational, and draw people to them like a magnet. People feel stronger when spending time with them and more motivated to make changes in their lives. These types of leaders usually have strong visions, they know exactly where they want to go, and they have no time for naysayers – they’re too busy getting on with it! They can be radical, and will usually have enemies as well, as some people prefer things to always stay the same and fear change, so these people will find them unsettling, and will react negatively.

These types of leaders tend to be politicians and high-profile entrepreneurs.

But there are also modest leaders. Those who shy away from the limelight and keep a low profile. There are plenty of powerful people who have created huge, influential organisations, but of whom you will have heard. These people prefer a slow and steady approach, and they tend to be committed to the success of an organisation of movement, rather than personal achievement.

These people tend to be spiritual leaders, authors and teachers.

Click here to read about Chelsea Singh.

Do you need to have a degree in business studies to become an entrepreneur?

With worldwide University attendance rates at their highest ever (though watch this space to see how the increased fees will affect UK students), it’s commonly believed that you can’t get anywhere in life without that little piece of paper that says you spent four years or more attending lectures, and sitting exams at the end.

 

But research shows that most students remember almost nothing of what they learned at school or university. So is it worth going to university if you want to make it big in business?

The answer is that while university will be very helpful as a character building experience and to make friends that will last a lifetime, there are many examples of people who dropped out of college, had terrible reviews from their teachers and lecturers and turned out to be some of the most successful business people and entrepreneurs of our time – these include Richard Branson and Bill Gates.

So, there’s nothing wrong with qualifications, and getting an education is no bad thing, but a degree in business studies does not a good business person make, and it’s very possible to strike it rich without a university degree.

Click here to visit the Chelsea Singh Investment website.

Industries of the future

Entrepreneurs are constantly thinking about the future and modern society is moving and developing faster than our human ancestors of the past could have ever imagined.

So what are the industries that show the most promise for transforming how the future looks?

Bioengineered renewable fuels

 

Energy is the word on everyone’s lips. We all know that the fossil fuels aren’t going to last forever, and renewable sources such as wind solar and geo-thermal and being developed, but not yet fast enough. There have been some complications to bio-fuel development – notably the impact on the food market, but algae and other bioforms seem like a good alternative if and when they can be developed efficiently in the future.

Medical advances

Spray on artificial skin for burn victims is already a reality – now it just has to pass all the safety regulations and it will change the lives of those with fire and other skin damage. Personalisation is the keyword for the future of medicines, with our personal physical make-ups being closely analysed and noted and medicines and therapies being tailor-made to suit our specific individual requirements.

Robots

Humans have been obsessed with robots for many decades, even centuries, and we’re now bringing the field of robotics into a phase that we can recognise from sci-fi movies and novels. There are bionic arms that can be attached to people who have lost limbs and controlled solely by the mind, and there are humanoid robots that can complete obstacle courses – with serious impact for military strategy.

Click here to read about Chelsea Singh.

Starting a Business

In the current climate with even long established businesses going to the wall and many companies struggling to stay afloat there are increasing number of people being made redundant and many of those people consider starting their own business with their redundancy package.

But most businesses fail within the first year – why is that?

Unrealistic expectations

Some people think that running your own business means being able to do what you want to do all the time. That it means waking up at whatever time, staying in your pyjamas all day and taking days off willy nilly. Unfortunately this is pretty much the opposite of the reality of running your own business.

People who start businesses usually work longer hours than those who do 9 – 5 , and  a lot of entrepreneurs are naturally workaholics. If you’re choosing starting a business because it’ll be an easy option, it’s the road to disaster.

Lack of Planning

Many startups think they’ve got a good idea, but fail to do the nitty gritty maths and calculations that are required to work out whether it is actually a viable business or not. Sure, projections of new startups are notoriously difficult and can be wildly wrong, but if it’s going to be literally impossible to make it add up, it’s better to see it from abstract calcultaions than a year later in your bank balance.

Another area where inexperienced people fail is by not checking out the competition properly and assuming customers will be battering down their door. Knowing what you’re up against and having a clear reason for people to buy from you instead of them is critical and you don’t want to be discovering your nemesis later down the line.

Lack of adequate funds                                                             

Businesses need funds to get started. Even starting on a shoestring means having at least a few hundred or thousand. The minimum a business needs to start is a phone, a business card and a website. But most successful business people know that to make a business a success you need to start off by investing.

With the right funding for marketing and giving a professional impression, trust is built quickly and customer bases can be expanded quickly, turning the company into a profit maker rather than having it creep along without breaking even for years.

If you want to give your business the best chance of success, then why not contact Chelsea Singh, via his personal website or check out CS Investments.

Tips for getting investment for your new business – from Chelsea Singh

If you’re thinking of starting up a new business, there’s a good chance you’re going to need investment to get your venture off the ground – even if you are starting on a shoestring budget.

So how do you convince potential investors that you’ve got the goods?

Here are a few pointers to get you going in the right direction.

Do the sums

Any serious investor is going to start talking about numbers, and you’re not going to get anywhere if you’re afraid of them. It’s true that projections for start-ups are notoriously hard – and the real figures are often wildly different – but that doesn’t mean it’s not a worthwhile exercise that may highlight problem areas and determine whether the idea really has any merit to begin with.

Be realistic

You may think that everybody’s going to be beating down your door to purchase hundreds of Thingummywatsits from you, but until you’ve tested the market, you really can’t know. Yes, entrepreneurs need to believe in themselves and have passion and drive, but that doesn’t mean being blindly optimistic.

Do your research

Test the market and find your competitors. This might sound daunting if you’ve never done it before, but you will be in a much stronger position if you get it together enough to do this research. Search the internet on terms that you want people to search for your products on, and see what comes up. Then try a bunch more. You’ll be amazed how many ideas have already been thought of and implemented…

Chelsea Singh is always on the lookout for new investment ideas.

Find out more at CS Investments.

Could you run your own business? Part One: Discipline.

Chelsea Singh knew from when he was practically a child that he was going to run his own business one day, and that being employed was simply not an option.

For some people it’s simply something they know, something they feel from very early on, the way other people know they want to be a doctor, or a pilot.

For others, they may start in a more normal route of employment and then later in life decide they want to try their hand at striking out alone.

So what sort of traits and skills does it take to run your own business?

Arguably, the most important traits in someone who is going to start up and run their own business are discipline, a thick skin and determination.

In this article we will explore the first of these; discipline.

A business owner needs discipline

This is absolutely critical for people just starting up. It’s so easy to slump down to the home office in your pyjamas, then spend the morning making coffee, doing the laundry, tidying up – basically anything other than getting on with work. Then, as the days go by and there’s no one else there, punctuality slips and soon you’re rocking up at 10.30am and taking three hour lunch breaks.

This sort of behaviour a successful business will not make.

To get your business up and running and not vanishing into nothingness before you’ve even gotten started, you need to have discipline. Each of us has different levels of natural discipline, but there are a few habits and patterns you can train yourself into to help.

Here are a few tips for getting your habit of discipline into place:

·         Get dressed as if you were going to the office, even though the only person who’s going to see you is the cat. This has a huge mental impact and helps separate ‘work’ time from ‘home’ time.

·         Be strict about hours. Have a specific start time and – and this is much more important than you may think – finish time. And decide on a lunch hour, that you take at the same time every day. Don’t be late and don’t stay for hours of overtime every day. Doing overtime is fine if it’s necessary as a one off, but it shouldn’t be a habit.

·         Have monthly meetings with someone where you have to explain what you’ve achieved that month and what your targets are for the next month.

Read the next part of the article here. 

Click here to visit CS Investments

More inspiring quotes from Chelsea Singh

"Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming." – Richard Branson
 
"Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy." – Norman Schwarzkopf

"The critical ingredient is getting off your butt and doing something. It’s as simple as that. A lot of people have ideas, but there are few who decide to do something about them now. Not tomorrow. Not next week. But today. The true entrepreneur is a doer, not a dreamer." – Nolan Bushnell

"To think is easy. To act is difficult. To act as one thinks is the most difficult." – Johann Wolfgang Von Goeth

"I had to make my own living and my own opportunity! But I made it! Don’t sit down and wait for the opportunities to come. Get up and make them!" – C.J. Walker

"The winners in life think constantly in terms of I can, I will, and I am. Losers, on the other hand, concentrate their waking thoughts on what they should have or would have done, or what they can’t do." – Dennis Waitley

Business Basics – The Business Plan: Part Two

If you want to start a business and you’re looking for investment, either from  banks or from private investors, you’re going to need a business plan.

A business plan is a document that details various aspects of a proposed business, including the aims of the business, the background of the individuals starting the business, details of the products and services that are on offer, the market, competition, strengths and weaknesses, operations, pricing strategy and financial forecasts.

Click here to read part one.

Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats

The SWOT analysis is a really great way of getting a quick snapshot profile of a new business. Strengths may be people skills or a unique product, weaknesses may be a poor understanding of technology or lack of funds, opportunities could be new government legislation or globalisation, or those things could just as easily be threats.

Operations

Operations covers the logistics, the nitty gritty of how the business will run. It includes: production, delivery, payment, suppliers, premises, equipment, transport, legal; requirements, insurance requirements and management and staff.

Pricing strategy

Pricing strategy is absolutely key to the success and failure of any business, and is probably the aspect that has most entrepreneurs tearing their hair out. Price too high and you may drive customers away, but equally pricing too low can be a disaster as it gives the impression of poor quality and may mean margins are too tight.

Financial forecasts

There are two kinds of people in the world, - those who love financial forecasts, and those who hate them. Either way, your business needs them. If it’s a new business, especially with a new product, the numbers will largely be guesswork, but putting price of units against number sold against expenses should give you an idea of whether the business is in any way feasible. For example, if it turns out you have to shift 3000 units per week just to break even but you can only manufacture 1000 per week, you’ve got yourself a problem.

Click here to visit CS Investments

Business Basics – The Business Plan: Part One

If you want to start a business and you’re looking for investment, either from  banks or from private investors, you’re going to need a business plan.

A business plan is a document that details various aspects of a proposed business, including the aims of the business, the background of the individuals starting the business, details of the products and services that are on offer, the market, competition, strengths and weaknesses, operations, pricing strategy and financial forecasts.

Aims of the business

This will include a summary of the business, its aims and a brief financial summary. This section is called the executive summary, and although you have to spend hours, days, even weeks preparing your business plan, at the end of the day, this page may be the only part that the investors actually look at.

The background of the individuals starting the business

The business plan should set out why the individuals are the best people to start this business. They must demonstrate that they have the appropriate skills and experience required to make this business a success, including previous work experience, qualifications and education, hobbies and interests and anything else that’s relevant.

Details of the products and services that are on offer

Naturally a key part of the business plan is details of the products and or services that are going to be sold. There should be a single line description and also a more detailed description. Ideally there will be information about Unique Selling Points (USPs) that will give your company the edge over competitors.

The market,

A sign of a serious entrepreneur is one that knows the importance of knowing their market. It’s no good just assuming the market is there and will be beating down your door – you need market research and hard data to crunch. This should include a description of your typical customer, their profile (individuals or businesses, age, wealth levels etc), what their priorities are, whether you’ve sold them before, location and much more.

Competition

The better the devil you know, as they say. New businesses need to know exactly what they’re up against. That means how much competition there is and what it looks like. Who currently holds the market share, how big are they, how long have they been in business, how do they make a success of it? You can learn a lot from your competition, and you need to be very clear about exactly why your customers should buy from you and not them.

Click here to read part two.

Click here to visit CS Investments

How to reach success - more quotes from Chelsea Singh

 

Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life - think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success.
Swami Vivekananda
 

Most people give up just when they're about to achieve success. They quit on the one yard line. They give up at the last minute of the game one foot from a winning touchdown.
Ross Perot
 

The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it is the same problem you had last year.
John Foster Dulles
 

Don't aim for success if you want it; just do what you love and believe in, and it will come naturally.
David Frost
 

I don't measure a man's success by how high he climbs but how high he bounces when he hits bottom.
George S. Patton
 

Always continue the climb. It is possible for you to do whatever you choose, if you first get to know who you are and are willing to work with a power that is greater than ourselves to do it.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 

Set your sights high, the higher the better. Expect the most wonderful things to happen, not in the future but right now. Realize that nothing is too good. Allow absolutely nothing to hamper you or hold you up in any way.
Eileen Caddy

Chelsea Singh - the building of an empire

There are plenty of rags to riches stories in the movies and in books, and Chelsea Singh proves that it's not only in fiction. Chelsea grew up in a modest working class family in London, but when he saw the riches and wealth of the exclusive areas of the capital, he developed a hunger to build his own empire.

Starting by working his way up a photographic company, the young Chelsea identified opportunities around him and soon and soon invested in his own businesses which he built into leaders in their industry before moving on to other things.

If you'd like to read more about how his business empire developed over the years, then you can read Chelsea Singh's full profile here.

Innovation is the specific tool of entrepreneurs...

"Innovation is the specific tool of entrepreneurs, the means by which they exploit change as an opportunity for a different business or a different service. It is capable of being presented as a discipline, capable of being learned, capable of being practiced. Entrepreneurs need to search purposefully for the sources of innovation, the changes and their symptoms that indicate opportunities for successful innovation. And they need to know and to apply the principles of successful innovation."
- Peter F. Drucker, "The Father of Modern Management"