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Posted by Sarah Brown on 26 Oct '16

5 reasons you need to think about your marketing NOW

Brexit and the following economic fluctuations means that everyone needs to consider the impact on their organisation in terms of costs and opportunities to generate new business

Whether you are multinational, sole trader, or social enterprise the Brexit decision will be impacting you and you need to think about your marketing fundamentals now.

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/marketing-to-people-who-dont-know-they-need-you-tickets-4549218836

Check your profits

Even if you don’t directly import to sell, the exchange rate falls will impact on your overheads from petrol to food to delivery charges and your profit margins will be impacted to some extent. Even if you don’t need to act now, you need to monitor and consider how you will respond. This could be by adjusting delivery fees or you might want to think about adjusting what you offer so you can maintain your margins

Pricing, contracts and revenue models

Closely associated to exchange rates is the general rate of inflation which has now started to rise after a long period of stability. If you are relatively new into business, this may not be something you have had to deal with before. There are several impacts, do you consider prices rises at a set time each year, if you have long term contracts, do you build in rises based on inflation? Do you warn customers well in advance so they can pull forward orders helping your cashflow? Do change how you charge, your revenue model, for example, taking staged payments so that the initial cost is reduced even though you increase it?

Strengthening existing customer relationships

Review your existing customers to identify if they may have more money because they are an exporter or involved in tourism, for example, or if they will be suffering increased costs. Either way you can demonstrate you are a caring supplier by contacting them to discuss how their business is going. If you sell to consumers then it might be to advise them about how if at all your business is being impacted.

Re-evaluating exporting

The drop in the pound might now make your product or service very competitive so it is a good time to consider developing export markets or targeting foreign visitors to the UK.

Luxury brands have reported increases in sales and VisitBritain reported a 2% increase in overseas visitor numbers on the same month in 2015 to 3.8 million. Their spending, it said, rose by 4% to £2.5bn while forward looking bookings for this autumn are up 6%. Its statistics also highlighted the growing importance of China to the UK tourism industry, with visits rising 46% in the last financial year and spending up by 18%.

Developing new or old potential markets

As imports increase in price, there are opportunities for UK companies to supply where previously they might have been too expensive. This could be a market that previously you served but then lost or totally new markets. It could be that by combining relatively cheaper pricing and the convenience of location and potentially higher quality will win for you – it’s worth considering

If you want to know more about building relationships with new markets and people who haven’t thought about buying from you before then you can come to a FREE workshop the 10th November in Sheffield - see details here

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