Making It Happen Archives

Drive progressive profitable growth with a finely-tuned marketing engine – 3 steps

Marketing engine? What? Why? A marketing engine or ‘model’ or ‘system’ is the proven way to profitably market your brand / business. It’s a hugely valuable asset that pays dividends in the short, medium and long term. ‘Proven’ means that it delivers. This means that time, money and expertise have been leveraged to try different […]

5 Killer Tips for Preparing a Great Business Strategy…

“In preparing for battle I’ve always found that plans are useless, but planning is essential.” (Dwight Eisenhower) I’ve been involved in preparing many different types of business strategy over the last 20 years. When I step back and consider what has produced the most successful outcomes, these tips capture what I’ve found to be most […]

How to stay ‘on-strategy’ – 5 tips for success!

If defining successful strategy isn’t challenging enough for most businesses, then implementing the strategy and staying true to it – being ‘on-strategy’ – is another challenge in itself. I’ve been involved in defining and implementing many different types of strategy over the last 20 years. Here are some solid success tips informed by my experience: […]

A puppy shows that Sainsbury’s new strategy is working well

A valuable lesson for any business Sarah Warby – Board Marketing Director at Sainsbury’s – is on a mission to ‘stop making shopping hard work’. Examples of this new focus are becoming evident – simplifying pricing and promotions and making the website easier to navigate for a better online shopping experience, are just a couple. […]

Air New Zealand compensation – A lesson in creating brand advocates

Hats off to Air New Zealand on two counts… 1. The airline has just been recognised as having the best safety record in the world. Bravo! 2. The airline truly understands how to create brand advocates out of a negative customer experience situation. Commendable! What happened? An aeroplane bound for Auckland from Hawaii has been […]

Business Growth – It’s there for the taking. Seize it!

In an economy characterised by “flat growth”, (Is that not a contradiction in itself?) many business owners and management teams are left wondering if “flat” is the new “growth”. Well, it’s not! It might be an excuse that’s used, or a lowering of company performance expectations “…for the foreseeable future”, but the danger of such […]

Little Chef – A surprising customer experience!

Whilst travelling last week, I needed to download and view some attachments on a laptop. I pulled into a service area on the hunt for a wifi zone and ended up in a Little Chef. It’s years since my last visit – a breakfast stop whilst on my way to a sporting event early one Sunday […]