competition Archives - Thoranna.is

9 Marketing Lessons Learned from the Iceland #Euro2016 Football Team

(who incidentally beat England! ;) )

Not to repeat what has been written and said in media all over, Iceland’s win against England was huge. A true David kicked Goliath’s ass moment! But make no mistake, it was not down to luck. There are a number of factors that lead to Iceland’s win against the most expensive team in the tournament, a team with some of the highest profile and most expensive players in the world.

What I find interesting is how many of them directly relate to business, and marketing to be precise, and how we can learn from the Icelandic team’s achievement and apply as small or medium sized businesses or startups to kick the assess of the Goliaths of big business! Who’s with me? ;)

Here are 9 things which you can learn from the Icelandic national football team and their results in the Euro 2016:

Organization and Planning

Read a few articles that cover the Icelandic team and you will come across the word “organised” a lot. The team keeps their 4-4-2 formation no matter what, which makes their defence stronger than the Tower of London. Having a game plan that everyone adheres to and trusts in is crucial, in football and in business. [Read more…]

Do You Know Your Competition?

Knowing your competition is a crucial part of knowing your market and keeping your finger on the pulse. It is also crucial to be able to differentiate yourself, stand out and show people that you are the one to do business with.

Take the quiz to find out how well you know your competition!

One needs to analyze the competition when in business

Knowing the competition is crucial to my marketing efforts

Knowing the competition helps me differentiate my business/products/services in the marketplace

I learn a lot when analyzing my competition

Analyzing my competition is an integral part of analyzing my market in general

I have done a thorough analysis of my competitors

I regularly do a thorough analysis of my competitors

I know exactly who my competitors are

My competitors are only those who sell exactly the same product/service as me to exactly the same target groups

I know the business size of all my competitors

I know exactly what products and/or services my competitors offer

I know my competitors' sales figures

I am clear on each competitors' position in the market and how they influence it

I have a clear idea of the overall strategy of each of my competitors

I have a clear picture of how each of my competitors want to differentiate themselves in the marketplace

I know the prices and price structures of my competitors

I know exactly how my competitors sell and distribute their products and/or services

I know which marketing communications my competitors are using (e.g. type of advertising, social media, email marketing etc.)

I know where to find information about the competition

I have a clear picture of my competitive market and how my business fits into it

I monitor my competitors on a regular basis

I would have no problem doing a great and informative presentation about the competition at a moments notice

How to Get Noticed in the Holiday Marketing Noise!

There is always noise in the marketplace, but probably never as much as late November and through December. For many business owners, the run up to the holidays is a stark wake up call, when you can feel your marketing messages drowning in a sea of advertising and craziness.

Here are 5 things to help you get noticed in the holiday marketing noise:

[Read more…]

You Are Not Better!

Thoranna.is - you are not better

Now listen very carefully, I shall say this only once:

You are not better than anyone else. Your business is not better. Your product is not better. Your service is not better. The quality isn’t better. The knowledge isn’t better. It’s just not better.

And you know what! It doesn’t matter!!!

See, business and marketing is not about being better. [Read more…]

SWOT Analysis – what, why and how?

SWOT analysis has been used for decades and gives you a systematic way of analysing the market, and when combined with other analysis tools such as PESTLE (see below), can be a great way to reduce the risk of missing something important. There are just so many things out there that it’s easy to miss crucial things if you are not careful. So what the heck is SWOT Analysis? Why should you do it? And how on earth do you do it? Let me tell you how – it’s actually quite fun ;)

What Is SWOT Analysis?

SWOT analysis is an evaluation tool. It can be used to evaluate a business venture or other kind of project, and lately SWOT is being applied in various other situations, such as personal development. For our intents and purposes, we can use it to evaluate our business, our products and/or services and the marketing of our business, products or services.

The analysis has four parts (S – W – O – T) which examine internal and external factors and their potential influence on the project in question. Let’s look at them in turn:

S = Strengths

W = Weaknesses

This refers to strengths and weaknesses within the business or project team. These are internal things – the sort of things that are up to us. If the project is marketing, we may have strengths such as a good knowledge of SEO or a great graphic designer on board, but we can also have weaknesses, such as a limited budget or lack of knowledge of Facebook advertising (if that is something that matters to our marketing). These need to be things that don’t apply to other players in our market. If all of them are great at SEO and can afford to hire a great graphic designer, then it’s not a strength of ours. If the other players in the market also have a limited budget and don’t know how to do Facebook advertising, then it is not a particular weakness of ours – it’s actually a potential opportunity to get ahead of them.

O = Opportunities

T = Threats

Opportunities and Threats refer to things in the outside environment that may impact our project and we can essentially not do anything about as such. We can only react and adapt, but not change the facts. These can be things like the weather, the economy, demographic developments and such and they can be good for us (hence providing opportunities) or bad (hence threats).

Why Do SWOT Analysis?

It’s really quite simple. You want to be aware of your strengths, so that you can best use them in your business; your weaknesses, so that you can find a way to improve upon them and neutralise their impact; the opportunities in the marketplace so that you can take advantage of them and the threats out there, so that you can be prepared and minimise their negative impact on your business.

How Do I Do SWOT Analysis?

Go through [Read more…]