Business Insights

For as long as there have been markets, there has been a thing called “market research.” The Phoenicians - a civilisation in the Middle East, established four and a half thousand years ago - studied consumer demand for their exports, and became the trading powerhouse of the classical world. Marco Polo’s diaries talk about the trade studies he conducted for Kublai Khan. Despite this long history of success, a lot of businesses still don’t fully understand the markets they operate within, or the people they’re trying to reach. That’s why we’re going to walk you through what market research is, what good it does for a business, when’s the right time to do it, and how to do it well.

For business owners, “Brexit means Brexit” means one thing: uncertainty.  With all economic indicators pointing towards a recession, the question isn’t so much ‘if’ the downturn will hit, or even ‘when’. It’s ‘how’ businesses will manage to survive it. Responsible business owners should now be busy making plans to weather the storm.

How much is your business worth? Ask this question to ten business leaders, and nine of them will focus on the bottom line - turnover, profit, revenue. Important factors, no doubt, but value runs deeper than the financials. Business value is generally calculated as Net profit of business times Multiple of earnings for the sector. This series is concerned with those multiples; those variable elements of a business that can add considerable value when it comes to the time to sell. In this series so far we’ve covered benchmarking, and the importance of a good employer brand. In this piece, we’re focusing on new product development.

In 2017, Paris Saint-Germain signed Brazilian football superstar Neymar for a record-breaking €222 million (about £197 million). It’s a lot more than the likes of Bristol City’s Bobby Reid, who they sold to Cardiff for £10 million. But if you compare the two on their scoring record alone (strikers, after all, are there to score goals), Reid looks like the better player, with 19 goals at Bristol City compared to Neymar’s 13 at Barcelona in the season before their respective moves.

Marketing: never has a word been so misunderstood. Ubiquitously used to describe everything from a leaflet through your door to multi-million dollar, multimedia campaigns (and everything in between), it's easy to see why marketing has become a term shrouded in misconception and myth. In this series of articles, we aim to dispel some of those myths and instead find the truth. Our first piece unpicked ‘Marketing is all about lead generation’ and the second looked at the myth that ‘Marketing is an expensive business 'cost'’. Find out how to make Marketing ROI work for your business in this step-by-step guide.