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Association Belge de Documentation / Belgische Vereniging voor Documentatie INFORUM2009

Arthur Weiss, AWARE's managing partner led a session focusing on social networking and how this can be used to enhance marketing intelligence at ABD-BVD's Inforum2009: It's all about people conference at the end of April, 2009. The lecture showed how marketing and competitive intelligence professionals can use social networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn and others as part of their portfolio of research tools.

For more information on these lectures and how we can help you become a more effective business researcher ask us about our courses on finding CI information.

WS Radio Interview

Arthur Weiss was interviewed by Paul Helm, the president of Strategic Research Network, as part of the InfoPro show on WS Radio - The worldwide leader in Internet talk.

Listen to the whole interview or in separate parts (around 10-15 minutes each)

• Introduction - AWARE''s background and projects
• Competitor Analysis - a brief guide
• Upcoming industry conferences and associations
• Competitive Intelligence Books.

Quick Tip

Robert Smith was devastated.

As the owner of a small retail business selling various groceries he had always recognised the threat posed by major supermarket chains such as Tesco, Walmart, Carrefour and the like. Now a branch of Tesco had opened next door, and business was tailing off.

He told all his friends how worried he was - and that things couldn't possibly be worse. And then a branch of Walmart opened on the other side. Robert now told friends that he expected to be out of business within the year.

His friends were really surprised when they met him a few months later - getting out of a top-range Mercedes wearing an expensive suit and with a big smile on his face.
We thought business was so bad that you were about to go bankrupt. What happened?

Robert replied: Well that is what I thought. And then I remembered that one secret to effective marketing is to make sure that your potential customers know where to find you. So I changed the name of my company. Come and look!"

Robert's friends followed him to his shop, sandwiched between Tesco and Walmart. Over the front, the new name was posted in big neon letters ENTRANCE

How do you promote your business? Can potential customers find you? Do your marketing promotions send people away, or invite them to come and buy. You need to ensure that all your marketing promotions allow customers to enter.

(For more marketing and business humour, visit our humour pages)

Recommended Book

Competitors: Outwitting, Outmanoeuvring, and Outperforming
Liam Fahey
Buy UK £ or US$

Read our review of this book

For more recommendations visit our book selection.

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