MARKETING IDEAS FOR SMALL BUSINESSES

Improving Sales Through Planning

Marketing is a very broad field and encompasses many disciplines. At its very simplest, marketing includes:

  • ADVERTISING
  • CORPORATE IDENTITY
  • PUBLIC RELATIONS
  • NETWORKING
  • MARKETPLACE DEMOGRAPHICS
  • PRODUCT / SERVICE ANALYSIS
  • METRICS

Many small business owners consider “marketing” as advertising only. And even when we know marketing is “more” than that – our work day interferes and advertising becomes our sole tool. We even fail to monitor advertising's effectiveness, too.

This is not meant to be harsh – just reality. We get overwhelmed by day-to-day events. Our business suffers and sales drop off. Once business drops off – it becomes hard to justify marketing expenditures. The best remedy is to develop a plan before things go astray. But it is never too late – so let’s get started!

And remember that if marketing causes your eyes to glaze over or you feel too overwhelmed, contact us to create a program. We will be happy to provide a free review of your marketing plan and offer direction.

Define Your Goal

Yes, it sounds too basic. This is one of the two most essential steps. Selling more products or services is a very broad goal and admirable. But something has made you decide to consider changing your marketing approach. Learn to "zoom in" and define your goals more succinctly. You will have broad goals (selling more), but you'll want to uncover specific goals as well.

Now...

After the Review

Creating a marketing plan will include Branding your Company using available tools like:
Web sites
Printed material
eMarketing
Networking
Sales strategies

We can affordably help with these services. Contact us today to get started.

Stop, then Start

A marketing plan means we don’t decide to start creating ads and ordering web sites. It means planning a specific strategy with timelines and goals – taking into account available tools and assigning resources.

We won’t necessarily have to reinvent your company. Logos and printed collateral material may be fine. Even the web site could be up to the task. However, go ahead and review all of your existing programs, even if they seem to be functioning properly.

Most marketing fails due to skipping this second step – the review

In your review take into account:

  • What do I sell or provide?
  • Who purchases my products and/or services?
  • What do I have in place now that works?
  • Am I missing opportunities within my market?
  • How do my customers view my business?
  • What tools am I using? Not using?
  • Have I "timelined" my marketing?

The review process will make your mind race. The urge will be to start changing things. Don’t! Keep it simple and stay focused on asking questions. The best reviews are about questions and not about answers.

Your Next Steps

The review will uncover many things, but most important, it needs to have uncovered personality. To begin, we need to know the personality of our company and the personality of our customers. No amount of advertising can overcome skipping this visualization.

So, are they compatible - our Company's persona and our customer's persona? More important, does our present marketing align with our prospect's persona? This alignment is important to effectively and efficiently tell our story to new targets. Read more about the planning stages.