•#1 Marketing Strategy: Your Marketing Message
Your marketing message is what forms the background of all your marketing strategies and communications. If your marketing message is weak, unclear or poorly crafted, then it doesn't matter what specific marketing tactics you use...your prospects and customers won't take notice.
The goal is to have a well-written, targeted marketing message that resonates with your target market. You want them to see or hear your marketing message and get an instant reaction of "Hey, that's for me". You...
•Advertising and Small Business: Should You?
? I worked in an advertising agency for 5 years and then in the advertising sales department at a radio and television station for another 4 years, and believe me, every client wanted to be on the front cover, above the fold, on during the Super Bowl, or air during rush-hour traffic.
For the bigger multi-national companies advertising was a no-brainer in many cases - it's what they needed to do to keep up awareness of their brand and keep top-of-mind.
The answer for small business owners was...
•Build the Marketing Relationship With Your Prospects
Congratulations, you've done the research into understanding your prospects' hot issues and have gotten noticed because you've demonstrated that you understand what solutions they are seeking.
Your prospect has given you their contact information in exchange for your great, solutions-packed free give-away. They may also have sent an email, filled out a contact form on the website, or come up to speak with you after a presentation you've given.
At this stage in the marketing relationship when...
•Build Trust with 9 Small Business Marketing Strategies
Marketing is all about creating and fostering relationships with your prospects and your clients. A big part of achieving this is that people need to know, like and trust you before they'll engage in a relationship with you or do any business with you.
Before a person will commit to making a purchase from you, they need to trust that your products and services will do what you say they are supposed to. Also, if you want to keep your profitable clients, they have to continue to trust that...
•Consistency IS Sexy!
The main definition of consistency is: steadfast adherence to the same principles, course, form, etc.
One of the major reasons that small businesses (and large businesses) do not have success with their marketing is because they don't apply the principle of consistency to their marketing strategies.
Many people have a skewed view of marketing - they associate it with big-time advertising - which often looks sexy, fun, spur of the moment, like the much-anticipated commercials that air during...
•Do You Need a Marketing Mindset Adjustment?
? I talked in my last blog post about the importance your marketing mindset/attitude has on your success. Whether your mindset about marketing is negative, positive, or most likely a little of both, I've found that an "adjustment" is essential every now and then.
Some of us feel that we have a "good enough" attitude towards marketing and selling our services and ourselves. While there seem to be many more small business owners who look upon marketing as something that is a necessary evil or...
•Follow-up or Fall out
A relationship isn't based on one date and a marketing relationship isn't built on one contact between you and your customer. It also works at the other end of the spectrum: a relationship won't be sustained without any contact and a business relationship will fall by the wayside if a client is ignored.
Keep in mind that the bulk of your future sales come from your current customers. Once you've made a sale, because your customers know, like and trust you, they are more likely to buy from...
•Get The Most Out Of Your Marketing Message
Your marketing message describes the core of your business and your clients. It's essential that it accurately reflect your offering so that new and future prospects and customers know exactly what you offer and how it can help them.
The whole idea of a great marketing message is that it helps prospective and current clients, vendors and partners understand quickly and easily how you can help them. So you'll want to use it in all of your promotional, sales and marketing materials and...
•Know Thy Target Group!
You need to understand who they are and what motivates them. You want to paint a picture of who these people are - their habits, vital statistics (demographics), their character or personality (psychographics) and their buying habits.
Let me expand on demographics and psychographics.
Demographics for individuals are their vital stats such as age, gender, marital status, education, income and so on.
In terms of businesses, the demographics would be size of company, type of industry, number...
•Know Your Market Before You Figure Out Your Marketing Message
Who are you marketing to? Who are you trying to sell to? You need to be really clear about this - not just to craft your marketing message but for your overall business.
It is important to zero-in on a primary group of people and really understand who they are and what makes them tick. The better you know them, the more you understand how your product or service fits into their lives. You are able to determine if they have problems you can help them with, and then position your product or...
•Marketing is a Relationship
In all my years of marketing and helping people market their businesses, I've found that to successfully and easily market, it helps to view marketing as an ongoing relationship. Finding and keeping clients is another way of saying forming and having a relationship with your prospects and clients.
Marketing is not trying to get someone to buy something from you. Your marketing efforts need to focus on building relationships with prospects and clients rather than trying to "sell" them...
•Mini Marketing Action Plans
Most small business owners do not have marketing plans. This means that their marketing tends to be inconsistent, ineffective and inefficient.
Some service professionals do have marketing plans for their business, but fail to actually put it into practice. This really isn't much better than having no plan!
The secret to consistently marketing your services and products is to have what I call a "Marketing Action Plan". A plan saves you time and money, brings in more prospects and clients,...
•Niche Market and Why You Need One
A niche market can be thought of as a narrowly defined group of potential customers - usually a portion of a larger target market. For example, a target market is working women, but a niche market is working women with kids at home, or working women in executive positions, or working women in the financial sector.
As a small business owner, you usually do not have the money, resources and time to market to a larger target market. You need to focus your marketing efforts on those people most...
•Schedule for Success
Life is busy and our business keeps us hopping too. There is never enough time to get everything we want done and need to get done - and there never will be enough time!
That's why it's so important to schedule things and especially your marketing activities. If you're a smart business person, you know that marketing is key to growing a wildly successful business. You're actually in the business of marketing - that's your prime role. If you don't market, no-one knows about you and...
•Start a Conversation With Your Customers
The secret to making people sit up and take notice of you and your company is to identify and address the problems they are facing. This is really the only way that you'll get their attention and any resulting action on their part.
Sure, people may take a second glance at your flashy brochure or your great looking website, but they won't "stop to have a conversation" if you haven't shown them that you understand their needs and wants, and have a solution to offer.
The first stage in trying...
•The Importance of Being Consistent
In an earlier article I talked about consistency being key to your marketing success. I was talking about the definition of consistency as steadfast adherence to the same principles, course, form, etc.
However, there is a second definition of consistency that is just as important for your marketing solutions. Consistency also means: agreement, harmony or compatibility, especially uniformity among the parts of a complex thing.
Why is this so important to your marketing and business?...
•What Benefits Do You Offer to Your Clients?
? To find your most profitable clients the first small business tactic that needs to be done is to figure out what exactly you have to offer to potential and current clients.
Many businesses make the mistake of thinking that what's important is their expertise, credentials, processes, or their products and services.
Yes, all of these are relevant but they are not the true motivator for your prospects and clients in determining whether or not to do business with you. Their biggest concerns are...
•What Is a Marketing System?
? You've heard me say over and over again that the key to marketing is to take consistent action. If you don't take any action with your marketing, then nothing much is going to happen in terms of finding and keeping your most profitable clients.
One of the ways to help you take consistent action is to have a system (or several systems) for your marketing.
What exactly is a system? There are several definitions but the ones that resonate with me are:
1. A group of interacting,...
•What is Your Prospect's Problem?
? Once you have identified your target or niche market, the next step is to determine what their unmet needs or wants are - in other words, their problems.
You need to answer this question in order to write your marketing message but also for the good of your business. If you don't know what people need, then how will you figure out what solutions your products and services can provide? If you can't figure that out, then you're not much use to your prospective customers!
The secret to...
•What is Your USP?
? USP stands for Unique Selling Point or Unique Selling Proposition. It's a term used in marketing that is supposed to tell prospects and customers what it is about your product or service that is unique, valuable and relevant to them.
A great USP makes it clear why your business stands out in a crowd of competitors. It helps your potential customers understand how you are different and why this difference is an advantage or benefit to them. Your Unique Selling Point answers the question why...
•What Solution and Benefits Do You Offer?
? What is your solution?
Simply put, your solution is the flip-side of your target/niche group's problem. Your products and services are the solution to your potential and current clients' problem or need.
Another way to look at it is that the solution is what you are actually selling - what you are offering in your marketing, your website, your sales literature, and so on.
People don't buy things - they buy solutions to problems. You should have a clear idea of what your target group's...
•Why Your Marketing Message is Critical
I believe your marketing message is the most important aspect of your marketing. If you don't have the "right" marketing message for your business and your intended customer, then everything else you do is compromised.
If your marketing message is weak, unclear or poorly crafted, then it doesn't matter what specific marketing tactics you use...your prospects and customers won't take notice.
Your marketing message forms the core of all of your offerings. Once you have crafted the marketing...
•Your Customer's Problems are Your Marketing Opportunities
The essential purpose of a small business or company is that your product or service provides some kind of solution to some kind of need or problem. In other words, people's problems are your opportunities.
That's pretty oversimplified but holds true. If you don't know what's bugging your prospects and keeping them up at night, then you won't know what solution your services and products need to offer them.
From a marketing point of view, you have to be very clear about what your...
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