Unfortunately many marketing initiatives by small businesses fail. Most small business owners have not been trained in how to market a small business and are unlikely to have a specialist marketer in-house. Often a small business will originate from the business owner's passion and skill at what they do - they are at the heart of their small business. So why do marketing activities fail so often for small businesses? It is because over 95% of small business owners will select one of three marketing approaches, "copy-cat advertising", "forever advertising", and "do nothing", that unfortunately do not deliver to expectations.
One form of small business marketing that is very prevalent is the Copy Cat method of advertising. This mimics what another company is doing and typically copies their ads. The end result is normally no significant return on the marketing dollars spent because there are fifty messages out in the market place all very similar.
The "forever advertising" is to decide on one type of advertising and just stay with it forever. For example, advertising year after year in the Yellow Pages, or ongoing advertising campaigns in your local newspaper. Where this fails is that it is only reaching the same people who access or read these mediums year in and year out. How do you measure if this is the best spend for your marketing dollar when you only have the one ongoing/unchanging method. This may mean limited growth and potential for your business.
The final form of popular small business marketing that is doomed to failure is the "do nothing" approach. With this approach the business owner typically believes that their product or service and how they do things will speak for themselves - it doesn't.
At the core of the small business marketing problem is that most small business owners don't clearly understand why you do marketing. In a nutshell marketing is about "the things that you do that allow people to get to know you, like you and trust you." After all if you are going to buy a product or a service from someone yourself wouldn't you rather buy it from someone you know, like and trust?
To enable your small business marketing to deliver the following three steps are suggested. The first step is to be clear and specific on who your "ideal customer" is. For business customers you need to know: their location; how many people they employ; how much annual turnover is generated; who is their business owner and what are their key attributes; what problems can you help solve for them; and anything else relevant about them. If you are unsure as to who your ideal customer may be, then try looking at some of your best customers for commonality and their fit to your business.
The next step is to identify an Irresistible Offer specifically for your ideal customers. What can you promise that will knock people's socks off? You can become known by your ideal customers because of the Incredible Offer that you make. And we are not talking about low price offers here, in fact, quite the opposite. Think about Dominoes Pizza's: "Pizza hot and fresh to your door in 30 minutes or less or its free." At the time this blew the completion away and was a great offer to Dominoes ideal clients: people who want a hot pizza delivered at home right now.
The last step is to find the best communication channel to provide your irresistible offer to your ideal customers so they can get to know you, like you and trust you. An effective way to communicate this to potential customers is to provide them with information from your customers that love what you do - testimonials. Combine your irresistible offer, testimonials and possibly some case studies in a pack and give them out and you will be effectively marketing to prospective customers to build awareness, likeability and trust. If you get the opportunity to follow up with your prospective customers personally then you are well on your way to having new customers. This is marketing delivering new customers, which means increasing your small business sales.
One form of small business marketing that is very prevalent is the Copy Cat method of advertising. This mimics what another company is doing and typically copies their ads. The end result is normally no significant return on the marketing dollars spent because there are fifty messages out in the market place all very similar.
The "forever advertising" is to decide on one type of advertising and just stay with it forever. For example, advertising year after year in the Yellow Pages, or ongoing advertising campaigns in your local newspaper. Where this fails is that it is only reaching the same people who access or read these mediums year in and year out. How do you measure if this is the best spend for your marketing dollar when you only have the one ongoing/unchanging method. This may mean limited growth and potential for your business.
The final form of popular small business marketing that is doomed to failure is the "do nothing" approach. With this approach the business owner typically believes that their product or service and how they do things will speak for themselves - it doesn't.
At the core of the small business marketing problem is that most small business owners don't clearly understand why you do marketing. In a nutshell marketing is about "the things that you do that allow people to get to know you, like you and trust you." After all if you are going to buy a product or a service from someone yourself wouldn't you rather buy it from someone you know, like and trust?
To enable your small business marketing to deliver the following three steps are suggested. The first step is to be clear and specific on who your "ideal customer" is. For business customers you need to know: their location; how many people they employ; how much annual turnover is generated; who is their business owner and what are their key attributes; what problems can you help solve for them; and anything else relevant about them. If you are unsure as to who your ideal customer may be, then try looking at some of your best customers for commonality and their fit to your business.
The next step is to identify an Irresistible Offer specifically for your ideal customers. What can you promise that will knock people's socks off? You can become known by your ideal customers because of the Incredible Offer that you make. And we are not talking about low price offers here, in fact, quite the opposite. Think about Dominoes Pizza's: "Pizza hot and fresh to your door in 30 minutes or less or its free." At the time this blew the completion away and was a great offer to Dominoes ideal clients: people who want a hot pizza delivered at home right now.
The last step is to find the best communication channel to provide your irresistible offer to your ideal customers so they can get to know you, like you and trust you. An effective way to communicate this to potential customers is to provide them with information from your customers that love what you do - testimonials. Combine your irresistible offer, testimonials and possibly some case studies in a pack and give them out and you will be effectively marketing to prospective customers to build awareness, likeability and trust. If you get the opportunity to follow up with your prospective customers personally then you are well on your way to having new customers. This is marketing delivering new customers, which means increasing your small business sales.
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