Effective marketing is more than an eye-catching advert or a cold-calling campaign. You need to understand what sets your business apart from the competition before you can start promoting it. Let's start at the beginning.
The exciting aspect of marketing is coming up with creative ideas that will blow your customers' socks off. The less exciting, but more important, aspect is understanding what you are selling, to whom, when and why. Here's how to do the groundwork.
You can only start marketing your business effectively when you are able to do the following:
1. Define your business - from a customer's point of view - in 30 words or less. What do you want to be known for, what do want to accomplish?
2. Describe your point of difference, or unique selling point. Why would customers come to you rather than anyone else?
3. Create an image. Your logo is the "face" of your brand. Whether your hire a professional to design it or you produce it yourself, your logo must match your brand (as described in the two points above). Keep it simple. You need to be able to communicate your company name and an emotion in less time than it takes to sneeze.
Local reputation management and training consultant, Deon Binneman, outlines the following as being essential to any small business marketing strategy:
Identify your customers. Who is your ideal customer, including his/her age, income level, geographic regions, and education level?
What's on their wish list? Discover what makes them tick, what they need, what products they use and how they use them.
Define your competitive advantage. What is your company good at doing? What do you like doing?
Relate to emotional buy-ins. What words, feelings and emotions will make your product appeal to your customers?
Build your reputation. Do more than you are expected to. Build credibility by maintaining high standards of quality and reliability.
Constantly ask yourself. How can you provide what your customers want, better than anyone else?
Follow the 80/20 rule
Originally devised by a 19th-century Italian economist, this rule states that 80% of possible business activities tend to come from only 20% of the effort put into it. Additionally, the cost of acquiring new customers is around eight to ten times more than the cost of keeping an existing one. So if you can define your "critical few" customers and target your marketing directly to their needs, you'll get far more "bang" for your marketing buck.
Five easy steps to create a marketing plan
1. Position your product: Is it the right product or service for your market? Does your customer think it is a good deal? How readily can your target customers find this product or service?
2. Brainstorm: Who are you selling to and what do they need? What distinguishes your product or service from the competition? Which marketing tactics will make your products noticeable?
3. Listen to customers: What influences their purchasing decisions? Based on these, what are your strengths, weaknesses, business opportunities and threats?
4. Draft the plan: Summarise your market position and goals, define what you want to achieve by when, list target markets and strategies, allocate expenses and resources, identify which marketing channels you will use to attract customers and formulate competitive strategies.
5. Track results: Create benchmarks to measure whether your marketing efforts are paying off. Review your plan each year.
Don't make these common marketing mistakes ...
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