Inside Small Business | Small Business & Home Business Marketing

Marketing for Beginners! Read before you leap!

Mark LeBlanc, Small Business Success

Ask ten different marketing experts what the definition of marketing is and you just might get ten different answers.  Let’s look at it from a practical perspective and I will share a framework for how you can look at marketing and begin to shape a marketing plan that attracts more prospects and leads to more sales.

Think of marketing as what it takes to get your phone to ring and drives people to your door.  However at that moment, then the selling process takes over and marketing goes back to work in getting more prospects.

Marketing is a process that involves strategies, tools, and acts of marketing.  Direct mail is a marketing strategy and a web site is a marketing tool.  Attending a networking meeting of like-minded professionals is an act of marketing within the strategy of networking.  I could go on and on with specific examples, but I think you get the point.

Every marketing strategy is a great marketing strategy.  The challenge is selecting the strategies that are most likely to work for you and making a commitment to consistent execution of the strategy.  Remember, if the strategy doesn’t work, it is usually not the fault of the strategy.  It is most-likely how you executed the strategy and how meaningful your message was.

The magic is in the mix and the best marketing plans contain a mix of strategies.  The foundational strategies include, but are not limited to:  direct mail, telemarketing, networking, advertising, publicity, tradeshows, speaking, and the advocate (connecting with referral sources) strategy.

As a beginner, choose two marketing strategies and then create a monthly benchmark for each strategy.  A benchmark is a number that measures an activity or a result.  Depending on the type of business you are marketing for will determine the strategies and benchmarks.  For example, you might choose to attend two networking meetings each month and mail 100 pieces of direct mail every month.  As you advance you might add another strategy or two.  From a baseline perspective, execute two strategies monthly and consider a third you implement quarterly and possibly one more that you do once a year.  From time to time change your strategy mix and increase or decrease your benchmarks as your time and budget will provide for.  Measure and track your results.

Not everyone is blessed with the creativity gene, so you may need to enlist the help and creativity of clarifying your marketing messages and developing the appropriate tools that support your strategies.

As you being to identify connections and attract prospects, make sure you are building some kind of database collection of prospects and clients.  You can invest in a database software program or choose a web-based database system.  As soon as you have a couple hundred prospects, you might consider a quarterly newsletter or mailing to your database.  Many success stories are made from prospects that came back later and became good customers, so never let a prospect slip through that cracks.  Consider this deadly business sin entrepreneurial malpractice.  Marketing your programs, products and services on a consistent basis will prevent the roller-coaster of good times and not-so good times and is your key to success!

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Posted on Monday, December 1st, 2008 at 9:37 am and is filed under Business, Free Articles Directory, Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.