Profit Zing » Prospects

7 Costly Small Business Marketing Mistakes Every Entrepreneur Must Avoid

admin — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 11:17:30 +0000

Robert L Moment asked:

Everybody makes mistakes and entrepreneurs are no exception. But for an entrepreneur with a limited budget, committing mistakes too often can be very costly. It is an open secret in the business world that most of the mistakes that can be committed in business have been committed; so why not just learn from them, saving you the agony of committing them yourself.

With that said, here are 7 costly small business marketing mistakes every entrepreneur must avoid:

1. An Incongruent Marketing Message

To effectively sell your product or service, your customer has to “get” the marketing message. A customer-centric marketing message educates your prospects and persuades them to become customers. Too many small businesses make the mistake of focusing their message on the product or company, instead of how the prospect would benefit by purchasing their product. Prepare the right marketing message with some of these in mind:

• Identify the prospect’s problem.

• Explain to the prospect why the problem should be solved immediately and explain why your product or service is the right solution to their problems.

• List the benefits your prospects would enjoy upon purchasing your product and provide an unconditional guarantee to allay any fears they may have.

2. “Spray-and-Pray” Marketing Instead Of Precision Marketing

The days of marketing as a zero-sum game are over. You must demand accountability from your marketing efforts, expecting tangible results in the form of a healthy ROI (return on investment). Differentiate your marketing messages and target them to meet the specific needs and wants of your prospects and customers.

Many small businesses are guilty of the dreaded “spray-and-pray” marketing ideology, which inevitably drains their resources to the point where it very often leads to their demise.

Do not commit this same mistake, but instead practice precision marketing, where every aspect of your marketing and advertising efforts are measured and tracked for maximum returns.

3. Failing To Realize Marketing Is About Value Creation

To create a sustainable small business, you have to market something of value to the prospect and customer. Marketing is your business and creating value for your customers should permeate through all your marketing efforts. Strive to always over-deliver because customers love to receive more than they expect and the easiest way to do so is to develop a thorough understanding of their wants and desires.

4. Selling Instead Of Educating

You must have heard about the age-old principle that “people love to buy but **** being sold to.” It is a principle that will continue to hold true for ages to come, but unfortunately, many small businesses still fail to adhere to it. The fastest way to get rid of a prospect is to try forcing a sale out of him or her.

Education-based marketing, however, is a powerful marketing strategy to overcome this problem of being sold to. This strategy makes use of giving away valuable information, educating your prospect about the benefits of owning your product or using your service, offered to them as free reports, video cassettes, CDs, or DVDs in exchange for their contact information.

It is a strategy that builds trust with the prospects resulting in a much higher closing ratio. So, forget about throwing a sales pitch and try educating your prospects instead for a higher conversion rate.

5. Failing To Test

The biggest mistake any entrepreneur can make with their business is the failure to test every possible variable most important to their customers. This applies to both online and offline marketing efforts.

I can understand if small businesses faced more difficulty with market testing because of limited budgets years ago, but the Internet has done away with this excuse. It has become so cheap to conduct price tests and sales copy tests and identify what campaigns, keywords, and metrics give you the best ROI online that not testing any of these has become a cardinal sin.

6. Not Following Up With Prospects Or Customers

Small businesses spend a great sum of money acquiring customers, which makes it all the more difficult to understand why many of them don’t follow up with their customers, or even their prospects after the “front end” sale.

It has been well documented that true riches are to be found in the backend sales and the reason for this is simple. If a customer or prospect raises his or her hand to do business with you, it means an element of trust has been established and a business relationship is ready to be formed. They are more then likely to buy from you repeatedly if you make it a point to capture their contact information and develop a follow-up system for communicating with them frequently.

7. Selling To The Wrong Target Market

Never assume that your product or service will appeal to a general audience because this assumption has profoundly resulted in many small businesses shutting up shop. Large businesses are guilty of this too, but you can save yourself from committing such a rash mistake by asking yourself these two questions:

• Who are your customers, or who is your target market?

• Who will use your service, or who will buy your product?

Answer these questions with absolutely clarity and segment these markets by demographics and psychographics to zero in on your ideal customer. The time spent doing this correctly will add nicely to your bottom line.

Just remember that to succeed, you must be prepared to fail, so don’t fear the eventual mistake but learn from it.

Build Trust With 9 Small Business Marketing Strategies

admin — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 05:26:38 +0000

Jody Gabourie asked:

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 you’ll deliver on your promises.

Trust is the basis of any relationship, be it personal or strictly business. Take a look at the following ways that you can build trust and credibility into your small business marketing strategies:

1. Provide examples

Give lots of case studies and examples that outline how you’ve helped clients and the difference it has made in their business and their life.

Real examples are much more powerful and credible than simply making claims about your service or products.

2. Seek out referrals

We all ask our friends and colleagues to recommend good places to eat or a reliable plumber, because we trust the opinions of people we know.

It’s the same for your business; actively seek out referrals from satisfied customers. Implementing a marketing system to generate referrals is one of the most overlooked marketing tactics for small businesses.

3. Get testimonials People always pay more attention to what others have to say about you than any claims you make about yourself and your business. Make it easy for your customers to provide testimonials. Create some marketing systems to facilitate this and then use the testimonials in all your marketing tactics: website, sales pages, direct mail, email communications, brochures and so on.

4. Offer guarantees

None of us like “buyer’s remorse” and providing a guarantee of service or results of your products and services will go a long way to help alleviate any concerns people have in handing over money to you.

Make sure you act promptly and with no hassles when you have to fulfill your guarantee. Keeping your word is a huge part of building trust with people.

5. Share your contact information

Nothing raises a red flag more with me than when I cannot find a business’s contact details – address, phone number, fax, email address, website, name of their assistant, customer service number, etc.

By listing your contact information on all your marketing materials, you go a long way in showing people you exist, you are a real legitimate business and you’re available if they have any concerns or questions.

6. Write articles

Write and submit articles to establish yourself as an expert and to help build a reputation that shows you know what you’re talking about, you’re willing to share your expertise, and you’re “here to stay” – all components towards building trust.

7. Stay in touch

Regular and consistent contact with people helps facilitate trust – they know you’re around and interested.

Contact your prospects and clients regularly (via email, phone call, card, etc.) to get feedback, follow up, and provide useful tips.

8. Be a resource

Provide information that is timely and helpful to your prospects and clients. Post articles on your website, send them an applicable, interesting report or magazine clipping, forward an email with details about a great teleseminar or workshop they might benefit from.

9. Let your personality come through

People do business with people, not companies. Help prospects trust you by letting them get to know you. Share your personality and passion in your marketing strategies and communications – for instance, have a picture of yourself on your website, share some tidbits about your personal life (hobbies, likes & dislikes, pets) and don’t be afraid to express opinions in your writing.

Take a look at your day-to-day marketing tactic and determine if you are doing all you can to build trust with your prospective and current clients.

If not, try incorporating a couple of the suggestions above and once they’re running smoothly and are part of your marketing system, then add a couple more. Keep doing this and you’ll be rewarded with long lasting, rewarding and profitable relationships with many people.

Home Based Business Marketing – 4 Easy Steps To Building A Mailing List

admin — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 22:31:40 +0000

David Ogden asked:

In your home based business marketing efforts, one of the most valuable pieces of real estate an Internet marketer can own is a mailing list. Whether you have your own products, or not, you can still build a mailing list fairly easily on the Internet today. Here are four easy steps to building a mailing list that anyone can do with a little bit of effort.

1. Use your own autoresponder to store names and email addresses. Your autoresponder should also be used to send follow up messages to the people who are subscribed to it.

The autoresponder is the key to developing a mailing list into a valuable piece of real estate. How you use your autoresponder will be of the utmost importance to the future success of your home based business marketing efforts.

2. Develop a pre-sell page with an opt-in form on it. Many affiliate marketers fall into the trap of sending their traffic directly to their affiliate sales page. Even people who are marketing their own products online make the same mistake.

You are much better to use a pre-sell page where you warm your prospect up. You can even put an opt-in form on your pre-sell page and ask your visitors to fill out their name and email address before you send them on to your sales page.

This is a good way to build your list while warming your prospects up at the same time. The key is to make this pre sell page as targeted as possible without causing your website visitor to lose interest and leave before they fill out your opt in form.

3. Your sales page is where you sell your products or affiliate products. This is where your prospects will be sent after they go to your presale page. If you’re utilizing your opt in form correctly then once they fill the form out you will redirect them to the sales page where they now have a chance to purchase a product from you.

Obviously your home based business marketing goal is to sell products to make money on the Internet. You do this on your sales page, but if your visitor chooses not to make a purchase on the first visit, you still have their name and email address that you can follow up with your autoresponder.

Since many people take several exposures to a product before they make a purchase this gives you an excellent chance to still make a sale in the future if they don’t buy from your sales page right away.

4. Market your pre sell page like crazy all over the internet. You need to learn how to promote your pre sell page to get traffic to it. The only way the previous three steps will work is if you are getting visitors to this page.

These are four home based business marketing tips you can use today to start building your own list. If you’re serious about making money in your business, then list building needs to be on the top of your daily priority list… every day.

What you Need to Know About … Small Business Marketing on Line

admin — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 11:12:42 +0000

Dawn Abraham asked:

I’m going to share with you a few important tips to Small Business Marketing on line and making it a success. You have your business idea and you have a business plan, now you want to know the best way to marketing an on line.

If you follow these beginning tools, you will have built a foundation in which you can triple the income you are now making. If you’re in the category of zero income then these tools can start producing income for you soon after you implement them.

Build a list of targeted prospects

You want to start to build a list of targeted people that are interested in your business. All you need is their e-mail address and first name. Growing this list is priceless. Once you have this list you have gathered interested people who have an attraction in your online business.

Here are a few ways to gain this information.

1.Offer a free newsletter

2.Offer a survey that takes their name and e-mail address

3.An opt-in box when they arrive on your site that gives them access to something free if they register their e-mail.

Small Business Marketing on Line … with a Newsletter

Offering a newsletter can be a wonderful way to gather prospects and keep in touch with them on a regular basis. People may go to your web site once like it, not have time to really go through it and have the best of intentions to return and they most likely forget.

With a monthly or weekly newsletter you can remind your visitors of your web site along with letting them know what is new this month. If you have a new product to launch you can include links back to your web site where your products are.

My recommendation is to offer something of value in each newsletter so people will open it and share it with their friends as well. This will also help you to build confidence with your new prospects. They will see what you have to offer by giving them a sample every month or week of your knowledge and information about your topic of expertise.

Make sure your newsletter is offered on your homepage as well as your secondary pages. Give away a free e-book if they sign up. It will pay off in the end to have a large targeted list of customers that you continue to market to on a regular basis.

Small Business Marketing on Line… The Survey Says…

They are many types of surveys that you can generate that will help you gather significant information about your prospects, this way you know what they like and what their needs are. Questions your survey can ask; what is your biggest problem? What would you like more of? What would you like less of? Gather as much information as you can so you know what to market and how. This way you know what to deliver because they told you what they need.

This is a valuable tool that you will want to put to use. It takes all the guess work out of what your prospects want to see from you.

Small Business Marketing on line … with Free Take-A ways

Offering something of value for free to collect a targeted prospects e-mail will be one of the best things you ever did. If you give away some wonderful information you put together in a e-book and include it as a down load when they sign up for your newsletter, you have only taken the time to write the e-book after that your work is done and you have gathered many valuable contacts you may not have had otherwise.

If E-books aren’t your thing then give away a free MP3. You can have an informational MP3 that may offer tips ideas or teach something along the lines of the theme of your web site.

If you offer a service you can give a free day or an extra day or so for signing up for your newsletter. You can offer a 20% discount for signing up. This way you get a new client and their e-mail address.

For more information on small business marketing sign up for my FREE newsletter! I give free tips and information like these that you will love! ?

What we think about expands

Would You Use Meat Loaf in Your Targeted Small Business Marketing

admin — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 00:00:15 +0000

Paul Flood asked:

Entrepreneurs know the importance of a targeted small business marketing strategy. Many make the mistake of doing what big advertisers do. Rock icon Meat Loaf is in a great commercial but the product and company selling it are easily forgotten. Learn a lesson on how not to advertise

Remember Meat Loaf (born Michael Lee Aday)? His album Bat Out of Hell, released in 1977, has sold nearly 40,000,000 copies and was on the charts for over 9 years. He is also featured in a new commercial that is running pretty frequently on TV.

The ad features Meat Loaf as a dad whose son is begging him to get him a cell phone. He’s singing about how he won’t run up the minutes. Personally, I am a fan of Meat Loaf and I like the commercial. He includes some lyrics and riffs from Paradise by the Dashboard Light, which I’ve always thought was a cool tune.

The other afternoon, I heard the commercial and started singing the tune in my head and realized I had seen the commercial several times and could not think of the company or brand of the phone! Now, I’m thinking this was a fairly expensive production because in addition to Meat Loaf, Tiffany is in the commercial and they are probably fairly expensive talent to hire.

After all of this expense, I couldn’t relate a brand or a product to the commercial! I kept an eye out for the next airing and saw it was for the AT&T GoPhone. Think of all the money spent on the ad. They did a lot of things right like using celebrity endorsements, a good tune and an entertaining spot. But it really made me wonder, why couldn’t I think of the company or the product?

What could you do differently if were considering a similar TV ad as one of your primary small business marketing tools ? For one thing, a bit more focus on the product instead of the production. You could easily think of special offers that would give prospects a reason to buy soon. I’ll bet a contest to have dinner with Meat Loaf or win a free “Bat Out of Hell” concert DVD would attract buyers. You would have a tracking mechanism to see how many inquiries and sales were generated. What if they had a toll free number, 1-800-MeatLoaf, to call and get a special offer and find out how to download the song to iTunes or even a ring-tone? The marketing folks could track response and the ROI on the ad. What if there were a contest to be in a commercial with Meat Loaf?

But instead, the focus was all on creativity and entertainment. I’ll bet the ad will even win an award but I still think ads should be written to sell the product now, not build a brand or win awards. My guess is that you can’t afford Meat Loaf in your ads but remember, when you do advertise, it’s about making money, not building your brand. Brands don’t put food on the table, sales do. When you spend money on marketing, either do it yourself of find a professional whose goal is to increase your profits and is willing to guarantee results, not just earn a commission.

The commercial may not be on TV too long but you can catch it on www.youtube.com. Search for Meat Loaf AT&T. This version is a 90 second commercial that does a better job of naming the product than the spot on TV but it still could have soooo much more potential as a source of REVENUE instead of a brand. When you think about branding as a strategy, ask yourself if you want to get your name out there or sell as much of you product or service as possible and build a strong and loyal customer list as quickly as possible.

For the small business marketing tools to add to your toolbox, go ahead and think about branding. However, your brand needs to be strong and you should strengthen it with incredible products and service or with your Unique Selling Proposition. Build your brand using marketing that creates prospects and leads. It is just as expensive to get your name out there with a compelling offer and reason for a client to buy from you now as it is to just get your name out there. The difference is the ROI. The Meat Loaf commercial offers no way to measure the ROI and small businesses can’t afford to throw scarce marketing dollars up against the wall and guess at the ROI.

Here is a powerful small business marketing tip when it comes to a brand-building strategy: If your financial planner came to you with an idea to spend $10,000 on marketing as an investment, you’d think, “What will my return be?because she is a trusted advisor. Use the same standards with your marketing, advertising and media reps. Ask the question: “What is my projected return and how does it compare to other marketing investments?When the rep tells you the value of impressions, ask for some statistics from other advertisers regarding the ROI of the ads and spots they are running?

After you watch the YouTube video, see if you can help me out. Why is Tiffany holding a leg of lamb when she enters the commercial set? Maybe there is some reference I don’t remember from Meat Loaf’s earlier days. He was quite a theatrical talent!