George Dodge asked:


Let me ask you a question. The answer is to the question is critical to your business success.

Do you fully understand the real nature of the business you are in?

Your instant response is of course, I’m in the [put your industry name here] business. For example, you probably said, of course, I’m in the real estate business, or the plumbing business, or the printing business, etc.

But that is only partly correct if you are the owner of the business. As the business owner, the real nature of your business is marketing the business you are in.

You may have the greatest service or the best product in the world, but if no one knows about it, you will soon be out of business.

One method of increasing the exposure of your business to your potential customers, is to conduct a marketing crusade.

You can compare this marketing approach to a missionary’s work or the launching of a crusade because only the fervor and the determination of a missionary or crusader will assure your marketing success.

Missionaries are driven by more than just their desire to sell someone on buying their product or service. Rather, a missionary’s goal is to convert the world to their way of thinking, their mission and their crusade. Only through such a conversion process can you expect to receive not just a customer, but customers for life.

When your business launches a marketing mission, it takes a different approach than traditional marketing.

Traditional approaches are taken and set aside in favor of our missionary or crusader’s goal. In a traditional marketing effort, the real motivation for most marketing activity is just to make money. That’s nice to do, but that’s not all we need.

Every marketing effort, at this point, is tied directly back to its contribution to money coming in.

Now, as a missionary, your business goal becomes an effort to win your customer’s lifetime business and loyalty. If your business’ marketing activity is successful in changing the way your customers think about your business or products or services in such a way that the customer sees you as a vehicle to accomplish their goal and growth, then your goals and your growth will be a natural result.

As your business manages its sales growth properly, increased profit is going to follow. Immediate profits are nowhere near as important as long-term profits. To insure that you’re going to continue to profit for the long-term, your real objective is to convert your prospect into a customer who shares your vision of what you’re trying to accomplish and is a true believer.

Vision is a problem with the normal sales approach. There is no vision other than the short-term, which is to make the immediate sale. There is little or no real focus on back-end selling and the life time value of a customer, which we’ll talk more about later on.

What is your vision?

Is your business focused on an area of interest to your customers, prospects or clients?

Are you driven fervently by the need to help them or yourself?

Why should others patronize your business rather than any other business? Or not do anything at all?

What can you do that will not only cause your customers to return again and again, but cause them to tell others to buy your products and services as well?

Can you take that vision and incorporate it with a main sales and marketing thrust, advantage or Unique Selling Proposition and use that for an advantage over your competitors?

A good marketing crusade will integrate all this together and soon have customers coming to you as a result of what Dan Kennedy calls a Magnetic Marketing System. If you were Jiffy Lube, you might call it a well oiled marketing machine.

Todd Jirecek asked:


Small businesses are popping up everywhere. However, one of the biggest problems they face is small business marketing. To understand this lets first take a look at why.

Today more than ever, people are jumping on the small business band wagon like the traffic that arrives at a 60% off sales at a major clothing store.

There are all kinds of people starting their own plumbing business, contracting business and whatever else you can think of.

Part of the reason for this is there is no job security anymore and unions seem to be a thing of the past. The days are long gone where people stayed at the same job for 25 years or more.

Corporations have downsized more than ever in today’s changing world. People seem to be laid off for just about any reason you can think of anymore. One thing is for sure, the economy has changed.

Many people think we are doomed as a society but, are they failing to realize that things have just only changed.

It’s kind of like the auto worker who was laid off because he was replaced by the mechanical robot arm that now makes cars. However that worker took notice and went back to school and learned to repair those robots.

His future is now bright again because he was able to see the change he needed to make.

In marketing, the same change takes place all the time. Marketing is a never ending battle to get the word about your products or services.

If one thing doesn’t work you should try something else until you land upon a winning combination. And then create a small business marketing plan.

Don’t get caught up in the mindset of you tried something once and it didn’t work for you so therefore it doesn’t work at all.

Marketing takes many years of skill and practice to be able to perform it like a red belt karate master.

But let’s look at that karate master just a little closer for a second. In some forms of martial arts, a black belt has to learn only 5 to 10 moves to become a black belt.

So they practice those moves over and over until they know them like a pup knows its own mother.

The point here is many people are looking for the quick fix all the time. They continue to search out many sources of marketing information without taking any action at all.

Learning is a very positive thing and should be performed all the time.

However, one of the greatest tricks of marketing is finding that one thing that you know you can do and works very well for you.

And then repeat it over and over until you know it like the karate master.

Then and only then can you move on to other things in the marketing mix to help make your business more money.

Again, do not get caught up in thinking you have to learn and do everything at one. Your business marketing will take time to learn.

Make it a process and enjoy it. Continue to read books and other marketing strategies materials that help you learn more.

If you find yourself in a bind and already own a business that needs help with marketing. Here are five small steps to help you until you learn the bigger picture.

1. Hire an expert. Many marketing experts do consult for thousands of dollars at a time. However, maybe you have a friend that owns a business. Jump up off the couch and see what they do for their marketing.

2. Get the word out. Listen you are going to make mistakes. But, doing nothing is a total loss. Get out there and do something today to make it happen. You could try to make a flayer and hand it out to people.

3. Tell your friends and family. Friend and family are there to help when you need it. So don’t be shy. Ask them for help. You could ask them if they might know anyone interested in your business or if they know anyone who could help you.

4. Start a company web site. A website is a great way to get the word out about your business. The trick here is learning about web marketing. One way could be a logo on your car.

5. Joint partnerships with other businesses. Whatever business you own there are similar businesses that you could pair up with. You could recommend each others products or services to the others customers. Just make sure they are in line with your target market.

These are small ways to leverage your business over your competition.

Just remember to learn all you can and if you do nothing else take action to make it happen.

You will stumble along the way, that is a given. But, if you do nothing you have no business.