John Coates asked:


Marketing is critical to the success of any business, whether it is a one-person operation, a medium sized company or a multinational corporation. When running your home based business, it is even more important that marketing your business is done right, as you cannot afford to get it wrong. Remember that everything you do, and the way that you do it, is all marketing. Doing something well is usually as easy as doing it badly, but wins you a good reputation.

 

The UK’s Chartered Institute of Marketing definition of marketing is, “The management process that identifies, anticipates and supplies customer requirements efficiently and profitably.” So we can see that marketing is not just about advertising and selling products or services. It is about: finding out what potential customers want; creating the products and services that satisfy those needs; selling those products and services at the right price; making those products and services available in the right place.

 

To check if you are doing all of these we can look at the four elements of marketing that are known as the four Ps – Product, Price, Promotion and Place. Let us look closer at the first, your product.

 

Does your product meet the needs of your customers? If it is not perfectly suited to customers then you may want to make some changes. Ideally, your response to this question should be that no changes are required. How do your products compare with your competitors? If they are better or compare reasonably well, then you pass this criteria. But if they do not compare very well or you do not know, you need to urgently review this particular aspect.

 

Every product or service can be said to have a four-stage life cycle. Birth is when a new product is launched and introduced to prospective customers. Growth occurs when the product becomes popular and starts to sell well. Maturity is when the product is selling so well that you are unable to keep up with demand. The final stage is decline, when demand and sales fall. Customers have turned their attention elsewhere. Take a good look at your product or service and decide which of these stages are applicable.

 

The second element of the four Ps is price. The price should be thought to be fair by the customer. It does not necessarily have to be the cheapest, but value for money. It should be competitive so that when your customers compare your prices to those of your competitors, they think yours are within the price range they would expect to pay. The price you set for your product or service must be profitable. If you are not trading at a profit you will not be running your home based business for very long. Remember that the price you set has to cover the cost of your overheads: light, heating, telephone, advertising, etc, and still provide a profit. When costing you product, you should also include your time.

 

The third element of marketing is that of promotion. Promotion is how a product or service is brought to the attention of your potential customers. This can be done in a number of ways and can be paid promotion or free. The former includes advertising in newspapers, magazines, radio or television. Depending on your budget you may want to consider what could be classed as “free” promotion. This could include competitions, e.g. create a winning slogan and win a holiday for two. (Remember that competitions do not have to cost you anything if you consider joint ventures!). You may want to make special offers such as: buy one get one free; buy now and pay next year; 0% interest, etc.

 

The final element to marketing your business is place. This covers where the goods or services are offered for sale and then the way these goods or services are distributed and delivered to the customer. In running your business from home, you need to look at how you distribute and deliver to your customer. Running your home based business does not mean you can forget this element of marketing your business.

 

Marketing your business well, you must get the four Ps right; product, price, promotion and place. Analyze these areas, monitor your results and be prepared to change your marketing strategy. Be willing to ask your customers or clients what they think, and be prepared to act on the results.

Kendall Summerhawk asked:


Do you know what most women entrepreneurs bring with them when they start their own business?

The notion that being busy means being productive.

Nothing could be farther from the truth!

As I warn my business coaching clients, this faulty (and even dangerous) notion is a hold-over from the days of working at a j-o-b.

You see, at a job, you’re paid to show up and stay busy. What people do at their jobs is rarely connected with actually bringing in new clients or making money.

But when you work for yourself, EVERYTHING you do MUST be tightly connected to getting and keeping new clients. Period.

Which means handling things like most emails, filing, problem solving (unless it’s solving your clients’ problems), administrative trivia, surfing the ‘net, sorting your Outlook files, paying bills, fiddling with your website, creating brochures… are a waste of time. These tasks don’t put women entrepreneurs closest to the money; they pull them away from it!

Here are my top favorite tasks that I do nearly every day to put me closest to the money:

Small Business Marketing Strategy #1: Write an article.

Not crazy about writing or not sure what to write about? One of the tips I shared in a recent Success Circle Marketing Makeover call is to write like you are having a conversation. Pretend you are chatting with a good friend about a very specific topic.

Small Business Marketing Strategy #2: Send a “thinking about you” card…or two!

Why not surprise a client, referral source, another woman entrepreneur or prospective client with a friendly “keep in touch” card? They will feel special…and think you are too!

Small Business Marketing Strategy #3: Send a press release written as a mini-article.

Think a press release is only to announce an important event? Nope! Take one of your articles, trim it down to 250 words and add your author’s bio. You can use this strategy to send one a week.

Small Business Marketing Strategy #4: Record a free audio tip for your website.

Even better, transcribe it and post it on your website as a viewable option. Google will love your site for adding fresh content.

Small Business Marketing Strategy #5: Make your first (or next) information product.

Keep it simple and get your information product done now! The credibility and leverage you gain will tremendously boost your business. Example: one of my Platinum Inner Circle clients created a $9.95 eBook on a popular topic. The result? This woman entrepreneur received dozens of sales and several new clients worth many thousands of dollars. Nice!

Small Business Marketing Strategy #6: Ask to be interviewed or to interview an expert.

Interviews are easy to set up. They increase your credibility, widen your exposure and raise your expert status, whether you’re the expert giving the interview or conducting the interview. Choose someone you respect. Call to ask for the interview (you’ll be surprised how often you’ll hear “yes”.) Then record the interview and offer it as a mp3 file on your website.

My business coaching challenge: make a stand for doing ONE small business marketing strategy each day, and then integrate your action into your daily routine.

This is how you’ll go from being busy to becoming successful… with a lot more time to enjoy!

Aaron Goldberg asked:


When it comes to small business marketing there are several things that must be kept in mind. For example, small businesses rarely have big budgets for advertising. As a result, they need to find methods to advertise their product or service without spending a lot of money. The following small business marketing tips will help your business grow and make more money.

Multiple Marketing Tactics

The first thing you will want to do is come up with several marketing ideas that will help your business. Then, figure out a plan to rotate these tactics so that you get the most bang for your buck. One marketing effort may work great the first time and not the second time or else it works only occasionally. Because of this it is important for small businesses to have a marketing plan and alternate various types of marketing tactics for the best results.

Buddy Marketing

Another option is to use buddy marketing. This is a great way to reach new customers without much cost. The way buddy marketing works is that when you send out a brochure of your company you include a business card or small leaflet for another business to advertise for them based on an agreement that they will do the same for you. The business should be complementary to yours, but not in competition.

Second Offers

As soon as a customer makes a purchase send them a letter thanking them for their purchase and that because of this purchase they may be able to buy return and buy an additional item for a discount of 20% or something of that nature. Make sure you include an expiration date, too, so there is a sense of urgency.

Market to Past Customers

Remember that marketing to your past customers is better than marketing to new ones. That is not to say that you don’t want to try and get new customers just that old customers are easier to sell to. As a result, concentrate and marketing to your past customers whether this be through email marketing, newsletters, or coupons in the mail. Regardless of the way you market to past customers you will benefit by making more sales.

These are just a few tips to help small businesses market their services and business. It is really important to keep in mind there are unlimited ways to market your business without spending a lot of money or even time. It’s just important to be aware of what the options are and how to make them work for you.

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.

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.

Nate Stockard asked:


What is marketing?

Marketing is defined in many different ways according to who you ask, but all responses usually are part of the same answer: marketing is a combination of all of the activities you implement or participate in which help promote, brand, and sell you product, service, or business.

Why is marketing important?

Many small business owners feel sales is the most vital part of their business. Sales are very important, but your brand, image, and, ultimately, marketing determines your customer loyalty and growth of your business. Marketing establishes the basis for your sales strategy and how you will close sales.

What does marketing cost?

Small business owners are confronted ever day with sales pitches for various costly marketing activities. Most small business owners see marketing as an expensive business component they just can’t afford. This is not true. In fact, small businesses can’t afford to overlook marketing, and it doesn’t have to drain the bank account either. One of the best forms of marketing that is very affordable is a consistent and professional image. Elegant business cards, matching letterhead, and an informative and effective website are just a few pieces of a small business’ tool box that can do much more than a high-dollar advertising campaign.

How do small business owners create a consistent and professional image?

The first thing a company will create is a name. There are many steps before this point, but this is the first product. Next, comes a unique logo that conveys the right image. Once the marketing package has these two pieces, consistency becomes the primary focus. Small business owners usually put off the rest of the basic building blocks until they can put it off no more. At that point, professionalism and consistency goes out the window in favor of a quick answer.

The right way to approach this issue is to prepare on the front end. Following the name and logo stage, the small business owner must push on. Create the right business card, elegant letterhead, useful brochure, and quality website. By creating all of these things at the point in the start-up process, all of the basic components of your marketing become consistent, professional, and effective from the start.

Henal Patel asked:


You have a brilliant idea for a new business. You go ahead and open your business, ready to offer a wonderful new service to happily awaiting clients. But how can you drive those clients to you? How can you ensure that your business will succeed? What is the most important thing for your business – besides the customer? The answer is marketing. Marketing is the backbone of any business establishment. This is true especially when the targeted business focuses on a local community through local ads. Customized planning procedures are available online to suit each and every business in implementing an excellent marketing strategy.

Small businesses can benefit from the useful tips that are available on the Internet to target local search traffic. Tips are the best shortcut to use. The crucial objective of a marketing strategy is to cost-effectively increase traffic without resorting to banner advertising which is often ineffective. With the advent of the Internet, you will use sophisticated, cutting edge technology that reaches the maximum number of people. You do not have to resort to old, outdated, expensive marketing techniques that are no longer effective for your business, or any business.

Marketing your business on the internet help you to target at the specific group of consumers who are looking for your service or product more effectively. Everybody have internet services or is easily available. Most people simply do a search on the internet for a service or product they are looking for with a few keywords. Your business will be available to them with the necessary information even some description of your service or products. This is what a consumer is looking for.

The best local advertising tips also save considerable time and money when creating a marketing plan. These tips serve as a guide for the beginners in a field who wish to enhance and establish their small businesses. You get to utilize the secrets and tips that have worked for others. Isn’t it great that the work has already been done for you? The Internet is a great source for pioneering pragmatic ideas. It’s been proven through the numerous companies who have achieved success online.

Utilization of marketing resources often grabs the attention of local customers. Effective marketing procedures include perspective planning, conception and formulation of a business strategy, selection of appropriate marketing materials, and local search strategies. The ultimate aim of any business is to grab the attention of a potential local customer so that he or she will utilize their product or service. It is a given that a customer is more likely to use a service or buy from a business when that company is local. Why? Maybe it is because the customer feels ties to the community and feels better about putting money into a local business. Maybe it is because there is a better potential for improved customer service. Whatever the reason, you will want to attract customers who are right there in your community, and this will give you the opportunity to cultivate new business relationships and ensure word-of-mouth marketing.

Jason Swanson asked:


Throughout these sets of articles we have looked at many different ways that one can create online business ideas. This is very important but it is equally important that you know how to market your business ideas so that people know what you have to offer.  Within this article today we are going to look at what you can do in creating online business marketing that will sell your product.  We will look at two different methods that you can use but, to truly become successful at online marketing, you are going to have to make sure to learn about the subject as much as possible.  Without a certain number of hits to your website every day, you can be guaranteed that you will not have great sales figures.  The only way to get the hits that you want is through marketing and this is where this article comes in.

The first thing they can do in creating online business marketing is to make sure that your website is properly created.  This article isn’t long enough to go into everything that you need for your website but you should make sure that your site is properly indexed by all of the major search engines so that you’re getting the maximum amount of natural search engine traffic you can.  If you need more information about this, look in your library for books on search engine optimization.  This can help you redesign some pages on your website to make sure that you are getting maximum exposure.  If you want to get more people to your website, you may also want to look into Adwords. Where this can benefit you is that you can bid on certain keywords so when people search on these keywords, your ads will come up.  You will paya certain amount per click that you receive from your ads being displayed. This is very good for you because you can target the audience that you want to bring to your website.  By bidding on this, you are able to control your marketing costs and still receive leads.

Another way to get traffic coming to your site and help in creating online business marketing is to offer some free giveaways.  There are a great deal of free forums out there where you can post about free giveaways at your website and this is an additional way to bring traffic to your website.  The word free is one of the major hot buttons for most people so by offering something for free if they visit your website, you will be guaranteed to get a great deal of traffic.  The way to run giveaways would be to have someone sign up for your newsletter in exchange for the free gift. This will help build your newsletter and create more online business marketing because you have a larger responsive list who is potentially interested in the products that you sell.  The way to do this in a newsletter is to make sure you do not push products but rather soft sell them while pushing information your target audience can use. 

Hopefully these two different methods of creating online business marketing can help you out.  What we have told you about today only scratches the surface of the possible things you can do but these are two of the more popular methods and they are very low-cost methods so that you do not have to use a great deal of money that you may need to run the business.