Nate Stockard asked:


Small business marketing is small, as noted by the name, but too many times business owners think that small business marketing is too small for planning, budgets, or strategies. Since small businesses usually have little or no marketing budget and are concentrating on just keeping the doors open, owners, more times than not, neglect their marketing planning. No business should exist without marketing planning and strategies!

Actually, small business marketing requires planning and strategy more than major companies.

When the marketing manager of a large corporation has a $20 million marketing budget just for print ads, they have room to make mistakes, produce the wrong ads, and even scrap the marketing plan half-way through completion. Small businesses don’t have such freedom and liberty. Small business marketing should contain a plan before anything else happens in the company in the area of sales and marketing. There should be budgets and strategies created as early as possible and reviewed as often as possible.

Create a marketing plan as soon as you decide to start a business.

My company specializes in helping small businesses with marketing and design, and we encounter many of the same problems, and they all stem from lack of early planning. Once you decide to start a business, start creating a marketing plan.



Who are your customers?

What are their needs and wants?

How will you acquire new customers?

What kind of customer relationship management systems will you use?

What do your customers expect from you?

What are your products’ benefits?

What are your strengths?

What are your weaknesses?

How will you advertise?

How much will you budget for marketing?



This list is actually very small when it comes to creating a marketing plan, but you must answer all of these questions and more. Small business marketing must be precise, have a defined strategy, and contain at least a rough budget. Figure out who your customer is, how you will reach them, and why they will buy from you. Starting with these three areas will give you a plethora of other questions to answer in figuring out the maze of small business marketing.

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Henal Patel asked:


A business marketing adviser is in reality, a friend who gives creative ideas to attract new customers. You may have thought and thought about how you could grow your business and add new customers to your database. But you may feel that you cannot come up with any new ideas for grabbing new clients. If that’s the case, turn to a marketing advisor. Select one, who will listen to you, will offer suggestions, and who is reasonably priced. For small business SEOs, only those well-versed in the business world can fully understand the needs of your business. To evolve a suitable strategy, it’s important that the marketing suggestions and advice of the advisor will attract new customers. After all, isn’t that why you planned to hire him or her in the first place?

A small business owner or a person in professional practice should always be concerned about new prospective customers and cash flow. Sure, your seasoned clients are tried and true, but you must always look for and obtain new customers for continuous growth potential. But how to find these new customers? A good marketing adviser will tell you that a unique method of incurring residual income involves marketing affiliate programs that create vertical avenues of profit. In other words, let others find new customers for you by using their own contacts.

There is no doubt that local merchant success depends on the development of contacts within the local community. The better the social contacts between the potential customers, the faster words will spread. Word of mouth is still the best marketing your business can get. Small businesses have many challenges such as growth in sales, development of customer relationships, and accounting. And think of it this way – growing your business clientele also builds other opportunities within the community. And if other businesses within your locality are doing well, you in your turn will have a greater likelihood of seeing success in your company. It all works hand in hand. Business for you may mean growth for other, complementary companies and vice versa. If the potential for growth is in your community, jump on it. You should obtain business opportunities and see new clients while helping to build your community.

Online companies provide business listings by category for easy consumer access. Look for portals that supplement the gap of traditional marketing techniques. Online marketing is much simpler than the traditional marketing of years ago and much more cost-effective. Because everything is available on the Internet and right at your fingertips, and because computers are accessible by people of all ages, you have a great potential to build new relationships and service new clients through the Internet. The Internet is not just for finding and contacting customers far away, but is also a great tool to expand your client database in your own community. In the past, there was less opportunity to meet clients of different ages and different background. But now, your business opportunities are numerous. Isn’t it great to be living in the Internet Age?

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.

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.

David Ogden asked:


Today many small businesses are marketing themselves on the Internet. As a matter of fact many small businesses today are actually Internet businesses themselves. Here are 3 affordable small business marketing strategies and you can use to get the word out about your business.

1. The first thing we want to talk about is utilizing a pay per click advertising campaign. Google Adwords and Yahoo Marketing are the two most well known companies that offer pay per click advertising campaigns.

These are great because you control how much money you want to bid on a targeted keywords, and you also control how much money you want to spend every month. You know that the traffic that you are getting to your website is targeted because people are searching for specific keywords or keyword phrases.

What makes this affordable for many small businesses is you only get billed when somebody actually clicks on your ad. This makes it very easy for you to determine if this form of our marketing is the effective for you or not.

2. Blogging is another affordable small business marketing strategy that you must be using. As a matter of fact, you can blog and get the word out about your business and your only investment will be in the time it takes to write the blog articles.

The key point to making blogging work is to social bookmark your post to the proper social directories. The other thing is to write your blog articles to target specific keyword phrases that relate to the theme of your small business.

This may take a little while to get the hang of, but it is really quite simple to do. You must be consistent in how you blog and how often you blog as well.

3. A third small business marketing strategy that has proven to be very effective is ezine advertising. The reason this is so good is because there are many email newsletters today that have been around for several years and have very loyal readers.

This gives you an opportunity to get the word out about your small business to people that actually will read either your classified ad, your solo ad, or an article that you run that is picked up by the ezine publisher.

This is three affordable small business marketing strategies that you should be implementing to promote your business on the Internet today. You may not know how to do any of them right now, but you can quickly learn the ins and outs to make these strategies affective for your small business.

Paul Flood asked:


Copyright (c) 2008 Paul Flood Marketing, LLC

These Powerful Small Business Marketing Tips Are Guaranteed to Dramatically Increase Your Sales!

If you are like many entrepreneurs, you are looking for small business marketing tips that not only work, but work consistently. If you’re ready to take the your small business to the next level, you need to look at marketing differently.

This may seem obvious but, over 97% of the time, your small business marketing should have one of two goals: 1. Result in a sale. 2. Result in a lead or prospect.

The other 3% of the cases include your community service marketing like memberships in Rotary, Kiwanis and organizations to which you belong.

Marketing Shouldn’t be a Mystery!

Small business owners often see marketing as a mystery and don’t know what works for their business. Not knowing what to do leads to either copying competitor’s poor marketing or their falling prey to media and agency reps who often know less about marketing than them! The reps are taught to tell you, the small business owner, the goal of your marketing is to build your brand.

The ground is littered with failed small businesses who fell for this brand-building fallacy. Don’t misunderstand me here. I strongly believe in advertising as a pillar of your marketing system but you must view all your marketing as an investment, not as a trial to see what works if people know your name.

Another Small Business Marketing Tip:

Look at advertising as you would a sales ep. Would you hire a sales rep to build your brand and “get your name out there?” If they never close and sale and you’re losing money, do you keep them on board? Of course not! You don’t keep them around longer or pay them more money. You make a change.

Do you see the analogy? Your sales people and advertising are both marketing investments. Why continue advertising that doesn’t generate profits?

Remember that everything in your business is part of your marketing. You either move clients and prospects towards or away from a buying decision. When you look at everything you do as part of your marketing investment, you begin to consider how to leverage it in every possible way to increase profits.

7 Powerful Small Business Marketing Strategies That Will Grow YOUR Business!

1. Develop a powerful (USP) that gives prospects a compelling reason to buy from you now. Your USP must scream a powerful reason to do business with you. It motivates your clients to send friends in droves to buy your product or service! This small business marketing tip has built small companies into empires! Remember the little pizza company that guaranteed fresh hot pizza in 30 minutes or less – Or it’s free?

Make an outrageous and exciting claim that shows that you are better than anybody else and the best thing for a prospect can do is buy from you now!

2. Learn selling and customer service skills. Advertising legend Clyde Bedell taught us “That all good selling is service.” Service and sales go tightly together. When you cross-sell, you provide a tremendous service. You save clients the time and aggravation of having to search elsewhere to complete the purchase.

Marketing legend Dan Kennedy sums up this concept beautifully by saying “People are walking around holding an umbilical cord and saying, “Tell me what to do.” Your clients and prospects need and value your recommendations and will follow them so make a habit of providing them!

3. Capture client and prospect information and create a database. Take a moment to ask yourself the last time a retailer or restaurant asked you name or asked you to return. In general, it is NEVER! Your business will be one of less than 5% of companies that make any effort to build a powerful bond with your clients.

4. Use your database to keep in touch. Send thank you notes. (Super car salesman Joe Girardi is in the Guinness book of records for selling more cars than anybody. His secret? he kept in touch with tens of thousands of clients using thank you notes and greeting cards.Give them a reason to return by sending special discount coupons, invitations to “Platinum Client Days”.” Always thank them for their past business and give them a special offer as a reason to return and always have a deadline for your offer. 5. Start a newsletter, which is THE most powerful small business marketing tip to build a fence around your clients. The added advantage is that you are marketing to those most likely to buy – Current and past clients!

6. Create a referral and reward program. Unfortunately, most people are afraid to ask for referrals even thought clients are happy to give them. The easiest strategy is to simply ask for them and reward people who send you new clients. It can be as simple as giving coded coupons to a client in your store. For each one that is redeemed, the referring client gets a gift. Many professionals are a lot more strategic and have arrange special meetings with their clients for the sole purpose of getting high quality referrals. If you are living up to your USP, clients will gladly refer others! You must realize that if you are providing quality products and services, it is your right to ask for referrals.

7. The final small business marketing tip is so powerful that you must insure you have the capacity to handle the additional business! Joint Ventures and Strategic Alliances leverage the goodwill and relationships other businesses have built with their clients.

Identify non-competing businesses that serve a client base similar to yours. Approach the owner and propose a joint venture or strategic alliance in which you are going to endorse their business to your list and vise-versa. As mentioned earlier, consumers are constantly asking “Who should I buy this product or service from?’

This powerful small business marketing tool leverages the trust you and your alliance partner(s) have built with their clients and, when properly structured between two good companies with quality products and services, is as close to a guaranteed success as you will ever get.