Kendall Summerhawk asked:


You’ve heard it before, right?

How you’re supposed to work on your business instead of in your business? Sounds good, but how on earth do you make that happen when you’re already stretched thin trying to get everything done in your day?

Carving out time to consistently work on your woman-owned business is actually quite simple if, instead of trying to “fit it all in”, you shift your outlook about this important time.

Trying to “fit it all in” is a left-brained, logical way of looking at your time. It’s a distinctly masculine viewpoint of time, which works great when you need to powerhouse your way through a project. But, it does not work as well when you find yourself butting up against the competing needs of clients, family, exercise, down time and other priorities.

Here are four tips for turning your marketing strategy time into sacred time so you can accomplish what matters most, even on your busiest days:

Small Business Marketing Tip #1: Create a ritual of beginning and completing your marketing tasks.

Days that seem to run together are missing the important ritual of beginning and completing, a ritual that actually helps you feel like time is slowing down. So instead of letting your marketing tasks bleed through to everything else, create your own personal ritual that signals the start of your marketing for the day. One of my favorite rituals is to close out my email program, unplug the telephone and pull out my marketing to-do list. When finished, I just reverse my steps for a satisfying feeling of completion.

Small Business Marketing Tip #2: Clear space on your desk, even if just for ten minutes.

If your desk is normally piled with papers and sticky notes, try moving everything off to one side so you have a nice, clean welcoming work space. You’ll be surprised at how much more creative you are with your marketing plans when you (literally!) make space for them!

Small Business Marketing Tip #3: Keep it pretty.

Who says marketing has to be unattractive?! I use pretty marking pens, colorful folders, pretty paper clips and sticky notes with inspiring messages printed on them to keep my marketing ideas and projects organized and fun. Making what we do a visual treat is an important part of creating a feeling of the sacred.

Small Business Marketing Tip #4: Don’t let the needs of others trample your sacred time.

Sacred time inspires feelings of abundance, importance and quiet. Think of it this way: you wouldn’t play loud rock music in the middle of a sanctuary, would you? Of course not. So it makes sense that you wouldn’t let other people interrupt your sacred marketing strategy time either.

By thinking of your marketing strategy time as sacred time you’ll find it simple and easy to honor working on your business, so that your woman-owned business grows and thrives into the true expression of your Soul’s Divine Mission™ that it’s meant to be!

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!

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.

 

 

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.

Babubyname asked:


Positioning is another one of those marketing jargon words that everybody throws around and is important to understand. It’s also important to understand how positioning specifically applies to your small business marketing.

Basically a marketing position describes your unique place in the market. The key word here is unique. What makes you different from your competitors? What features and benefits do you offer your target market that the other players don’t?

Here are a few things that may go into your positioning:

-Price Point – This doesn’t necessarily mean you have the lowest price. You may be the most expensive in town, and that’s OK if you convince your customers you’re worth it.

-Service – Almost every business claims they have great service. If you can provide exceptional service compared to your competitors, your customers will remember you. I’ll never forget calling a surly plumber to try to get him to my house for an emergency on a weekend. he acted like he didn’t want my business and then told me it was going to be $200 for him just to show up, no thanks. I called roto-router who gave me amazing service, a guarantee, and the whole bill was less than $200. I now use them for all my plumbing.

-Features and Benefits – Positioning is not just about what makes you different, it’s also about what you emphasize. Folgers announces to the world that it’s “mountain grown coffee” ( a feature). Guess what? All coffee is mountain grown. Folgers just claimed this feature first. What’s something that none of your competitors are talking about?

-Credibility – Legal Seafood’s clam chowder is served at every presidential inauguration. Many products get celebrity endorsements. Many companies tout how long they’ve been in business. All of these things build trust in the mind of the consumer. What trust-building factors do you have that the competition does not?

-Negative Features – Is there something you don’t have that annoys customers of your competitors? I’m not saying use negative advertising, but just mention the feature and tie it to a benefit. I’m annoyed when I have to pay for parking to go shopping at Mall. Instead of touting free parking, a mall that wants to speak to me might declare, “you’ll never have to pay for parking”. This drives home the pain of shopping with a competitor without going negative.

-Anything Else – Literally anything that differentiates you from your competitors can be part of your positioning strategy – your location, your hours of operation, the way your office smells. Small business owners need to think creatively here.

In a great article by John Jantsch he states that a positioning strategy must answer the question, “why should I buy from you?” This is brilliant in it’s simplicity; it cuts through all the strategic junk that complicates marketing. If you can’t answer this question, your customer is not going to do the work to figure out an answer on his own.

http://www.smallholders.com

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.