Understanding Small Business Marketing
It's all very well having a great product or service, but if you can't find a simple way to communicate your idea to your audience, you won't be selling very much.
As the public, we are used to being bombarded with millions of marketing messages, each with its own promise. This means that it is not quite as simple as just telling people. Your message needs to stand out from the rest in order for the audience to remember it, so your marketing message needs to be memorable and give its audience a reason to listen up, pay attention and take action.
Furthermore, that message needs to be repeated through various means to maximize impact and have people remember you.
Before you write your marketing literature and key messages you need to choose which of the various marketing strategies will make up your marketing 'circle'. You need to figure out:
- What slice of the marketing pie or 'circle' you are on.
- What ingredients or tools you will need.
- Which strategies you should use that best suit that position in the circle (ie your objectives).
To do that you need to consider which of these objectives holds the most importance for you and your business at any given time. Do you need to:
1. Find and attract prospects and customers, make contacts, gather leads, collect referrals? Having enough numbers to call and e-mails to e-mail is slice one of the marketing pie.
2. Convince the prospective customer to book an appointment to allow you to present to them or persuade them to enter your offline or virtual store by getting their attention is slice two.
3. Closing the deal and getting the sale once you have their attention is slice three.
4. Providing the service or product and then following-up contact to request a referral or testimonial from the customer is slice four.
As you begin to follow up and contact each customer again to seek repeat business, you are then gathering more leads to go back to slice one.
As a brand new start-up business you will almost definitely need to begin with slice one of the marketing circle. You need to attract prospects - names, faces, leads, contacts - people to get in touch with, likely customers. This is the first part of the circle. Attracting prospects to you and making first contact. Part of this lead generation process should include launching a website and driving traffic to it through web promotion.
If you already have a collection of business cards from people you have not spoken to since you met them, have leads or e mails you have not yet replied to, or prospects who said call me back in a few months - then you need to focus your efforts on following up ' slice four '.
If, however, you find that following up doesn't tend to lead to many appointments or repeat sales, or find prospects are already using your main competitor, then you will need to focus on slice two. Get their attention, appeal to their needs and wants, lower prices or offer added value, do whatever it takes to compel them to act.
If you find yourself getting plenty of meetings, but minimal sales as a result, or have plenty of customers entering your store but few buying, or don't know where you stand with new clients, you need to focus on slice three, closing the deal and getting the sale.
Whichever needs the most work at any given time is the part of the pie you should focus on.
Once the sale is closed, the order fulfilled, the customer is satisfied and you've gathered more contacts from that customer by way of referral, you can start over again at slice one.
