Posts Tagged ‘Business Marketing’
Small Business Marketing
If you are an owner of a small business and do not have a marketing plan, you are destined to fail. And I’m not necessarily talking about a business plan with all the financials and stuff. Those are important too, but if you choose not to have a concrete plan for your marketing, all you’re going to accomplish is to become one of the 90% of small business failure stories.
Planning is integral. You won’t even go to the supermarket without some sort of plan. How do you expect to run a successful business without one? As you read through every one of these tips you’ll realize that your small business marketing success depends on having a great marketing plan. 5 crucial elements of a small business marketing plan are as follows:
1) Vision -It’s important that you create a vision statement for your small business. Something that can always be there to let you know what it is your business is all about and where you want to go. Here’s an example from Microsoft: “a personal computer in every home running Microsoft software.”
2) Your Clients – Your small business marketing plan should also include who your ideal clients are. Those people you want to open their wallets and give you their money. If you can determine the age, gender, income, habits, likes and dislikes of your ideal client you’ll be far ahead of the game when it comes time to strategize.
3) Competition – Just as it’s important to figure out who you’re selling to, it’s also important to figure out who is already selling to them. Once you narrow down who your competition is, you can determine what they do that works and what they do that doesn’t and craft your own campaigns accordingly.
4) Goals – Just like you’ve gotta have vision, you also gotta have goals. Set a reachable one year goal and this will help you in deciding which actions to take along the way. Your goal can be financial, or in terms of customers or market share, or all of the above. Just be sure to make it lofty enough for a challenge, but realistic enough to stay focused.
5) The Strategy – Once you’ve figured out all of the above elements, it’s time for the strategies themselves. What marketing actions are you going to take over the coming year that will enable you to reach your goals? Will you be doing radio spots? Print ads? Web marketing? A combination of the three? There are countless tactics you can use. If you can’t decide which way to go you can always hire an agency to help you out. They aren’t always as expensive as you think.
If you can follow these 5 crucial elements of a small business marketing plan you’ll be well on your way to small business success.
Author: Cara McCarron
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Tags: Business Marketing, Business Marketing Plan, Small Business Marketing
Small Business Marketing
Small Business Marketing Strategy for Brand Promotion
Brand as the base of the marketing triangle. Brand is much more than a logo or a sign.
Successful small business marketing can best be viewed as a triangle containing three essential elements: Brand, Package, and People.
Brand forms the base of this marketing triangle. Brand is the foundation your business is built upon in the mind of your customer. When you rest a heavy load on a weak foundation, a crooked and cracked house is the inevitable outcome. It’s no different when building your business. A strong brand is critical to your small company’s long-term business health and profits.
Brand is really your company’s identity. Brand is the essence of your company–the who of your company in the mind of your customers. Think your customers pick up your company’s identity by osmosis? By that latest brilliant advertising slogan? Sometimes, but for most small businesses, new customers learn of you–and your brand– from another customer or from one of your employees.
Yes, employees–definitely the most under-utilized marketing referral source in small business today.
So, weaving a Brand Banner that customers and employees can carry around for you and then wave at the right time–for you, unsolicited–is an ultra-effective way for your small business to advertise. This Brand Banner must be easy to repeat and memorable. Your advocates will bear your Brand Banner because of the natural human inclination to share helpful information with other people.
Just remember, if you let that Brand Banner get soiled, ripped or grimy, then that’s the flag that’ll be out there flying for your business. Not the impression you want to make. This is yet another reason customer service is so vitally important.
Brand isn’t your company logo, latest advertising slogan or catchy jingle any more than your best suit is you. The suit can improve your image, but even casual acquaintances will still recognize the essential you underneath.
Brand is similar to integrity–if you’ve earned it, your small business can make errors along the way and still become very successful. Customers don’t expect perfection, but they do expect attention. If they trust you to do the right thing by them, even when you mess up, you’ll boost your small business integrity and your brand. But without integrity, you can pour out thousands of advertising dollars to look great and sound slick, but still fail in the end because you are essentially anchored to nothing more solid than shifting sand.
So, if Brand is Identity, and your small business marketing is built on referrals from customers and employees, then a critical next step is for you to understand just how it is that customer’s perceive you. Like beauty, Brand is in the eye of the beholder.
Remember: People (customers and employees) + Package (your Face to the Customer) + Brand (who you are) = Marketing Success.
2006 Marketing Hawks
Marketing Hawks Blog
Craig Lutz-Priefert’s marketing blog
By Craig Lutz-Priefert
Published: 10/1/2006
Small Business Viral Internet Marketing Experts
As viral marketing is an efficient and cost-effective promotion strategy, more and more small business enterprises are depending on internet marketing experts providing viral marketing on the internet.
Small Business Marketing Strategies
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Tags: Business Marketing, Small Business, Small Business Marketing, Small Business Marketing Strategy
Wedding Business Marketing
Creating a marketing plan for your wedding business doesn’t have to be complicated. Here are some common questions about planning.
Q. What will a marketing plan do for me?
A. A properly constructed marketing plan helps you design your service so that it’s more attractive and visible to potential buyers. It can also help you be more profitable.
Q. What should a good plan include?
A. First off writing marketing plan is an opportunity for you to take an objective look at your business. It forces you to look at facts instead of blindly preceding on guesswork. You need to look at the needs of your customers, trends in the market as well as your competition is.
You need to figure out exactly who your customers are. Is your target market the affluent, older bride or is it the younger, middle-class bride? Knowing your ideal client will help you decide how to reach her.
Q. When should you decide on how much to charge?
A. The planning process is your opportunity to decide on your pricing strategy. You also need to take a careful look at your brand’s personality and your positioning statement.
Q. What’s a positioning statement?
A. Positioning is nothing more than how you were potential customer perceives your business. Are you the friendly and approachable planner? Are you a cost-cutting wedding planner? Are you the exotic destination-wedding planner? Carefully consider how you wish to be perceived in your market.
Q. Is a marketing plan only good for new businesses? Can it help me get repeat customers?
A. Absolutely.A solid marketing plan is not just about attracting new customers it also includes how you will deliver the outstanding service that’s required to generate word-of-mouth referrals.
Q. How many pages should my marketing plan be?
A. There is no hard and fast rule on how many pages of marketing plan should be. The size of the document is not as important as the thinking that goes behind it. You want and make sure that your marketing plan is actionable in other words you can take this document and use it as your road-map to achieving your goals.
Q. Should I hire someone to write it?
A. You should never abdicate planning your business to anybody else. A marketing plan is not a document or impressing bankers. The only thing that really impresses bankers is consistently generating profits. The decisions you make in a marketing plan affect what you were going to be doing next week next month or next year.You have to be intimately involved in creating a marketing plan that resonates with you your values and your objectives.
Q. What mistakes do wedding planners make when they create a marketing plan?
A. They fail to use the plan as a road-map to guide every business decision. They seem to forget about the plan and wing it instead. Simply typing up a marketing plan putting it in a three ring binder and leaving it there is not going to help you grow your business. I’d rather see you write a marketing plan on the back of a napkin that actionable than having a 70 page typeset dead document.
Q. Any other advice?
A. There’s lots to learn about marketing.Don’t get overwhelmed. There are plenty of resources out there to help you grow your business intelligently.
Author: Brian McGovern
The Wedding Planner’s Marketing Plan
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Tags: Business Marketing, Marketing Plan, Wedding Business Marketing, Wedding Planning Business Marketing
