Marketing your small business can be fun and manageable once you understand what it truly is. The problem is, marketing can get a bit overwhelming as you try to understand how all the parts come together to create sustainable results.
There are countless ways for marketing your small business, but consistent profits come from understanding what marketing really is at it’s core, and developing a framework that will help you use the tools available to yield consistent results.
Here are five important things to keep in mind when marketing your small business:
1. Tell people what you do – over and over again.
Marketing is not a magic sales bullet. You’ve got to keep talking to people and talking about your product or service. The problem is this: a lot of entrepreneurs are reluctant to talk about their product or service. Instead you may incorrectly assume that people already know what you do, and they’ll find you if they require your service. It doesn’t work that way.
We, as consumers, get a lot of information coming through our senses every day. Information gets lost in a noisy marketplace. But successful marketers understand that we all need to see or hear marketing messages more than once before we take action.
Your marketing challenge as an entrepreneur should not be about telling people what you do over and over again (you should accept that this is necessary), but insead finding creative ways to do it so the people you’re talking to are happy to receive the information.
2. Test more and talk less.
Got a great idea of how to creatively tell people about your business? Test it.
The only way you’ll know if something works is if you stop talking and over thinking it and actually go out to the marketplace and test it. You’ve got to accept that you’re going to spend a bit of money finding the right balance. Stop wasting time searching for free marketing methods. The best methods will require you to pay either with a long stretch of time invested or a little bit of money – it’s your choice but, you must keep testing to gain the results you require.
3. Start with a marketing goal.
Social media, webinars, blogging etc. —these are all tools and they don’t get results unless you have a plan on how to use them to get results. Your plan is based on what goal you really want to achieve in a particular time frame.
Don’t waste your time fussing about the tools, get clear and specific on your marketing goal. What do you really want? Ten new clients? Five thousand email subscribers? Put a number and a time frame to your marketing goal and then go from there…
4. Understand that visitors aren’t customers, yet.
People who visit your website to get free information and leave comments about how brilliant your company blog is – don’t pay the bills. People who come into your shop, and look around cooing about how lovely your designs are, don’t pay the bills. People who talk about how they’d like to go to your restaurant don’t pay the bill; people who spend money pay the bill.
Learn to tell the difference – don’t spend money on thousands of visitors who want to look – attract the ten who want to buy. Focus on people that are serious and create a system that converts these people into paying customers.
5. It’s easier to sell what people already want.
It’s all well and good to talk about how people would potentially like and buy your product or service, if only they’d take the time to understand how it would revolutionize their life (office, home, car, relationship, etc.) But they just don’t get it!
It is not about giving people what you think they need. Marketing is about giving people what they want. You need to understand that your target market is not ready to be an expert in your field and they don’t have the desire to know everything. They simply want enough information to solve their problem and ease the pain.
As a marketer, your job is to create offers that appeal to your target customer and your bottom line. In other words, it’s about giving customers enough of what they want so they get excited enough to keep coming back for more.
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