The Best Kept Secret of Successful Marketing

March 1, 2010

You’ve been in business a while. You’ve been buying advertising, tweaking your website, spending a fortune on yellow pages and attending all kinds of networking groups. Yet your pipeline is empty; you don’t know from where your next job, project or sale is going to come– or even if it will come. You have no idea how you are going to pay next month’s invoices, salaries and rent. What do you do? If you’re like most small business owners you do the only thing you know how; you buy more advertising and other marketing tactical stuff and hope this time will be different.

But have you really thought about this “strategy”? Why would you dump more money into more advertising, more website tweaks, more yellow page ads, more postcards and more networking that aren’t working? Are you hoping this time will be different? Hoping you’ll find the Holy Grail, that Secret Sauce of advertising?

So many small business owners keep spending on the Marketing tactics hoping that one of these days, they’ll “get it right”. Albert Einstein defined insanity as: “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. Isn’t it time to stop the insanity?

What’s the secret to successful marketing? The only way to “get it right” is to stop the insanity; take a step back and do some basic groundwork – develop a Marketing strategy first. Here is what a Marketing strategy can do for you:

Help you figure out who in the world is most likely to buy what you are selling and where to reach them. For example, as the owner of a high-end hair salon – the lady who loves her $8 mall haircut is NEVER going to come to your salon- so why market to her? Just because she has hair doesn’t mean she deserves for your valuable marketing dollar.
Spend less money and get more qualified leads. If you know who is most likely to buy you can stop wasting money chasing people who will never buy.
Make you stand out in the marketplace. Do you know how you are different from your competitors? If you say “Service” or “Fair Price” you’re missing the mark. Who doesn’t offer great service and fair prices? Developing a marketing strategy will help you find out what that difference is – and how to use it to attract the right customers for your business.
Get a greater ROI (Return on Investment) for your Marketing tactics. Imagine doing some of the “stuff” I mentioned above and actually seeing results? A Marketing strategy can do that for you. Knowing a few basics about your business and putting a little strategy behind your Marketing spend will do wonders for your ROI.
Put a system behind your marketing so you can consistently work prospects down the funnel and into your pipeline. A Marketing strategy will help you build a process that continuously feeds prospects and leads into your funnel; when business is slow – and even when it’s busy. A Marketing strategy will help you avoid an empty pipeline.

Investing in a Marketing Strategy for your small business is the best investment you will ever make. It could save you thousands in the long run- and make you money too. Really- stop the insanity, try something different.
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