Stop Being Stuck!!!!
August 30, 2010
5 Easy Steps to Plan for Growth With Cost Effective Marketing
I meet small business owners all the time who think a formal marketing plan is an expendable luxury, yet they’re challenged with meeting their business objectives: getting more customers and increasing sales. The fact is most successful businesses have a written marketing plan – and follow it. Without one, money gets wasted on “ad-hoc marketing”: a print ad here, a radio spot there, a direct mail campaign, networking events, never knowing if any of it is really working – or whether it could be working better.
With money tight these days and all of us trying to achieve more with less- planning is more important than ever. Here are 5 EASY steps you can take to make your marketing more productive, efficient, and cost effective! 
1. Identify your target market -Who is your best customer? Take a long hard look at the attributes of your best customers; these are the types of people who are best suited for your business. Once you know who they are and what they look like you can find out where they go for information about your product or service and communicate with them there instead of wasting money putting your message in front of the wrong people and places.
2. How are you different? What makes your business unique from everyone else out there doing what you do? (Hint: it’s neither “great service” nor “fair prices” – who doesn’t offer those?). This is essential to effective marketing. Until you can communicate exactly why prospective customers should work with you, you are playing a guessing game with your marketing dollars. Everyone buys for different reasons- learn why your BEST customers buy from you and you’ll be able to tell future best customers why they should buy from you!
3. Once you narrow down your target market you can begin developing a marketing plan to educate your target audience (reducing the need to SELL!). There are a ton of tools available to communicate with prospects. Find out what works for your business and audience. Use Email, blogs, micro sites (or PURLS), customer segmentation, variable data and social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc) and create a strategy to engage your target market in a conversation with you – on their terms. It’s easier than you think!
4. Create a marketing calendar that will guide you throughout the year and set you on a path to achieve your business and marketing goals. This also helps you organize and prioritize; systematizing your marketing so you can easily fit it into your already busy schedule.
5. Measure your success. It’s imperative to track and measure your results so you can stop throwing money down the toilet on stuff that isn’t working!
I guarantee that if you do a bit of work to figure these things out you will spend less time and money on your marketing and get better results!
Welcome Smart Marketer’s Club Reader!
June 22, 2010
5 Ways to Fit Marketing into Your Schedule
Oh I’m guilty of it too. We get caught up in the day-to-day of our work; answering phone calls, putting out fires, payroll, inventory, life…. But the fact is, the long-term success of any business is dependent upon finding
the time to invest in the future. And one of the surest ways to insure your business will be around for the long-haul and continue to grow and flourish is to implement and use a marketing plan (and a system).
Here are 5 tips to help you manage your time and fit marketing into your regular routine
- Tackle one thing at a time. You don’t have to accomplish everything in one day. Choose monthly themes: make June website optimization month and July list building month and focus on that one task for the entire month. This makes marketing less overwhelming and gets you started in the right direction.
- Set marketing appointments with yourself. I can’t stress how important this is. I do this and every successful business owner I know does this. Write it down, put it on your calendar, block it out and don’t book anything during those times. If it’s not on your calendar, it’s too easy to forget about it and become so overbooked you never get to it. This is your time to work on your business – take it and use it.
- Hire someone. It doesn’t have to be a full time person and it doesn’t even have to be a marketing expert. Hire an intern or a student to make follow up calls to customers or write introductory letters to prospects or potential strategic partners. You can even hire someone on a commission basis to make outbound sales and appointment setting calls, or a writer to write your blogs. With so many un- and under- employed people out there, it’s not hard to find people who are willing to do some hourly or commission based work for you and this will free up hours of your time that you can devote to more productive endeavors.
- Plan your activities out for a year. Yup, a whole year. Create a marketing calendar for an entire year and plan your weekly and monthly marketing activities. For example: every Monday, blog, update Facebook; Wednesdays, call 5 customers and 10 prospects; once per month, review website, do a postcard mailing. Once you have everything laid out in front of you it makes it so much easier to manage and actually get it done. I like a printed calendar and I hang it in my office right in front of me so I can visualize it. I also set reminders in outlook as a double-reminder that my business must not be neglected!
- Take baby steps. This kind of goes with #1- but in addition to taking things one at a time, baby steps is about finding what it takes to get over a hurdle and take that first step. Does a task seem overwhelming and insurmountable? Then don’t think about the big ole scary task – break it into smaller parts and tackle the little parts instead. Don’t think “Oh my god, I need 20 sales this month. How am I going to do that?” Instead think, “Ok, to get 20 sales, I need to get 5 this week – or one per day. What can I do to make 1 sale today?” Isn’t one sale a whole lot easier and manageable than 20? I love to think of things in terms of baby steps. I’ve never accomplished anything in life by tackling the entire task all at once. That just leaves me overwhelmed and paralyzed in fear. Instead, I tell myself, “take baby-steps, one small step at a time…”. I know that soon I’ll be taking bigger and bigger steps and before you know it I’ll be off and running. It works every time.
Managing your time and fitting marketing into your schedule are critical to the future success and sustainability of your business. Marketing is a vital component to building a business, getting and converting leads, satisfying customers, making sales, increasing profits and achieving your goals. With the proper marketing strategy and time investment the possibilities are endless!
Small Business Owners: Are You Living The Dream?
March 21, 2010
One of the things I talk a lot about in my small business marketing seminars is setting goals for your business. This is a crucial step toward achieving success and living “The Dream” of entreprenurship: pride of business ownership; flexibility; profits; control over their personal and professional lives, etc. However, I meet small business owners every day who just don’t quite seem to be living “The Dream”. So, I’ve been wondering: what were the goals and dreams these entreprenuers had when they set out? What was it that drove them to leave a regular paycheck, health insurance and stability behind and go it alone? Are these business owners living their dreams and achieving their goals? Or have they gotten lost along the way in the daily grind of running a business? Have they forgotten they once had dreams, goals and ideas for their business and their lives?
As a marketer – and someone who wants to help small businesses grow and thrive – I sometimes have to face the fact that not all small business owners want my help. Where I may see huge potential for growth, popularity and profits some are quite content to stay where they are. I don’t always understand it; but then I don’t walk in their shoes. So I’m really curious about this and I want to hear from you – the entrepreneur, the small business owner, the president/founder/CEO of your own company.
- Why did you take that leap into self-employment?
- What did you hope to achieve? Was it fame and fortune? Or was it something a little less… let’s say, grandiose.
- Were you just sick of working for others and saw an opportunity to work for yourself? Or was it something else?
- Have you achieved everything you set out to?
- If not why and what are you doing, if anything to work toward your goals and your dreams?
I want to devote this week’s blog to all of you- and I want to hear your stories. I’m sure others do too – this is how we learn. I look forward to reading your comments! Please click here to tell your story. (And then scroll down to the comments section on the bottom of the page)
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+Carolyn Higgins, President of Fortune Marketing Company
- Carolyn Higgins, President of Fortune Marketing Company specializes in helping small to medium sized businesses get the customers they need to sell more, increase profits and achieve all of their business and personal goals. We do this by implementing and managing marketing systems based on data and strategy - there is no guess work. For more information visit us at: FortuneMarketingCompany.com. We'd be glad to help!
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