To Market To Market - Part 4

Start Your Marketing Plan Today!

To begin your marketing plan, you have to start with an understanding of your industry as well as your local market. If your local market is not performing to the trends you’re seeing throughout your industry, you have to ask why, and you have to make a determination as to whether or not your local market will follow that trend at some point.

So let’s take a look at some of the ways you can analyze your market:

• Define your target market and its segments by size, needs, trends, demographics, geographics, psychographics, and purchasing cycles. Sound like a lot of work? It is; but it’s the kind of work that results in sustained success.
  
• Clearly develop a tactical plan for your marketing penetration strategy. It’s not enough to say that you’re going to “contact all major providers” of whatever your product line is. You have to clearly define who they are (including contact names and phone numbers) and a plan for actually making contact with them. Are you going to call them? Send letters? Set appointments for face-to-face meetings? What? How? What will you say to them when you talk? What will you send to them? What will you hand them?
  
• Once you know the “who, when and how” of your marketing strategy, you’ll need to define your growth strategy. Lots of folks truly think they’ll double their efforts every quarter; but that typically doesn’t happen. Growth strategy has to take into account additional personnel, additional collateral material costs and the ability to support additional sales.
  

Tomorrow we’ll take a look at what else it takes to develop your marketing strategy.

To Market To Market - Part 3

Employee or Entrepreneur?

The primary difference between an employee and an entrepreneur is beyond just who owns the business. Employees perform a function and get a paycheck. Entrepreneurs find a customer and then perform a function. So as an entrepreneur, what you earn tomorrow is based on what you do today to find a customer. In other words, you must FIND the work before you can DO the work!

As we mentioned in Part 2, you can market to your end user or you can market to a group of people who already do business with your end user…or both. Your primary responsibility as a marketer is to find a niche market for your product or services.

A niche enables you to wake up in the morning and know what you must do to find business. A niche keeps you focused because as wonderful as we think we are, we cannot be all things to all people. The niche comes first…the money follows. Pick one niche (target market) and stick with it. Get good at it and avoid the tendency to bounce around and try different markets or niche groups. You should get really successful in one area before you expand to another.

“Successful” in this case means:

• You’re reaching your target market.
  
• Prospects are reacting positively to your marketing message.
  
• They are purchasing your products or services.
  
• Your delivery methods are effective.
  
• Your customer service methods are working well.
  
• Customers are giving you referrals.
  

Marketing is 100% of what you have to do as an entrepreneur and you should consider it your only approach to success.

To Market To Market - Part 2

Business isn’t business…business in marketing!

And it’s all in your head! Your marketing mindset is comprised of your beliefs about marketing (whether those beliefs are right or wrong). Those beliefs manifest as thoughts, thoughts manifest as words, words become actions, actions become habits, habits become your character, and your character determines your destiny.

That’s a real mouthful! But the bottom line is, the things you believe about marketing can and will prevent you from succeeding in business or they will empower you to take action!

Your business plan is the place to define the actions and steps necessary to create an effective marketing strategy. One question to keep in mind is this: Who do you know who…? and then fill in the blank. Most businesses want to sell to the end user; but businesses will be better served if they market to people who know the end user. For example, if you manufacture purses, you don’t want to go door-to-door to sell them; so you build a network of companies that are already selling to people who want purses and you market to those companies; they in turn sell your purses. Makes sense, doesn’t it?

When most people think about marketing, they typically think two thoughts: cold calling for sales and high-cost advertising. But marketing is not sales and marketing is not just advertising. Marketing is the communication methodologies you have in place to let people know about your business and its products and services.

Marketing is what enables your customers to find your products and buy them. Then and only then will you get paid!

To Market To Market - Part 1

It's All About Planning!

The first step in developing an effective marketing program is to develop a comprehensive business plan. Lots of folks try to market their businesses without ever having established any strategic goals. And lots of businesses have failed.

Having a business plan is like having a roadmap. You might want to go to California but how are you going to know if you’re actually getting there or if you’re just out having a great ride? Business planning is all about setting goals and determining what objectives you’ll have to accomplish to reach those goals. (Like a roadmap, get it?) And it lets you measure your progress.

Every good business plan will contain the same basic elements:

• Description of your company and its products and services.
  
• General overview of your industry in the current economy.
  
• Analysis of your competition and why you’re better.
  
• Portrait of your customer.
  
• Strong marketing message and methodology
  
• Operations and technical approach.
  
• Management team.
  
• Growth strategies.
  
• Budget.
  

In order to be successful in business you must first be successful in marketing, but do the first things first:

1. Write a business plan.
   
2. Keep it real.
   
3. Be sure it’s reasonable.
   
4. Do the research.
   
5. Have people who are objective read it.
   
6. Update it regularly.