The Building Blocks to Effective Marketing
The Building Blocks to Successful Marketing
It’s More than Sales and Advertising
By Julie Chance
Whether you’re a Fortune 500 company or a one person shop, to be successful, you must have a marketing strategy and you must implement it consistently. However, it doesn’t have to cost a fortune and you don’t have to be a creative genius.
The key is developing a marketing strategy that forms a solid foundation for your promotional efforts. Implementing promotional activities such as advertising, direct mail or even networking and one-to-one sales efforts without a marketing strategy is like buying curtains for a house you are building before you have an architectural plan. How would you even know how many curtains to buy or what size they needed to be?
You can develop a strong marketing foundation by:
- Defining your product or service: How is your product or service packaged? What is it that your customers are really buying? You may be selling web-based software tools but your clients are buying increased productivity, improved efficiency and cost savings. And if you offer several products or services which ones are the most viable to promote?
- Identifying your target market: Everyone or anybody might be potential clients for your product. However, you probably don’t have the time or money to market to Everyone or Anybody. Who is your ideal customer? Who does it make sense for you to spend your time and money promoting your service to? You might define your ideal customer in terms of income, age, geographic area, number of employees, revenues, industry, etc. For example a massage therapist might decide her target market is women with household incomes of $75,000 or more who live in the Uptown area.
- Knowing your competition: Even if there are no direct competitors for your service, there is always competition of some kind. Something besides your product is competing for the potential client’s money. What is it and why should the potential customer spend his or her money with you instead? What is your competitive advantage or unique selling proposition?
- Finding a niche: Is there a market segment that is not currently being served or is not being served well? A niche strategy allows you to focus your marketing efforts and dominate your market, even if you are a small player.
- Developing awareness: It is difficult for a potential client to buy your product or service if they don’t even know or remember it exists. Generally a potential customer will have to be exposed to your product 5 to 15 times before they are likely to think of your product when the need arises. Needs often arise unexpectedly. You must stay in front of your clients consistently if they are going to remember your product when that need arises.
- Building credibility: Not only must clients be aware of your product or service, they also must have a positive disposition toward it. Potential customers must trust that you will deliver what you say you will. Often, especially with large or risky purchases, you need to give them the opportunity to “sample”, “touch”, or “taste” the product in some way. For example, a trainer might gain credibility and allow potential customers to “sample” their product by offering free, hour long presentations on topics related to their area of specialty.
- Being Consistent: Be consistent in every way and in everything you do. This includes the look of your collateral materials, the message you deliver, the level of customer service, and the quality of the product. Being consistent is more important than having the “best” product. This in part is the reason for the success of chains. Whether you’re going to Little Rock, Arkansas or New York City, if you reserve a room at a Courtyard Marriott you know exactly what you’re going to get.
- Maintaining Focus: Focus allows for more effective utilization of the scarce resources of time and money. Your promotional budget will bring you greater return if you use it to promote a single product to a narrowly defined target market and if you promote that same product to that same target market over a continuous period of time.
Before you ever consider developing a brochure, running an ad, implementing a direct mail campaign, joining an organization for networking or even conducting a sales call, begin by mapping a path to success through the development of a consistent, focused marketing strategy.
About The Author
Julie Chance is President of Strategies-by-Design, Strategies-by-DESIGN, a Dallas based firm that helps small and medium sized businesses Map A Path to Success by providing consulting, training and skills based coaching in the area of marketing strategy development. For more information go to www.strategies-by-design.com or call 972-701-9311.
jchance@strategies-by-design.com
Break the Habit!
Habits are easy, and they help us get through the day. Do them too often, however, and you end up in a rut. Let the ruts get too deep and it is hard to find a new solution to a problem or challenge. Sometimes drastic measures are needed to break out of the rut.
Break the Habit – Try a New Approach
If you need a fresh idea, try a new direction. Consider using a technique called “Random Input.” This technique helps you break away from restrictive thinking patterns. It opens a conversation about new solutions you normally might not associate with the problem.
How it Works…
Begin by selecting a random noun from the dictionary or one that strikes your fancy. It works best if the noun is something that can be seen or touched (e.g., helicopter, dog). Use this noun as the starting point for brainstorming.
Next, look for ways to connect the noun to the challenge at hand. As you brainstorm, do not eliminate or evaluate ideas. Let your mind wander. Capture every idea. Yes, you will have some useless ones. Others may lead to valuable insights. And at least one is likely to make a startling, creative leap.
Example – Breaking Away
Here is an example of how Random Input can work. Imagine your challenge is to find a new fundraising project for a teen soccer team. You have considered all the conventional solutions, but nothing really exciting comes to mind.
Now is a good time to try random input. You see your favorite plant on your desk and decide to use the word “plants.” Brainstorming may lead to some of these ideas:
Planting seeds in the spring, and selling the young
Offering lawn care services instead of the typical car
Selling decorative floral arrangements for holidays
“Selling” or “renting” trees or plants around the playing field to sponsors and supporters
Engage Others
You will generate even more ideas if you brainstorm with others. Invite 3 – 5 people to join you for short (20 – 30 minute) sessions. When it comes to brainstorming, two heads are definately better than one!
The ideas will be sketchy at first. Many will be may be useless or impractical. Yet, one might be original enough for the basis of an entirely new concept. Try it! Random input is a great new habit to develop.
A twenty year veteran of corporate America, today Lorraine Ball helps small business owners use planning and creative thinking as a starting point for growth and change.
Active in the local business community, Lorraine is the recipient of 2005 Rainmaker of the Year Award. She serves on the boards of Rainmakers and the Network of Women in Business.
How to Market Yourself by Marketing Others
Sometimes you may wish someone else would sell your products or services so you did not have to do it. In the mind of almost everyone, this would be absolutely ideal. In reality, only you can be as passionate and knowledgeable about your products and services. This is even true when you company grows.
There are several things that you can do to lessen the pain of trying to sell your own products and services. Here are three great ways to be more successful.
- Don’t forget there is a difference between sales and marketing. You should first MARKET your products and services and forget about selling. You should ease into the selling phase through a good solid marketing plan that contains action steps and timelines for completion. You need to plan where you are going and as Yogi Berra states. “If you don’t plan, you will end up somewhere else”.
- 2. Find other services and products you can use as a lead in to the ones you provide. This means you need to find a product at a low entry price that will allow you to upsell to your other products and services. If you are selling weight loss products, then start with a free booklet on weight loss guidelines. Then upsell to what you have to offer. Be sure that your upsell offer is included in the guide book. For more information on how to upsell you may contact BetteD@BlueprintBooks.com
- 3. Create your own channel partners (called affiliates in the eMarketing world). Get as many as possible to sell your wares. The more the better. Even if each one of them only sells one item per week, and you have 50 people, that is 50 sales per week. This takes some preparation as you need to make sure the “partners” have all the tools they need to do the sale. You also must have a communication plan in place to keep in touch. They will go away or not sell if you do not communicate with them on a regular basis. You can learn about good communication skills through BizMechanix.com
In summary: Market first, find other products that complement your current ones, and find channel partners or affiliates to sell on your behalf. Remember that good communication is the key to resellers.
Bette Daoust, Ph.D. has been networking with others since leaving high school years ago. Realizing that no one really cared about what she did in life unless she had someone to tell and excite. She decided to find the best ways to get people’s attention, be creative in how she presented herself and products, getting people to know who she was, and being visible all the time. Her friends and colleagues have often dubbed her the “Networking Queen”. Blueprints for Success – Networking: 150 ways to promote yourself is the first in this series. Blueprints for Success Branding Yourself: Another 150 ways to promote yourself is planned for release in 2006. For more information visit http://www.BlueprintBooks.com