Archive for 'Small Business Marketing'

Passion Simplifies the Sales Process

I’ve never been a great sales person. Heck I don’t even think I’m a good sales person. As a matter of fact, I hate selling. However this weekend at my golf club, people thought I was a great sales person (which I found rather humorous) because I was easily selling raffle tickets to raise money for the Susan G. Komen Foundation.

On August  5^th, we are holding our annual Rally for the Cure Charity Golf Tournament. We instituted a member-only raffle to raise money. I had no trouble working the Player’s Lounge this weekend to sell tickets because I am passionate about this cause. I didn’t feel like I was selling something but rather offering people a chance to get something valuable and help our cause. People readily took out their wallets to buy their raffle ticket.

What made this an easy sell?

• We were giving them something of value (a $20 raffle ticket could win their annual dues)
• We could relate to everyone because many of us have experienced the effects of this disease either themselves, through a friend or a family member
• We were passionate about this effort and want to beat our donation from 2009.

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Marketing – Always On 24×7

As many of us get into summer activities, one thing we need to remember is that as a small business owner, we are always creating an impression of our business, affecting our brand and reputation. Whether we are out to dinner with family and friends, socializing at the golf course, tennis courts or beaches, how we behave at all events, whether fun or business oriented, is something we need to recognize as part of our marketing activities.

What encouraged me to write this post was something that happened at a business golf outing I recently attended. All the people at this function were either small business owners or people who worked for small businesses. The group of men playing behind us became loud, rude and somewhat obnoxious. Their behavior was not something that encouraged me to want to get to know them and their businesses. My reaction was:

“What is your business? I don’t think I want to do business with you.”

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Power of Three in Marketing

I was asked an interesting question during one of my coaching sessions:

As a small business owner, if you were to focus on only three marketing activities over the next six months, what would they be?

That made me stop and think for a bit. Putting the gears in motion and applying the power of threes, I realized that this question and its answer would help other small business owners focus on what is important for them to be found. My recommendation for three marketing activities include:

#1 Building a first-class Web presence to develop your expert reputation

Today’s small business needs to have a solid presence on the Internet to help build your expert reputation. Building a first-class presence includes:

• Building a website and blog on WordPress
• Creating compelling profiles on Google, Facebook and LinkedIn
• Establishing local business listings on Google, Yahoo, Bing and Best of the Web
• Launching a Facebook Business Page
• Setting up a Twitter account with a custom, branded background
• Syndicating your content out to relevant sites

In order for this to all work, all the gears need to be moving in unison in order for all the pieces to create one unified image.

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Traditional vs. New Media Channels

Is One More Successful than the Other?

I consistently get asked by small business owners if they should be doing social media marketing to help them grow their business. Before I answer their question, I usually ask them if they understand who their ideal client is and where they hang out. Of course I get that “doe in the headlights” look followed by “no but I should be doing social media marketing”.

If you assume you need a Facebook Business Page because you’ve “heard” that you should have one to market your business, you need to step back and understand some marketing fundamentals so that you make the right choices for your business.

For a business to develop a quality marketing communications plan, you need to understand:

• The goal of your campaign (i.e. brand awareness, leads, sales);
• Your target market;
• The message you want to send them;
• The communication channel (the media) that makes the most sense for your particular target audience.

Successful marketing happens when you achieve your goal by sending the right message and reaching the right market using the their communication channel (medium) of choice. Picking the right communication channel for your message will contribute significantly to the success of your message reaching your market and therefore, it is important to understand the various communication channels available. Read more on Traditional vs. New Media Channels…

Marketing is About Education, Not Sales

I started my career educating customers on technology products for a major computer manufacturer. My pathway into marketing - from educator to technical marketing to product manager to marketing director and now small business marketing coach and mentor – was a natural progression for someone with an educational background. I have always believed that marketing was a multi-faceted education for your prospects:

• How do they go about finding the right solution to their particular need.
• What do they need to know to get the best solution.
• Who should they be working with to get to where they want to go.
• Why there is value in doing business with you.

Whether I was marketing software products, business to business services or consumer services, marketing is more successful when you focus on educating your prospect rather than selling them your products or services. Read more on Marketing is About Education, Not Sales…

Marketing Action Plan

The final post in the year end marketing review series to help small business owners get their plan ready to kick off a successful year.

So far in this series we have:

• Identified whether our ideal client has changed over the last year;
• Set our goals for our business;
• Tweaked our product and service offerings to align with our ideal client;
• Determined our differentiator and reviewed our messages to ensure we are communicating it effectively;
• Reviewed our marketing content for consistency and accuracy;
• Evaluated our marketing results to determine what’s worked and what hasn’t;
• Assessed our online reputation to see what is really out there.

Armed with this information, we can now put a marketing action plan in place that will grow your business and achieve the goals that you set for yourself. I want to emphasize the word action because a marketing plan that sits in a drawer will not help grow your business. The marketing action plan sets priorities and dates on all your marketing activities to ensure they get done. Read more on Marketing Action Plan…

If I Can’t Find You Online, Do You Exist?

Eight down and one to go in the year end marketing review series to help small business owners get ready for a wonderful new year.

Before we plan our marketing activities for the new year, we have one more review  – do you and your business exist online? As a small business owner, how you are perceived when people search and find your information will determine whether they contact you about your products and services. So as hard as it may be to know the truth, we must understand whether:

1. We have an online presence or not;
2. Our online presence consistently projects how we want to be perceived.

Do You Exist?

This may be the easier issue to deal with as you get to start with a clean slate and do it right from the beginning. Make developing your online presence and marketing your business online the major part of your marketing plan this year. If you’re not sure how to go about developing your online presence, it may just be worth it to hire someone to help you make choices. Make sure this person has strong marketing experience in both online and traditional marketing and understands the challenges of small business owners. Make sure this person will guide you through the entire process, from brand and message development through implementation. Read more on If I Can’t Find You Online, Do You Exist?…

Marketing Activities – What Worked?

Whoo-hoo! Seven down and two to go in our year end marketing review so we’re ready to hit the ground running! Hope you’ve found these useful so far!

Do you regularly review the results of your marketing efforts? Is your marketing plan a living document that ebbs and flows with what is happening in your business? As a small business owner, you should try to stay aware of how your marketing is working throughout the year so you can make adjustments as the need requires.

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