In conversations with small business owners, I have realized that my conversation with them takes the following structure.

• Business owner: I want to add viral marketing / social media / Facebook / Twitter / LinkedIn (pick your favorite platform) to my marketing efforts.
• Me: Of course, great idea but first who are your ideal customers as that will determine which platform may make the most sense?
• Business owner: I just want to add social media to the marketing activities.
• Me: Great, but what are you trying to accomplish so we can determine the type of results you will get?
• Business owner: I’ve heard that social media marketing gets great results for very little money!
• Me: Yes, it can, however, although it may not cost dollars, you do need to budget time to ensure you are consistent with your social media effort.

For the most part, the conversation is usually engaging and the business owner and I discuss the various options. Based on the type of business and the target market, we can determine whether social media is an appropriate strategy now, later or never.

Having this same conversation with different small business owners got me thinking about how many small businesses get distracted by the hype around the next shiny new marketing thing because they were told they should, when in fact they need to understand the marketing fundamentals for their business, determine their strategy, stay on course and measure their results. Look to add new activities when you have the time and resources to do so.

As a small business owner, make sure you know the following 5 things about your business so you can determine the most effective marketing activities.

1. Know what you are trying to accomplish in your business – In other words, set goals. Aiming at a clear target will help you make decisions about what to do, when and where in your marketing efforts and keep moving towards the final outcome you have set.
2. Know your ideal client intimately – Not only do you need to know what they want, you also need to understand how they purchase your product or services. If they would not think of searching the Internet for the solution you provide, then incorporating social media may not be the right marketing activity for your business.
3. Know what makes you different – Understanding what you do best and exploiting it will help you stand out and be noticed, no matter which channel you use to do so.
4. Know what value you offer – Your target audience will have different issues, goals and needs and will be looking for a solution that works for them. If you can’t clearly explain why someone should utilize your solution, it doesn’t matter which media you use. No one will listen.
5. Know how much time and money you have to realistically spend on marketing - There’s plenty of options available. We just need to be selective and spend our precious resources on what will get us the best return on our investment. Once you have decided on the best activities for your business, be disciplined about how you spend your time and money on marketing activities. It’s easy to get enticed by empty promises and activities that don’t pay off for you.

Before you jump onto the next new social media “thing”, be sure you know these 5 pieces of information about your business and are comfortable with the answers. Then you can put a plan together that utilizes all of the marketing channels that are available today in the most effective manner.

How well do you know the answers to these for your business?

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

5 Things You Need to Know to Market Your Small Business is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

Planning Your Road to Success

One of the things I do for my clients is simplify marketing so it eliminates confusion and enables the business owner to focus on what is important. But there is always a part of marketing that stresses many small business owners – i.e. determining their mission, goals, strategies and tactics. These concepts are important in order to develop a plan that focuses you on what is important to help you succeed.

Mission vs. Vision

Mission (purpose) = defines why you are in business and what you are doing now.

Example:
Masterful Marketing partners with small business owners as their trusted marketing advisor to help them achieve success by learning, incorporating and executing marketing strategies and programs that take their business from mediocre to marvelous.

Vision = defines what you want your business to be or be known for. It’s useful to develop a 1, 3 and 5 year vision to ensure you can progress to where you want to be through well defined measurable steps:

Example:
One year: By December 30, 2010, Masterful Marketing will be offering quality information products in addition to coaching services that make up 20% of the overall revenue for the company.

Three year: By December 30, 2013, Masterful Marketing will be recognized as one of the top three marketing brands for small businesses in the United States.

Goals

Goals are well-defined, targeted statements that give you clarity, direction and focus. It is important for the small business owner to define what you need to do to achieve your vision in measurable and realistic terms. If a marketing goal is to “increase visibility for your Website”, then you need to include by when and specific criteria with which you can measure your results. Ideally, you should have only 2 or 3 goals that you want to work towards in a 3-6 month timeframe. Any more than that, you risk taking on too much and achieving nothing.

A common approach to developing your goals is to use the formula for the five characteristics of well developed goals – S.M.A.R.T.

• Specific -  What exactly are you trying to accomplish? The more specific you can be, the more likely the goal will be accomplished.
• Measurable – How do you know if you are successful? Answer the questions “How much?”, “How Many?”, and “By When?”
• Attainable – Is this realistic based on the resources you have or can acquire to achieve them or a major obstacle to success? The best goals should encourage you to reach, but not so far as to involve unavailable resources or unrealistic expectations.
• Relevant – Will this goal help you reach your vision? Setting goals that do not align themselves with your ultimate outcome will divert your attention from those that help you get where you want to go.
• Timely – What is the deadline for this effort? Without having specific time frames associated with each goal, you most likely will not achieve them because the day to day interruptions will take over.

Example:
By December 2010, create, launch and sell via the Internet 25 copies of an information product that simplifies developing a marketing plan for small businesses.

Strategies and Tactics

Probably the most confusing concept is how to determine strategies verses tactics. Previously, I wrote about Traditional vs. New Media Channels and the five categories of marketing strategies that are available within each channel – advertising, direct marketing, events, public relations and word of mouth.

When determining how you will achieve your goals, your plan should define which strategies you will include on each channel and the activities you need to be doing regularly that will lead you toward those goals.

Example:
Implement Internet marketing activities to launch the product into the market including public relations, advertising, events and word of mouth: The tactics (activities) that will help me achieve my goal include:

• Build my email list by offering a free marketing plan template;
• Develop the pricing and packaging strategy for the new information product;
• Develop a press release to announce the product and submit to the online media outlets;
• Create a blog post describing the new program and feed it to all social media channels;
• Develop an email announcement to send to my list;
• Develop a Facebook Business Page and announce the availability to my fans;
• Offer a free one hour tele-clinic that creates value and introduces the program to your target audience

It’s useful to include your tactics on a calendar with deadlines so you get the activities underway or completed in time to achieve your goals.

Stay Focused

As small business owners, we all want to do many different things believing that more is better. In marketing, you are better off selecting one to three of your most important goals and work towards achieving them. Having too many goals will only set you up for failure and disappointment. Figure out what’s important to you to accomplish in the next 3 to 6 months and go for it. Otherwise, you will be constantly distracted and won’t accomplish anything.

How are you defining your goals, strategies and tactics? What are you trying to achieve by the end of this year?

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

Mission, Vision, Goals, Strategies and Tactics is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

This is the second post in a series that discusses your year end marketing review to help you get ready for the new year.

Your goals can deal with many different elements of your business. You can have goals to drive more business from information products, generate better quality inbound leads, increase the awareness of your brand, drive more visitors to your web site or get more repeat clients. The primary purpose for setting goals is to guide your efforts and measure their success.

Regular review of your goals should be something you do more often than once a year, but now is as good a time as any to take a look. Reviewing your goals is not about looking back but about seeing if your goals are moving you forward. It is also not an exercise where you beat yourself up for not getting them done! The review is to determine which ones you accomplished and which ones you didn’t and why.

Do you have a vision for your business?

Chances are very good that those goals you did not accomplish were not aligned with the vision you have set for your business. Setting goals that help you get where you want to go makes those goals so very much more important to you and therefore, more likely to be accomplished.

And if you don’t have a vision, you should! Your vision is not just the dream about what you want your business to look like, but your beacon that inspires, gives you direction and keeps you on course. There are benefits of having a clear vision and the accompanying goals that help you get there:

• It focuses you on where to spend your time, effort and resources. It helps you assess the many opportunities that become available and make choices based on whether the opportunity gets you closer to your vision.
• When you become overwhelmed, you can look at whether what you are doing is heading you towards your vision. If it isn’t, then you need to decide whether continuing to spend time and effort on this activity is truly worth it!

Do your goals help you get to your vision?

Look at your goals for this past year and determine which ones you want to continue to strive for based on your vision and which ones just go away. For every goal you set, make sure it helps you get to where you are trying to go. Be focused on the ultimate target, set goals that will take you to your dream and you will see great things happen to your business.

What’s your vision for your business? How will you realign your goals to achieve your vision?

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

Reviewing Your Goals is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

I’m getting a lot of queries from my clients in the form of “What do you think of this?” where “this” is a proposal from a niche marketing company for them to buy a plethora of services from PPC Advertising to social media marketing services.

I appreciate that these companies need to sell their services to survive, but as marketing companies they should do a better job at targeting their offerings.

• Recently I have taken on a client that was spending $2000 per month on Google Adwords with a company that I won’t name. As part of their service, they make a proxy of your Web site so they can track the results of the campaign. All this does is eliminate your site from the organic search engine results pages because the this company is drawing all traffic to their copy of your site. They also put their own phone number on the site so all calls to the company get routed through their service.
• Another client sent me a proposal for SEO, PPC and a blog. The proposal nicely said that their current web site was not optimized for key search engine phrases. Upon evaluation, the site appeared on the first page (and in many cases in the first position) for each of their keyword phrases.
• Finally another client sent me a 10 page proposal from a social media marketing firm that was proposing to create videos for viewing on YouTube. The proposal was totally untargeted at this small service business. In addition, it was poorly written with grammatical errors. For a marketing company to send such an unprofessional piece to a prospect leaves me concerned with the company’s credibility and what they will do with your precious marketing dollars.

Marketing Lesson

Evaluate all opportunities against your overall marketing plan.

• Do these opportunities help you achieve the goals you have set?
• Will they help you reach your target market?
• Do they fit into your overall marketing budget?
• What will you trade off to invest in this new activity?
• Does it make sense for your business at all?

Stay on course with your marketing strategy to ensure consistent results. It’s ok to adjust the plan based on new information, opportunities that make sense for your business or an infusion of funds that you weren’t expecting. Otherwise resist the temptation to try something “new” just because you think you have to. You don’t.

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

Stay on Course for Marketing Success is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

If you haven’t put together your 2008 marketing plan, it’s not too late. In a post from the Vista Consulting library, Year End Marketing Planning, we talk about a few tips on how to use what happened this past year to help you plan for the next 12 month.

But if you haven’t done a lot of marketing in your business or are starting a new business, you will need to spend some time on developing your purpose, vision and goals.

The Purpose

You need to do is understand the purpose of your business. Why did you start your business in the first place? What mark are you trying to leave on the world by being in business? Do you love what you do? Do you get up every day looking forward to your work?

The Vision

What is your vision for your business? Where do you want it to be in 3 to 5 years? A vision statement is a statement about what you want your business to be. It is your dream of the future without respect to current resources. It inspires, gives you direction and keeps you on course.

Goals

Goals are the critical piece of the marketing plan. To develop a sensible marketing plan, you need to know what you want to achieve with your business and how you are going to get there (see my post Business Goals Help You Plan Your Marketing). Determine your goals for the year. You can break them into business and marketing goals or just list all goals together. I like to split my goals into both categories because for me, business goals are those things I want to do to change my business. Marketing goals are things I do to keep me in business and need to be the quantifiable, measurable targets I aim for, such as number of new clients, percentage increase in unique visitors to your web site or number of speaking opportunities you want to achieve. Include a mix of financial goals, such as amount of income, number of sales, and amount of profit, and non-financial goals, such as books you will read, networking events to attend, and number of articles published.

Understanding these three elements of your marketing plan helps you focus on the important activities that will help you get where you want to be at the end of the year. Without goals, you run the risk of wandering aimlessly throughout the year, unfocused and possibly missing opportunities that could elevate your business to a new level.

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

Why Your Marketing Plan Depends on Goals is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.