Your value proposition is an important part of your marketing strategy that is often misunderstood. Although a key concept in marketing for decades, it is now just as important in the online world where you are trying to get people to click on your ads or convert on your landing pages into qualified leads.
How do you view marketing when it comes to your business – an investment or an expense? If you pick investment, then spending money on creating a powerful web presence is something you will do willingly because you know it will help your business grow and succeed. If you pick expense, then you will cut marketing when things get a bit tight (if you spend on marketing at all) and make irrational decisions when it comes to your web presence.
Marketing your small business is very much like playing golf. In golf, the goal is to play each hole to get the ball from the tee into the hole on the green in the fewest number of strokes possible. To achieve that goal, you need a strategy for each hole such that you get to your destination successfully. Your action plan is to execute each shot as planned, resulting in the par score.
“If you don’t know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.” Yogi Berra had a humorous way of stating the obvious but when it comes to your business, winding up somewhere unknown is not funny. Most business owners understand the value of having marketing goals, but many never take the time to set them, evaluate progress and adjust them as necessary.
Customer service is more important to your marketing strategy today than many business owners realize. Because of brand exposure via social media, marketing needs to be concerned with the entire customer experience. Companies that provide excellent customer service strengthen their marketing by simplifying the task of tracking and managing the perception of your brand.
Recently I wrote about the true value in your value proposition because small businesses need to understand what it is they offer and why their market needs it. And you really need to define your mission statement is so you can communicate it to your target audience. Now we need to turn our attention to creating a strong brand, one of your most valuable business assets.
Your value proposition is the value a client gains from working with you. If you have trouble explaining to people what you do and why you are the best to help them solve their most challenging problems, it’s time to identify the one thing that really makes you different from your competitors. Then you can be crystal clear about why you are uniquely different and will be able to communicate it with confidence.
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. …
We just returned from our vacation in Aruba. We’ve been there many times and own a timeshare at the Marriott Surf Club. We go to just get away and relax – no site seeing, no golf – just reading, sunning, swimming and oh, yes a bit of gambling at night for entertainment. Of course, no …
Why are business owners gun shy about selecting a target market? You can’t appeal to everyone. Then why do business owners drive themselves crazy trying to work with clients they just don’t connect with? When you identify people or businesses that you just love to work with, you enjoy your work more and you can focus on …
Marketing your business has four stages: plan, execute, track and measure. If you haven’t had a marketing plan in the past, we’ll start with a review of last year so we can see how you did. Can you directly attribute revenue to your marketing activities? If so, which ones gave you the highest return? Don’t know? That’s ok …
Read moreMarketing Execution – Plan, Execute, Track, Measure
I recently had the pleasure of wrestling a new client’s domain name and web site from their current developer. It is not a pleasant experience but when you ask the developer to make changes and nine weeks later they haven’t even returned a phone call, something has to be done. But even more disconcerting is when I …
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