Developing your positioning statement and key marketing messages is essential to establishing your market perception. It is important that your marketing efforts establish value in the minds of your customers. To do an effective job of developing your messages and positioning, you need to understand the difference between these two types of messages. A positioning …
As long as I have been in marketing, I’ve heard my share of excuses for why small businesses don’t invest in marketing. These marketing myths when constantly repeated, become reality. Small businesses have many opportunities to attract their ideal client if they put these marketing myths aside and create a practical marketing plan that will work for their business.
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.
Small business owners don’t go into business to become marketing experts. For you to succeed however, mastering marketing is a critical component. Although there will be many posts on small business marketing trends for 2013, I believe that these following six small business marketing trends are critical for you to implement sooner than later.
Have you come up with a great name for your business or a service you offer? Did you have a great logo designed that is unique and memorable? Did you know that your name and logo are valuable assets of your business? Many businesses don’t understand the value of registering a trademark for your identifiable …
Having a marketing general contractor (or marketing consultant, coach, advisor or mentor as we are commonly known) to help you develop a plan, choose the right activities and work with the various niche specialists ensures that your web presence is consistently projected to your target market.
Focus, focus, focus It’s the mantra of many involved in small business marketing and is important to those of us who need to deliver client projects while continuing to market our businesses. What marketing should your small business consistently execute that will deliver proven results? Here are my recommendations for where you should focus over …
Marketing people love to write about marketing blunders and mistakes and we all have our opinion on what should be included in the top mistakes every small business must avoid. However, even though we continue to make these blunders visible, I still see these mistakes made, costing small businesses dearly in terms of dollars and …
Read more10 Marketing Blunders Many Small Businesses Still Make!
The Guardian Life Small Business Research Institute published a report in June 2010 called Six Dimensions That Characterize Success-Oriented Small Business Owners. The survey is based on analysis of a survey of 1,100 small businesses with between 2 and 99 employees. These 6 dimensions include collaborative, self-fulfilled, future focused, curious, tech savvy and action oriented. …
Read more5 Personality Traits of Successful Small Business Owners
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 …
Read more5 Things You Need to Know to Market Your Small Business
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