What do you do if your business, product or service is something hardly anyone is aware of or understands? Or worse yet, if it is something they are afraid of or want to avoid? My answer is three-fold. First, focus on the SOLUTION you are providing What is the primary problem your prospects have that you can solve? Do they have pain you can relieve? Do they have an ailment or affliction you can cure? In these cases, you are not selling your "scary" or "misunderstood" product or service, you a More..

Is A Marketing Plan The Same Thing As A Communications Plan?

How does a marketing plan relate to an organization's communications plan? What are the differences? Is the marketing plan just one aspect of the communications plan? Should one consider combining them into a single document? A communications plan is a PART of your marketing plan. A communications plan is a focused strategy you use to get the word out about your business, product or service. You may use a variety of communications tactics such as public relations, advertising and speaking enga More..

My Marketing Budget Is Small - How Can I Make The Most Of It?

Regardless how small or large your budget is, there are a number of ways you can make it go farther. One way is to capitalize on the seasonality of your business. For example, it may not make sense or be necessary to market consistently all year long. Are their times when your particular industry is slow and customers are not likely to purchase? Conversely, are their times during the year when customers are more likely to be in the market for your product or service? Schedule your marketing ac More..

How To Market Effectively Even If No One Understands What You Do

So how do you effectively market your product or service when one knows anything about them because you're in a new and emerging industry? How can you expect to get customers if no one understands what it is that you do? If this is your situation then a big part of your marketing strategy will need to be educating consumers about what you do. If yours is a field that is relatively new, or perhaps misunderstood, adopting an education strategy can help consumers understand the benefits you provid More..

Marketing Effectively to More Than One Audience

What's a small business owner to do if they have more than one audience to market to? Perhaps they need to attract clients but they also need to recruit business partners or vendors. Do they need two marketing plans or can they use one plan that tries to address both aspects? This is a great question that applies to many different types of businesses who find they need to market to more than one group of people. You only need one marketing plan. However, you will have two different target audie More..

Determining Marketing Effectiveness Even If You Didnt Track

What if you've done a variety of marketing activities over the past year, but you did not establish any way to track the response? Now you don't know what worked and what didn't. Is there anything you can do now before you continue with your marketing efforts and potentially continue spending money on not-so-effective marketing activities? First of all, don't beat yourself up. You are not alone. In fact, one of my biggest challenges as a marketing consultant has been to get my clients to track More..

One-A-Day Marketing Vitamins

Is your business growing, or are you on a plateau in need of a boost to move up? I know that I always tell you it is best to have a positioning statement and a plan. But sometimes, you just need something to get you off square one. Below is my list of 20 marketing vitamins that you should choose from daily over the next month. 1. Consider starting a monthly e-newsletter. They are a great way to communicate with existing customers, and to remind them of other services you provide. 2. Call a cu More..

Did Jesus Get Killed for Practicing Interruption Marketing?

I'm reading Seth Godin's Permission Marketing and he brings up the difference between Interruption Marketing and Permission Marketing. Interruption Marketing is when you interrupt people from what they are doing in order to ask them to pay attention to something else. Permission Marketing is when you build your product around a consumer base that is expressing a need that you design your product to fulfill. If you've read The Tipping Point then you already know that as soon as Connectors, Mav More..

Powerhouse Marketing With Persuasive Postcards

The lowly postcard?it's more than just a "having fun, wish you were here" delivery system. This tiny billboard is actually a powerhouse of a marketing tool with almost unlimited uses. Harness this little dynamo and you'll find a surge of new business opportunities. Here are some reasons your company should consider a postcard: 1. Cost effective: A regular-sized postcard only costs $.23. You can send up to a 4 1/4" x 6" card without incurring additional expense. This cost is before any bulk-mai More..

Postcard Mania

Will postcards be an advantage for you? The latest craze these days is to send a postcard advertisement to everyone on a mailing list. It is both good and annoying to customers. Junk mail, as many call it, does not always get read, but if you put a twist on what is on your postcard, then you are likely to be noticed. A postcard will not yield much business, but in reality it only takes one good contract to pay for the whole mailing. So how do you use postcards effectively? First, you should tak More..

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How to Use Flyers to Increase Your Business

What benefits will you get from flyers? Flyers are much different from postcards in that they convey product sales to the consumer. Safeway, Costco, Albertsons and other grocery chains are excellent at putting out flyers. Many consumers will look at the specials and head out to purchase them either when they need them or simply to stock up. Do flyers work in this respect? Yes, or they would not be doing them. If you are not in a high demand product line such as groceries, then a multiple page f More..

Marketing From Both Sides Of The Ball

In the world of business, marketing is often conveyed as a game. It is not uncommon to hear or read of a company "playing the marketing game" or "establishing a marketing game plan". In many ways, referring to marketing as a game is an accurate way to explain it. In fact, it could serve as a highly effective way to convey the importance of it in any business model. First and foremost, success in marketing endeavors requires strategic planning. Like a football team preparing for Sunday's game by More..

For Market Breakthroughs, Put Timing on Your Side

In today' s marketplace, the pressure for immediate bottom-line results forces many companies to give knee-jerk reactions to economic fluctuations. While this management style may produce some immediate short-term gains, it is self-sabotaging because it handicaps the development of creative inspiration, which is the cornerstone of long-term marketability. Successful enterprise building requires seven key elements. These are: 1) People, who are the source of the creative ideas that drive the en More..

Standards for Dry Washing and Pressure Washing in Mobile Car Care

The industry standard for mobile washing is completing the car and removing the dirt so it is clean as promised to the customer. Some would say this is not a standard but rather the minimum required. The environmental standards for run off are simple in that no used wash water is allowed to enter a storm drain. Which is fairly simple and straightforward. Customers obviously prefer a clean car. So should you use a product such as Dry Wash n' Guard or use a pressure washer to clean the automobile More..

Unleash the Power of Post Cards

Direct mail marketing is essential for a business to survive. Choosing the correct materials can make the difference between success and failure of your marketing campaign. Postcards are visually appealing and one of the most affordable means to market your products and services. What makes an image smarter marketing post card different from all the other direct mail pieces and postcards that flood our mailboxes each week? They are high quality, powerful marketing tools that peak curiosity a More..

Universal Principals That Guide Business Growth

Universal principals are those "self-evident" truths that have guided brilliant minds and withstood the test of time. Today, however, most of us forget to apply them consistently. As a reminder, here are a few Universal Principals based on genius thinking past and present that Baby Boomer Business Owners can use to inspire consistent accomplishment. Today, I have reflected on my own thinking along with the best genius thinking both past and present and wove them into 10 Universal Principals fo More..

Standing Above The Crowd

In today's highly competitive business environment it is critical to find ways to separate yourself from the other companies who sell the same - or similar - product and/or service. Here are several strategies that can help you accomplish this: Help your clients achieve their goals. Virtually every business person has specific goals they are striving to achieve. These can include everything from increasing their market share and sales, to reducing operating expenses, to streamlining the busines More..

How to Tie a Tie and How To Kiss - What Do They Have In Common?

How to Tie a Tie and How To Kiss - What Do They Have In Common? Now before you decide I've gone totally bananas, there is a connection between these two subjects but it's not perhaps obvious straight away. For most - men anyway - they learn how to do one of these before the other. Individual cases may vary, which one were you in? So you wanna know? Both of these terms are some of the most searched for internet keywords every month. How to tie a tie gets 46000 searches per month and how to ki More..

An Internet Marketing Strategy that Works

You can't put up a beautiful (or any) web site and hope that people will just arrive. You have to let them know, IN EVERY POSSIBLE WAY, that your web site is there. This HAS to be part of any Internet marketing strategy you develop. This is actually a basic marketing principle. Customers are not going to look for you, you have to look for them. Promoting your web site on-line and building traffic is the subject of thousands of web sites, e-zines, books, courses and seminars. Using the web to pr More..

Marketing to the Affluent - with Wine

With its association to an affluent, sophisticated lifestyle, wine can make a good accompaniment when marketing to an affluent audience. However, I am not talking here about ordering expensive wine at a client diner. Wine can be used more creatively and productively to connect to this target audience. For example, wine proved to be a powerful marketing element for a startup magazine targeting an audience that is personally affluent and controls an enormous amount of money. BuySide magazine is More..

Plant a Seed and Watch Your Business Grow

Do you have all the business you could possibly want or need? If you're like me, you're still growing your business. Marketing is an ongoing item on my agenda, and I'm always looking for new ways to market my services. Where do you begin the process of attracting more business? How do you get the ball rolling in the direction you want your business to be heading? Well, it's really simple. Start planting seeds! If you can start your garden growing this spring, why not start your business growing More..

The Path To Your Prospects Wallet Begins At His Heart

You want your prospect to make the decision to buy your product or service. So you show him what you have to offer in your sales letter, web page, ad or commercial. You lay out the facts, and he comes to a rational decision based on them. Right? Wrong. People buy things based on emotion. And if you're not connecting emotionally with them, they aren't going to buy from you. It's that simple. In fact, studies have shown that people with injuries to the area of the brain that controls emotions do More..

Beyond Fear And Greed: Emotions That Sell

Fear and Greed. The stock-in-trade of sales. Appeal to them, and your success is assured. But isn't there more to life than those two emotions? Yes, there is. And your marketing would do well to expand its emotional horizons! Let's take a look at a few of the other response-generating feelings: Curiosity: "What never? ever to eat on an airplane!" That headline is from the super-successful sales letter for Bottom Line newsletter subscriptions. You read the message to find the answer to the ques More..

The A-Z of Exhibiting Overseas

Exhibiting overseas is one of the fastest and most cost effective ways to identify the best foreign markets for your products/services. International trade shows and fairs offer opportunities for multilateral contacts and business deals. They allow you to test your product's export suitability; explore the strength and scope of your competition; and gain exposure to potential suppliers, in-country distributors and customers before making any sizable financial commitments. However, to effectively More..

Making a Hit with Your Marketing Campaign

Considered a vital link in a show's promotional plan, direct marketing is vital only if it's done right. It's certainly not as simple as typing a letter, adding an address and stamp, and popping it in the mail. Direct marketing specialist Debbie Bermont, president of San Diego-based Source Communications, offers her golden rules for creating that vital, highly successful direct marketing campaign. There are some key golden rules to making your direct mailings work effectively. That doesn't mean More..

5 Tips to Help You Identify WHO To Market To

If you have your own small business, it's important to decide exactly who you will be marketing your products or services to. After all, you probably don't have the time or the money to market to everyone. And even if you did, it is not recommended. You'll want to select what is called a "target audience." This is an identifiable group of people you believe will be the best prospects for your business. But for many small business owners, narrowing their focus to one primary group of people can More..

Your Ultimate Competitive Advantage

The biggest secret to success in business is to always maintain a competitive advantage in everything you do. One of the best ways to get and maintain a competitive advantage is to always make it as easier for your prospect or customer to say yes than to say no. The way you do this is by taking away the risk by offering a powerful guarantee. When you remove the risk for anyone who is deciding whether or not to do business with you, it results in a powerful advantage in your business success. Wh More..

Small Business Marketing; Abstract Philosophical Discussion

Our bodies work like our small businesses. They work best by word of mouth, networks, referrals, etc. The Internet also works this way to serve the most good thru networks, portals and referral links; of course the Internet could work better, but all in all we are well served by using such systems and we are most hurt when those systems are used against us. For instance a virus in the blood stream, an International Terrorist in an airliner, a drug dealer in your neighborhood or a computer virus More..

Market Yourself as the Expert

As a small business how do you compete with the big guys and their big budget advertising campaign? The big guys don't read this magazine so we can share these low budget yet high-impact marketing secrets with you. Use these tips to market yourself as the expert in your field. Write tips sheets - for your clients, prospects and the media. Write and publish articles in magazines, newsletters and newspapers. Write letters to the editor expressing opinions, advice and clarification. Publish yo More..

20 Power Marketing Tips

Use these powerful yet simple tips from the national best-seller, "Secrets of Power Marketing: Promote Brand You" - the first guide to personal marketing for non-marketers. Create and grant an annual award. Send hand written congratulations and thank you notes. Send greeting cards for some occasion other than Christmas. Send postcards when you travel and even when you are at home. Give a good book to special clients. Always sign it with a positive message. Build relationships with the medi More..

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