Welcome to the Small Business development program, Boost Your Sales and Attract New Customers. This program has been developed to represent the Ultimate Marketing Opportunity for small business, and we’re pleased that you have decided to take part in this presentation. Throughout the presentation of this program, you will find that interactive elements will allow you to complete questions, plan activities, read and learn from case studies, and gain insight from experiences reported by small businesses from all over the world.
Your program consists of a Manual of Study, a Workbook, this Audio track to accompany and highlight the material, an E-Book which will highlight the ideas included within the material, and the Business Success Marketing Wheel. In addition, you will be furnished with templates which can assist you in planning for your personal and professional costs over the near term horizon, and a template for a SWOT Analysis---where you will actually analyze your business, based on a series of questions which test the business Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats, prior to developing the Business Planning Process for Marketing of your Business. Committing all this material to writing may seem like a significant amount of work, but it will serve as the first step for improvement of your Marketing Expertise.
Within the Manual, you will find over 50 proven ideas for development of your business. Many of these ideas will be new to you. You have probably never heard of some of them, and learning about how they work as well as how to make them work for you will be a learning experience not soon forgotten.
We’ve taken the role of Marketing as a function of your business and distilled it down to a single thought: The entire concept of Marketing is predicated on the fact that you must seek out ways to create a need in the mind of the consumer or client for your products or services.
Frequently, Small Business owners believe that advertising and marketing are one in the same. Nothing is further from the truth. Advertising---the publication of facts, prices, or figures designed to drive trial or repeat purchase intent--- is different from Marketing. Marketing is the process of creating a compelling demand in the mind of the consumer. While it’s true that you may tempt a customer or client with a published offer to entice them to purchase, the process of marketing is significantly more intense and more focused. Think of it this way-- anyone can purchase Advertising, but targeting your offer specifically to a purchaser, and closing the deal with the customer or client is a very rewarding prospect to most business owners.
Beyond simply closing the deal, however, comes the aspect of creating an ongoing relationship with the client or customer. What specifics can you implement which will make this customer YOUR customer? What variables that are within your control can you address to be sure that they come back to you over, and over?
One of the first things you must be able to do is define your marketing goals. If you don’t know the characteristics of your clients or customers, you must determine them. You must understand to whom you are marketing your product or service. We’ll help you understand how to define your specific marketing goals and what you hope to achieve and, hopefully, offer some opportunities to match your strategies to your clients or customers.
You can help yourself by considering the proven message your customers will respond to, the demographics your business targets, how the message is to be delivered to them using your entire budget, and—against all the variables-- remember that frequency of sales equals increased revenue.
There are three key pieces of information that you must communicate to your clients or customers to achieve success with any marketing program.
1) I’m here!
If a potential client or customer isn’t aware of your presence, you’ve already lost the sale. He or she must know that you are there, what you are capable of providing, where you are located, what store hours you keep---or, in the case of an Internet business—where he/she can find you.
2) Here’s what I’m selling (or doing.)
If the client or customer isn’t aware of whom you are, what you do, or how you do it, he or she can know where you are located--- but they aren’t going to consider you seriously for your abilities to meet their needs. Many businesses believe that they must include, in their name, what their business is. Examples of this would include Acme Office Supplies for a company selling office supplies; Denora’s Cookie Company, for a group which sells cookies; Samuel’s Delivery Service or John’s Barber Shop, to define either a delivery service or a haircutter. You will find that other types of businesses—may use the same theory in naming their business. Doctors, Dentists, Professionals such as Attorneys or Accountants almost always use their role in the name of their business. It’s rare to find a group of Professionals that name themselves something other than the business they are in. It is becoming a trend in some parts of the world, however, to name a business entirely separately from the functionality of the business itself. An example of this might be the medical practice of several Physicians, which has recently named itself “Seasons.” Often, Professionals will think that they can name their group by a name which implies their competencies. An example of this would be a group of Dentists which go by the name “The Smilemakers.” Caution must be advised in going too far outside the norm in naming your business. A business named “Sunflowers” would probably not build custom bicycles or custom developed skateboards. However, as a counterpoint, who would believe the most popular software product in the world would be called “Windows?”
3) Here’s How to Contact Me!
One of the most important facets of business is the ability for your clients or customers to contact you. If they do not know how to find you, you have—again—lost the sale. One point made throughout the material you will review is to have your name, the business name, the business address, the website URL and a telephone number on all printed or online material which potential clients or customers will review. The easier you make it for potential clients or customers to contact you, the easier it will be to close on the working relationship with the client.
Your Small Business Success Kit also includes a Business Success Wheel, which highlights 8 specific attributes which will help ensure your success. We’ve gone to great lengths to explain the various types of Marketing characteristics you will need to demonstrate ongoing marketing success.
To accompany that wheel, we offer a Workbook which allows you to complete fill-in-the-blank exercises. Successful completion of all the exercises in the workbook will give you the basis for a Marketing Plan which is based upon the Planning Process. The Planning process is based upon the process of MBO, or Management by Objectives---a principle developed by Management Guru Peter Drucker. The three principle questions asked when using a Management by Objectives Process are
a) Where am I today?
b) Where will I be tomorrow?
c) How will I get there?
There are four key elements to the Marketing Planning Process; the process of analyzing the market opportunities, the process of developing the marketing strategies, the process of the planning of marketing programs, and the management of the Marketing Process. Without these four key elements in place, marketing programs are more costly, less effective, and have less opportunity for success. We want your program which you develop using our tools to be very successful for you in marketing your business.
To that end, we have identified what we believe are the 8 key attributes which you must contribute to the development of your Marketing Plan. Those eight keys include the following:
Marketing Acumen
Acumen is defined as being able to “demonstrate keenness and quickness in understanding and dealing with a situation.” You must examine the marketing being done by your competitors and understand whether what you are offering in the marketplace meets and exceeds what they are offering. Your Marketing Acumen leads you to recognize the competition, understand what he/she is doing, and create a response. You must always listen to what your sense of value tells you about the service or product being offered, and must always look at what your clients are telling you.
Marketing Analysis
We have made available to you a SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, Threat) Analysis template for use in assessing your business. A SWOT Template helps you to define—on a single page of paper---what your business is all about. This SWOT Template is in a standard format, and can be applied to any business.
Marketing Insight
Insight is related to intuition. When we say that a business owner has Marketing Insight, we are saying that he or she has an ability to clearly understand the nature of marketing, how to use it to his/her ability, and use it to increase sales and revenue. Do you clearly have the ability to understand the nature of marketing? If your answer is no, we’ll help you to gain valuable insight into your marketing process. If your answer is yes, we’ll help you learn valuable techniques and opportunities for improvement in marketing your business.
Marketing Expertise
Marketing Expertise represents judgment and the correct use of judgment. Judgment often comes from experience; hence, we can say that your experience directly influences your judgment. It doesn’t matter how much a business owner can or does make, or what they spend, or how they use the tools that are given to them…it matters about how they get results. It matters to us how they use their expertise in driving their sales. While we can’t teach experience—it’s something gained over a period of time—we can certainly share experience, and this Success Module does that with you.
Marketing Accomplishment
Accomplishment in the Marketing world reflects achievement. Accomplishment means something which is done skillfully and with key objectives planned. Using our Business Success Module, your Workbook, and the Goals Objectives, you will list all the various steps necessary for proper planning, proper administration leading to marketing accomplishment. But this course is more that that. It is a compilation of knowledge presented in a compact package, developed to help you make more money. The key attribute—the reason that 95% of people start a business---is to make money. Profit is key. And to make money, one must plan for their business, operate it in a clearly professional manner, and be diligent in their efforts to protect and grow their business. We will help you plan to operate your business in that way.
Marketing Administration
Small Business owners rarely do enough planning. Since they don’t plan well, they sometimes don’t measure results achieved against expectations and make immediate corrections to their actions. They may understand the importance of planning, understand all the reasons why planning is important in creating development success in a business, but as a general rule, they feel that planning takes time away from the actual operation of the business.
In our Business Success Module, we strongly suggest that you develop a Pro-Forma budget for not only your personal financial needs for a six month period, but also for your business and marketing needs for a six month period. Is a six month plan adequate for a new business? No, it’s not—but it’s better than having no plan at all. It is certainly more essential to have any type of plan—even one short term—than to have no plan at all. You will find a simple template in your Business Success Workbook which can be modified, shortened, extended or have the results combined—which will assist you in developing your own key business elements within Marketing Administration.
Marketing Delivery
Business grows and develops based upon the perception of your clients and customers. It is important that you understand what your business represents to potential and existing clients. If you do not understand the purpose of Brand, and brand delivery, our workbook will help you to both put into writing and to understand how important Brand and branding is to you. It can help you to understand pricing considerations and how they will impact growth, both positively and negatively. Our workbook exercises can’t teach experience, but they can help you to understand the importance of employee loyalty and focus.
Marketing Style
Style in marketing represents the way that facts are represented to potential clients as opposed to the facts themselves which are being presented.
Any marketing style highlighting your product or service will most likely be unique—small business does not often have large amounts of money to spend for marketing; it can be special; it can be humorous, or thought-provoking. It can generate emotion; it can be obnoxious or demeaning. The key to your marketing style will most likely be that it will be different. Differentiation in marketing style opens doors which will help potential clients or customers to distinguish you from others and make your offering significantly more focused.
In summation, this Marketing Program will educate you about marketing and how marketing impacts upon your business, as well as how your specific business can be impacted by your enhanced marketing efforts. It will help you think about your own product or service and how it fits in today’s new economy, and plan programs which will lead to growth of your business. It can help you understand the various attributes of demand for your products or services, and how you can develop perceptions of need fulfillment.
Most of all, however, it will help you gain the knowledge which will serve as the basis for your personal and professional growth and development.
Justice Mandhla is the author of Boost your sales and attract new customers and he spends a great deal of his full-time writing day researching and writing about marketing and advertising strategies.
See more at http://www.longlife4learning.com
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