Five Tips to Market Your Business EffectivelyOwning your own business is a challenge. During the start-up phase the business owner’s name is listed at every position on the organizational chart. The hats worn are many including management, organization, sales, delivery, webmaster, and copywriter. One hat that should not be neglected is marketing. Marketing translates into results in the future because the time invested today will begin to pay off ninety or more days from now. For this reason, business owners should set aside from ten to twenty percent of their time to work on marketing on a regular basis.
Marketing as a process
Let’s define marketing. Marketing is a process where actions are designed to increase sales, grow relationships, and elicit business from prospects and clients. Marketing encompasses your business name, your tag line, your business cards, and all marketing materials that showcase the company’s brand. Marketing is also making sure the company has the right products or services at the right price targeted to the right market.
Wait for business or go get it?
Marketing activities are either passive or active and the right marketing plan contains a mix of both. Advertising, having a website, and sending out newsletters are all passive because they don’t require a response from your target client. Active marketing includes getting on the phone and calling clients to ask for referrals, sending thank you cards to prospects you meet at networking events and following up with a phone call, and giving talks and workshops in your area of expertise.
Marketing is an art, not a science.
There are no crystal balls, no equations that define success. Each business is unique, requires a different approach, and an understanding that results cannot be predetermined.
Here are five tips to market your business effectively.
Spend a bit more to improve the company’s brand by using a professional to design your marketing materials. This may not pay off in increased sales immediately, but it will position the business with a more successful image and result in better quality referrals. Be consistent in your marketing. Make sure your website, business cards, brochures, flyers, and direct mail pieces have a consistent brand that is identifiable as your company. Ensure that you have a blend of active and passive marketing activities so that you are engaged in face to face contact with your clients as well as utilizing the more traditional methods such as advertising. A marketing plan is only useful if it’s implemented. Make sure you regularly schedule marketing tasks into your day planner or your calendar software (as a reoccurring entry). Schedule blocks of time to work on marketing and then follow through. Do the scary things. Sitting in your office shuffling papers is not going to get you more clients. Figure out the networking events you will attend in the next few weeks. Pick up the phone and call the person you met at the networking event last week. Decide how to get in front of your target clients and speak to them as a group. Take the steps and make the effort to create a marketing strategy that will bring you clients. Get an accountability partner and make plans to get out there and get known. After all, you are just a well kept secret until you market yourself more effectively.
Copyright© 2004-2010 | Suzanne Muusers - All Rights Reserved
About the author
Suzanne Muusers is a Business Coach and Business Expert based in Scottsdale, Arizona. She has owned or managed a business every year for the past 25 years. She is a credentialed member of the International Coach Federation and works exclusively with entrepreneurs and financial advisors who want to leave behind their lives as business workers to become business owners earning six figures and above annually. Suzanne is also the creator of the Two Page Mini Business Plan™ - The Secret to More Business Income and the Financial Advisor Marketing Plan E-Course - How to Get More Ideal Clients
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