Small Business Marketing For Dummies

From Small Business Marketing For Dummies, 2nd Edition by Barbara Findlay Schenck

To make your small business successful, you must understanding the facts about the marketing process and develop an effective marketing plan that creates and keeps customers.

The Truth about Marketing Your Small Business

The success of your small business depends on how you develop your marketing plan. Here are some facts about the marketing picture that can help you turn prospects into customers:

On marketing: Marketing is the process through which you create and keep customers. Selling is but one step in the marketing process.
On customers: Business owners don’t work for themselves; they work for their customers.
On products: People don’t buy products. They buy the promises, the hopes, or the satisfaction they believe the product will deliver.
On competition: One of the biggest obstacles to the purchase — and therefore your biggest phantom competition — is your customer’s inclination to do nothing at all.
On commitment: Dedicate time or money, or both, if you want to market your business from where it is to where you want it to be.
On your business image: Most of the time, your business makes its first impression when you’re nowhere to be found. In your stead is your ad, voice mail message, direct mailing, business sign, or logo. Most often, your marketing communications make your impressions for you. Be sure they send a uniform, professional message.
On brands: Your brand resides in the consumer’s mind, built as a result of impressions made by encounters with your name, logo, marketing messages, and everything else people see and hear about your business.
On features vs. benefits: When you describe a feature of your product or service, you’re talking to yourself. When you describe the benefit your product or service delivers, you’re talking to your prospect. Consumers don’t buy features — they buy benefits.
On hiring professionals: Getting help is a sign of marketing success. It means you’ve decided to strengthen and invest in the image and message you present to the market.
On target marketing: It doesn’t matter how many people you reach. What’s important is how many qualified prospects receive your marketing message and how effectively you move them through the steps that turn them into customers.
On print ads: Four out of five people read only the headline.
On broadcast ads: It takes reach to achieve awareness; it takes frequency to change minds.
On direct mail: Mail only to genuine prospects, convey a compelling offer, and use an attention-getting format.

How to Develop a Small Business Marketing Plan

When you establish a marketing strategy for your small business, your key purpose is to produce and keep customers. Here are steps to create a successful marketing plan:

State your business purpose.
Define your market situation, focusing on issues that affect your customers, your product, and your competition.
Set goals and objectives.
Define your market and customer profile.
Define your position, brand, and creative strategy.
Set marketing strategies for your product, pricing, distribution, and promotion.
Outline your communication tactics.
Establish your budget.
Blueprint your action plan.
Define opportunities for long-term market development.