Marketing is the one area of business planning that is rarely addressed adequately and, in some cases, not considered at all. Yet arguably, it is the one area of your business that is crucial to the sustainability and eventual success of your venture.
The perceived complexity of marketing can sometimes be too daunting for most business owners, who end up dabbling in half hearted methods of promoting their businesses and, therefore, waste money as a result.
There are no rules and no certainties, but one thing is for sure doing nothing is NOT an option!
1. Get expert advice
For marketing to work it needs to be creative and strategic. Some fool once said that “any publicity is good publicity”. If you believe that, then you have to be prepared to spend considerably more on damage limitation than you do on marketing! Don’t dabble. Marketing is not a hobby, it is a serious aspect of running and maintaining a business. Professional, experienced advisors will offer up the ‘golden chalice’ - ROI (Return on Investment).
2. Know your market
Don’t waste time and money marketing your products or services to sectors of the market who would never purchase them. Identify who they are, their demographic profile, how they make their purchasing decisions and their lifestyle. Perfect pinpointing is impossible, of course, but knowing these facts will help you to concentrate your marketing where it is most effective. Local councils will happily supply detailed demographic profiles of their population gleaned from census data.
3. Identify your ‘edge’
What have you got, that your competitors don‘t have? This is the key to attracting customers. Your marketing success will hinge on this. The Australian marketing arena is an extremely vibrant and congested place! You MUST identify the key areas that are going to lift you out from the crowd and get you noticed.
4. Work out your budget
Marketing is an investment. At times you have to speculate to accumulate and therefore you need to have the capital to do that. The sums are relatively easy. Your business plan should have identified your projected turnover. In order to sustain that turnover and add growth to it, you must ringfence no less than 5% of turnover to reinvest back into the business as marketing budget. How you calculate it depends on your business. You may allocate 5% or more of last quarter’s turnover to marketing for the next quarter. maybe an annual calculation suits your business or even seasonal. However you choose to do it, make sure you use this small percentage of your turnover to grow your business.
5. If you can’t measure it, don’t do it
In order for you to assess whether a marketing strategy is working, you need to know what returns you are getting on your investment. That’s not rocket science. Some media are easy to measure such as web, emarketing, coupon response marketing and telesales, for example. Others require some analysis. Increased sales of products or services that are being specifically promoted is an obvious indicator, but where the marketing is of a general nature, it is crucial that you know how the customers heard about you. So, carry out the cheapest form of market research ever created - ASK THEM!
6. Review your strategy regularly
Marketing is a slippery fish! Just when you think you have it in the bag the whole market twists and turns and your prize catch is gone to spawn in warmer waters! Never be complacent. Review and revisit your strategy often. Concentrate on what is yielding good returns on marketing expenditure and let weaker strategies go. Keep your ear to the ground on external factors, such as trends or fads, that may impact on your target market and use that to leverage more marketing power. Don’t be afraid to piggy back off other business’s successful marketing and always be prepared to move your marketing (or indeed, your business) in a direction that is going to tap into rich veins of income that may crop up from time to time.
Above all else, give your business the transfusions it needs to survive and thrive. New sales are the oxygen of any business. Promoting your business need not be expensive. There are simple, cost effective ways to keep your business in the public eye, which is the ultimate goal of marketing and the key to business growth.
Without promotion something terrible happens… Nothing!.. ~PT Barnum
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