Posts Tagged ‘marketing strategy’

Successful business owners will tell you that having a well thought out marketing strategy is crucial to their overall success.  Developing the plan doesn’t have to be a daunting task if you follow these components.

1. Proper Positioning

Positioning is the most important element when developing your marketing plan.  Positioning is the process by which you create an image or identity in the minds of your customers each time they experience your product or service.   Generally speaking positioning involves several steps; but in a nutshell it boils down to ensuring you are offering what your customers want with the most profitable market opportunity while differentiating your product/service from the competition in such a way that customers will choose your product or service.   To sum up, positioning is putting the right product at the right price in front of your target market.  When you have done this, you have mastered positioning.

2. Survey Your Customers

Don’t know what your customers want?  The best way to get the information that can propel your product or service forward is to ask your customers.  You need to understand clearly your target market if you have any chance at appealing to them to buy your products or services.  Surveys, samples, and test markets are great ways to get the feedback you need.  The feedback you get from your current customers or potential customers is priceless and will help you evaluate the integrity of your product, whether or not it’s in line with you branding, if the pricing strategy is correct and whether or not the quality of the product meets your customer’s expectations.

3. Tap Into The Power of Your Mastermind

Mastermind programs are one of the most powerful programs a person can participate in.  Why?  Because you get to leverage other people’s expertise and information and that is always better than trying to go it alone.  Your mastermind participants have probably had similar situations when developing their own marketing plans and even if they haven’t, they are a wonderful resource for ideas, perspectives, and experiences.  Having this resource to brainstorm with and to solve your biggest business challenges is the greatest benefit of a mastermind.  The synergy created between the members of the mastermind is the fuel that creates powerful results.  If you are not part of a mastermind I encourage you to investigate it and see if it doesn’t help you achieve the goals you set for your business.

4. Create Your Plan

A marketing plan is an essential element in your business and its overall success.  So many women business owners fail to create a marketing plan that it is no wonder that there scattered marketing attempts fail to yield them the results they are looking for.  Your plan doesn’t have to be complicated or complex to be effective.  I teach my clients an effective and simple marketing strategy that gets them the results they are looking for.  Remember simple is better and will be more effective.

5. Measure and Track Your Results

You know the saying if you don’t know where you are going how will you know when you get there?  The same is true of your marketing results.  If you don’t have the plan in place how will you know if you have achieved the results you are looking for.  You must track your results to see if you’re yielding the desired outcomes.  How will you measure the results of your plan?  Some ways this can be accomplished is by:  tracking open rates from your newsletter or other email marketing campaigns, how many unique visitors visit your website, increased signups for your newsletter, increased calls for new business, your return on investment vs what you spent.  Only you can determine what activities you want to engage in.  Just remember to know precisely the results you are looking for when developing your plan.

Sometimes I get so tired of the hype that marketers use to sell their products or services.  These marketers are sometimes the exact people who preach about being authentic and using the highest degree of integrity when marketing.  Here are some of my pet peeves and how to avoid them:

1. The Automatic Sign Up

This just happened to me last week at my local Chamber meeting.  I gave this person my business card and before I got home I had her most recent ezine in my in box!  Did she ask me if she could send it to me?  No, she didn’t, but I got it anyway.  And the icing on the cake…she told me if I put a link up on my website to her website she would do the same for me!  Now this may be appealing to some but I wasn’t falling for it!  Don’t do it!

2. Going, Going, Gone

Marketers who say stuff like, “We have 15 spots left, no I mean 17, no I mean 19.” Or the other version is, “Offer ends Monday, no I mean Tuesday, oops I mean Friday.”  Give me a break!  No matter if the game is played with numbers or time, the bottom line is it is still a game; and one that is insulting to potential clients.  Again, don’t do it!

3. Direct Messages

It seems like every day I get a new direct message from some yahoo  telling me how I must  check out this link so that they can sell me their stuff!  No thanks…and then I block them.  You heard me right.  When I get pitched to immediately I block them.  I don’t need to be sold too all day long and this is what some of these people on twitter are doing and frankly I won’t stand for it.  Don’t do this one either!

4. All Promo, All The Time

Some marketers send one promotion after another and it gets tiring.  Usually their ezine is full of useless information and when you check out their website they offer nothing free.  You guessed it, don’t do it!

5. Bad Twitterfeed

I like Twitterfeed,  but I really don’t need to get every feed, post, and link about everything.  Twitter is used best when used as a marketing tool; one that has been given careful consideration and is in line with your marketing plan.  There is no need to post every single thought, action or food you consumed because bottom line -  nobody cares.

6. Immediate Action Required

You all know what I am talking about!  You must act NOW.  Everything is urgent and it’s urgent all the time.  Give me a break…reading these emails and sales letter exhausts me.  I mean really do they think we have nothing better to do then stop what we are doing and attend to ANOTHER urgent message.  Now that is not to say that sometimes you get a notice and it is urgent but you will quickly learn if this is an ongoing case of the “emergencies” or if it out of the ordinary for this person.  If it’s all the time just hit the unsubscribe button.  And remember just don’t do it yourself!

Are you guilty of any of these mistakes?  If so, you know what to do…don’t do them again!

As a business owner our time is valuable so if you come across people who present their products and information in a manner that sends up the red flag then move on.

I read a great article the other day about the use of basic and advanced marketing strategies and how you need to use more advanced techniques in this economy.  And while I agree with the author, what I find more times than not is that people are not using the basic marketing strategies to there full advantage.

Here are some easy and simple tips that will help you get a grip on the basic strategies so you can move into the more advanced and see your business grow!

1.  The first basic marketing strategy is the development of your  marketing message. Who you work with, what their challenges are and how you solve their problems.  Trouble is, most new entrepreneurs particularly coaches (I can pick on coaches because I am one myself) have no idea who their target market is and what problem they want to solve.  I have told you over and over again how important it is to be crystal clear on this point or you will suffer greatly in trying to create a captivating marketing message.  It is impossible!  I know because when I first became a coach I mistakenly thought I would be a “life coach” ~ what the heck does that mean?  I wasn’t sure myself so I know no one else knew what that meant either.

2.  Your web site is a marketing tool and one that  people will visit. The problem with most websites is that they read like a brochure.  They don’t speak directly to the clients biggest challenges and they certainly don’t tell anyone how a problem will be solved.    And that my friends is what clients want!  They want to know that someone out there understands their problems and will help them fix it.

I remember reading a website of a woman, who happens to be a coach, and in fact was one of my instructors at coaching school.  Her website missed the boat completely… it talked about what coaching was and how the coaching calls would go, etc, etc.  Frankly, clients don’t care about stuff like that.  They care more about their problems than how you coach.

If you have a website,  find a professional to evaluate your site and give you honest feedback and suggestions for improvement.  I am currently working on a new program and this particular service is being added as a bonus to the participants so that I can show them how to build a more captivating site!  Watch for the details coming soon!

And by the way you should know your web site stats!  But that is a blog post for another time.

3.  The third basic strategy is that you regularly engage in marketing activities. I like to suggest that you pick three activities and do them regularly.  Two of the three should include writing and speaking and the third can be your choice.  The problem here is that although many entrepreneurs start out with good intentions, their writing or speaking activities fall by the wayside.

If you are blogging you MUST do so consistently.  To blog every once in a while will never yield you the kind of results that you are looking for.  Plan on blogging at least three times a week for it to be effective.

If you are doing a ton of public speaking, make sure that you pick your speaking engagements with your ideal clients in mind.  For example,  if you are a business coach for women speaking at the Men’s Auxiliary Luncheon  is probably not the best use of your time.

Finally,  by excelling in these basic techniques you build a strong foundation for taking your marketing activities to the next level. Next time I will discuss some more advanced strategies and how you can propel your business farther and faster!

I think I have this quoted correctly, but whatever the right phraseology is, I think you get the point.

How is your marketing strategy working?  Are you getting the kind of ROI that you expect from your marketing efforts?  In this day and age you can not keep marketing your business like you did some 5 years ago.

How does one bust out of that old way of thinking?  By coming up with creative and innovative ways to market your business and stay ahead of your competition.  It requires you to be smarter than the guy next door, to stand out in the crowd and to listen to what your clients are telling you they want.  Do this and when the dust settles, and we know it will, you will be standing on top of the mountain with your competion at your feet.