HOW TO MARKET YOUR BUSINESS Part 1

by David Sanders, Certified Master Consultant

So you think you should have more business? Perhaps you would like a better class of clientele.

The good news is that there are potential customers looking for your business as hard as you are looking for them! So where does one turn in the search for how to reach those ideal customers? There are dozens of ways to promote any business. But in my experience working with over 300 different industries and at least that number of marketing ideas, most miss the boat when they try to market.

EVALUATE YOUR OWN MARKETING

There are three main camps in regard to marketing:
1) those who do it well (maybe 10%)
2) those who are unsure what to do (the majority)
3) those who have a lot of ideas but still can’t get enough customers in (probably 30-40%).

If you are in category 1, read on, as I may shed some light on how to improve even a good marketing program. If you are in the second camp I will point you in the right direction and give you some good ideas. If you’re a number 3, perhaps I can get you to discard some of the less workable ideas and do ones that work best for your type of business.

There are hundreds of ways to market your business; most are a waste of time and money. Properly using a handful of the right marketing tools will make a huge difference in your business. First let’s establish some basics and then I’ll give you some general recommendations.

DO YOU DEPEND ON LOCAL TRAFFIC?

Let’s examine your business. Different marketing media work for different types of business. Most businesses rely on local traffic. Restaurants, professional practices, repair shops and most small retail businesses draw from a fairly narrow radius of 2 to 5 miles. If you keep a mailing list of your customers, clients or patients (and you should) do a zip code sort to find out where they come from. This is a crude type of survey and can be quite revealing.

If your business draws only from a small area, avoid most electronic media (radio, TV, etc.) as you would be paying to reach a lot of people who will never visit you. Radio and TV are usually quite expensive and in most small businesses give a poor return on the money invested.

Ads in large metropolitan newspapers usually get a poor response. In smaller communities newspapers can work well and sometimes classified ads work even in larger papers. Avoid extensive contracts with any of these media until they prove themselves. Insert a “weasel out clause” in these contracts so you can get out if it doesn’t pay for itself.

If your business has multiple locations or attracts business from a wide area, there are some things you can do with the electronic media that make sense, but it is rarely your best bet. A rapidly evolving marketing frontier is making money for some — marketing via the Internet is a subject that I will cover in a later article.

After spending almost a two decades marketing a wide variety of industries and professional practices of all descriptions, I recently completed a 4-year in-depth analysis of marketing responses nationwide. What I found might apply to your business, too. Above I have covered some things to avoid which should save you some money. Next issue I will cover the best marketing media to use which should make you money. If you are in a hurry to find out, give me a call and I’ll be happy to discuss it with you.

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