Marketing is one of the most difficult tasks for any small or medium sized business. Many businesses simply take out an ad in the local paper or think that marketing starts and ends with an annual letter to everyone on their mailing list. These traditional forms of marketing may well work for some industries but for most these will be lazy and unproductive forms of marketing.
In order to carry out effective marketing businesses must come up with new, innovative and targeted methods of contacting potential customers. Business is all about building personal contacts with actual and potential business partners. These are some points to consider when conceiving a marketing plan, ideally these considerations should run through all aspects of your marketing efforts.
The first, and most important, step is to identify those that you want to target. This is important because this group of people are people that you will stay in contact with over the course of all your marketing. It is no good targeting a massive amount of people with a scatter-gun approach, ensuring that you are targeting a core of people interested in your message with repeated communications that they are happy to recieve. Rather than having short exposure to a large group of people who may or may not be interested in your product is not as beneficial as being foremost in the minds of a smaller group of people who probably are interested in your product.
The second step is measuring the results of your marketing campaign. The most famous saying about marketing is that only half of it ever makes an impact, the only problem being that nobody knows which half. While the saying may be tongue in cheek you must ensure that you know exactly how effective your marketing efforts. Quantifying exactly how successful your marketing is and which parts are most successful is vital. Not knowing which half of your marketing is successful is not good enough! Seriously though, nobody ever got anywhere by throwing money down a hole, this is effectively what you are doing if you don't measure the success of your marketing efforts.
Third, make sure your marketing is not just the same generic marketing all your competitors choose to do. If possible research what you're competitors do. Then make sure that you do something completely different. Consider stepping outside of the standard formalised business communication. Making an impression by ensuring that your communications stand out from your competitors' will help your company to make more of an impact with potential cutomers. Do anything, just do it differently! Remember, the most effective form of marketing your business is to get out there and network. If people at networking events remember you for an ad campaign that was slightly wierd and wacky then all well and good, it gives you something to talk about!
Fourthly, do make sure that you follow up your marketing efforts. Try to get along to networking events that the targets of your marketing will be attending. If people contact you as a result of a marketing campaign then make sure you know who they are and keep in touch with them. As I said at the start, business is all about building personal contacts. If somebody buys something from you as the result of your marketing then write them a letter in response thanking them and offering them other services. Remember that marketing to people who have already been your customers is much easier than selling to people who have never bought anything from you before.
Finally, if you aren't actively building business contacts as a result of your marketing then try a different tack. If you don't get results then don't be afraid to ditch what you are doing and start from scratch.
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