The Evolution of Marketing
Just so that you understand I don’t believe for 1 second that all other forms of marketing are dead, quite the contrary, we now just have many more methods available to us.
20 short years ago blogging was not considered necessary for a business it was something that the other guy did and most people thought that it was a waste of time. Facebook has only been around for 8 years and QR Codes started about 12 years ago. Pinterest started around Dec 2009, and texting started during the early 1990′s when people would send “07734″ which when turned upside down said hello.
Now the point of all of this rehashing of things of the past is that all of these things that I have mentioned are now main stream methods of prospecting, communicating and selling your customers. For the small business to ignore these new methods of marketing can mean that you will not grow or worse yet, your business will die and go away.
The Evolution of Marketing is the reason that I wrote the book “the New Marketing Basics”. This was with the hope of trying to educate mister / miss small business owner to start using as many of these Great New Technologies to communicate and sell their customers as they felt comfortable.
It is sad, seeing the small business owner waiting to see what the other guy is doing before they try any of the new technology. Why wait for the next guy, as most of these marketing methods don’t cost anything more than time.
The Evolution of Marketing has brought down marketing costs in all areas and has made some methods down right a great way to market to your consumer on the cheap.
Follow our articles as we try and show you ways to make your advertising dollars go further than ever before.
Discover your Target Customer
When starting out your business you need to know who is your Target Customer. This allows you to have on hand what your customer wants and needs and gives you an insight on how you can be of service to them as well. Not know this Important information make you no better than a Saturday afternoon garage sale, selling the stuff you don’t want and can’t use anymore. To me that is not a business that I want to be in.
Today in business we need to know who our customer is, what they need and when they need it. Lazer focused is the name of that business. The best way to do that is by finding what the demographics is of the people that usually purchase your type of product or service. You can do this a number of ways.
A. Look at the age, gender and Marital status, including number of children and age or grandchildren if any, of your customer. Each spends money differently.
B. Find the education level of your customer.
C. Look at lifestyle, to see if your are conservative, trendy, enjoy traveling or drive a minivan.
D. Look at their activities, interests, attitudes and beliefs, to find what they do in their spare time. Hobbies, music or environmental issues or politics. Tread lightly on the last 2 as they can sometimes be more than you really want to get involved with. Of course if that is where your headed then by all means go for it.
Then we can start that in a number of ways to make sure that we know their needs and when they need it, by asking and making note of what they already buy from You. This gives you a fairly clear target of what they will need in the future.
How do you make the first contact of a new prospect? There is a number of ways that you can go about this, old school, using news papers, penny saver papers, direct mail, phone call, Joining the Chamber of Commerce, join local business groups, I just joined the Patch an online local news paper that is in digital format and they just had a local meeting and had some guest speakers to help get everybody in the know about them and how social media can help them grow their business.
The idea here is as you get to know these people in your market area you build a Customer / Prospect list and keep as much information about each customer (securely) as you dare. I would refrain from to much personal information but would make sure that I know what type of products that they are interested in and what they are buying.
Don’t forget to market to your demographic (customer) where they hang out, work and already shop.
PMA Good or Bad?
Positive Mental Attitude I have heard can be bad for business.
WOW, I don’t like hearing that. I have always had a positive out look on my life and business. Well after reading the article about this in the Open Forum that American Express supports I kind of go along with their story and here is why.
They start by saying, “Chanting affirmations does not take the place of hard work. There’s no substitute for examining the problems plaguing your business. Most of the time, people who use positive affirmations are using them incorrectly. Positive affirmations, in themselves, are not wonder drugs for business success.” I saw this while raising my children, where we would give them ribbons for participating, not for just coming in 1st, 2nd or 3rd but for just being there. To me that was not a good idea as they should get the good feelings for just being a part of the group and the fact that they weren’t in the top 3 really didn’t make that much difference on how we felt as parents. We just like seeing them have fun, win or lose.
This is the part that I really believe, “One of the most common mistakes of using positive affirmations is that people project them too far ahead of their current business situation. Repeating, I own a million-dollar business isn’t likely to create that business for you when you’re barely making a profit.” Never thought that this would work, however it has for some people and that’s great for them, but I would just guess that is probably less than 1% that it works for.
Now the reality of it, goes something like this. You fill your mind with positive thoughts, such as “Action Expresses Priorities” or “Reach for the Impossible” so that you are looking forward by acting on positive thoughts and not having a $1,000,000 bill posted on your bulletin board hoping to make that a reality. I use to carry 3 $100 bills in my wallet to help me feel like I had money. That kind of worked, as it helped me feel that I wasn’t struggling to have money because I already had some.
What I would like to you to understand from this post is that when using your Positive Mental Attitude to get something or somewhere, you need to use action along with thought as thought without ACTION will give you a headache.
Found in March 2012 issue of the Readers Digest and I love this “Do not allow people to dim your shine because they are blinded. Tell them to put on some sunglasses.” Lady Gaga.
You tell them Lady Gaga.
Best Bosses
Just found an article about who makes the best bosses. Is the older guy / gal or the younger people that make the best bosses?
Being the older guy myself I found the article to be a downer for me, except that I don’t fit the mold portrayed by that article writer. The writer said that it is easier to teach the younger people to manage responsibly, but it is harder to get the older counterparts to hire younger people that have that new creativity and hunger for risk-taking.
I disagree, right from the get go as I look toward the younger generation to help me see what I am missing in that risk-taking of new ideas, I can’t believe that I am that much of an anomaly. After all over 2 years ago while visiting my youngest children in Virgina, it was then that I realize that the mobile phone was a force to recon with and I started pushing toward mobile marketing and if you will notice we have a section about mobile marketing and how to use it. Keep in mind also that we are expanding this market into a new site that deals with only mobile issues.
I will keep you posted here to let you know when it is live.
Now if you are of the younger or older persuasion and have an idea of something that you would like me to cover, please bring it to my attention and I will be more than happy to see what I can find out. I really enjoy new ideas and like to see what come of them.
Fundamentals of Building Your Business Successfully
There is more to building a successful business than your business cards or the
filling out the right paperwork. If you are just starting out or have been around
for a while you need to have a savvy business plan that includes some of the
strategy included here.
Community
Be a part of your community. Share your knowledge base with anyone that you can. By
sharing with others in your community you will pick up leads just because most will
like your sharing nature. Also helps other to get to know you. Identify your
customers is kind of a duh, as this offers insight as to what your customers need
and are willing to purchase. You can do some market research on your own just like
the big boys or you can ask your current customers what they are looking for and
why they shopped your store. Another way is to go online and see what people that
buy your type of products also purchase; this will give you some complementary
products to offer your customers.
Encourage
Encourage a good office environment as acquiring new employees and training them
can be a costly endeavor and keeping good people is an advantage. It is good for
your customers as well, that way they become familiar with your staff of friendly
helpful people.
Invest
Invest in the basics which differs depending on the type of business that you have.
Don’t go without some of the basics, good phone system, Website including a mobile
friendly site as well. These should be connected to any advertising that you have
running currently. Think about getting new employees before you need them so that
you are not training them when business gets busy. That means if you need people
for the summer months don’t wait until June to hire and train them.
Listen
Listen, even when you disagree, actually that is the most important time to listen.
The opinion of your Customers, employees and purveyors is always important; you
never know what you are likely to learn from them. It might be a new product coming
up that your purveyor didn’t know or tell you about. It could be one of your
employees that are giving extra good customer service (that should be rewarded) or
that an employee gave a customer too much discount. You just never know what you
are going to learn by Listening. One of my favorite sayings is “God gave you 2 ears
and 1 mouth, what do you think that He was trying to tell you? Listen twice as much
as you talk.”
Plan
Plan conservatively by setting realistic goals while you are looking toward the
future. This one idea can help you make it or break it each year. Aiming for a
lofty goal can derail your business in a heartbeat as your net profit falls short
of what you have planned for.
Mentor
Have a mentor help and encourage you at every step of your planning process. He /
she will be one of the cheapest expenses that you will have as they can bring
insight where you may not understand what is happening when sales fall off and it
may be as simple as the time of year when your customers leave town for spring
break. If you didn’t know this you might lay off employees and all that you needed
to do was to give them a day or two off.
This person can also be a guide for finding new products, services that you can
offer. Or it can be as simple as how to handle difficult customers. Or where to
find the hard to find customers. Where you can cut corners and where it would not
be a good idea to try and save money. Help keep you motivated even when times are
tough, and maybe even find a new customer that you never thought of asking.
Professional bookkeeper
Have a professional keeping the books. You might say, but I can do that. Sure you
can but you need to focus on other aspects of your business. I will tell you just
like I was once told about this. Would you have a Photographer tell you what you
need to fix on your car if you heard a clicking coming from your frontend? Would
you ask a Florist if you need a tooth filled or replaced with a crown? If you
answered no to either of these then you do not need to be keeping you own books.
Backup Social Media and More
Never claiming to be the smartest guy in Marketing I love nothing better than sharing something found and posted by some other greats that we have in Marketing and Entrepreneur Magazine is no exception, a publication that I have followed for years if not decades.
Their latest post on their website is about how to backup your social media and in some cases free. Check out their post http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/222538.
Here is another article of interest from OpenForum American Express that I found interesting. 6 Cultural Trends Every Business Must Embrace to Avoid Failure in 2012. Now I don’t really agree with the whole article but it is very interesting. http://www.openforum.com/articles/6-cultural-trends-every-business-must-embrace-to-avoid-failure-in-2012?extlink=em-openf-SBdaily
This is worth reading to see what others think is important for the new year.
This is the best one today, “Has Your Business Made a Brilliant Mistake?” I like this article as it show how you can turn a negative into a positive. http://www.entrepreneur.com/blog/222487
Again I want to thank those people at entrepreneur magazine for allowing me to share these articles with you.