Thursday, September 25th, 2008
By Nate Stockard
Many small business owners and managers approach marketing in a shotgun approach. They throw money at different marketing activities and hope that something hits their target. In most of these cases, the results are poor. Owners and managers start blaming the radio stations, the ad agency, or even the marketing consultant who told them marketing was the most important activity of their business. They don’t understand the need to plan and map out their marketing efforts. Planning is key to reduce marketing costs and increase effectiveness.
Why create a marketing plan?
When an entrepreneur starts a business, they decide on the product or service, determine where they are going to get it, and plan on how they will sell it. Most owners and managers don’t realize that this planning actually coincides with marketing planning, but in order to be successful a conscious effort has to be applied to planning marketing activities that correlate to creating the product or service and selling it.
As we discussed in the marketing concept of consistency, marketing must be consistent. In order for marketing to be consistent, it must be planned. You must plan each step of your marketing just as you do a business plan. Most businesses have realized the need for a business plan. It helps to guide where the company is going, what is expected, and what they will do when they fail or succeed. These are the same reasons for creating a marketing plan. You must know what the goal of your marketing is, how much you are budgeting, the expected results, what to do if you exceed or fall short of your goals and expectations, and how to relate your marketing to the rest of your company.
What is the difference between planning and strategy?
Planning consists of your marketing roadmap. It tells you where you are starting, what’s your end point, and what the path is to get there. Your organization’s goals are included in planning. Budgets, analyses, and forecasts go into your planning.
Strategies are how you accomplish your goals and forecasts. In fact, strategies are part of the plan. Strategies tell you how you will get from the starting point to the end point and the specific way you will take your planned path. Strategies consist of the action steps that you will implement to obtain the forecasted results. To sum it up, planning creates the big picture and strategies make up the individual parts of the big picture.
What goes into marketing planning?
Marketing planning is typically conducted by your executive staff. The top-level managers usually provide input and feedback for the necessary goals and objectives to make your company successful and maintain a high level of growth. If you have a dedicated marketing department, they will ultimately be responsible for the marketing plan and its contained strategies, but the entire company must be involved in creating the basic outline of your marketing plan.
The marketing planning should begin with an overview of your business and what you intend on selling. When starting here, you should define your business specifically and break down your products and services so that everyone involved understands the basis for all of your marketing planning. Your marketing planning should consist of goals and objectives that relate to the goals and objectives of your business plan. From there, you should analyze your target market, competition, strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities (SWOT). You should also include what you are budgeting for this marketing plan so you can plan strategies correctly. Forecasting your expectations will give you benchmarks to evaluate your marketing planning, which leads to the need to determine how you will assess your results and what types of metrics need to be installed to successfully review your progress and success or failure.
Creating a roadmap is vital to being successful in business and marketing. Marketing can be expensive, wasteful, and ineffective if not properly planned. The old adage, “Failure to plan is planning to fail,” is very true in the realm of marketing. Even though many of today’s marketing activities include free and low-cost tools such as social networking, engaging marketing activities without planning can become expensive in regards to time spent.
Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008
By Nate Stockard
The first major marketing concept that small business owners and managers need to understand is consistency. Consistent marketing starts with the creation of an idea then the mission statement, and everything else to follow. Consistent marketing also lowers the cost of marketing, increases synergy among employees, and projects the proper image in advertising and promotions.
Establishing a Brand
When an entrepreneur starts a business, they decide what they are going to sell. Sometimes, they find a want or need in a certain market and create a product or service to fill that void. They buy necessary products or design the proper services, and then they begin selling. They sell to a few customers, get a few more, break even, and even begin to make money. Then sales drop. They are doing okay with their current customers, but some are not buying again, and they are not bringing in more business. They add other products and services, but these just cost more to offer and eventually cost the company more money than they are making. They run advertising campaigns that don’t really connect with the business, and they can’t understand what is wrong.
Here is the answer: Consistency. All marketing activities and concepts revolve around consistency. If owners and managers neglect consistency when it comes to their marketing, which includes collateral, advertising, promotions, and even products and services, they face huge up-hill battles that often are not won. Consistency plays a big part in other aspects of the business: sales, employees, physical locations, and many other elements.
When you begin a business and decide what it is you will sell, you must create a brand immediately. What is meant my creating a brand is determining who you are, who you sell to, what exactly you will sell, and how you will sell it. You must decide upon the specifics that make you unique and what makes customers come to you. While making these decisions you must remain consistent. It is not consistent for a bakery to open and say they are going to sell to health-conscious customers when all they sell are huge, fresh-baked chocolate cookies covered in mounds of peanut butter. There is no consistency to who they are selling to and what they are trying to sell.
There are many aspects to establishing a brand, which we discuss in later topics, but consistency must be a key element in every part of establishing a brand.
Consistent Marketing Collateral
We touched on consistent marketing collateral in “How Much Does Marketing Cost?” but we must reiterate that point here in consistency. If you are creating your marketing materials yourself, or you are obtaining the services of a professional designer, make sure everything is consistent with your brand, image, and the other pieces.
It does your business no good to have a beautiful logo, eye-catching business card, and top-notch brochure if they don’t complement each other and lose consistency. The logo should match what you sell and to who. Next, the business card should match your logo in color schemes, appearances, and what it conveys. Many business owners don’t value consistent marketing collateral and will decide or demand inconsistent elements because they look nice or they think it will make people pick up their card. You want to create business cards that are unique and eye-catching, but potential customers should know it belongs to you, the computer repair guy, and not a fashion designer.
Consistent marketing collateral also means to portray your company in brochures and websites the same way as you do in person. Make sure customers know what they will receive from you when they do reach the physical part of your relationship (i.e. consultation or online order). It will leave a negative result with a customer that sees a brochure with a downtown hi-rise pictured, model-quality customer service reps, and a $1 million dollar reception area and is presented with a small metal building in the middle of no-where and they have to wait in the sun to talk with you. There is nothing wrong with the latter part of that example, but don’t build customers up with different expectations that what they will receive. Being a successful business doesn’t require a huge investment in an office and personnel, but it does require consistent branding and image. A potential target will become a loyal customer if they are prepared before-hand for what they will receive and the business delivers the same way or better each time. Consistency is another name for success, and that includes marketing collateral.
Online Marketing
There are many arguments to be had on the difficulty or simplicity of online marketing. Some professionals will say that online marketing, social networks, and a web presence are easy and anyone can be successful. Others will tell you that it is a complicated process that should be left to professionals that know how to manage it. Either way, they will agree on one thing: consistency.
The online world has attracted a lot of players, and not all are good. For this reason, any business trying to establish their brand online must develop trust and lasting relationships with customers and potential targets. The easiest way to do this is through consistent marketing. Using the same avatar, posting similar ads, and targeting similar groups are examples of consistent marketing. Keep in mind, once someone sees any of these consistent examples and decides to surf to your web site, it must remain consistent. Using a crazy animated ad to draw attention may get clicks to your site, but those clicks will mean nothing if the user leaves your site immediately because it is not what they expected.
One major area that must remain consistent with the rest of your marketing efforts is your social network. As a small business, the owner or general manager will probably be in charge of social networking sites, blog postings, and other social activities on the web. You may also decide to outsource this work, and find a marketing firm that can handle these tedious tasks for you. Either way, you must make sure that you, your employee, or your hired firm produce a consistent image with what you sell, who you sell to, and how you sell it. You don’t want your myspace page to be full of teen pictures, music, and alcohol bottles if your company sells computer equipment to doctor’s offices. Your networking pages can have a personal twist to them, especially if your business is small and the owner is the one managing this segment of your marketing, but make sure you are attracting potential customers and delivering the proper brand image.
Another mistake that is made in online marketing is an inconsistent website. Some businesses will never make use of social networking sites like facebook or myspace, but everyone must have a web site. Today’s society demands some type of online presence even if that means just a website. 66% of consumers surf the web before making purchases. Unfortunately, many business owners fail to convert potential customers because their website turns customers away. Businesses must realize that a website is just like a physical store. If it looks cheap, cluttered, and dirty, customers will leave. They will not dig deep, ask many questions, or make purchases. They will just leave!
Web design can be an expense that many businesses can’t see a need for, but a properly designed site will go a long way. Many owners and managers feel that they can design their own website with the help of a book and Microsoft Frontpage, but more times than not, that is not true. Some owners and managers have the experience and know-how to produce a professional website, but if you don’t have that ability, you should seek help. In the end, the site must be consistent with your other marketing collateral and your brand. When a customer takes a brochure and then looks to your site for more information, it must give them the same feeling and expectation as the brochure and your sales staff does.
Sales Management and Other Employees
One major key to success in your business is creating synergy among your employees. By establishing a consistent mission statement, purpose, and cohesive goal, you can bring your employees together and allow them to provide consistent results with that of your other employees and your brand image.
There is an ongoing feud between sales and marketing departments between who is responsible for what. By creating consistency between your marketing and sales management, these two departments can come together and work together instead of against each other. The primary item to understand is to make sure you are directing your company and its staff in a similar and consistent manner. Each department must perform their tasks in unison with the others so that you deliver a consistent message, product, and service to your customers.
Advertising and Promotions
The final area of marketing consistency is advertising and promotions. Once you have defined who your company is, what is will sell, and who you will sell it to, you have to maintain this consistency in promotions and marketing.
Pay attention to the various marketing campaigns you encounter. Compare them to the rest of the message that you receive from that company. Is it consistent? Do you get the same image and feeling from that advertising campaign as you do from their online efforts? Think about this when creating and implementing your marketing campaigns.
To create consistent marketing and advertising campaigns doesn’t mean you have to run the same ads everywhere. Many times this is effective, but it is not always the case. Creating consistent campaigns means to analyze your basic brand and be sure you are conveying the right message. If one campaign positions your company as a traditional accounting firm with solid experience, and the next campaign portrays your company as the cutting-edge modern accounting agency with young professionals, your target audiences will get confused.
Another place to consider consistency is within an individual campaign. Let’s say you are trying to drive your existing customer base that is used to coming into your physical store to your website. You have created summer-long campaign filled with instructional brochures, direct mail pieces, in-store promotions, and various other activities. Consistency will become an issue and this campaign will probably end up a failure, if each activity is different. You give away golf balls in your store, but your direct-mail pieces are themed with cook-out imagery. Your brochures pitch your website as easy to use, but your sales staff tells you customers they need to sit through 8 seminars to be able to log on. All of these are inconsistent and don’t produce a similar theme or message.
There are several reasons for consistency, especially in advertising and promotional campaigns. First, potential customers are bombarded with advertising every where they go, everything they hear, and everything they see. Second, it takes at least 3 real impressions before a potential customer will take notice of something new that was not referred by word-of-mouth. Some sources say it is as many as 7 impressions before your campaign will take effect. Consistency in campaigns will result in more impressions that have effect on potential customers. This also relates to the rest of you business. Once you have a customer, you must continue to remind them who are and why they should continue to buy from you. Consistent letterhead, websites, brochures, advertising campaigns, and sponsorships all contribute to consistent branding and image-building.
Thursday, September 11th, 2008
By Nate Stockard
Many small business owners disregard marketing because they feel it is too expensive or it is only for large companies. Marketing consists of a lot of different elements some of little or no costs and some with some substantial costs. If you use your resources and creativity, you can utilize a few key marketing activities, reduce costs, and be extremely successful.
Below is a list of various marketing items and the range of costs associated with each. Following the table is more information about some key marketing items that are REQUIRED for any business.
Marketing Activity – Cost Range
Newspaper Ads - $30 - $5,000
Magazine Ads - $200 - $10,000
Newsletter Ads - $10 - $2,500
Direct Mail - $.05 - $5.00 (per piece)
Radio Ads - $10 - $3,000 (per ad)
TV Ads - $25 - $5,000
Sponsorships - $100 - $10,000
Seminars - $50 - $5,000
Conferences - $1,000 - $100,000
Tradeshows - $100 - $50,000
Web Ads - $.05 - $1,000
The list above is just a short list of some of the ways you can spend your marketing budget, and as a small business owner, I know that some of these look too expensive and out of reach. In fact, some of these I suggest small businesses never including in their marketing mix, but every business must have the basic building blocks of marketing.
Every business must have identity collateral, and these pieces need to look professional, polished, and appropriate. The basic building blocks of small business marketing are logo, business card, letterhead, brochure, and website.
There are many companies that use just these five items to handle their marketing. They rely heavily on a sales force and these five items are all that they need. These five items are also the things your customers will see every time they interact with you. When you meet a potential client, you give them a business card, which also has your logo on it. When you mail an invoice, your logo is included. If you mail any type of sales letter, it will be on your letterhead. When a customer asks for more information, you will give them a brochure. Finally, 66% of consumers go to the web before making any type of purchase, so you will have a website with your logo and information available for searching.
Just about every active company has these things, but most don’t have consistent professional pieces. More times than not, small business owners create each of these building blocks themselves and only as they need them. In between the other daily tasks of the business, these owners lose sight of consistency with their marketing materials.
These five basic materials are part of what marketing costs, because they are affordable, sometimes free, to create. If they are created professionally, they establish and demonstrate your brand and image, and they foster a better feeling in your customers towards your company. Although you can spend a considerable amount of money of various marketing activities, which are necessary for many small businesses, the logo, business card, letterhead, brochure, and website are required. Including these five items in your business plan is not a hard thing to do should be considered early in planning.
Tuesday, September 9th, 2008
Our parent company, Stockard & Associates, Inc. has started a free service for business owners and managers.
FreeMarketingAnswers.com provides small business owners and managers a place to ask any questions they have about marketing.
Log on to the site, click the big red button, Find Your Marketing Answer Now, and open a consulting ticket. One of their marketing professionals will be able to give you excellent advice on how to conduct your marketing activities. The site is completely free, so try it now!
FreeMarketingAnswers.com
Friday, September 5th, 2008
By Nate Stockard
Kotler and Armstrong define marketing as “the process by which companies create value for customers and build strong customer relationships in order to capture value from customer in return.” This definition alone can explain why marketing is important, but let’s outline several reasons why marketing should be one of the small business owner’s main priorities.
1. Marketing builds value in your products and services for your customers.
Most salespeople want to know as little as possible to make the sale. Some sales staff needs technical specifications and things of that nature, but ultimately, the less they have to learn the better. This makes sense, because their goal is to make sales. Therefore, marketing has to step in and create value for your customer. If you can not create value for your customers, why will they buy from you? Sometimes they will buy from you once, but will they come back if there is no value?
Many times, business owners don’t capitalize on all the ways they can give value to their customers. They get lost in the production or product concept of marketing and end up with marketing myopia. Marketing myopia happens when a company pays more attention to the product/service than the value or benefits it offers to the customer. You can not let this happen to you. Pay attention to your customers and why they buy your products. People buy a Toyota Prius not only because it saves on gas, but because it makes them fell more eco-friendly.
2. Marketing helps build customer relationships.
Everyone put emphasis on the sales staff when it comes to sales. “If the sales team doesn’t work harder, we won’t increase sales,” but this is not necessarily true. It costs three times as much to obtain a new customer as it does to keep an existing one. This means you need to maintain the relationship with your current customers in order to lower marketing and sales costs and increase sales.
Properly planned and implemented marketing activities are the only real way to build customer relationships. These activities can include a lot of things: loyalty programs, thank-you cards, customer appreciation events, free gifts, and so on. Each company must find a unique way to set themselves apart from the competition while building a loyal and long-lasting relationship.
3. Marketing establishes a brand image.
When you use FedEx for shipping, you know what you are getting: fast delivery, flexible shipping options, and better service than other shippers. Are all of these things true? They may be, but their marketing activities established all of these. FedEx will have to live up to these expectations of their brand, but their marketing department set the customer up with this image.
You must use marketing to establish your brand. Customers need to know what to expect from your company based on your brand image. What kind of products and what types of service will you provide the customer? Let your marketing tell the story and establish your brand.
Friday, September 5th, 2008
Wednesday, August 27th, 2008
I have noticed that quite a few companies are reaching out to small businesses. The marketing world knows that they are just implementing a marketing campaign, but they really can help small businesses.
Monday, August 25th, 2008
By Nate Stockard
Everyone’s idea of marketing is different. Each textbook defines it differently, and each marketing professional will include different aspects of marketing. Marketing is a lot of things.
Merriam-Webster defines marketing as:
1 a: the act or process of selling or purchasing in a market b: the process or technique of promoting, selling, and distributing a product or service
2: an aggregate of functions involved in moving goods from producer to consumer
This definition couldn’t be any more general, but that in itself is the point: marketing is anything used to promote, sell, or distribute a product or service. Marketing can be passing out flyers to promote. Marketing can be the way you complete a sell. Marketing can also be who will sell your products. Marketing must be an integrated process that combines a wide variety of activities to promote, sell and distribute your products or services.
Marketing starts with determining a want or need. You must identify a reason for your product or service in order to have something to sell. Once you determine the want or need, you must create or establish the product or service that will satisfy that need or desire. Although this sounds like the beginnings of a business plan, it is also the basis for your entire marketing plan.
There are many steps to marketing once you have established a product or service that satisfies and want or need. You must make decisions about your marketing mix (product, price, place (distribution), and promotion), and you must incorporate your marketing collateral with every step. You also must combine your sales strategies with your marketing strategies to design a successful business model.
Marketing is a lot of things, but ultimately, it is any technique or process of promoting, selling, and distributing your products or services.
Monday, August 4th, 2008
By Nate Stockard
All marketing resources will eventually talk about your marketing mix, but what do they mean exactly? Marketing mix is a term that the marketing world tries to hold as a private term that only the industry knows about, but as a small business owner, you need to understand how to plan and implement your marketing mix.
The marketing mix is defined as the four P’s of marketing: product, price, place, and promotion. These four areas make up the complete outline for product or service marketing. Once you have defined the variables for each P, you have a basis for proper marketing.
Market research will play a major role in each area of your marketing mix. You must understand what you are competing with in regards to products and pricing. Although you may have a new and unique item with an innovative type of distribution, you still must compare your product or service to existing ones.
Here are the four P’s of your marketing mix for small business marketing.
P #1: Product
The product or service or selling must be defined first. What are you selling? How will it be packaged? Determine your product’s features, and then build the benefits from them. At this point, you will make all of the decisions relating to your product or service: style, quality, packaging, warranty, etc.
P#2: Price
Pricing actually plays a vital role in the branding and image of your product. Determining your price can be difficult, especially if you product is in a widely-variable industry. You must determine pricing strategy, retail and wholesale pricing, possible bundling, and any type of discounts.
P#3: Place
Place refers to how you will distribute the product. Will you sell to retail stores, or will you sell directly to customers? Is your product a wholesale item? The decisions made about distribution will affect your marketing mix in terms of how you will warehouse your products, how you will process orders, what types of channels will you use, and how will you cover the market.
P#4: Promotion
Promotion is the area where you will make decisions on how people will learn about your product. What types of sales strategies and promotions will you use? What kind of sales force will you need to sell your product? How will you use public relations and publicity to support your product? There are many aspects of the promotion element of your marketing mix. In fact, the other three P’s will affect your promotion strategy.
Decide on the first three P’s before you tackle Promotion, but ultimately, each P will coordinate with the others. Once you complete your marketing mix decisions, review the entire plan to make sure you have a consistent and precise marketing mix plan in order to properly sell, distribute, and promote your product.
Sunday, August 3rd, 2008
By Nate Stockard
Over the past decade more and more people are getting fired, getting downsized, or getting fed up with their corporate jobs and embark on the journey as a small business owner. Unfortunately, most of the new small business owners fail to consider their marketing plans or strategy. There are many marketing concepts for small business marketing to consider and plan for, but here is our list of Top 10 Marketing Concepts For Small Business Marketing.
Marketing Concept # 1: Consistency
Consistency is the number one marketing concept for small business marketing only because it is left out of marketing concepts for so many businesses. I have worked with a long list of clients, big and small, that are extremely inconsistent in all areas of their marketing. Consistency helps lower the cost of marketing and increase the effectiveness of branding.
Marketing Concept # 2: Planning
Once small business owners decide to be consistent with their marketing, planning is the next major concept to engage. Planning is the most vital part of small business marketing or any level of marketing, for that matter, and so many owners, marketing managers, and even CMOs plan poorly. Put the time into planning your marketing strategy, budget, and other concepts presented here to ensure success.
Marketing Concept # 3: Strategy
Strategy immediately follows planning because your strategy is the foundation for the rest of your marketing activities. In the process of planning, you must develop your strategy: who you will target, how you will target them, and how will you keep them as a customer.
Marketing Concept # 4: Target Market
Target market is also another key concept for small business marketing. Defining exactly who you are targeting allows small business owners to focus on specific customers and reduce marketing waste. A well-defined target market will make every other marketing concept so much easier to implement successfully.
Marketing Concept # 5: Budget
Although it is listed at number 5, budgeting is important throughout the entire process. Creating a marketing budget is usually the hardest and most inaccurate part of small business marketing. Most small businesses owners lack a great deal of experience in marketing, so their budgets usually end up skewed. The most important part of this marketing concept is to actually establish a marketing budget. From there, you can worry about how to distribute your available funds.
Marketing Concept # 6: Marketing Mix
The marketing mix is usually defined as product, pricing, place, and promotion. As a small business owner, you must specifically decide on your products (or services), the appropriate pricing, where and how you will distribute your products, and how will you let everyone know about you and your products.
Marketing Concept # 7: Website
In today’s market, a business of any size must have a website. I hate when I see businesses that have a one page website with out-dated information. Customers, be it businesses or consumers, will search the web over 60% of the time before making any purchasing decisions. This marketing concept contains a slew of additional components, but you must at least develop a small web presence of some kind and keep it updated.
Marketing Concept # 8: Branding
Many small businesses owners also neglect this concept. Small business marketing must focus on this marketing concept just as much as large corporations do. Branding consists of the pictures, logo, design scheme, layout, make up, and image of your products and even your company. Branding is how your customers perceive (please place a lot of emphasis on that word!) your products and company. Make sure to pay special attention to what kind of brand you are building through each step of your planning and implementation.
Marketing Concept # 9: Promotion and Advertising
Promotion and advertising is a very complex marketing concept, but must be considered for any type of business and its products and services. Once you engage the previous 8 marketing concepts, you must finally let your target market know about you and your products. Proper promotion and advertising will result in effective brand recognition, and, ultimately, increased sales.
Marketing Concept # 10: Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
The concept of customer relationship management has become a huge industry in the marketing world. There are many types of software and services offered to help businesses of any size handle their customer relationship management. Since there is so much available, usually for a large sum of money, small business owners usually look at this concept as something they are not big enough for or have enough money to implement. Don’t be fooled by the massive industry that has evolved from this concept. Maintaining proper customer relationship management is essential to creating loyal and consistent customers.
This list of marketing concepts should be examined, researched, planned, and implemented, especially by small businesses, in order to be successful. Also, your marketing doesn’t stop here. Each business is unique and will have additional components that must be considered, but this list will jump-start any marketing plan.
