“You’re in business to serve a customer need,” says Derek Hansen, founder of American Capital Access. “If you’re not sensitive to customers, don’t know who your customers are, how to reach them, and, most of all, what will convince them to buy your product or service, get help.”

Effective marketing, planning, and promotion begins with current information about the marketplace. Visit your local library, talk to customers, study the advertising of other businesses in your community, and consult with any relevant industry associations. This interactive tool will help you assess your marketing strengths and weaknesses. Once you have all the necessary information, write down your plan:

Define your business:

·      Your product or service

·      Your geographic marketing area - neighborhood, regional, or national

·      Your competition

·      How you differ from the competition - what makes you special

·      Your price

·      The competition’s promotion methods

·      Your promotion methods

·      Your distribution methods or business location

Define your customers:

·      Your current customer base - age, sex, income, and neighborhood

·      How your customers learn about your product or service - advertising, direct mail, word of mouth, Yellow Pages

·      Patterns or habits your customers and potential customers share - where they shop, what they read, watch, and listen to

·      Qualities your customers value most about your product or service - selection, convenience, service, reliability, availability, and affordability

·      Qualities your customers like least about your product or service - can they be adjusted to serve your customers better?; prospective customers whom you aren’t currently reaching

Define your plan and budget:

·      Previous marketing methods you have used to communicate to your customers

·      Methods that have been most effective

·      Cost compared to sales

·      Cost per customer

·      Possible future marketing methods to attract new customers

·      Percentage of profits you can allocate to your marketing campaign

·      Marketing tools you can implement within your budget - newspaper, magazine, Yellow Pages, radio or television advertising, direct mail, telemarketing, and public relations activities such as community involvement, sponsorship, or press releases

·      Methods of testing your marketing ideas

·      Methods for measuring results of your marketing campaign

·      The marketing tool you can implement immediately

·      “3-7% of Sales” [sba/trng: Ad your Busi/BofA]

The final component in your marketing plan should be your overall promotional objectives: to communicate your message, create an awareness of your product or service, motivate customers to buy and increase sales, or other specific targets. Objectives make it easier to design an effective campaign and help you keep that campaign on the right track. Once you have defined your objectives, it is easier to choose the method that will be most effective.

For more detailed information, review the following guide: “Marketing Your Business for Success.”

new: http://www.sba.gov/smallbusinessplanner/manage/marketandprice/SERV_MARKETINGPLANS.html

origi [http://www.business.gov/phases/managing/market_price/marketing_plans.html]

15 Foolproof Ideas for Promoting Your Company Every successful company uses some sort of promotion to influence certain audiences - usually customers or prospects - by informing or persuading them. Reasons for promoting a business include: increasing visibility, adding credibility to you or your company, enhancing or improving your image, and bringing in new business. The following cost-effective, easy-to-execute ideas have the power to increase sales in a way conventional advertising cannot. The key is to find the methods that are appropriate for your business, marketplace, and professional style

Newsletters. Another good way to promote, particularly for brokers, banks, and business consultants, is through newsletters. They demonstrate how much you know about your field and do it in a low-key, informative way. They help keep your company high in the consciousness of your prospects.

Premiums. Also called an advertising specialty, a premium is a gift of some kind that reminds your customer of you and your service. There are thousands from which to choose: key chains, coffee mugs, refrigerator magnets, baseball caps, paperweights - just about anything that can be engraved, imprinted, silk-screened, or embroidered with your company name and phone number. Articles. Another possibility is to write an article for a trade journal, reprint it, and mail it off to your friends, customers, and prospects. This positions you as an expert, and is a particularly good way to promote a consulting business.

Donations. Donating your product or service to a charitable cause often results in positive exposure to community leaders, charity board members, PTAs, and civic groups. While consumer products are desired most, many organizations also look for donations of professional service time. If you have a restaurant or a large meeting facility, consider hosting an event for a charitable organization. This works best if volunteers for that charity are potential customers.

Free Services. If you can’t afford to give away products, offering your services as a way of generating new business can also pay off. For example, if you own a retail clothing business, send out a flyer offering customers a free fashion consultation to draw them into the store.

Special Benefits, Rates, or Notices. Smart organizations go out of their way to make customers feel important and appreciated. Frequent flyer clubs are the most pervasive example of loyalty-building benefits for customers only; this method has been adapted by many kinds of businesses. Most software companies sell program updates to customers at discounted prices, and advance notices about sales, changes, or opportunities can help cement customer ties.

Say Thanks. One of the best ways to let customers know you value their business and encourage their continued patronage is also one of the easiest. It boils down to saying thank you in letters, mailers, surveys, statement stuffers, receipts, invoices, and in person.

Six Essentials of a Successful Ad Program

If you are new to advertising or if you’re using media or publications you haven’t tried before, it’s important to assign your ads to outside specialists rather than try to create them yourself. These specialists may be the creative group at an advertising agency, a freelance writer and designer, or the ad department of the newspaper, magazine, TV channel, or radio station where you plan to advertise. Such people are experienced in translating information about a product or service, target market, U.S.P., and goals into advertising that suits each medium and conveys an effective image and sales message. Moreover, it’s extremely helpful to work with and learn from specialists for several years before you consider doing advertising in-house.

Whether you work with specialists or create advertising on your own, here are six guidelines to follow in developing an ad program:

1.      Do your homework - start compiling your own ad file. Collect ads you like as well as competitors’ ads to give you ideas. Read books on advertising; include anthologies of the best ads of the year and how-to’s by advertising greats.

2.      “Sell the sizzle, not the steak.” The old rule about selling products based on the benefits and excitement they provide has proved true time and time again, so focus on your U.S.P. and on those intangibles that motivate human behavior and generate sales. This rule does not apply to Yellow Pages ads, which do sell steak, but it remains the essence of all other advertising you do.

3.      Stick to your own image and personality; stay with the basics of who you are. Make sure that the personality and image projected in your advertising ring true.

4.      Work as a team with your ad rep or ad agency. The best advertising results from a synergy of your expertise in your business and your ad specialists’ expertise in advertising. Carefully explain your product, market, and goals, and let the ad people go from there to develop their ideas. Advertising is a give-and-take process, and both sides need to communicate and work together without dictating until the outcome feels right.

5.      Give each advertising medium you choose a fair test. Advertising rarely brings sales overnight. Run your ad at least five times - or at least two months in weekly publications - to test the market properly. Often, consumers need to get used to seeing your ad before they’ll act on it. Results take time. 6.      Don’t overlook current customers. Nobody sells you better than a satisfied customer, so in your efforts to gain sales from new prospects, remember that you can build sales equally well through customer referrals and repeat purchases of existing clientele. Maintain a mailing list and, at your earliest opportunity, start producing sale notices, newsletters, catalogs, or other goodwill and sales-generating materials for current customers. Some of these items lend themselves to a direct mail campaign targeted at new prospects as well.

What’s In an Ad?

Print ads generally have four written parts - headline, support copy, call to action, and company name - plus a visual. Visuals are usually more important than copies; they’re more effective in attracting readers’ attention and can instantly present your product or service in a dramatic and motivating way. Unless you’re commissioning your own original artwork or photography, the visuals you’ll use will probably be either drawings and photographs from your suppliers or non-copyrighted artwork (clip art) found in clip art books and scrap art computer programs. Choose the strongest visual among them - the one that best draws the eye and explains what you’re selling - and move on to copies. The most prominent piece of copy, your headline, must not only work with your visual, amplifying its meaning, but also attract attention with a word, phrase, or sentence announcing a benefit that appeals to your target market. One expert wrote that a headline is that final, mind-changing, sales-clinching comment you’d make when leaving the office of a prospect who, until then, had responded with nothing but negatives. Others point to the enduring effectiveness of the standard headlines “Sale,” “Free,” and “Buy now and save.” Collect ideas that are right for you from your salespeople, the ads in your file, and advertising books. Remember, it is not so much the words, but the ideas they express that sell; determine your message, then find words to convey it.

Below the headline, support copy explains the headline premise and adds secondary benefits and any assurance readers might need to dispel suspicions raised by the headline, such as the assurance of “same great quality” when you’re offering a “new low price.” Following this copy, a sign-off is a call to action urging the reader to respond (“Call for an appointment today,” or “Remember, sale ends March 21″).

Your company name, traditionally at the bottom of the ad, should include your address and phone number. Make your phone number larger to help stimulate response by phone. Add a cross street to your address (e.g., “5730 Sheridan, at La Monte”) if you’re a new business or if, for other reasons, people might have difficulty finding you.

The next step is to combine all these visual and copy elements into an eye-catching, easy-to-read ad formatted to the dimensions stipulated by the publication. It’s best to study the ads in that publication in advance and consider what your ad might look like in order to stand out on the page. Experiment with different layout ideas rendered in thumbnail sketches, then fine-tune your ad to fit the layout you prefer. Obviously, it’s highly advisable, if not imperative, that when you’re doing ads in-house, the person composing your ad has design experience. Not only is skill required to make an ad look right, but the quality of your ad must compete favorably with others appearing in the publication.

It’s also a good idea to prepare your ad well ahead of the deadline. This way, you can put it aside for a few days and then review it with a fresh perspective while there’s still time to make revisions.

As a final check, lay your ad on a page of the publication where it will appear; make sure it stands out from the articles and other ads on the page.

There’s a famous saying that goes like this, “If the circus is coming to town and you paint a sign saying ‘Circus Coming to the Fairground Saturday,’ that’s advertising. If you put the sign on the back of an elephant and walk him into town, that’s promotion. If the elephant walks through the mayor’s flowerbed, that’s publicity. If you can get the mayor to laugh about it, that’s public relations. And if you planned the elephant’s walk, that’s marketing.”

http://www.va-interactive.com/inbusiness/editorial/sales/articles/creatingbuzz.html

Cheat Sheet:  Marketing 101:  The Fundamentals Let.s start with the marketing plan.

The marketing plan identifies the market and your overarching positioning strategy. The length of your final marketing plan is up to you and depends on your organizational culture and the audience that will read and use the plan. At first, though, try to state it in just one paragraph. According to Jay Conrad Levinson, author of Guerilla Marketing, a simple plan can be created in just seven sentences.

A simple marketing plan.

Sentence one explains the purpose of the strategy.

Sentence two explains how you.ll achieve this purpose. It describes your competitive advantage and benefits.

Sentence three describes your target market.or markets.

Sentence four, the longest, outlines the marketing weapons you.ll employ.

Sentence five describes your niche.your positioning.

Sentence six reveals the identity of your business.

Sentence seven states your budget, which should be expressed as a percentage of projected gross revenues.

The creative plan.

Almost any marketing person worth his or her salt will tell you that marketing is not creative unless it sells.

Advertising legend Leo Burnett used to remind his staff that a person can be creative by coming downstairs with his or her socks in their mouth.but what.s the point? There must be a reason for your creativity, and your creativity should never detract from your message.

Developing the creative plan.

A creative strategy is similar to a marketing plan but is limited to the marketing materials only.and directed solely at their content.

A creative plan can be written in as little as three sentences which detail:

o The purpose of the creative message

o How the purpose will be achieved

o The mood, tone, or personality of the advertising

Your marketing calendar.

Once you.ve selected the marketing media and weapons that can propel you to your goal, be sure you use them in an orderly, logical manner. This can best be accomplished by the third and final section of your marketing plan: the marketing calendar. A marketing calendar indicates whether or not you can use these methods properly because it forces you to come to terms with the costs and realities of the media you select. SmallBizU

Target Market Description

Critical to your success in marketing any product is aiming all your marketing efforts at a target market. Planning your marketing strategy without knowing to whom you’re trying to appeal is like planning a party without knowing anything about the people attending.

·         Describe the size of your target market. Remember, a market is people with something in common, not a place or a thing. Be specific and include statistics about the size of your target market. Include information on whether the size of your target marketing is growing, shrinking, or staying the same. If the size of your target market is changing, explain why.

·         Describe your target market in the following terms:

o        Characteristics they share such as age, income level, sex, race, number of children, marital status, where they live, etc.

o        Habits or hobbies they exhibit. For example, your target audience may tend to be workaholics, which makes them good candidates for meals delivered to their homes or offices.

o        Wants and needs they have and how your product fulfills them. For example, most single, working mothers often need affordable, quality daycare for children.

·         Describe your market’s buying habits For example, how do they spend their disposable income? When do they buy? How much? How often?

Note: You may have more than one target market. Identify your primary market — the customers who buy your products or services most often. Then, include secondary groups if you feel they will provide significant business. For each group, you must identify their characteristics, needs, etc. because you will most likely change your marketing strategy accordingly. http://www.sba.gov/starting_business/marketing/currentsituation.html

SBA/Advertising your Business/BoA V. Yellow Pages

This medium can be one of the most effective advertising sources for some businesses, like emergency drain cleaning and appliance repair services.

Pros: Reaches consumers at an excellent time – when they are ready to shop or need information about products they are about to purchase.

Cons: Expensive. You are quoted monthly rates by sales personnel, but your contract will be for a year.

Recommendations: Everyone likes to shop in their own backyard, so you should prominently display your location in your listing. Use short, crisp wording that issues a call to action (“Large stock of widgets. Huge inventory. Call for fast, friendly help.”). Don’t forget, the primary objective is to sell the call. The objective of the call is to have the customer come in or buy your service.

XI. Newspapers

One of the more immediate advertising venues. Lead time for a newspaper ad is just a day or two, so testing is easy and fast.

Pros: Selectivity in areas served: your hometown or across the country. Different sections draw different readership, so you can target your ad to your market. Newspapers work for a large variety of offers: sales, products, shops, retailers, service organizations. Wide selection (in my neighborhood alone there are 30 newspapers to choose from).

Cons: Too many papers dilute the market. Bigger ads can overshadow your small ad. Your ad can get lost in the clutter in larger papers. Big run papers can be expensive for small advertisers (large advertisers get huge discounts for running volume lineage). Your ad may be grouped with competitors.

Recommendations: Testing is the way to go. Some of my clients have had good success with the TV Listings section, some with the Business section. Negotiate good placement in the paper and good placement on the page. Sundays are not as good as weekdays for smaller ads because they can get lost. Wednesday is coupon day, which has high female readership. Don’t forget local weeklies and classifieds. Local papers are much cheaper than larger metropolitan papers with better demographics for single retail stores. Don’t forget to send press releases.

XII. Alternative Media Options

In addition to the traditional advertising media, there are many new alternatives popping up everyday that you should be aware of. Here is a sampling:

·      School newspapers and yearbooks

·      Mobile advertising (trucks, taxis, buses)

·      Telephone kiosks

·      In-store displays

·      Supermarket entrance advertising (community bulletin boards)

·      Supermarket register tape programs

·      Event marketing

·      Package inserts programs from almost every type of merchandiser and direct mailer

·      Professional and local theater program books

·      Motor racing events programs

·      Town festival programs

·      ATM messages

Whatever you do, don’t forget to track response. When working with any print media, always send press releases and negotiate price and position. http://www.bankofamerica.com/smallbusiness/resourcecenter/index.cfm?