The Sweet Spot of Small Business Marketing

You’re stuck.

You’re a (insert your specialty here) business owner trying to be a marketing director. You know what you’re doing, but people don’t seem to know what you’re doing. To all your admiring friends around you, you are the expert plumber/accountant/locksmith. But your dream of the ultimately successful business has not materialized the way you thought it would or should. You haven’t found your Sweet Spot.

Four Easy Steps
Get a plan to market your business.

“Oh sure,” you say. It’s easy for you to say it’s easy. But I’m running my business everyday. Yes, your are, the key is to get a plan and then systematically work it, one step at a time. You don’t have to spend four hours a day on marketing, but spend a couple of hours a week working your plan and you will see the results over time.

I have found that there are four easy steps to putting together an actionable small business marketing plan. Read on…

BrandingSpot
Brand your business.

“Oh, brilliant,” you are now saying. “That’s telling me something I needed to know.” Well, just hold on there. Believe it or not, you can brand your business very simply and not like the big national conglomerates do. Here’s what you need: A brand promise, and a signature.

A brand promise is what you promise to deliver to your customers beyond the product or service you happen to sell. A signature is what the big corporate types call your slogan or your tagline.

ExperienceSpot
“Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.” If mousetraps aren’t your thing, then build a better customer experience and your customers will remain loyal to you…and they’ll tell their friends. A great customer experience is also the first step to word-of-mouth marketing, but more on that a little further down the page.

Build an experience that customers have to talk about…positively. To accomplish that, draw a customer experience map and then go about designing magic moments on that map.

ConversationSpot
Word-of-mouth, Social Media, PR

It’s really a shame. Most businesses will tell you that word of mouth (WOM) is their most effective form of marketing, yet they have absolutely no plan to encourage this incredible weapon. Did you know WOM can be enhanced and accelerated? As mentioned earlier the customer experience is the start of good WOM, but it’s not the end. What you want is to get customers involved with your brand so that they will be more likely to recommend it. Even if you’re an electrician or roofer? Most definitely! Give your customers the opportunity to talk about you.

The goal is to shorten the amount of time it takes new customers to make a decision to do business with you.

PromotionSpot

Have you asked your potential customers to go out on a date with you yet? Then why would you ask them to go all the way with you? Your pick up lines need some serious work.

Advertising is courtship. Think of your advertising as a series of dates where you let the customer get to know you. Why should they kiss you? (That’s spending money with you). Use your advertising where you and the new customer become increasingly acquainted. Don’t use advertising like it’s cocaine, sniffing some and then getting an immediate high.

Get a Plan
The key is getting a plan. A small business marketing plan following the outline above is fairly easy to implement, once you put all the pieces together. Then you can methodically implement your plan step-by-step during the normal course of your work week.

Caution: Shameless Self-Promotion Ahead
**Note: This event is now over.

So how do you get a plan? If you are in the Central Texas area, the Central Texas Business Resource Center will be hosting my next live event on August 15th: “DIY: Do it Your Self Marketing for Small Businesses”

In a little more than four hours we will help you build your small business marketing plan and get you on the path to effectively marketing you business.

As a special bonus, one of the brightest minds in marketing, John Moore of Brand Autopsy Marketing Practice, and author of Tribal Knowledge: Business Wisdom Brewed from the Grounds of Starbucks Corporate Culture will deliver the lunchtime presentation: The Bigness of Smallness: Get bigger by acting smaller.

Related Posts:
The Marketing Circle of Life
The Customer Experience Map
Breadth vs. Depth – Brand Identity

Of course, you can always just keep coming back here for more small business advice, or visit my website for more small business marketing ideas.