Part 8 of Build Your Marketing Plan Series
July is Build Your Marketing Plan month on The Marketing Spot blog. This is the final installment of my eight-part series on how to build an exceptional small business marketing plan. Each “lesson” of the series contains a background article, down loadable worksheets and a slidecast. This information is part of my full-day workshop, DIY Marketing for Small Businesses.
(See Part 1: The Brand Promise)
(See Part 2: Your Signature)
(See Part 3: The Customer Experience Theme)
(See Part 4: The Customer Experience Map)
(See Part 5: Conversation Starters)
(See Part 6: The Conversation Playbook)
(See Part 7: Courting Customers)
*Note: The next live, DIY Marketing workshop is September 24 at the Houston Small Business Development Center.
“Repeated exposure to information in specifically timed intervals provides the most powerful way to fix memory in the brain.”
-John Medina, Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home and School
Businesses love the dream of the big splash. Hey, it’s fun to think your message will go viral. Announce your brand and vroom, it spreads like wildfire! But those examples are rare, and the viral approach is not realistic for most local, small businesses. People simply won’t remember you if they don’t hear about you often enough.
Really, if you want to make an impression on potential customers it just takes time, repetition, and smart use of your marketing budget.
The Internet & Small Business
The internet is the great equalizer for a small business. You can look like a big company and make your message available to world-wide multitudes with a simple website. But as a whole, the internet is not a great promotional vehicle to broadcast your message on a local level. For businesses such as banks or beauty salons, you need a way communicate your brand promise to people who are not actively looking for you. And that’s why traditional media is still important. [Traditional Media: television, cable, radio, billboards, newspaper, magazines, direct mail]
You’re reading this on the web, and so you’ve probably heard that traditional media is dead. Well, it’s not, but you do have to know how to use local meda the right way. That includes which medium to choose in order to accomplish your marketing mission. Here, we want to select the best medium to promote your courtship message.
With this installment of Build Your Marketing Plan, you will complete your marketing plan and receive a new marketing tool. The Media Spotter Matrix helps you select the correct media on which to promote your marketing message. To learn how to use traditional media effectively, download the two PDF worksheets below and print them off. You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Then watch the slidecast below for details on how to use tools.
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After you download the worksheets, watch the slidecast below and make sure your audio is turned up. If you cannot see the slidecast in your reader, click here.
If you have questions or comments, click the comment link below.
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