Your
small business strategy lies squarely on the bedrock of your marketing
system; and if you don’t have a marketing system and you’re not working
on developing one, then you have no small business strategy. Full stop.
If you only ever listen to one thing I give you, then let this omne thing be it.
If
succeeding in business is important to you, then there is no
alternative but to take small business marketing very seriously indeed,
and to educate yourself to become excellent at it. Frankly, the degree
of marketing competence I see displayed by most small business owners is
embarrassing.
The furthest most of them go is to have some fuzzy
notion about the need for more business, and then to leave the rest to
chance, hoping, wishing and even praying for punters to walk through the
door or hit their website and buy something from them. But hope is a
lousy strategy for success.
Yet the inescapable and
unquestionable truth is marketing is the No. 1 activity every business
should be focused on, because it’s the only thing that brings in
customers and clients. And business means sales; sales means profits (if
you’re doing things the right way). And profits keep the lights burning
and food in your belly.
If you want to enjoy the benefits of a
successful marketing system, you need to accept most of what you hear,
believe, and probably think you know about marketing and small business
strategy is incorrect. The business world is dominated by marketing
myths, and they serve no one but a few phonies.
Small business strategy tip # 1: Marketing is a money maker
Most
small businesses work with a marketing budget. That’s mistake No. 1,
and a very dangerous small business strategy. Yes, you read that
correctly: I am saying you should be willing (and even eager) to commit
an unlimited sum of money in your marketing.
Here’s why:
marketing is expected to make money. If it doesn’t, you shouldn’t be
doing it. So, if it makes money, then from that it follows for every
pound you put in, you get more than a pound back, right?
That’s your return on investment. Just like the bank paying you a premium
Small business strategy tip # 2: see your marketing system as a money machine!
OK,
now let’s pretend you have this superb marketing system and you know
from experience there’s a 90 % probability every time you run it you’re
going to make a handsome profit. A nice place to be, right?
Right. (it’s eminently feasible for your business, too).
Given
the above … if for every groat you pump into your marketing system,
it spits out a groat and a half, or two groats or ten every time you
push the “go” button, then would it be the action of a rational person
to limit the number of times you press that button just because of some
daft “budget”?
Nope. If you had any sense at all you ‘d keep
pressing that button like a rat with a wire in its brain pumping in the
shots of “happy juice”
This
is precisely what takes place when you have a suitable small business
strategy and a tried, tested, and proven marketing system.
This is one of those “too good to be true” things that basically IS true. Deal with it.
Small business strategy tip # 3: Look before you jump in
There
is one caveat: never invest more than you can bear to lose. In certain
cases — it happens — external events work together to annihilate your
campaign with no forewarning. That’s why you limit your direct exposure
per run of your campaign.
The smart thing to do is determine your
evil “budget” as a portion of profits, so the more you bring in, the
more money you can plough back into your marketing.
More than
once small business owners have said to me they can’t do any more
marketing this year since they don’t have the budget for it, even though
their marketing is making them a profit. Some years ago, right at the
beginning of the 2007 recession, I heard a real estate agent say she was
stopping all of her advertising, even though it was the only thing
bringing in business. Now THAT is insane..
Madness – a small business strategy destined to failure.
Small business strategy idea # 4: How to make marketing pay
Just how do you know when your marketing is working?
When it’s making money.
How do you know that?
By ruthlessly and fanatically recording and evaluating everything you do.
Thus
lies the problem for a lot of small business marketing: they track and
test absolutely nothing. Instead, they model the “big boys” and churn
out useless “image” and “brand” marketing which can not be assessed in
terms of results. And small business owners can’t bear the luxury of
ineffective marketing.
So the “secret” here is to ensure your
small business strategy is designed in a way to let you track every sale
to the marketing activity that brought it in. Right down to every
email, postcard and sales call. You can never ever have too much
information about this, since it’s the difference that’ll make you
wealthy.
