When it comes to small business marketing, it seems that everybody is an expert. Everyone from long-time marketing professionals, to anyone who knows about small businesses, to new small business owners has marketing advice to offer. Driven by the belief that their approach is the best one, they are honestly trying to be helpful. The unfortunate reality is that no single marketing approach works for everyone. The best marketing approach for you is the one that works best for you and your business.
Regardless of the approach that you ultimately develop, it must meet two basic criteria: It must be planned, and it must be capable of being maintained continuously over the long run. Planning your marketing is an extension of planning your business. It details specifically what resources you have and how these resources can be used to meet customers’ needs and wants. Planning also outlines how you can connect your goods and services with customers’ requirements.
Marketing is not a sporadic activity, something that you do only when you need new business. It is something that you continue to do from startup to windup. As a result, your marketing plan must be kept current and up to date.
Marketing in Your Business
Critical as it is, marketing is not something that many small business owners do on a continuous or ongoing basis. After the initial burst of promotional activity that usually accompanies the launch of a new business, marketing becomes more reactive than proactive. As owners become more involved with serving their customers and otherwise engaged in running their business, they tend to forget the role that marketing plays in protecting their existing client base and in generating new business. For many people, marketing becomes something to be done when they have time or a reaction to a slowdown in their business activities.
Realistically, we regularly do the things we enjoy doing and procrastinate when it comes to doing the things that we do not enjoy. For example, I love writing and enjoy chatting in person with interesting people. On the other hand, I do not like long telephone conversations and really don’t like small talk. Obviously, given the opportunity, I would willingly choose writing or an in-person conversation over a telephone chat of any kind.
When applied to marketing, this procrastination really means that unless you enjoy a specific marketing activity, you are likely to find something more enjoyable to do.
People who have been most successful in their businesses know that the most effective marketing activities are those they have developed for themselves rather than those that try to duplicate what other businesses are dong.
Building Block
Small businesses are unique. Each one reflects the individual personality of its owner. This means that as the owner of a small business, you cus-tomize your systems and procedures to reflect your own skills and strengths. Among the things that you customize is your approach to marketing. Entrepreneur Beware
Watch out for self-appointed mar-keting authorities and experts. These people advocate specific marketing practices and routines as the best approaches for small business. In reality, the practices usually reflect the experts’ own practices and, as such, they might or might not work for you. Be especially wary of those authorities and experts whose only business is selling their marketing know-how. Do not try to adopt their practices without customizing them to meet your own personality and style.
Planning Your Marketing
For new businesses, your marketing plan will profile your ideal customers—those customers to whom you would like to sell your goods or services. For existing businesses, your plan identifies your current customers. The plan will also identify what you do, or will do, for your customers, and outlines how you will go about converting potential customers into actual buyers of your product or service.
Once your marketing plan is finished, you can either add it to your business plan in its entirety, or you can simply add a summary of it. In combination with your business plan, your marketing plan will provide you with acomprehensible and useful road map for running your business over the coming year.
Hot Tip
The best marketing activities are thoroughly planned, organized, and implemented. They are designed to achieve the goals set out on your business plan.
The Steps to Successful Marketing
Few marketing activities are likely to generate significant new business in the short term. Effective marketing involves the use of many strategies over a period of time. Because of this, marketing planning is essential. Marketing planning involves the three steps of identifying a need, identifying the customer, and outlining your strategy.
Identify a Need
This task involves asking yourself the following questions.
- What is the need that I can meet?
- For whom will this need be met?
- Why must this need be met?
- What benefits will arise as a result of this need being met?
- How can I meet this need?
- When must this need be met?
- What will happen in my business as a result of my meeting this need?
Identify the Customer
This second step involves assessing the attractiveness of a given market and estimating its overall size, growth, and profitability.
The next chapter will help you identify who your customers are and what you can do for them. When you determined this information, include a summary in your marketing plan.
Outline Your Strategy
How will you introduce and promote your services to your market? This third step defines the broad principles by which you expect to achieve your marketing objectives. It includes basic decisions about how much time and money will be dedicated to the overall marketing effort and how this time and money will be used.
Putting It All Together: Your Marketing Plan
Your plan will serve as a checklist to follow in marketing your services. It should be fairly general and flexible so that you can respond to new opportunities. Plans that are too rigid tend to be more of a handicap than a useful tool: They interfere with effective marketing and become obstacles to your success.
The table on the next page outlines the contents of a marketing plan. The first three items—assessment of current marketing situation, opportunity analysis, and objectives— are based on the information that you gathered in Chapter 7 and expanded in the first and second planning steps above. The fourth item— marketing strategy—is based on the strategy you developed in the third step above. The next item—action programs—details how you propose to implement this strategy, while the last item outlines how you are going to control the process that you have created.
Hot Tip
Your marketing plan is a document that you prepare for your own use. It is not intended to be used outside your business. This means that you should use as much or as little detail as is appropriate for you. Important as the plan is, do not allow yourself to spend too much time preparing it. The purpose of the plan is to help you in running your business; but it should not be your main busi-ness activity.
Contents of a Marketing Plan
| Item | Purpose | ||
| Assessment of current | Presents background data on the market, the product or | ||
| marketing situation | service to be provided, and the competition expected. | ||
| Opportunity analysis | Summarizes the main opportunities/threats, strengths/ | ||
| weaknesses, and issues facing the marketing effort. | |||
| Objectives | Defines the sales-volume goals of the plan. | ||
| Marketing strategy | Presents the broad marketing approach that will be used to | ||
| pursue the plan’s objectives. | |||
| Action programs | Answers the questions, What will be done? When will it be | ||
| done? How much will it cost? | |||
| Controls | Specifies how the plan will be monitored. | ||
Below is an example of a marketing plan, based on the Shop Talk video production business of Lorne Ralph.
Sample Marketing Plan
Assessment of Current Marketing Situation
The business is located in an area with a population of approximately 50 000 peo-ple, a reasonable number of whom are baby boomers with children at the appropri-ate age for marrying and starting families.Media reports suggest that baby boomers like the idea of professionally produced videos for weddings and other rites of passage; these people are probably also will-ing to pay for quality video work.
There are very few other qualified and experienced video producers; most videos are produced by untrained videographers who run part-time businesses.
The main competition will be from part-time videographers who offer lower prices.
Opportunity Analysis
Opportunity : I can be among the first full-time videographers in the area; this can lead to a high profile and an image of being innovative.
Threat: The market may not readily accept innovative approaches, and may instead prefer traditional portraits.
Strength: I was born and educated in the area and my family has lived here for many generations; this means that a large number of people will know me and my family.
Weakness: My family is very conservative; local people may have trouble seeing me as being innovative. Objectives
To obtain a minimum of fifty assignments for weddings, etc.
To generate at least $50 000 from the production and sale of videotapes.
Marketing Strategy
To address the threats and weaknesses, I will focus my marketing activities on pro-moting the benefits of a video record of a wedding over the traditional portrait photography.
To keep marketing costs low, I will network with wedding planners, florists, and clergy to increase my profile.
Action Programs
Mailing to all wedding planners, florists, and clergy will be done quarterly. Estimated cost: $500/mailing.
Prepare a sample video with selections of elegant and humorous components of weddings. Estimated cost (including samples to give away): $1000.
Participation as exhibitor in the Spring Home Show. Estimated cost: $2000.
Controls
Track referrals from wedding planners, florists, and clergy. Collect feedback on sample video.
Collect and follow up on leads obtained at the Home Show.
Keep It Current
For your marketing plan to continue to be useful, it is important to update it regularly. Although you can update it annually, it is better to review and revise it every six months or so. This will allow you to amend the plan to reflect any changes or new developments in the current marketing situation. The departure of an existing competitor will result in new opportunities for you, while the entry of a new competitor into your market will certainly pose new threats that were not considered in your original plan.
In upgrading your plan, you can develop new action programs to replace those that you have successfully completed. You can also plan to do more of what you do well and work to improve the things that you do not do very well.
Hot Tip
Your marketing planning is actually an ongoing process that continues to keep your activities focused on achieving the results that you want.
The Dos and Don’ts of Marketing Planning
Do
Personalize your plan, both in content and style. The content should reflect you and your business; the style should be easy to prepare and follow.
Use your plan as a checklist for your marketing activities. It should serve as a reminder of what you hope to achieve.
Make your plan flexible. This will allow you to respond appropriately to new opportunities and threats as they arise.
Seek the input of your network contacts. These people often see things that you don’t and can often make useful comments and suggestions.
Keep an open mind about your marketing activities. Just because you have decided to do some specific thing, it does not necessarily mean that it is the right thing to do. Conversely, just because you have decided not to do something, it does not mean that it is not useful.
Don’t
Overanalyze. Remember that the plan is a tool intended to help you with your mar-keting. Analyzing marketing considerations should not be one of you primary busi-ness activities.
Overwrite your plan. You are not preparing material for publication. You are prepar-ing guidelines for your own use.
Copy others’ plans. For your plan to be useful, it must reflect you and your busi-ness, not represent a model of what an ideal plan should look like.
Be too bound by your plan. It should help guide you to where you would like to be. If it’s not producing the results you want, make some changes.
Overlook the importance of your plan. Even if marketing comes easy to you, your plan will help keep you focused and on track.
The Least You Need to Know
Your marketing should reflect you and your business, not someone else’s mar-keting activities.
The best marketing plan is an extension of your business plan.
Your marketing plan will serve as a blueprint for your marketing activities. Your market is constantly changing; so should your marketing plan.
