Your Natural Marketing Style

Your Natural Marketing Style
Let me ask you a question...did you become a small business
owner to become a marketing expert? I know - dumb
question. But I ask it for a very good reason. You know I
didn't get into business for myself to become an expert
marketer either. But I quickly realized that this was what
it was going to take in order for me to have any chance of
falling into the small percentage of businesses that
survive that often-quoted five-year mark.

I mean the statistics are staggering! Depending on who you
talk to less than 10 % of small businesses can survive
staying in business for 5 years. What accounts for this?
I believe one of the biggest things is lack of marketing
success.

So I started my journey to becoming a master marketer by
reading lots of books, talking to people and attending
numerous seminars. Pretty soon I had a good overview of
marketing techniques for service professionals. But while
the marketing theory was good, it left me wondering how I
could make the theory work well for me and my unique
personality.

And then one day it dawned on me - I needed to discover
what I soon started calling my Natural Marketing
Style™. I had been dabbling in lot of different
marketing activities and I enjoyed some more than others.
I started to look for patterns and I soon figured out what
my Natural Marketing Style™ looked like.

What is your Natural Marketing Style™? You have one.
We all do. Some of us are lucky enough to have more than
one. To determine yours, sit down for a moment and look
back on all of the different marketing activities you've
tried in the past. Write down as many as you can.

Next, create a spreadsheet with 5 columns across the top.
You'll want to look at your comprehensive list and break
them down into one of these five categories... "loved it,"
"liked it," "neutral," "sort of disliked it" and "really
never want to do again."

After you have your list organized into columns, take a
look and see if any patterns start to emerge. What do the
marketing activities in the "love" and "like" columns have
in common?

Notice that you loved being a guest writer for someone
else's newsletter? Maybe your Natural Marketing
Style™ is that of a writer! If so, create a
marketing plan with writing as your primary strategy.

You'll have a lot more fun and a lot more success if you
create your marketing strategy based on your own Natural
Marketing Style™. So get started right away - you'll
be glad you did!

----------------------------------------------------
Kelly L. LeFevre, MSM, and Molly A. Luffy, MBA, authors of
the upcoming book Unleash Your Marketing Karma: How to
Build Your Business by Giving It Away, are Co-Founders of
the Business Building Roundtable. This free virtual
community helps service-based solo/micropreneurs create
powerful strategies and implement innovative techniques to
achieve their ultimate success and satisfaction. To learn
more visit http://www.BusinessBuildingRoundtable.com