During my marketing work with small and large businesses,
and with my own business, I've seen the many ways that we
can trip ourselves up and sabotage our efforts.
Below are 4 surefire ways to fail:
1. Do not have any written goals
If you don't know where you want to go, then how do you
know when you've got there?
If you haven't figured out what your marketing and sales
goals are, and the overall goals of your business, then
it's pretty hard to market with any success. You can't
plan properly, allocate resources or track the success (or
lack of) of any activities.
It's not enough to express these goals verbally - you need
to sit down and write out your objectives for each of your
marketing strategies. It's a well documented fact that
people who put their goals down on paper achieve a higher
rate of attaining these objectives.
Without an idea of where you're going, then you're bound to
get absolutely nowhere.
2. Have inconsistent marketing
By being inconsistent, many business owners ensure that
they don't do anything long enough to make any sort of
impact on business and sales.
People need to have time to get to know, like and trust you
and this requires consistent, long-term marketing
strategies. You can't expect to send one piece of direct
mail or put out your newsletter sporadically and build a
marketing relationship with prospects and customers.
The best way to build consistency into your marketing is to
focus on a couple marketing strategies only and get them
set up and operating smoothly and on auto-pilot as much as
possible. Then, once you see results with that, you can
introduce a couple more tactics and so on.
If you do not show consistency in your marketing, then your
prospects and clients won't show any consistency back in
terms of first-time and return sales.
3. Try to appeal to everyone and their dog
I'm sure you've heard the saying, "Try to please everyone
and end up pleasing no-one." If you try to market,
advertise, talk to, and reach everyone you'll end up
squandering your money, resources, time and energy. You
need to have a target market and better yet, a niche
market, where you can focus the bulk of your strategies and
know that group of people thoroughly inside and out.
When your marketing activities and materials are too
generic and do not appeal to a specific group of people,
you increase the chances of having them appeal to no-one -
as the marketing doesn't "speak" directly to their needs
and wants.
4. Do not have a marketing plan
If you don't have a plan, then you'll miss out on marketing
opportunities, won't be able to organize yourself or anyone
else, won't know what's working and what's not, and you'll
have lower sales.
Many people are turned off by the thought of a marketing
plan and to tell you the truth, I don't really like long,
involved plans either. However, what I do have is a
marketing action calendar where I plot out when I'm sending
out my newsletter, email campaigns, direct mail; when I'm
going to have a special promotion or workshop; when I'm
going to be away on holidays or at my coaching retreat; and
so on.
By having an idea of when and what you are marketing, you
can make the most of your budget, resources, time, and
great opportunities that come your way.
If you don't have a roadmap of what you're doing, you'll
end up doing not much.
If you follow these 4 surefire ways to fail at your
marketing, you'll do just that. However, if you want to
see your business grow and succeed take the time this week
to write your objectives, make a marketing action calendar,
determine the unique audience you want to talk to, and go
after them with consistent marketing!
----------------------------------------------------
Jody Gabourie, The Small Business Marketing Coach, delivers
simple, innovative and powerful marketing strategies to
help business owners find and keep their most profitable
clients. To learn more about how she can help you take
your business to the next level, and to sign up for her
FREE special report, ezine and articles, visit her site at
http://www.JodyGabourieMarketingCoach.com
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