By Scott Bonner - Marketing tends to get the smallest amount of attention by small businesses, but is the really important thing they can do. In a number of ways the small business owner slaps together a print, radio or television ad and calls it done. Whatever comes from it comes from it. However this is typically not a effective methodology at seeing results.
In bad economic times marketing budgets are the very first thing cut when they should be increased. Marketing is what pulls new customers to your business it permits you to grow in great times and stabilize in bad times. No new shoppers means no chance to sell.
For many marketing your company is something to outsource to others. In the case of explicit jobs or a smaller company I will agree with this. A focused internal marketing team will see more satisfactory results then an external team spending part of their time on your business. You may gain a more comprehensive understanding for your consumer and how to market to them.
If you have a profitable small business it's time to think about making marketing a staple in your company. Bring in one person to oversea the marketing efforts and assume command of the outside corporations. Most external marketeers do a large amount of one and done approaches, where they do one campaign take their best guess at what will work or whatever came to mind first and stop. They do not attempt to understand your customer like you do or work out ways to relate to them.
With marketing there's a lot of trial and error, and data that must be used to make good decision and create a working marketing system. Effective marketing is tedious and a lot of stats and trends that warrants a full time individual targeted on marketing. To understand how much goes into a good marketing campaign and why a full time individual is needed let's take a look at what's concerned.
First task of a marketing pro is to spot the target audience, who are they, where can they be reached, how do you reach them and how do you convert them. Often marketing demographics are used to express the target audience like with MovePoint Moving Software for example, Our targets are people aged between 25-55, business owners or entrepreneurs working in the moving industry, they're independent local movers not lorry lines associated. Due to no affiliations reaching them there aren't simple places online where they hang around and chat you can promote yourself at, and rarely do they go to the big conventions. Meaning you've got to find things they do offline and online and position yourself where they're going.
2nd the marketers must survey or poll their market to establish common characteristics and supply an educated guess as to how to join with them. As an example moving software is usually difficult to use and rubbish and a lot of our client say they like how simple to use our software is matched against the others. So sending a message of... "easy to use moving software" can be valuable starting point the marketing campaign.
3rd you should select a medium and design a campaign around it. For example, are you working with web advertisements, postcards, mails, etc. How should it be designed? What are the calls to action (COA)? How are you able to track results? Then design an alternate campaign in the same medium with an insignificant difference to figure out how that change might effect the quantity of COAs that are taken. This is going to be a different look, different message, maybe even a different medium, or something as easy as a different color.
4th, designate trial groups to split test them while tracking metrics. A group of over 400 would be good to have a good test set. Send each group one version and see what the data tells you. Track the metrics what number of them took actions like viewing the ad, following the action call, and purchasing your service.
5th, what can the info picked up tell you? Did one receive more reply then another, it possibly resonated with your audience better and the differences between the 2 will teach you something. Think about how that change possibly relate to their mind-set or thought processes? Can you pull any common features out of those individuals that responded? After that test you need to get some better ideas for your next test.
Repeat this process testing concepts and ideas you have about your audience until you get a totally clear picture of who they are, and how you connect to them. Thru enough random test you'll find techniques to join with your target market across any medium and find out how to reduce your marketing spend and quickly decide what marketing opportunities are out there for you.
To get a marketing company that puts this level detail and effective marketing practices into. Place will need a company with some considerable time and commitment to you and need big money. You are often better to have an in house team to deal with the method and systematize the marketing process. Then outsource the execution of the marketing, design, or minor parts to outside firms where they specialize in sending the intended message. While this process is pointless it's the one proven way to make certain your marketing is the best it can be.
About the Author:
Scott Bonner Senior Developer MovePoint LLC. Frequent Contributor on Moving Business Network. To 1 about Scott Bonner's Business and Technology Experience visit www.scottbonner.com
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