Sales & Marketing Consultant, Bestselling Author & Sales Conference Speaker

What you are doing currently to promote your business is one thing, but have you thought about setting things up for the future? For instance, Facebook offers users the possibility to schedule their posts in order to be published at a later date.

For businesses, scheduled updates offer the possibility to programme your marketing campaigns in a heartbeat. Let’s say that you already have all your strategies for the year set up and all you need to do now is implement them. You will save a lot of time if you write all the promotional materials in advance and just schedule them to be released at a later date, according to your campaign calendar.

There is also another advantage that you can draw from scheduled posts. For instance, you can create a buzz around a certain product or service in advance of it actually being launched. By inviting those in your database to visit your website at a certain date in order to grab a promotional offer, you will spark their attention and interest in advance of the launch, and you will have an audience ready and waiting for the actual launch of the product or service.

Besides saving time, scheduled posts allow you to be well organized, and when running a small business this is a very important advantage. As a small business owner, you are likely to have a small team who are working on lots of tasks and projects all at one time – so by scheduling your posts in advance for certain events you can help those people who are in charge of your social media marketing strategies to do their job more efficiently.

Happy Marketing!

Sean

Sean McPheat

http://www.seanmcpheat.com

(Image by David Castillo Dominici at FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

I have a whole lot of admiration for small business owners and entrepreneurs in general. I respect their dedication and hard work and, above all else, their willingness to take risks.

In recent years, I have worked for several small business CEO/Owners and while they are very successful, I have wondered (and posed to them) how much more successful they might be if they borrowed some “big business” practices in areas like sales, marketing, human resource management (things like recruiting, retention, culture, etc) and general planning.

Marketing, for example, is an area that many entrepreneurs thrive at because they are often very creative people and have a flair for promotion. But let’s think for a moment about an overall marketing approach and what is required before one starts to promote. An analogy would be the construction of a house where you need a solid foundation before you start to put up the walls or finish the rooms.

As a long time marketer, here is what I would recommend to smallbiz owners as their 5 Marketing Essentials …their foundation, if you will …that they should have in place before they promote. Not having these in place could seriously compromise the effectiveness of their marketing programs.

Note: Some of these are strategic and some are quite tactical. Collapsed together, they are the foundation:

1. Value proposition or unique selling proposition (USP).

What is the USP for your company? What distinguishes your products and services from those of the competition? Ergo, why should anyone buy from you? This must be articulated and will become central to many marketing messages. Think of it as the mantra for your company and that every employee should be able to describe the company’s USP to customers, suppliers, new hires etc. When someone asks “So, what’s so special about your company?” there’s an answer instead of the less impressive “hmmm, let me think for a moment”. Lastly, write it out for all to see.

2. Know your audience.

Who is your target audience? Where are they? What are their titles and specific job responsibilities. What are their fears and concerns? This is core stuff that you should know. Also, make an overt distinction between the decision makers and the influencers at your customers and the role that each plays. Lastly, you should know who are your best customers, why they do business with you and what distinguishes them from your worst customers. Write it out!

3. What are your products and service benefits.

Remember to speak to the benefits of what you offer and not the features. Honestly, a prospect doesn’t greatly care about what your product does, per se. It’s all about addressing the pain points that your customers have and how your product will alleviate that pain. The specific features that you bring to the table are gravy so long as the pain is gone. Again, don’t leave this to chance. Write it out!

4. Create a customer treatment plan.

This sounds somewhat heavy but it’s not and, to a degree, you’re probably already doing this in a disparate fashion. A customer treatment plan simply means to decide and then map how you are going to “touch” your prospects and customer before, during and after a sale. Examples of this might include an email, letter or phone call to welcome a new customer, to activate a new customer, to check in after 3 month to gauge satisfaction, etc. Don’t leave this to chance or the varying whims of your employees or you’ll have 100 customers with 100 impressions of your product which is not good. Write it out!

These first four elements are more strategic in nature; things that you think through, plan out and then execute on a daily basis. The final foundation element is more tactical:

5. Have a great web presence.

This sounds so obvious but there are still tons of companies out there that do not have a web presence or have one that, frankly, looks terrible. More than ever, your web site is the first impression of your company for prospects and customers. An old, untidy, hard to navigate site conveys that your company might be old and untidy and hard to work with. Invest in a great website. It’s not expensive anymore to have a terrific looking and functional site anymore using WordPress for example. Having Facebook company page is better than nothing.

With these fundamentals in place, a small company can now promote themselves knowing that the foundation is in place to enable a robust and cogent customer experience.

What do you think? What marketing essentials do you think warrant consideration? I’d love to hear from you.

Thanks!

Related link:  3 Powerful Sales Management Tips For The Small Business Owner 

(Image by FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

Guest blog by Geoff Vincent, CEO of BizCompare.com

Geoff Vincent is the founder and CEO of BizCompare.com, a business information and research site. Geoff’s background includes marketing and management positions at American Express, FedEx, CCH and Dun & Bradstreet. He writes regularly on Twitter @bizcompare and on his blog providing a pragmatic POV on B2B and small business sales, marketing, leadership and management best practices.

There are two questions that you should always ask. The first, Is my brand great. The second question to ask is, what makes my brand memorable. If the answers that pop into your mind include how slick your website is, the number of fans on your business Facebook page or how many hits your blog has received, it is time to take a second look. When your brand has hit a wall, the answers to these questions aren’t how great you look online; the answer should be you, the person. You are what makes or breaks your brand, not the marketing dollars you keep investing. So if your brand has hit a wall, there are a few things that you can tweak to get your business back on track.

Who are you?
What makes you unique? In the land of massive marketing noise, consumers really want to experience a personal connection with the businesses they work with. They can buy a similar product or service from a variety of other businesses; therefore you need to give them a reason to buy from you. The one thing that holds us back is fear.

How many of us are held back by a fear of being too personal? We fear rejection and if we get ‘personal’, we may have our feelings hurt. Business is not always personal, but it should be. We need to push past our limiting beliefs and fear of feeling like a personal failure. If you don’t get the sale or if you have a dissatisfied customer, simply view these things as a learning experience. I’ve said it before but it still rings true, every no you get simply means you are closer to getting that yes.

What makes you unique?
While other businesses may offer the same product or service that you have, they are not you. You are unique. You are your brand. Take a step back from your website and your online presence and reflect. Are these elements reflecting the true you? Do they reflect your ethics, what is important to you, what you value and most important, your expertise in your field? If they don’t, it is well worth the time and investment of marketing dollars to give your online identity a facelift.

If you feel stuck or overwhelmed by the thought of trying to identify who you are and what makes you unique, take this time to ask a third party. Go to people that you have worked with, worked for and know personally and professionally. Ask them to give you the first five words that they would say describe your personality. You may be surprised by what this list looks like in its entirety. You will be left with a refreshing and eye-opening perspective of how you appear to others. This is the best starting place to push past your wall.

Happy Marketing!
Sean
(Image by Sayan Samana)
Sean McPheat

http://www.seanmcpheat.com

Whether you’re starting out with a new business, launching a new product from an established business, or seeking to expand the customer base of a product or service that has already been launched, it is absolutely essential that you’re creating and implementing a quality marketing plan!

I can’t tell you how often I see even the most established and successful marketers miss this crucial process. Even if you’re already a successful marketer or business owner, there’s something in here for you.

Identify Your Audience

This is the most crucial step, and why it’s so important to draft up a marketing strategy plan before you initiate the launch of a new product or marketing campaign. As is always the rule, a product should be developed for a market. You should never just develop a product because you have an interest or an area of expertise, and then hope that some people are interested enough in your product to buy it.

Make sure that you include in this section the ways that you, or your company, can reach this audience. Its not good identifying your target audience as the native tribes of the Congo if you don’t have a plan to get your product to them.

Identify Your Goals

Just as important as identify your audience is thoroughly identifying your goals. What exactly do you want to do with this product/service/company/campaign? It doesn’t matter what you’re launching, the key is identifying the purpose.

Sitting down and really thinking about what you want from your campaign can provide incredible insight into what steps you should take in your campaign. For instance, the marketing moves that you’ll want to make to increase your conversion rate are different from the moves that you’ll want to make to reach your market and make a profit, as well as what you hope to get from the product, or from your company at large.

Quantify Everything

This is so important, I can’t say it enough. Put everything that you’re thinking about in numbers ,and write it all down. Marketing is a creative industry, but the number that drive it aren’t creative at all. The numbers have to match or your bottom line will suffer. Which means that you’re either cutting into your profit margin, or you’re making somebody in another department of your company very unhappy.

Establish what your budget will be, and map out several different scenarios, determining the impact on your bottom line and profitability of each one.

In addition to helping you avoid overspending and market overreach, itemising your budget and putting everything down in writing can help you to identify unforeseen places where you can cut costs and save a bit.

Happy marketing!

Sean

Sean McPheat

http://www.seanmcpheat.com