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How to successfully market a small business

Written by: Peter Geisheker

Article Overview: To successfully market a small business, you need to perform the following marketing...

How to successfully market a small business

1. Stay in constant contact with all of your existing customers. Do this by email, direct mail, and phone calls. If you want loyal customers, you must build a relationship with them, and that means staying in contact with them at least once a month, month after month, forever. The top reason why your customers will leave you is that another company is taking the time and spending the money to communicate with your clients more than you are.

2. If you are going to advertise in print, radio, or TV, you must do it consistently, month after month. One of the biggest mistakes I see businesses make is they run one advertisement one time or they send out one direct mail campaign and then stop thinking that doing that one-off marketing tactic will bring them a truckload of clients. That no longer works. People see and receive so much advertising that the one time marketing tactic is no longer effective. To get your message seen through the deluge of advertising, you must market to the same people over and over and over.

A prospective customer may need to see your advertisement 7-12 times or more over the time period of several months or even years before they will buy from you. Therefore, for your advertising to work, you must do it month after month, forever. You always want your company's name and the benefits you offer to be in the minds of your target market. For example, Wal-Mart is the biggest company in the world. They have a tremendous brand and everybody knows who they are. But do they stop advertising? Of course not! One of the main reasons for their success is they never stop advertising. They know that out of sight means out of mind.

3. Instead of trying to market to the world, select a niche market and market to that same group of prospective customers every month. You will have far more marketing success if you market to a small group of highly targeted prospects many times than you will have marketing to a large group of people (or businesses) one time. It is marketing repetition that builds trust and brand loyalty. So, only market to a group of people (or businesses) that you can afford to market to every single month.

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Finding a technical person to work with - Hi Barbara, I would suggest tapping your network to see who knows who. It's amazing how small the world is. Your situation reminds me of many entrepreneurs who are afraid to go for venture capital because they feel the venture capitalists will take the idea and use it themselves or with another company. It takes a team to build a successful company and most engineers are just that - engineers. To make the business fly they would need to have their own vision as well as the experience of being a mother with infant / toddlers with strollers and the knowhow to successfully sell and market a product. This is a highly unlikely scenario and chances are if that person existed your product would already be on the market. I've always found that be telling people what I'm up to I've received far more help than harm.
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Re: Personality Not Included - Hi Shri, Is this business book about developing your company's brand image or your own? Should an entrepreneur always market themselves as the driving force behind their business? Don't a lot of small business owners like to remain anonymous because they want to appear larger than a "one person show"?


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