Why is my marketing not working for me?
Why is my marketing not working for me?
But why isn’t your marketing working for you? Let’s look at some common reasons and see if we can put them right.
REASON NUMBER 1: TARGETING THE WRONG PEOPLE
The easiest way to find customers for your business is to go where they go. The most common reason why your marketing isn’t working is that you don’t know enough about where your customers go. Let me explain. If you were targeting mothers for instance, common places you might find mothers include doctor’s surgeries, mother and toddler groups, post offices, schools, nurseries etc. If you were targeting HR Managers, you might go to CIPD meetings, read Personnel Today, go to HR conferences etc.
Sounds easy doesn’t it. But, I meet far too many businesses who tell me that anyone is their customer or are appealing to the end user rather than the person who buys their services (i.e. the employee rather than the HR manager who will pay for what they’re selling).
Solution: Go back to basics. Really define who your customer is. Think about what motivates them and what frustrates them. Then think about where they might go to buy what you’re offering and make sure you’re in these places when they’re looking.
REASON NUMBER 2: NOT EVERYTHING YOU DO WILL GET YOU CUSTOMERS
Whenever you do any marketing, there are three objectives: a) Get awareness of your business b) Build your reputation and c) Get customers. Agree? Problem is that many of the marketing ideas you’re doing already are probably better at getting awareness of your business or building your reputation. PR for instance is great for awareness as is advertising; networking is great for awareness; doing a talk is good for building your reputation; sending out leaflets is good for awareness and so on.
You can get business from these methods, but it an extra step – capturing contact details!! If you do some PR, you’ve no idea who has found your press release really interesting but didn’t get around to calling you, let alone who might have looked at it. Therefore, you need to build some mechanism in each of your marketing methods to get contact details of people who are interested.
So in a press release, you might offer a free sample or a free newsletter; in a talk you might offer a free summary of your presentation and so on. If people give you their contact details, they’re telling you they’re interested – then all you need to do is follow-up.
Solution: Without contact details your marketing ideas will do little more than build your reputation and the awareness of your business. In each marketing activity you do, find some way of capturing those contact details.
REASON NUMBER 3: NOT DOING MARKETING
Ah – caught you! I know it’s hard. I know you have 1001 other things you want to do. But, the simple fact remains that most small business owners who say they aren’t getting as much business as they would like are not doing any marketing. They may dabble in it, but they probably aren’t doing it consistently.
You see if you really want your marketing to work for you, you should be trying 5 (yes 5) marketing ideas at once and putting a system in place to capture contact details so that you can follow up with people.
If you really don’t have time, find a marketing person to do some marketing for you (you can always contact us you know) which frees you up to do the things you like doing.
Solution: Do marketing (or if you really don’t like it, find someone to do it for you).
9 times out of 10, the three reasons I’ve outlined above are the main reasons why marketing doesn’t work for small business owners. Think about the solutions I’ve mentioned and try putting them in place for your business. Good luck.
Why is my marketing not working for me - To learn more about this author, visit Helen Dowling's Website.
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There is nothing more frustrating that doing some marketing and finding it doesn’t work for your business – especially if you’ve spent money on it. Not only is it annoying, but it’s also demoralising and pretty soon when you’ve exhausted all the ideas you had for marketing your business, I can completely understand why you’d think that marketing was a huge pain.
But why isn’t your marketing working for you? Let’s look at some common reasons and see if we can put them right.
REASON NUMBER 1: TARGETING THE WRONG PEOPLE
The easiest way to find customers for your business is to go where they go. The most common reason why your marketing isn’t working is that you don’t know enough about where your customers go. Let me explain. If you were targeting mothers for instance, common places you might find mothers include doctor’s surgeries, mother and toddler groups, post offices, schools, nurseries etc. If you were targeting HR Managers, you might go to CIPD meetings, read Personnel Today, go to HR conferences etc.
Sounds easy doesn’t it. But, I meet far too many businesses who tell me that anyone is their customer or are appealing to the end user rather than the person who buys their services (i.e. the employee rather than the HR manager who will pay for what they’re selling).
Solution: Go back to basics. Really define who your customer is. Think about what motivates them and what frustrates them. Then think about where they might go to buy what you’re offering and make sure you’re in these places when they’re looking.
REASON NUMBER 2: NOT EVERYTHING YOU DO WILL GET YOU CUSTOMERS
Whenever you do any marketing, there are three objectives: a) Get awareness of your business b) Build your reputation and c) Get customers. Agree? Problem is that many of the marketing ideas you’re doing already are probably better at getting awareness of your business or building your reputation. PR for instance is great for awareness as is advertising; networking is great for awareness; doing a talk is good for building your reputation; sending out leaflets is good for awareness and so on.
You can get business from these methods, but it an extra step – capturing contact details!! If you do some PR, you’ve no idea who has found your press release really interesting but didn’t get around to calling you, let alone who might have looked at it. Therefore, you need to build some mechanism in each of your marketing methods to get contact details of people who are interested.
So in a press release, you might offer a free sample or a free newsletter; in a talk you might offer a free summary of your presentation and so on. If people give you their contact details, they’re telling you they’re interested – then all you need to do is follow-up.
Solution: Without contact details your marketing ideas will do little more than build your reputation and the awareness of your business. In each marketing activity you do, find some way of capturing those contact details.
REASON NUMBER 3: NOT DOING MARKETING
Ah – caught you! I know it’s hard. I know you have 1001 other things you want to do. But, the simple fact remains that most small business owners who say they aren’t getting as much business as they would like are not doing any marketing. They may dabble in it, but they probably aren’t doing it consistently.
You see if you really want your marketing to work for you, you should be trying 5 (yes 5) marketing ideas at once and putting a system in place to capture contact details so that you can follow up with people.
If you really don’t have time, find a marketing person to do some marketing for you (you can always contact us you know) which frees you up to do the things you like doing.
Solution: Do marketing (or if you really don’t like it, find someone to do it for you).
9 times out of 10, the three reasons I’ve outlined above are the main reasons why marketing doesn’t work for small business owners. Think about the solutions I’ve mentioned and try putting them in place for your business. Good luck.
Why is my marketing not working for me - To learn more about this author, visit Helen Dowling's Website.
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John PowerJohn Power, founder of Biltmore Franchise Consulting, has extensive experience developing and marketing franchises and business opportunities. He has been in and around franchising for over twenty years. From 1980 through 1990 he conceptualized, organized, and developed the American Video Association. He grew AVA to 2,000 national members, before selling the company it 1990. It was later merged into another home video marketing company. From 2000 to 2005 he worked as a contract marketing and human resources consultant to several local and national companies. In 2005 Mr. Power began working as a franchise development consultant on a full-time basis. Since that time he has helped more than three dozen companies initiate and develop their franchising program. He notes that there are many companies interested in developing a franchise program, and who need his specialized assistance. Mr. Power is a “hands-on” franchise consultant. He said, “I am the ‘nuts and bolts’ person who tends to the details for my clients.” Mr. Power holds a B.S. degree with a major in Marketing. See: www.biltmorefranchise.com You may contact Mr. Power at: jpower@biltmorefranchise.co - Visit John Power's Website |
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David AchesonDavid Acheson is the founder of DCJA Consultancy. DCJA Consultancy is a management consultancy business specialising in B2B sales consultancy. They offer bespoke and packaged sales consultancy including Sales Optimisation Review, Interim Sales Management, Sales & Marketing Review, 1:1 Sales & Management Staff Analysis, Management Training, Solution Sales Training, Creation of New Pay Plan, KPI's, run Customer Feedback Campaigns, assist with Recruitment, Coaching, Appraisals and set up Strategic Marketing Campaigns. David spent his early career in accountancy and then moved into sales in 1982, working in Office Equipment, IT, Advertising, Training, Outsourcing and Consultancy. He has held many Senior Positions in SMBs and Global Organisations including Head of Sales Operations & Head of Business Development. His knowledge, skills and great experience of the Sales Industry has led to David making keynote speeches and running educational sessions to key businesses through organisations including The Chamber of Commerce and Business Link. - Visit David Acheson's Website |
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Dave KurlanDave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website |
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Jay Kubassek(Jay's Full Bio: EvanCarmichael.com/jaykubassek) In five years, Canadian-born entrepreneur Jay Kubassek went from selling mufflers at a Midas franchise to revolutionizing Internet marketing with the 2004 launch of CarbonCopyPRO, a online marketing education company, now worth over $20 million with customers in over 160 countries.
As an independent film producer, his upstart film fund Aliquot Films is currently producing a films with Spike Lee and Abel Fererra (starring Ethan Hawke and Dennis Hopper.)
Jay's entrepreneurial spirit is irrepressible. He’s the owner of five companies, a professional speaker and trainer, international real estate developer/investor, extreme sport enthusiast and emerging philanthropist. Jay resides in NYC with his wife Jamie, son Milo and dog Cooper. Visit Jay's official website: www.JayKubassek.com - Visit Jay Kubassek's Website |
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John AlexanderJohn has taught keyword research and SEO skills to small groups of business owners and Webmasters from over 80 different countries world wide since 2002. John is also the Director of Search Engine Academy ; Co-director of Training at Search Engine Workshops offering live, SEO Workshops with his partner SEO educator Robin Nobles, author of the very first comprehensive online search engine marketing courses at SEO Training Online and the SEO Workshop Resource Center. I look forward to hearing from you! - Visit John Alexander's Website |
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