 Is Your Marketing Strategy
Killing Your Profits
By
Charlie Cook
Copyright © 2004
With the wrong marketing strategy you could be killing your profits and limiting
your business. Your marketing strategy is like the driver in a car, with
marketing tactics being the engine. If you know where you want to go and
how to get there, your marketing tactics will help you attract many more
clients -- if not, you could crash.
Every business uses one or more of the following tactics to attract clients;
mailings, advertisements, phone calls, networking, promotional events, a
web site and sending email. If you use any of these and aren’t attracting
as many new clients as you want or making as much money as you’d like,
the problem may not be the tactics. It's your marketing strategy that needs
attention.
Without an effective marketing strategy you won't achieve the results you
want, no matter how much time and money you spend. A high profile radio ad
campaign won’t help you grow your business unless it includes a message
that attracts your prospects. An article about your firm in a newspaper can
bring in business or just be a conversation piece. Email messages you send
can end up in your prospects' delete bin or prompt them to contact you.
Mailings, radio advertisements or web sites are only delivery vehicles for
your marketing message. They are the tactics you use to implement your strategy.
Are you using the right strategy to market your business?
What are the fundamental principles of your marketing strategy? If you can
answer this question, you're among one percent of business owners who can.
Most people think only about their marketing tactics or vehicles and wonder
why their profits aren't growing as quickly as they would like.
Business-Building Marketing Strategy To grow your business you need to:
Define Your Goals
Identify where you want to take your business and what you want to achieve.
Other than making more money than you are now, have you written down a vision
of what you want your business to be two years from now? Five years from
now?
Target Your Marketing
Most small business owners waste their time and money pitching too broadly.
Do you have an effective method for identifying the people who want your
products and services?
Use a Problem Solving Approach
Over 95 percent of small business owners focus their marketing on the reasons
people should buy their products and services, not on their clients. Is your
marketing focused on client's concerns and problems or on yours?
Demonstrate Value
Getting your name in front of people is a first step in marketing, but if
your prospects don’t know what you do or how you can help them, you
haven't achieved your goal. Past clients and prospects may have only a limited
idea of how you can help them. Do your prospects understand the range of
problems you solve and the solutions you provide?
Build Relationships
Every past client and prospect who has shown an interest can help you grow
your business. Most service professionals know this but waste this resource
through lapsed or infrequent communication. Do you have a method for staying
in touch on a monthly basis with every person who could help you grow you
business? Do you have a strategy for growing the number of qualified prospects
on this list each week?
Many people find that defining their marketing strategy is the hardest part
of their job. So hard that many small business owners use a tactical approach
instead. Don't make this mistake!
Once you have clear marketing goals and a well-defined strategy, your marketing
will be more focused and you can make more effective use of appropriate marketing
tactics to grow your business. Shift to strategic marketing and you'll turbo
charge your marketing and your business.
2004 © In Mind Communications, LLC. All rights reserved.
About the Author:
| The author,
Charlie Cook, helps service professionals and small business owners attract
more clients and be more successful. Sign up to receive the Free Marketing
Guide, '7 Steps to Grow Your Business' and the 'More Business' newsletter,
full of practical tips you can use at
http://www.charliecook.net |
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