You’re in Business, Congratulations!

Here’s the thing – so are thousands of other companies.

You are pushing a product range or service – so are thousands of other companies.

You have a specific target market – so do thousands of other companies.

What makes you think your target market will notice you over your competitor (or not even your competitor). I’ll re-phrase.

What makes you think that your target market is going to allocate an amount out of their budget to spend with you?

Your likely answer: “Because they need us”

Our Question is – “How do they know that they “need you” if you haven’t even introduced yourself and your product range or service to them? 

Planning is essential to making your mark on your target market.

In service and industrial based industries you need to think about touching your target market at LEAST 3 times (in retail it is 7 times) before the decision maker even knows who you are or remembers that your company may have some pretty good solutions for them.

There are a number of types of marketing you need to consider

• Trade Shows
• Website
• Online Shop
• Association Memberships
• Association/Trade advertising
• Social media
• Online Marketing
• Blog writing or creation of Articles / white papers
• Targetted Email Marketing
• Direct mail to your database and prospect list
• Telemarketing
• Press Releases to relevant bodies and associations / publications
• Email Newsletters to your database

Unless you have a well thought out plan, one or even three of these things on their own are NOT going to make you your fortunes.

You need to make these things work as a complete “vehicle”.

We recommend this process

Research, Plan, Set Up, Design and Write Copy, Start communicating with database, start the first wave of continuous marketing activities which includes follow up and then measure and report back so you know what works. It’s quite simple, but you have to keep on top of it. If you do a few of the things on the list and do not concentrate on one aspect properly the rest of the system will fall down.

Follow up is the biggest thing you can do for your business – seriously, if you spend loads of money creating a system that looks and feels great, has the perfect message and you have procedures in place to deal with the sales process and customer service chain, then no one follows up on the initial contact then you may as well just forget it and close the doors because no one is going to buy anything from you if you cannot be bothered to make a phone call to ask them their opinion or of they would like to make an appointment.

What you need to remember is that you are sending these marketing messages to people, people are emotive, vain, they like to hear good things said about themselves and their company, they also like “the easy road” so give it to them… Make the sales process as easy as you possibly can by marketing effectively, concisely, consistently and thoughtfully to that particular company. Understand your client (that takes research), use a sales message that works for them (so consider using split tests).

The same message across the board may not be the best message.

Remember that you may not be initially marketing to the decision maker who has lots of technical knowledge so be more generic initially and then when you get asked about specifics – be specific rather than giving them everything in a great big heap at the first hurdle.

1. They may freak out at the technical jargon you are using and put it in the too hard basket or hand it to someone who understands the jargon but doesn’t make decisions.
2. People like things in bite sized chunks as everyone is time poor these days.
3. Make information easy for them to locate IF they want to know more. So use your website as your personal business resource portal.

Your message, plan and approach needs to be carefully considered. Do not make the mistake of using a scatter gun approach or your results will be scatter gun too.

So our message – plan, stick to the plan or you run the risk of not getting the results you want from your efforts.