How to Marketing Without Spend Much Money

Marketing can be expensive. It doesn't have to be, but sometimes you will spend more than you should. Usually you'll realise this after you've done it. But here are two tips that can save you thousands of dollars.

1- Make sure you really understand your market and your distribution channels.

Sounds simple, doesn't it! For example, one client had developed an information product for small businesses. They had some assistance from another agency to check the market and confirm how they should present the product. Based on that information they printed marketing materials and ramped up to distribute through professional advisors such as accountants.

After a few sessions with my client, and some inexpensive (but very effective) research, we came to understand two things:

1. The target audience of owners of small-medium sized businesses were not interested in using this type of product, even though they needed it.
2. The chosen distribution channel was not well placed to encourage their small business clients to be proactive and use my clients product.

Unfortunately, the 'research' conducted by the original agency was flawed. My client was not entirely happy with it at the time, and for good reason.

However, based on our fresh insights we developed more suitable approaches for my client to distribute their product.

In summary...

• Before you spend lots of money (and time) pursuing a particular market segment, developing new products, or simply producing new marketing material, do some homework to ensure you are on the right track.
• Get reliable advice from a professional who can explain things without confusing you with jargon. Take a bit of time to really check it out. It's cheaper to do this at the start, rather than after you have invested heavily in it.

2 - Know where to find your customers, and promote your business there.

This is another so-obvious factor that is often overlooked. Most businesses want more customers or clients. Sometimes it's tempting to advertise very broadly to improve awareness of your firm. But beware! Who are you really promoting your business to?

If you have a close look at whom your customers (or prospects) are, you should be able to narrow down the most suitable ways to promote your business to them. If your customers are other businesses, maybe direct mail would be best, or advertising in a relevant trade publication, or using personal sales visits, or simply by participating in industry events and getting known. If in doubt, ask your clients and prospects where they usually go for information on new vendors.

If your customers are from the general public, then it's a bit harder to identify them individually. Print media can often provide great potential to reach prospects, but before you pay big money to advertise in a publication with broad distribution think about how you can narrow down the field.

Firstly, are you better considering a media option that is focussed on your target audience? It might cost more in terms of dollars per centimetre of space, but the results may be far higher than with a general-purpose publication. Look for publications that address your audience, and look for suitable sections or features in larger publications.

When you do this, be selective, and don't be seduced by claims of large readership or "cheap" advertising offers. Ask for a current reader profile from the publisher. Distinguish 'circulation' from 'readership'. Know who your prospects are and make sure you are reaching them with an appropriate message.

Don't forget to look at all your options. For example, have you got your web site functioning properly? Maybe that's a better tool to sharpen than simply reprinting last years brochures. Be open to different ideas.

I haven't yet seen a marketing budget that is "big enough", no matter what the actual size. So plan your expenditure carefully.

Remember to measure the results of your marketing activities, and over time you can improve your marketing choices.

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7 Cheap & Easy Ways To Get Prospects

Here are some quick techniques you can put into place on your web site or in your advertising to gather new prospects. There is practically no cost for most of these strategies yet they have proven to be extremely effective in any number of different venues. Use one, two or all of these strategies for a quick shot in the arm.

• Offer a free report or article that's sent by email from your autoresponder.
• Give people a contact web form or autoresponder email address to send in their questions.
• Have a media kit, price list, pictures, catalog, FAQ, etc. that are all available by email from your autoresponder.
• Make a sample of your product available from your autoresponder. (i.e. If you're selling an eBook, have a chapter available for free.)
• Deliver a free informational eCourse by email through your autoresponder.
• Create an outline of your site for visitors in a hurry to have the information emailed to them by autoresponder.
• Run a free drawing and have visitors email their entry to your autoresponder.

The key to all of these strategies is the autoresponder, which requires little or no effort on your part once it has been set up. Don't fail to utilize this tool no matter what type of business you own.

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Primarly Steps To A Great Marketing Plan

Step 1: Where Am I Now?

Before you decide where you want your marketing plan to take you,you need to find out where you are now. How have you positioned your business in the market? How do your customers see you? You may want to ask some of them for feedback. Write four or five paragraphs that summarize your business. Be sure to include philosophy, strengths and weaknesses.

Step 2: Setting the Goal(s)

Once you decide where you are, you can decide where you want to go. What you're trying to accomplish? Do you want to increase sales? Change the perception of your business among target audiences? Generate more store traffic? Enter a new market where you may not have much experience?

After you have answered each of these questions or any others you come up with, you want to make an outline for each of your goals, and be specific. While you should be optimistic, you will also need to be realistic. You need to be realistic in what you expect your marketing plan to do. Also, while it's fine to have multiple goals, be sure to prioritize them so you can create a realistic plan to achieve them.

Step 3: Getting To Your Target Audience

Who are your target audiences? If you say "everyone," you need to rethink your answer. Even the largest companies don't market blindly to every individual. They break their audiences down into distinct profiles, or niche markets, and create messages and vehicles designed to reach each segment.

Define your niche markets as clearly and specifically as possible. If you're reaching out to businesses, describe which type, including the industry, revenue level, location and other important characteristics. If consumers are your audience, describe their age, sex, income level, marital status and other relevant facts. If you identify several market segments, rank them in order of priority.

Step 4: Research and It's Role In Your Plan

Now that you've outlined where you are and where you want to go, it's time to determine the best way to get there.

Nothing will get you where you want to go faster than research. Information about your target audiences is available from a variety of resources, many of them free.

So be sure to take some time to find out about the demographics (physical characteristics) and psychographics (psychological characteristics) of your target markets. Demographics outline such factors as age, geographic location and income level. Psychographics offer insight into trends, buying habits, market segments and the like.

Trade associations and publications are often great places to start your research, especially if you're reaching out to businesses. Use your own and your target industries' trade resources for market information. Many associations have Web sites, and many publications are also available on the Net.

Once you've gathered this information, write a detailed profile of your audience segments. Include all the demographic and psychographic information you've gathered.

Step 5: Planning the Action

This is the crux of your plan. For each goal you've outlined, create a strategy, complete with your key messages and steps that will help you accomplish the goal. Don't forget that you have many tools at your disposal.

As you examine each of your goals, conduct a mini-brainstorming session. Consider the best ways to get your message out. You may decide to use newspaper, radio, TV, magazine or outdoor advertising;direct marketing programs, including postcards, sales letters, fliers, business reply cards, newsletters or toll-free response numbers; or public relations elements such as publicity, events, speaking engagements, sponsorships and opinion polls. Perhaps you can accomplish your objectives and cut costs by teaming up with related, non-competing businesses for in-store promotions or cross-promotional campaigns. On-line promotional opportunities are more abundant than ever, so consider designing a Web site or uploading information into a news group or special interest forum.

Write out each strategy, and beneath it, list key messages and tactics. Here's a sample:

Strategy: Position myself as the market leader in lease purchasing in my community.

Key messages: DeFiore Enterprises is a reputable, trust-worthy name in lease purchasing your home.

Tactics: Approach local community colleges about teaching a home-buying class using the niche of lease purchasing.

Issue a press release about the free brochure to local media. Send informational brochures to real estate agents and mortgage brokers who refer home buyers to you. For each step you plan, keep asking yourself, "Why should I do this?"

Don't decide to do big, splashy promotions if you really can't afford them. Smaller, more frequent communications are much more effective if your budget is limited. Don't forget to send communications to your networking partners.

Finally, be sure the promotions you've selected project the right image. If your audience is conservative, don't stage an outrageous promotion. Similarly, if you need to project a cutting-edge image, make sure your efforts are sophisticated. Also, be sure you have made friends with the media. Update your press package to reflect changes you have made.

Step 6: The Importance of Budgeting Your Resources

Home business owners believe marketing is an optional expense. This is one of the most tragic myths in business. Marketing expenses should be given priority, especially in times of slow cash flow. After all, how are you going to attract more business during the slow times if you don't tell customers about your business? Take a realistic look at how much money you have to spend on marketing. While you shouldn't overextend yourself, it's critical that you allot adequate funds to reach your markets. If you find that you don't have the budget to tackle all your markets, try to reach them one by one, in order of priority.

For each of your tactics, break down each expense and outline the estimated cost of each. For example, a brochure includes writing, photography, graphic design, film, printing and delivery. From there, you can beef up or pare down your plan, depending on your financial situation.

Step 7: The Importance of Timing In Your Projects

Now that you've broken down the steps involved in each activity, be sure you set aside the time to accomplish the steps for each project and set a deadline for each project. Again, make sure you're not overextending yourself, or you may get burned out. It's better to start with smaller, more consistent efforts than an overly ambitious program you'll never complete.

Step 8: On Your Mark Get Ready, Set, and Now Go For It!

With the above steps you now have in your hands the most effective "to do" list you'll ever write. You have prepared a document that can help you reach your market segments from a position of knowledge and expertise instead of from shoot-from-the-hip hunches.

Now you need to use your marketing plan. Make it a part of your "to do list" every day. Will it grow and change? Sure will. Also, as your business reaps the benefits of your initial strategies, you may want to increase the scope of your marketing. If you find something is not working, change it.

Remember, consistency and continuity, delivered with a dash of creativity, give you the formula for successful marketing.

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How Do I Define My Market?

Your market is who you want to reach. Your customer. Who is your average customer? What is your estimate of total market size? What territory do you intend to serve? Will you offer a variety of products or services?

The more specific you are, the better definition of your customer (what their characteristics are), the easier it will be to more clearly define your market.

Many times you can obtain your Unique Selling Position (USP) from your customer. You need a USP to stand out from your competition. It is specific to you and your business. It is yours and yours alone. Your way of doing business.

How you define your market will also make a difference on how and what you use to reach that market. Will you direct mail, cold call, do walk ins, use the web, employ radio/television and/or print advertising?

In lease purchasing you define your market based upon the strategies you employ. For example, with consulting your market is a lot broader and wider, than it would be if you are using the co-operative strategy exclusively in a well defined surrounding area of where you live.

Again, with lease purchasing, what you do to reach your market will depend on what strategy you are using. You would advertise in your local papers that you can help buyers and sellers with the lease purchase advantage. Whereas, for consulting you want to reach a wider market, so you might take out an ad in a national paper or advertise on the web, or use e-mailing as a marketing strategy. For example, when I need to send out emails for consulting, I open Group Mail, pull up my consulting group email,

Now that you've got the idea, start defining your market. Once you do, you'll find that your business is easier to operate and more profitable.

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The Ways to Evaluate Your Marketing Plan

Business owners often find it difficult to know whether their marketing tactics are working. This can be especially tricky when you use a combination of marketing activities simultaneously, or if using personal-contact tactics such as networking.

No matter what business you're in, your marketing should be accountable. So here's a few ways to evaluate how well you're doing.

1) Look at your sales (or fee income). They should be going up! But be careful about what you measure. Some firms have a longer sales cycle than others. To get an accurate picture you might need to also measure the number of new leads being generated, or the number of appointments, or the number of billable hours achieved. Remember discounts or variances in fees will affect total sales values.

2) Ask your clients. Check to find out where they heard of you. Most businesses never ask this question and miss out on gleaning valuable insights into how clients select a service provider.

3) Does your advertising and/or promotional activity produce direct responses?
It should. If your answer is "I don't know" then you've got some work to do. In addition to 2) above, there are some things you can do to improve response rates.

• Firstly, make sure you are advertising in the right media. Choose media to suit your selected audience. Be as specific as possible. And avoid rejecting options just because they don't look "exciting", such as trade journals that might have relatively small readership. Importantly, check with your audience to make sure they actually do read the publication.
• Use a strong headline that asks a pertinent question, or gives a solution-oriented statement.
• Include a clear call-to-action. Tell people what they should do. For example: Ring today for your free appointment; Ask for our free information sheet.
• Include multiple methods of contact. Phone, email, and web site are all important. Give prospects a choice of how to contact you.

4) Do your networking activities create new opportunities for you? One of the major principles of effective networking is to "give" rather than "sell". That is, you should look to help others as you spread word about your services. But this softly, softly approach can make it hard to measure effectiveness.

To measure your networking activities make sure you track the source of incoming enquiries. Then see if any of your visible/tangible tactics can be credited with generating the enquiry. If not, then maybe you can safely say it was a referral generated by networking. This is made a lot easier if you're a member of a lead-generating club such as BNI or Leads. You'll get specific feedback each week from these groups.

5) Do your marketing tactics make it easier to sell your services? To do this your marketing activities and/or material should do the following:

• Attract qualified prospects (who have shown a specific interest in your services).
• Anticipate and diffuse potential questions/concerns from prospects.
• Be easy to use when personally selling to prospects. For example: material should be relevant; images/charts easy to understand; and be presented in a format the prospect will be likely to keep.
• Focus on your client needs and your points of difference (Unique Selling Proposition).

6) Check your sales conversion rate. The best approach here is to look at your historical records and determine whether your conversion (or closure) rate has improved. "Selling" is an important part of the "marketing" function, so make sure you assess your success at closing the sale, rather than just focus on generating new leads.

7) Does your plan have a positive return on investment (ROI)? Does it bring in enough new/repeat business to justify the expense? Rather than just look at the "marketing budget" as one total, you really need to evaluate the cost effectiveness of each specific marketing activity. Even if you think you're getting a great ROI overall, maybe you can do even better by changing or eliminating unproductive tactics.

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