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Home » Marketing Articles » Managing Marketing Strategies For Small Business Owners

Managing Marketing Strategies For Small Business Owners

The best marketing strategy starts with the right attitude.

Although you've been to many seminars and workshops; and you've read as many books and how-to materials to properly equip you with the mechanics of marketing, your knowledge is not enough if you lack the right marketing attitude.

Let's face it, as a small business owner, you don't really have the savvy and experience that most Fortune 500 companies. In fact, compared to them, you're just barely reaching the very first step in marketing your product.

If you want to get ahead in the game and become a big player yourself, all you need to do is change your marketing attitude. Your marketing efforts will all be for naught if you have the following attitudes.

Attitude: "I'm good at what I do. I don't need to advertise."

If you're the best at what you do, you know you don't need to market because clients will surely come to you. You are a professional and have years of experience to boot. You don't need to advertise because people will always look for a professional and that's what you are.

Reality check. Even with the specialized niche you have and the expertise you gained from years of doing what you're doing, a successful marketing campaign is necessary to build your business.

Creating promotional materials like your flyer printing pieces are necessities not jut whims. Even the big guys use advertising to get jobs.

So even if you don't like it, marketing is part and parcel of the whole business ownership thing. Instead of seeing all the dirty work, why not engage yourself in looking at what an effective marketing campaign can do for you – develop a successful business.

Attitude: "I don't have time for marketing. I'd rather use it for something more productive."

This is especially true when you are already busy with a client or you have other important responsibilities taking up your time.

Being busy with an existing client work is great. That means you need to focus your energy and effort to meet deadlines and produce quality results. But what about after you're done with that client? If you have this kind of policy, you'll never be able to get yourself another client waiting for you when the first one is completed.

No matter your reason, the fact is, you need to get yourself to market your business even minimally. Set a time each week for you to do promotional campaigns like producing flyer printing pieces. Even with a small amount of time dedicated for marketing can do a world of difference in getting you your next bread and butter.

Attitude: "My advertising campaign doesn't work for me."

Not every marketing campaign works. But there are reasons why it doesn't produce the results according to how you imagined it.

Maybe your message is not so clear to your target audience. Or the marketing strategy you're adapting is not applicable to your target market. Or you're totally barking at the wrong tree. You might be promoting your business to a market that doesn't need you.

Or maybe because you don't exert your marketing enough. So before you complain that your print flyer don't do its job, you need to work it out first. Send them to as many people as possible and distribute not just once but as many times.

Changing your attitude is the first step to having a truly successful marketing campaign. So change it now before it's too late.

And here is another random article you might be interested in...

4th Quarter 2003 Publicity = 1st Quarter 2004 Prosperity

As the year starts to wind down, many businesses and entrepreneurs are making plans and budgets for the year 2004. Those plans could include anything from setting up goals for new products to preparing marketing, sales and PR/publicity campaigns. When it comes to your publicity plan, WHEN you launch your campaign can be just as important to what and how you launch.

HOLIDAY PUBLICITY OPPORTUNITIES

If your product/business lends itself to increased holiday sales, the next few weeks are a perfect time to get a publicity campaign launched - given the right media targets. Many holiday issues are already been laid out for magazines, and many other media outlets are feverishly seeking information/pitches on innovative stories for the holidays. Some media outlets even reorganize or beef up staff around the holidays to allow for an increase in stories on products. Have your publicist help you take advantage of this increased media opportunity. PLANTING

PUBLICITY SEEDS NOW FOR 1ST QUARTER RESULTS

Some business owners may be of the mindset: "I think we'll wait to launch a publicity campaign until after January 1st." The problem is -- if you wait to launch your publicity campaign until the first of the year hoping for a quick media interest blast in January, you may be in for a quiet month. Keep in mind most media outlets have editorial lead-times of a few weeks to 6 months. Also what some entrepreneurs don't realize is this. Because of the increasing number of publicity pitches media outlets receive, anything you send out is subjected to what I call the "media digestion period" - simply put - that is a period of time (sometimes weeks, sometimes months) that it takes media outlets to:

1. see/understand your release and decide if they are interested;
2. find space/time in their editorial calendar to place the article/news story/show segment.

The potential placement is also directly dependent upon how quickly and efficiently your publicist or PR agency can help the media secure the placement. Media relations is crucial. Your publicist's job is to make the reporter/editor/producer's job as easy and as effortless as possible - which will lead to quicker and more numerous placements for your business.

When it comes to publicity pitches, the facts are: placement is totally up to the discretion of the particular media outlet; and very few media responses are immediate. I have in fact had media outlets respond even before the media release seemed to settle in the fax machine tray. Conversely, I also had one media outlet that responded 17 months after a pitch. (I had to ask the reporter what the YEAR was on the release!) NO placement is guaranteed, but you can definitely increase the odds. Even if your product/business if a dead-on perfect match for a media outlet's editorial profile, you are not guaranteed placement without some hard work and media relations. That's why timing of your publicity pitch is so critical. Have your publicist get your pitch to the media, allow the editorial staff to digest it a bit, and strategically and professionally "rattle the cage" over the next several weeks to generate as many placements as possible.

What we are trying to do is plant seeds in media outlets' editorial garden so they will bear fruit -- in the form of articles/show placements -- continuously over the next several weeks and months. Like the plant that comes from a seed, publicity placements can also grow roots and lead to other arterial media placements in other media outlets. Given the right tending, the publicity seeds you plant over the next few weeks/months will indeed germinate and you'll reap a wonderful harvest for your business well past the first quarter of next year.

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