Small Business Marketing Success - It's All About Your Attitude

Small business marketing success can only be achieved when you are mentally prepared to be persistent and tenacious. Having a winning marketing attitude is the first step in creating a business that dominates your market and defeats all of your competitors.

What's your marketing attitude? Do you see yourself as confident winner or a cynical loser?

Most small businesses fail because of lack of sales brought on by a neglect of marketing. Typically, the business owner is wearing so many hats and battling endless problems that they push marketing aside until it is too late and they are hemorrhaging money. Marketing usually takes a back seat to employee problems, meeting payroll, dealing with vendors, satisfying customers, and fighting off competitors.

Unsuccessful business owners perceive marketing as an obstacle to be avoided rather the engine that drives the cash producing machine. Conversely, businesses that thrive for many years understand that marketing is the key to their success and that nothing else they do is more important. It's all about marketing attitude.

Here are six marketing attitudes that generate sales and lead to success:

1. A Belief in the Power of Marketing: Nothing else you will do in your daily activities will create sales and profits more than your marketing activities. Marketing is an investment that generates positive results, everything else creates costs. 2. Persistence and Tenacity: You must never give up and constantly market your business no matter what the market conditions or who the competition. Most small businesses owners quit because of a few of their marketing plays fail to produce. A never-give-up marketing attitude is a must. 3. A Systematic Approach: Successful marketing is a methodical process that requires strategic planning with defined goals and consistent execution with results that can be measured. Most businesses plan by tossing a coin to decide where and execute a single, one time marketing play. This approach never works. 4. Resiliency and Immunity to Failure: When you play the marketing game you will face failure. Not every sales letter, advertisement, or post card you send will get people to act in your favor. You must accept the failures and use them to adjust your approach until you win. Your favorite marketing phrase should always be - 'What's next?' 5. Relationships Matter: Successful small business marketing is the result of creating relationships with clients and customers built on trust. When they know you and like you they will buy from you without hesitation and not consider your competitor's offer. 6. A Winner's Mindset: Marketing is a game that is played on a tough battlefield with many worthy adversaries. Being shy and timid about letting your prospects know how you can solve their problems and improve their lives can be disastrous. A confident message with an aggressive approach is the only way to take on your competition and come out victorious with the sale.

Having the right attitude toward your small business marketing is the surest way to achieve the level of success you desire. It can mean the difference between you enjoying the thrill of victory or the bitter taste of defeat.

To learn more on how to create a winning marketing program with the right attitude, download a complimentary report "Six Fundamentals For Winning the Marketing Game" from marketing Coach Ron Abbott. You can claim your copy at http://www.TD-Marketing-System.com

How Long Should You Keep Marketing Prospects In The Data Base?

So, how long should a smart marketer keep their contacts in the data base? Many marketers remove people and records from the data base too soon, especially when considering the overall potential lifetime value of both the prospect and the company they represent.

Consider this: even if a single customer only buys one single item in a lifetime, you should strongly consider keeping him or her in your data base for a long period of time, or at least until they make a purchase from either you or your competitor. But, if this same contact continues to make purchases of the types of services and products that your company provides, on a repeated basis, you really ought to consider leaving the person and the company they represent in the data base for an unlimited duration. Or, you can just leave this contact and the company they represent in the data base for as long are you are sure you will be able to market to them cost effectively, whether this message is sent to the person by e-mail, by fax, or by phone. When providing a direct marketing solution for clients, one often hears about marketers who are beginning to close first sales from prospects who have been sitting idle in the data base for two, three, four years, or at times even! longer periods of time.

One good method of determining whether or not you should keep certain customers and prospect records in your data base for a long time cost effectively is to compare the cost of data base marketing to one prospect or customer for one year, as opposed to the cost of locating another new prospect to market to. As an example, if the company you represent tends to spend an average of two hundred and fifty dollars to generate a single inquiry, and only twenty five dollars a year in order to keep in contact with each person or record using data base marketing, you can afford to maintain the prospect or customer in the data base for up to around ten years for around the same cost.

If, however, you are going to keep people and the companies they represent in your data base list for a long duration, it is a good idea to periodically ask these contacts if they are indeed still interested in receiving information from you and the company you represent. You can simply opt to tell these people that if they do not respond to your inquiry, you will simply remove them from your data base list. Then, just keep those respondents who indicate that they would like to continue to receive your message and updates. Then, remove those who do not respond after a reasonable amount of time has passed after your inquiry. An even better idea is to maintain the records of those who do not respond for purposes of statistical evaluation, but add a code which will suppress these records when generating lists for active mailing, faxing, emailing or calling of prospects in future campaigns.

M. H. "Mac" McIntosh is described by many a! s one of America's leading B2B sales and marketing consultants and an expert on sales. See: http://www.sales-lead-experts.com for more info.

Market Surveys - An Under Used Marketing Tactic?

Since the days of running my own PR and Marketing Consultancy, I have valued market surveys as a superb marketing tactic. Market surveys, if they are properly set up, can provide a wealth of information for your firm. A survey can also actually generate sales leads, improve your brand awareness, help you gain knowledge about the competition, the market and their buying criteria.

Surveys continue to be an underused but powerful tactic in marketing from my perspective.

How To Set Up A Market Survey

A market survey has to be thoroughly thought through to be truly effective. It can't be too long and yet it needs to ask the right questions. Often, those dong a market survey miss out on the chance to truly add value by not asking the right questions or perhaps by framing the questions wrongly i.e. they are open to interpretation on the part of the respondent.

The first question to ask yourself is what information do you really require from the survey? You then have to construct a profile of the respondents that you are seeking to survey and frame the questions in a way that is not open to interpretation and yet provide the data that you are looking for.

Try to keep the questions structured and logical in order and ensure that the questions are concise, clear and not open to misinterpretation. In fact, run the questions through with potential respondents a few times and gain feedback from them on how it went and how it could be improved. It always pays to try to structure questions such that the answer is definitive as opposed to open ended. In other words ask yes or no questions or use a list of responses that can be ranked. This makes it easier for the respondent and ensures that you get the answers you are looking for.

Gaining Additional Information

What many forget when setting up a survey is that this is the chance to extract some real intelligence and data from the market. You need to make the most of it. Adding questions regarding the respondents buying criteria and buying habits can provide data that can be used to set up your future marketing campaigns with more effectiveness, decide where and how to advertise and, what to emphasize in your marketing collateral.

As stated above, surveys also generate leads. Talk to 50 companies and you will generate at least 1-2 real leads as well as arm yourself with 50 real names, phone numbers and email addresses to pass to your telesales folks. Additionally, the survey will equip you with some real competitive intelligence such as how active are your competitors from a sales activity standpoint, where are they installed/used, what do their users/buyers actually think of them and more besides.

Once the survey is set up it can be managed as either a telephone survey or you can use one of the many tools available to set it up as an internet-based survey. You will need, of course, to identify in both cases potential respondents that meet your criteria and have some way to reach them.

Summary

Market surveys are an underutilized marketing tool that can offer much more than simple market data if planned and executed properly. They can generate leads, help develop your brand, provide competitive and market intelligence and help you to hone your positioning. In fact, surveys are a cheap but sure fire way to gain the upper hand on your market and competition.

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