Bizsuccess

Friday, May 20, 2009

By: Susan Gunelius

Before a small business owner starts a new marketing program, advertising campaign, or promotional initiative, it’s important to get back to the basics and make sure the steps were taken to ensure success.  Take a look at the 3 steps to successful marketing below, and make sure you always follow them!

1. Do Your Research

Don’t just dive right in.  While it’s important to take risks, you always want to make sure you take calculated risks that have the best chances of paying off.  You need to do your research to make sure you know what you’re getting into before you take the plunge.  Most importantly, you need to thoroughly understand your market and your competitors.  How else will you know that you’re offering the right product, promotion, price, and placement for the marketplace?  You need to completely understand the market and your competition before you do anything else!

2. Listen to Your Customers

It doesn’t matter what you want or what you think.  What matters is what customers want and what they think.  While you might believe that you have the best product and promotion that would be perfect for you if you were the customer, your actual customers might not agree.

You can’t fit a square peg in a round hole.  In other words, your product won’t sell if there isn’t demand for it.  Understand your customers’ wants and needs and then deliver products and promotions that meet those wants and needs.  Otherwise, you’re just shooting darts aimlessly with the hope that luck will strike and you’ll get a bullseye.  Don’t count on luck.  Instead, meet market demands.

3. Know When to Move On

No matter how much you love an idea and think it should work, you need to know when it’s time to cut your losses and move on because the results you need aren’t coming in.  This is something that large corporations are terrible at, but as a small business owner, you run the show, and you can make the decisions.  Be the best leader you can by being willing to admit defeat and move on.

For example, don’t insist a failing ad still has legs.  Cut it off and move on.  Think of the sales you’re losing by trying to keep that failing effort alive.  In other words, you’re in charge of your fate as a small business owner, so don’t be afraid to accept defeat and move on.