perfect solution for ideal customers

 

Sometimes marketing can be a major mystery for small business owners.  It’s often just one more part of the business you have to fit into your schedule.  To be effective, it is important to stay informed about current marketing tools and processes.  And, yes, all of this takes time.  Often it is time you really don’t have to spare while you are running your business and dealing with each day’s challenges. Understanding the best marketing messages and which channels will put you in front of prospects who will buy from you is critical.  But, maintaining control of marketing is even more important in the grand scheme of marketing your business successfully.

Well known and respected management consultant, educator, and author Peter Drucker once said:

The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.”

Control your marketing to tell the perfect story about your firm

Excellent perspective, don’t you think?  Everyone hopes their product or service will sell itself.  First it makes life easier for the business development person in your firm.  If you are a solo-preneur, that means you.  No one wants to work harder than necessary – why should we?  Small businesses generally have more than enough work for each team member.  Many of us do a lot of multitasking every day.  We pray for ways to ease our work load and free us to do the things we started our business to do.  We want to do the things we are passionate about.

But, we find ourselves tied up with day to day tasks and putting out fires that keep us from the most important things.  Things like having time to plan for the growth and success of our small businesses. Tasks like making creative and innovative plans for our future get pushed to the side.  Instead, we find ourselves kept away from important things like keeping a steady flow of customers coming our way to increase revenues.  And, taking time and focus away from our marketing plans and efforts.

Eight Ways to Control Your Marketing

Let’s look at ways to help move your small business closer to Drucker’s quote about marketing.  Developing a well-laid plan for marketing can help you get closer to his philosophical approach.

Always be consistent with your marketing approach

To maintain a regular, steady flow of leads and customers, consistency is mandatory.  You can’t just market some of the time.  It is not wise to only market if and when you can find a little extra time.  Extra time never seems to become available.  Remember to make your plan time-related.  If you have a blog, include in your plan that you want to create and post ‘X’ fresh, focused articles each week, month, or quarter.

perfect solutions for ideal clients

Market to your ideal customers, not the world

Before you begin your market planning, your first step to control your marketing is identifying your ideal customers.  It is imperative to you determine who your ideal (best) customers are and market specifically to them.  A shot-gun approach to marketing or just throwing out marketing messages into the vast unknown is a huge waste of your time and money.  Develop Customer Personas for several groups that have already shown an interest in buying your products or services.  What key characteristics and traits do they share? Create a Persona based on what they have in common, then send detailed marketing messages they will understand and engage with.  Odds are good that others out there who share those same characteristics and traits will also be interested in what you have to offer.  Control your marketing:  market to these fine-tuned groups who want what you have.

Go where your ideal customers will be

Just because there are a handful of popular – and crowded – social media sites like Facebook or Twitter, doesn’t mean your ideal customers hang out there.  Look into social media Groups or online forums that match up with your keywords, offerings and topics.  Chances are your ideal customers will be there along with other similar prospects.  Just because social media sites have millions and millions of visitors every day does not mean your ideal customers are among those masses.  Nor does it mean they will see you even if they are there.  Control your marketing by becoming a big fish in a smaller marketing pond.  Why struggle to be noticed marketing among millions of others in the sea.

Online marketing is not everything

Online marketing is really just some new marketing channels and tools you can use to reach prospects.  Old-school, off-line marketing is not dead.  Networking is not dead by any means.  Nor is public speaking or print advertising – in the right places.  Attend networking events where your ideal customers go.  Advertise in places and publications that your ideal customers will see your brand.  Don’t be afraid to ask what your ideal customers do.  Listen for clues to where they go, or send a survey to your top ‘x’ existing customers.  Pay attention to what they say, notice what magazines and books they read. Then, control your marketing by placing your brand messages or yourself in those places.

Make your website work for you

Be sure that you have clear keywords that relate to your brand:  who you are (expert and most sanitary chicken-plucker in your tri-state area), what you do (construction firm that eliminates all dust during customer projects), and what value you bring to customers(most environmentally advanced cleaning products).  Create content that highlights your brand as providing the best solutions for customer needs.  Write content based on a small number of topics that revolve around your primary products and services.  These are known as ‘pillar’ topics.  They allow you to blow your own horn about your knowledge and skills.

Help customers find their way to you

Keywords and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) are big pieces of the successful online marketing puzzle.  Once you have conquered that challenge, prospects will find your website. When they find you and show up, then what?  You need to help them along the way.  Often referred to as a Sales Funnel, this is a number of steps between them finding your site and becoming your customer.

Not everyone that arrives at your website knows what they should do next.There are a number of steps they need to move through, depending on where they happen to fall in their ‘buying journey.’   It is up to you to make it clear and easy for them.  Create the steps you want them to take from being just ‘interested’, or attracted to your site to becoming a real, paying customer.

Offer a free gift as a customer magnet

How many times have you arrived at some website only to be offered something free like an e-book or a check list?  Maybe that is why you clicked on that website in the first place – to get something free that was of interest to you.  It’s not scary, it’s free.  It is something you think would be useful.  The cost: nothing in money, just trade your name and email address for some useful information.  This was Step 1 in someone’s ‘Sales Funnel’.

Think about it.  They offer you something free but useful to gain the ability to contact you further.  You pay the price:  your email address, so they can connect with you again to move you closer to their goal of snagging a new customer.  Maybe Step 2 will be an email message from you welcoming you, asking if the freebie was useful.  They may offer something else free, or at a low cost to move you forward again.  Each time you ‘bite’ tells them you are closer to being another ideal customer.  If you start with a check list – something created from your own experience, digitally and downloadable – you offer people something that really cost you or them anything.  But it makes you look helpful and as a potential solution to their challenges.

Website Calls to Action

Don’t assume every visitor to your website knows what to do next.  They need to be ‘nudged’ along the way in the direction you want them to go.  This is where Calls To Action play an important part in attracting your ideal customers.  ‘Sign up for our newsletter’ is a Call to Action.  So is ‘Download this free check list’.  Every page on your website should include at least one Call to Action to help potential customers find their way through your website to find your pertinent information.

Control Your Marketing at all levels

Starting at the beginning; developing your brand becomes the basis for all of your marketing efforts.   And, as the most important part of any small business marketing programs.  The brand represents the essence of you, your company, your products and services.  It reflects a consistent message of who you are, what you do and what value you bring.  Your brand highlights what customers can expect from you at a professional level and sets you apart from your competitors.

With this most basic element as the basis to control your marketing you are on the best path to reach the right customers, with needs that your products or services can meet.  Once you have fine-tuned and control your marketing process, the right customers will find you and keep coming back.  Once you create a positive relationship with those customers, they will become ambassadors, sharing the news about you and how you solved their problem.

What steps have you taken to take and maintain control of your marketing efforts?  What was successful and what didn’t really help much?