20 Marketing Tips You Must Know

20 Things You Must Do
To Market Your
Business Successfully
Presented By:

www.HowToIncreaseYourSales.ca

20 Things You Must Do To Market Your
Business Successfully 1

What Is Marketing?
What Is Selling?

• Marketing: is a process of finding and attracting people or
businesses (leads/prospects) who are most likely to want and
need your products/services and can afford to pay for it. Then
developing long-term relationships with them to promote repeat sales
and encourage referrals.

• Selling: is the process of converting your leads/prospects
into paying customers.


#1 Clearly Identify
Your Target Market
• If you try to sell to everyone you’ll end up selling to very
few

• Develop a profile of your ideal customer

• Select a market niche that interest you and that you can
communicate with easily, often and for a low-cost

• Not defining your target market in detail results in
wasted time, money and effort


#2 Define Your Product/Service

• What want or need does your product satisfy?

• What problem does your service solve?

• i.e. make money, save money, increase self-esteem,
fun, popularity, possess beautiful things

• Can you clearly describe your benefits
in terms of fulfilling need/wants, solving problem?

• Product/Service must be a solution, at a price people
are willing to pay


#3 Find A Way To Differentiate
Your Business From Your
Competitors
• What is the unique benefit (s) that you offer that makes you
different from your competitors?

• I.e. Dominos Pizza – “fresh hot, pizza in 30 minutes or less”
(huge reason for their success)

• Also known as USP – unique selling position, core marketing
message

• Why should people do business with you instead of your
competitors?


#4 Focus Your Marketing On
Your Customers Instead Of You
• The majority of your marketing communications should focus
on how your target market will benefit from using your
products or services

• Your customers want to know “What’s in it for me”. “How are
they going to benefit from using your product or service?”
** You must answer this question clearly in all your marketing

• Your education, technical skills, how long in business,
awards; should not be your main marketing message

• Talk about the problems and issues that your target market is
having and how your product or service can help them solve
them


#5 Communicate Your Benefits
Instead of Features
• People don’t buy what your products or services does, they buy the
end results of what you offer

• You must clearly and specifically tell people the results they will get
from doing business with you. Convert your features to benefits.

• I.e. Feature: highbred car, Benefit: It will save You money on gas and
reduce air pollution

• Effective communication of your BENEFITS is critical to attracting
your potential customers

• Educate your target market on how the BENEFITS of your products or
services will make them happier, save them time, make them money,
solve their problems and add value to their lives.


#6 Employ All The 3 Keys To
Growing Your Business
• Lead generation – finding and attracting potential customers

• Marketing to your current clients
- increasing the size of the average sales
- increasing the number/frequency of purchases
- receiving more referrals from customers
- Should have a REFERRAL PROGRAM
- strategy to encourage your customers to give you referrals

• Improving sales conversion rate
i.e. instead of getting 3 sales of 10, work on getting 6 of 10

** Use all 3 to leverage your time and resources**


#7 Implement Your
Marketing System
• You need a marketing systems to CONSISTENTLY ATTRACT
your PROSPECTS?, encourage repeat sales and referrals

• How are you going to encourage your prospects to contact
you?

• If you’re fishing for prospects, what are you going to use for
bait?

I.e. offer a free report, newsletter sign up at website, offer free
seminars, product sampling

• ***Must be planned, organized **


#8 Base Your Marketing
Strategies on
Research and Testing, Not
Guesses and Assumptions
• Research your potential customers – their issues and problems,
wants and needs

• Spy on your major competitors, what are their strengths and
weaknesses? How can you use them to give you a competitive
advantage?

• Test all you marketing activities on a small scale before you go
big – i.e. mail to small list first
• Find out as much as you can about your target market.


#9 Use Direct Response
Advertising, Instead of
Institutional Advertising
• Institutional Advertising – focuses on creating awareness/branding
“ GET YOUR NAME OUT THERE”
• Direct Response Advertising – asking your target market to respond in a
specific way i.e. call you for a free item of value, go to your web site to
download, watch or listen to something for free
• The marketing message should include the following things:

- An attention grabbing, compelling headline
- A specific offer
- A strong call to action
- A sense of urgency


Awareness Advertising vs.
Direct Response Advertising


Use Two-Step Advertising
• Step #1
Your objectives: to get people to identify themselves as potential
customers and to capture their contact information

• How? Offer them something of value that they want and need for FREE

• i.e. call for a free report, CD/DVD , visit your website to download an
e-book

• - To get your FREE stuff they have to give you their contact info
(name, email address, phone#)
•
Step #2
Enter their contact information into your database to follow-up and
implement a variety of marketing campaigns.


#10 Use Headlines In All Your
Advertising Literature
• Your headline is responsible for 80% of the success of your
marketing piece

• It must grab the attention of your audience in 5 seconds

• Must have strong benefit, or offer, be relevant to your target
market

• 5 times as many people read the headline as the body copy

• Headline must address the needs and wants of your target
market


#11 MAKE SPECIFIC OFFERS
• 3 TYPES of OFFERS
1. Offer to Generate Prospects – goal to capture contact info
i.e. Free No Obligation Marketing Check-up

• 2. Offers to Generate First-Time Customers – goal encourage first
purchase
i.e. Free 30-day trial

• 3. Offers to Generate Repeat Sales – goal encourage multiple purchases
i.e. Repeat orders are eligible for 10% off and Free delivery

• Make your offers enticing and compelling to entice people to take
IMMEDIATE ACTION

• Appeal to people’s self interest

• 1- offer per marketing piece (may be 2)

• Test different offers to see which ones generate the highest response

#12 Include a Call To Action
In Your Advertising
• Your Call to Action Tells People How to Respond
to Your Marketing Message
- Call for more details/info is not effective, it’s too vague

• Examples of effective call to actions
- Buy today save 25%,
- Offer ends December 31st. Call now!
- First 10 people to respond get a free special bonus

Your call to action should be related to the objective of your
marketing piece


Example of Awareness Ad Example of Direct Response Ad


Awareness Ad Direct Response Ad


#13 Use Social Proof to
Build Trust and Credibility
• Testimonials are a powerful tool to help break through buyer
skepticism, build trust and credibility

• Case Study –real life story of how your product helped someone

• Photos/video/audio of happy clients

• PR – get quoted in the papers or a magazines, guest on TV and
radio

• Use social proof at your website, in print ads, in brochures, even
on the back of your business cards


#14 Develop A Database Of
Your Customers And
Potential Customers
• Your database should be the hub of all your marketing
activities

- it will help you organize and schedule your touch points with
customers and prospects

• Get a contact management database
- i.e. ACT, Gold Mine, Maximizer

• Collect relevant info on your clients and prospects


#15 Follow-up! Follow-up!
• It usually takes 7-11 exposures to your marketing message
before people think of contacting you

• Over 60 percent of all sales are made after the 7th contact with a
prospect, especially true in B to B sales

• Studies reveal that most sales are lost due to lack of follow-up.

• Develop a follow-up system and you will get an advantage over
your competitors (contact management software)

• Follow-up at least ONCE a MONTH


Why a Follow-up System Is So Critical
----------------------------------------------------
2% of sales are made on the 1st contact
3% on the 2nd contact
5% on the 3rd contact
10% on the 4th contact
80% of all sales are made on the 7th -12th contact
Source: Referral Marketing Handbook


How Effective Are Sales
People At Following up

----------------------------------------------------
48% of sales people never follow-up
25% of sales people make 2 follow-ups and stop
12% of sales people make 3 follow-us and stop
10% -15% of sales people make 4 or more follow-up
contacts
Source: Referral Marketing Handbook


#16 Develop an Effective
Website
• Developed your website to achieve specific objectives

• i.e. to get leads, educate your customers, sell a product,
technical support

• Lead generation- capturing the contact data of your visitors
should be a major objective. Especially for new businesses

• Plan out your site on paper before you spend any money


Implement A Promotional
Strategy For Your Web Site
• You must have a strategy to encourage and entice people to visit
your website

• Too many businesses fall for the “Fields of Dream Myth” – if you
build it they will come NOT!

• How are you going to get people to visit your web site?
• You need more than search engine placement.

• Your web site address on all marketing materials is
a good start

• How about having a contest give away at your site?


#17 Set A Marketing Budget
• How much should you spend on marketing?

• Forecast the “LIFE TIME VALUE” of your client/customer

• Then decide how much you are willing to invest in finding and
keeping your customers

• Make a list of at least 10 specific marketing tactics,
NO COST, LOW COST, HIGH COST

• Remember that marketing is an investment in the growth of your
business, it’s not just an expense


#18 Set Marketing
And Sales Goals
• You must set specific, written goals with time lines and a
measuring component i.e. monthly/yearly sales

• Number of inquiries or referrals in a month
• Clients acquired in 3 months

• Goals will help you STAY MOTIVATED and FOCUSED

• Review your goals regularly and reward yourself when you’re
successful.


#19 Develop A Written
Marketing Plan
• Your marketing plan should be your roadmap to finding and
attracting your prospects, getting repeat sales and referrals

• It should organize and integrate all your marketing activities

• Research has found than not having a marketing plan
contributes significantly to business failure
and underachievement

• Include a Marketing Calendar: a to-do list of all your planned
marketing activities. Start date, who will do it, estimated cost,
measure results

• Companies that follow a marketing plan do about 24- 30%
more sales than businesses that do not. (U.S. SBA research)


#20 Track & Measure Your
Marketing Activities
• If you can’t measure the results of your marketing activities
you’re probably wasting your money

• Track and measure inquiries, leads, sales, phone calls you
generated

• I.e. use a coupon in an ad, subscribe to your newsletter link in
an email

• Tracking and measuring will let you know what’s working and
what’s not
ROI – track the return on your marketing investments


Conclusion
• Successful marketing will take patience, persistence,
testing, repetition, commitment

• Marketing is a process of testing and evaluating,
adjusting
• There’s no “Marketing Silver Bullet”
• No one marketing strategy or specific tactic will give
you quick, massive sales success

• Marketing is the most important job in your business.


Want More Sales?
Get FREE Marketing Tips & Ideas every month when
you sign up for my monthly newsletter. Sign up at:

www.HowToIncreaseYourSales.ca

204-783-6342
email: theMarketingCoach@PrimetimePromotions.ca


20 Marketing Tips You Must Know

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