Why Marketing Frustrates So Many Small Business Owners
And What To Do About It
Too Much Marketing Fails To
Motivate
You can't make a prospect do
anything but you can encourage or motivate your prospect by showing
that the gain from taking your recommended action solves a problem and
outweighs any costs and is therefore worthy of his or her limited time
and attention.
Questions automatically fly through
your prospect's brain when he or she sees your marketing message. Your
prospect asks "What's in it for me? Why should I do what you
want?"
The benefits may be obvious to you but unless
you explain them clearly, they are not so obvious to anybody
else.
If you fail to answer this "what's in it for
me" question, your prospect immediately moves on and your marketing
fails.
I had better set a good
example.
The Benefits Of Improving Your
Marketing
The benefits of improving
your marketing include:
- Attracting more leads and prospective customers.
Even if nothing else changes (and it will), more leads coming into your
funnel means more new customers, more sales and more
profit;
- Converting a
higher proportion of leads into customers and
clients;
- Increasing
the average transaction value bought by a new
customer;
- Persuading
your customers to buy more often by finding new ways to create value
for them and extra profit for
you;
- Increasing
customer retentions and extending the average life of your customers;
and
- Encouraging your
happy customers to refer your business to other
people.
Improve every factor and your business success will grow exponentially.
The Current Situation: Common Problems With Marketing
Unless you are one of the tiny minority of businesses that creates incredible word of mouth recommendations without any effort, you have to market your business.
If you want to be successful, there is no choice.
But do you find that your marketing is:
- Very time consuming?
- Expensive and still everyone wants you
to spend more money?
- Unproductive? It doesn't produce the results you want and
need.
Until you understand marketing, it is a frustrating activity which drains away time and resources from your business although occasionally you will strike lucky and attract new customers.
It doesn't have to be like this if you fix the core marketing issues.
The Underlying Marketing Problems
The cause of these marketing frustrations are usually in one or more of:
- Your
marketing mindset - if you don't understand what marketing
really is or what intentional marketing can do for you with the right
mindset, customer focus and commitment, you will find marketing
particularly difficult and daunting.
- Your target market - if you send your marketing
messages to the wrong person at the wrong place, you won't succeed.
Even if your message is beautifully crafted and presented, it is a
waste of money and effort if the person has no interest, want or need
to buy what you are selling.
- Your marketing
message - your marketing should educate
and sell. It must be interesting and relevant.
On this webpage, my intention is to educate you on what causes your lack of success in marketing so that you can see marketing coaching as both the logical solution but also that the next step of picking up the telephone and calling me on 0121 554 4057 feels like the right thing to do.
- The marketing media you use
- how your marketing message reaches your target
customers.
For example, you may have an excellent website, beautifully designed and with expert copywriting but if there is no traffic, the investment is wasted.
Do you have the right mindset?
Do you see marketing as the most important function in your business to attract and retain customers...
...or do you see it as a minor activity that can be delegated to a junior member of staff to send out a few letters and make some telephone calls?
Have you defined your target customer types clearly...
...or do you hope that anybody will be a customer?
Do you communicate with your top prospects regularly so that you build trust and win "top of the mind" awareness...
...or do you have a scatter gun approach to marketing with many more misses than hits?
Do you send out marketing messages that explain how the customer will benefit...
...or do you describe how great you think your business is, even though your customers aren't interested in you until they know what you can do for them.
Do you use multiple ways to reach out to the market and create a good impression...
...or do you rely on one or two ways to attract the attention of prospective customers?
These are all critical issues which help to explain why some achieve marketing success while others only see marketing frustrations.
So let me ask you:
"Are you ready to change what you do and improve your marketing to gain the benefits of higher sales and increased profit?"
The Marketing Coaching Solution
Many people will be trying to sell you marketing services and solutions - see marketing coaching v marketing consultants v marketing media sales if you want to understand the difference.
I believe you will find that marketing coaching is the most complete solution for improving the marketing of your business and creating success.
It will improve your marketing mindset, the clarity and definition of your target market, your marketing message and the marketing media you choose to use to communicate your message.
Marketing coaching works by teaching you how to improve your marketing skills, helping you to apply the new marketing ideas to your business and by providing accountability and feedback.
I offer two marketing coaching programs for clients in the UK:
Guerrilla Marketing Coaching - which specialises in the high impact, low cost and no cost marketing techniques made popular in the world's best-selling brand of marketing books in history.
and
Bespoke Marketing Coaching - a stripped down version of my business coaching program focusing on the main marketing pillars included within my Eight Pillars of Business Prosperity business coaching model.
I am based in Birmingham, West Midlands but my telephone based marketing coaching is available throughout the UK.
To find out more please click on the links or call me, Paul Simister on 0121 554 4057 now while you think about it.
If you are not quite ready to take that step, please sign up to my regular newsletter at the top of the page. It will give you two free marketing based reports to help you grow and will let you learn more about my marketing and business development ideas.