Marketing Plans, Necessity or Luxury?
♫ Tuesday, January 8th, 2008
1. Purpose of your plan – this is your goal, what you plan to achieve, your objective
2. Benefits for the customer – this is the “what’s in it for me” part. Your customer wants to know what benefits they’ll receive from your products or service
3. Your target market- this is the group or groups of individuals you serve
4. Marketing strategy- targeting your market strategically, keeping your potential clients characteristics and needs in mind while moving them to the action you desire. (This step is so important one of the upcoming articles in this series is about it.)
5. Your niche or specialty- this is the services or products you offer
6. Marketing budget- how much money you plan to invest in marketing 7. Marketing implementation action plan- where you intend to advertise and market
8. Evaluation strategies- ways you plan to track the outcomes of your marketing strategy.
When determining the purpose of your marketing plan, you’ll need to know who you are, what you do, why you do it, and who your ideal customer is. While each of these steps seems simple enough, spending time evaluating each step and laying it out in relationship to each of the other steps ensures that you’ll have a marketing plan that reflects your desires for your company while supporting growth and opportunity.
What are the Advantages of Direct Marketing?
♫ Monday, December 31st, 2007
The cost per acquisition of direct mail can be significantly less than other marketing methods. Plus once you’ve acquired a customer, you can also benefit from highly profitable repeat sales, gained once again through direct marketing methods.
Direct marketing provides greater control and accountability than other marketing methods. It is easy to measure results because you know exactly how many people you’ve contacted in the first place. Once you’ve run a direct marketing campaign and know the conversion rates involved, you can work on refining and improving your success rates. Plus it also makes it easier to plan, forecast and budget for future direct marketing campaigns.
Trade Shows for the new businesses- cost saving but effective marketing
♫ Friday, November 23rd, 2007
The main reason for starting a business is probably to provide services. Helping those who cannot help themselves could also be another reason which is partly true. Is creating a network another reason for running a business? Not at all! A network should be created BEFORE starting a business. The number one purpose of starting a business is to make money.
Every business and organization shares one profit-oriented goal. They would abandon anything that does not bring money. Even items that cost money are also to be questioned. The likelihood of continuing a business that does not incur profit but only covers costs in a long run should be decided by top management and stakeholders. Money is the most important factor that keeps a business going.
One sensitive issue in this area of economics is nothing new. The fact that businesses need to save cost in every way possible in order to make profit can be achieved by getting the lowest price for the best quality. To be able to do this, a business requires intense benchmarking, regular surveying and most of all, a person with a good business sense.
Marketing is an important element in business and it helps create demand for a product. A good marketing strategy should even start before the product is created and is done by identifying the need, desired features and the prime candidates for a market niche. Marketing creates the story and messages that you want to tell a specific group of customers in order to make them understand your product and how it can solve their problem.
An ideal place to start marketing your product is a tradeshow. Not only do your products get marketed to a large crowd related to your industry, you also get to save cost by doing the promoting yourself. Don’t go for an expensive large booth if you’ve just started; choose the low cost type of exhibit displays instead. There are many to choose from and your product will still get noticed without you spending more than you can afford.
A tradeshow is usually comprised of many competitors, suppliers and customers. Therefore, the image of your product is important. Attracting potential customers will rely on how much product exposure they get at first glance. A banner stand is an economical way to market your product but you must make sure that the stand is firm enough so that it won’t fly away with a breeze, fans or air-conditioning. This is equally as important as having an interesting banner with graphic.
Apart from the marketing team, signs and displays should illustrate a lucid message to people who may be interested in your product. Investing on LED light displays is a bad investment as it will create interest in your display and not the product. Overdoing the display will take away the attention from your product. Invest on something inexpensive and quick to make such as personalized printed table top which goes well with beads and other smaller items.
Another cost effective way of marketing at tradeshows is with pop up displays. Some advantages are they are easy to ship and the container can be converted into a small table that sits at the front of the display. This table could then be used to hold literature and other information about your product. Use your imagination and creativity to attract the attention of potential customers.
To invest in a large permanent booth in a tradeshow is unwise, especially for new businesses as dollars can be better spent elsewhere. The smart thing to do is to get a portable trade show display booth. Not only is it easy to be moved and transported, it is also cheaper and can be assembled at any spot.
A good business depends on many factors. However, the fundamental essence of every business is still the same: Make profits, save costs and think wisely before you do anything.