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Marketing 101
The world of business Marketing 101 is not without its moon-promising charlatans if you would only put your trust in their secret techniques programs software for marketing and sales success.
Why Marketing 101?
- Small business owners consume better things like producing and delivering valuable products and services for their customers than sorting out the truth from the trash.
- No one would be responsible for you if you ever felt overwhelmed and confused and thought effective marketing was out of reach.
- That’s where we’ve put together this primer on marketing basics, Marketing 101, for small business owners.
How to Detect Bad Advice?
As business owners, we all need more customers, and the faster/easier/cheaper it is to acquire them, the better right?
- Yes, of sequence. We can certainly agree on that.
- Nonetheless, it’s important to realize there are no natural shortcuts to customer acquisition.
- Instead, you must put the work in and establish a systematic approach that’s the only viable road to consistent long-term success.
So how do you spot the change between a fad or gimmick and a legitimate tried-and-true marketing practice?
- So your best protection against making poor (and costly) marketing choices is to understand the basics of marketing truly and then evaluate any new marketing advice you come across against this.
- If you do this, you will soon develop adept at discerning which advice is worth considering and which you must drop like a hot brick.
What is Marketing?
The marketing isn’t just putting up a slick business website and to come for sales to come pouring in. There’s a bit extra to it.
Around crucial points to keep in mind about marketing:
- Marketing is an ongoing procedure, not a one-time project.
- Here promotion and marketing are not the same things. Raise is just one of many aspects of marketing (and usually one of the last steps of the marketing process).
- Here Marketing starts with product beginning—determining the needs and wants of customers and then investigating and developing products and services that shine at meeting those needs.
- However, Marketing involves valuing your products in the sweet spot where you maximize overall profits (balancing a low enough value to encourage a sufficient sales volume and a high price to keep profit margins sound).
- Valuing also involves planning strategies such as offering coupons, discounts, etc., to fuel sales.
When you’ve developed your products and priced them strategically, you need to work out distribution channels, i.e., how are you making your products available and accessible to customers?
- Raise can only be done effectively once you have researched and developed your products, valued them strategically to enhance cash flow and profits, and usually up sufficient distribution channels.
- Without completing the entire marketing cycle, promotion is expensive and will fall flat.
The 7 Customer-Building Basics
Thus what is the fundamental basic process of fruitful marketing?
High-volume sales, customer acquisition, and general success results from:
- Contribution is a valuable product/service you can produce/execute uniformly and consistently.
- You identify your target audience(s), potential consumers who will find value in your product/service.
- Creation of your products/services easily accessible and actively asking for and close sales.
- Discovery cost-effective communication channels through which you can reach your target audience.
- We communicate well (and frequently) and build affinity with each target audience through the appropriate channels.
- Bringing the products, services, and benefits you’ve promised your consumers. Never promise what you can’t deliver.
- You are repeating and expanding the process.
- That’s it, no smoke or mirrors essential. These marketing basics smear both to online and offline marketing and promotion. Here they are as applicable to the smallest mom-and-pop shop as to the largest multinational corporation.
- Smear your skills and talents as you learn the basics, honestly and thoroughly follow these steps, and you will achieve success.
Evaluate Your Marketing
If your business is presently struggling (or even if it’s doing well), review the definition of marketing and the basic marketing procedure to determine where you might improve your efficiency and effectiveness.
Ask yourself queries such as:
- Consume you developed products and services that meet the real needs of your actual customers?
- Have you surveyed your clienteles (or just talked to them) to determine how they feel about your products and what can be improved?
- The container you make further improvements to your products so your customers feel like they can’t live without them?
- Have you priced your products low enough to be affordable for your target customers?
- And have you priced them high enough to make enough profit on each sale to make it worthwhile?
- Do you have unique pricing strategies (coupons, discounts, deals, etc.) to encourage people to buy your products consistently?
- Consume you made your products easily accessible to customers?
- Are they obtainable through multiple channels (for example, in your store, on your website, through third-party resellers)?
- Here are they always in stock when your customers want to buy them?
- Do you consume a promotion plan in place?
- Are you promoting consistently and continuously?
- Are you challenging your promotion to find what works best?
- However, are you reinforcing successful promotion and eliminating/adjusting ineffective advertising?
- Does it allow you to invest enough in promotion so that your sales reach the level you need to be viable?
These additional questions will help you evaluate your strengths and areas where you can improve. After there, you can build a strategic plan for taking your marketing to the next level.
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