Marketing Is A Must

     Your business is up and running now, and less than a third of the people who said "you should start your own business" are actual customers.  According to smallbiztrends.com 30% of small businesses fail in the first year and more than 50% never saw the end of year four.  What is the cause of this phenomenon and how can this be avoided?  Believe it or not a lot of these failures can be attributed to one aspect of marketing or the other.  Marketing is a wide field and it would take several books to truly explain every aspect of it, so this will just be an overview.  Although sometimes marketing "just happens" in most cases this is not sustainable.  Therefore, it is imperative that you have a marketing plan or strategy and a dedicated marketing budget.  The Objectives of your marketing plan should be S.M.A.R.T. or Sustainable, Measurable, Achievable/Actionable, Relevant and Time Bound.
   The very first thing that you need to do when it comes to marketing is to define your target audience.  As my Marketing Strategy professor would say "If you try to be everything to everybody you'll end up not being anything to anybody".  This simply means that you can't please everyone, and most who try end up failing miserably.  So with that being said you have to determine who, when, and where you will serve.  The biggest mistake that people make when segmenting a target audience is to start with demographics.  Although, you make use of demographics as an end step, the problem with starting with demographics is it can lead to your business being or perceived as being stereotypical.  Not to mention you can miss out on a lot of potential customers that should be in your target audience but don't fit the demographics.  The best way to segment is to use psychographics.  For example, a premium wine company may want to target "Married women making over $40K/yr with 2 to 3 kids that enjoys romance movies".  This target speaks to the mindset and interest of your intended customer and the choices that they have already made, as apposed to demographics in which people had no choice or control over.
     The next step is to build Brand Awareness.  There are many ways to do this depending on your budget.  If you have a sizable budget you can work through the traditional channels of TV, radio, billboards, and bus stop banners.  These channels can be very effective but they also can be very costly.  However, if you have a medium to low budget for marketing, the online marketing is the way to go.  Lets face it we live in a digital world and in most cases the majority of your customers are constantly interacting with the internet or social media.  So having an online presence is essential.  The first step in establishing an online presence is to create a website (or have one created) with a dedicated landing page. The landing page is the page that someone lands on when they click your ads, banners or links.  Generally online advertising works on a bidding system.  With a bidding system space on the viewers web page is auctioned based on each of the advertisers max bid amount for the keywords selected.  Now before you just throw you hands up in defeat thinking that the companies with the deepest pockets will win every bid there are a few other things that you should consider.  Both Google and Facebook place relevance and ad quality above bid price, this helps the "little guy" rank higher in search and ad listing.  So after you have created a quality ad or display banner you should bid using  the CPM method to increase Brand Awareness.  Cost Per Mille or CPM is closely related to traditional advertising as you pay your bid amount for every 1000 views.  This is both cost effective and it gets you a lot of exposure.  Now if you are running an extremely low budget marketing campaign then guerilla marketing is the way to go.  This is a process where you basically do whatever it takes to get your name or project in front of people.  Most people leave cards or flyers everywhere they feel it would stick or generate relevant traffic.  For example, a company with a product women would value could leave business cards in the ladies bathroom everywhere in the target market.  Or if you have a budget like Jay-Z then you can leave partial lyrics to songs on your upcoming album in the most unsuspected places causing people to become curious about what it was, who was doing it, and why.
     For both your business plan and your marketing plan it is important for you to do a competitive analysis.  You should always know what your closest competitors are doing.  You need to know exactly who your biggest competitors are, the similarities and differences in your products/services, and what are their prices.  Knowing this information allows you to create a sustainable competitive advantage based on your brand, offering, or relationships once they are established.  Also, it lets you know how attractive your prices are to customers.  For example, if you are selling used tires and you find out your competitors are selling them for $35 and you are selling them for $20, then you are shortchanging yourself.  Or if you are selling them for $45 then you know you are overpriced, unless you have an attribute that puts you in a niche category in which people are willing to pay more (i.e. you only sell specialty used tires).
     Next is positioning.  This is where you show your value to your target market.  One of the core principles of marketing is to be customer-centric and to provide a value that meets a customers specific need or needs.  Most consumers hate to feel like they are being "sold to" and are not open to just another business trying to sell them something.  Yet, if you can show the consumer that you offer a value to them, whether real or perceived, then they are more open to your business because to them you are fulfilling a need.  Positioning is sometimes confused with placement (one of the 4 Ps of marketing), but instead of the physical location of your business/product/service positioning more so refers to the position you hold in a consumers mind.  For example, people shop at Whole Foods because its a place where they can get healthy or organic products.  Therefore, despite prices which a lot of people would view as being high, shoppers at Whole Foods are loyal because of the value they feel that they are receiving.
     Although most business owners feel that you only have to market something once and then just let it work it's magic, in reality its an ongoing process.  One of the biggest processes in Marketing is to evaluate and adjust.  This allows you to see what's working, what isn't, and what just needs a little tweaking.  For instance if your company is running a Google Ads campaign on a Cost Per Click (CPC) basis and one of your ads is under performing.  In this situation you can first inspect the ad to make sure that it is of high quality and relevant.  Then you can check you keywords to make sure that they are relevant and if the bid amounts need to be adjusted.  If everything still looks ok to you then you can try A/B testing.  This is where you would allow the original ad to run as your A and then you make a few changes to the original ad and run it as your B.  Allow both ads to run at the same time for a specified period of time then evaluate them both.  Then discontinue the one that performed the worst, and create ad C to run simultaneously with your highest performer.  This is a process you would reevaluate every 3 weeks to a month, when you get 2 high performers you can either let both run or pick the highest performer.  Even though that was an example for a Google Ad, its pretty much the process you go through when reevaluating you entire Marketing Plan.
     A major part of evaluating your marketing plan and your business as a whole is conducting a S.W.O.T. analysis.  First you want to look at your Strengths, these are the things you are doing right and are going good.  Next evaluate your Weaknesses, or the things that need to be improved.  Then evaluate the Opportunities that are in front of you (i.e. the ability and demand for an expended product/service line).  Finally you want to access your Threats, this can be competitors, budget, infrastructure, internal company issues, or external factors that can affect your business.  You should conduct a S.W.O.T. analysis quarterly and adjust accordingly.

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