Marketing Remains Important

It is a brutal time and never has it been so apparent than in the business community where many small businesses struggle to keep afloat. Although you may need to cut back on marketing in difficult and uncertain economic times, smart business owners continue to market their products and services. How else are you going to drive business to your door? While your competitors are losing ground you may be able to increase market share! But it will not happen without forethought and planning.

The challenge is always risk versus return - risk of using that golden cash flow weighed against the expected return from the marketing cost. In times like these it's about developing a strategy that is effective and cost-conscious. Well that sounds easy (of course it's not!).

First of all, your strategy can only grow out of a marketing plan and it must be written! Start with defining your ideal clients - those folks that you really want to work with. Next define the features of your product or services that will satisfy the needs of these prospecitve customers. These benefits and features should become the basis for creating a message to target your ideal client. A targeted message is always more effective.

Marketing will be more successfull when driven by a high quality marketing strategy. It may be about different methods of communicating your message such as print, radio, or internet. Or it may be about starting internally with your team members to help them close more sales, increase traffic in the door or even a weekly meeting to discuss ideas, trends, successes and challenges.

It's a process and will require work - examine your current marketing efforts, look at what competitors are doing, look back at what's worked and not worked in the past. Read, study, brainstorm and most importantly, have a way to measure the return on your marketing investment. Here is a mantra that will often be repeated in this blog: What you can measure, you can manage.

Know your market, know your ideal client, examine options, identify potential, plan the strategy, implement it and measure the success. No business can survive without appealing to new customers. This is a difficult time that may break a business, but there is always opportunity to rise to the top with the right approach.