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Small Business Marketing Resources: Don't Waste Yours

If you don't want to waste your small business marketing resources, avoid three major causes of such waste and improve your odds of business success. The three major causes are:

1. Failing to conduct small business marketing research.

2. Not targeting the people most likely to become customers.

3. Failing to create and follow a small business marketing plan.

Small Business Marketing Mistake 1: Not Utilizing Small Business Marketing Research.

The first mistake is not investing in small business marketing research. Small business owners are reluctant to invest resources up front to conduct product development research, competition analysis, and market segmentation.

Without the information acquired from research, small business marketing is built on incomplete and inaccurate information. This dooms marketing efforts from the beginning.

Furthermore, without research to guide small business marketing decisions, business owners are less likely to approach marketing strategically, are more likely to make individual disjointed marketing efforts, and are less likely to win new and loyal customers.

A little money spent on research upfront can assure that your marketing to the right people and in the right way to be most successful. In fact, your target market is so important that it is covered as the second of the three major ways that small business owners waste their marketing resources.

Small Business Marketing Mistake 2: Not Identifying The People Most Inclined To Buy Your Products Or Services.

Business owners who don't do research often don't know the best target market for their products and services. Because they don't determine who is most likely to buy their products, they market to everybody, and often don't sell much to anybody. This type of small business marketing wastes marketing resources.

If you think everybody will want to buy your products or services, you are just plain wrong, and you're wasting marketing resources. If you instead take time to identify the people who really need and want what you sell, your marketing efforts will be far more effective.

Thus, your investment in target market research will return you much more in sales, and save you from wasting your marketing money on tactics that don't work well.

With target market research, you'll also be able to:

determine best potential customers,

gather vital information about this target market, and

plan at least seven marketing efforts that you will deliver each year to your target market.

By conducting target market research, you'll discover much about:

the people most likely to buy,

the best media to reach your target market members,

the best emotional and rational appeals to include in your marketing messages.

their spending power and the best price-point for your product or service.

Including this information in a small business marketing plan, will greatly improve return on marketing investments.

Small Business Marketing Mistake 3: Not Creating And Following A Small Business Marketing Plan

The third mistake is a result of the first two mistakes. Until you have done research on your product, competition and target market, you can't plan the best way to spend your small business marketing resources. When you haven't planned how to best spend your marketing resources, you can be persuaded to spend ineffectively.

If you think that the only reason to have a marketing plan is because lenders want to see one in your business plan, then you are missing a valuable guide for your business and marketing.

This results in failing to determine the marketing strategies and investments that produce the greatest positive return on investment (marketing ROI). Not planning what small business marketing strategies will best lead to marketing goals, leaves small business owners easily distracted by sales people.

In order to keep your marketing efforts on track, you must have a marketing destination. You must know what it will take to get to your marketing goal, or you risk contributing to sales people's sales goals more than your own business and marketing goals.

Don't waste your small business marketing resources just because a sales person has a "great" promotion on media advertisements. If the advertisements don't reach your target market, the promotion is not great for your business.

Likewise, without a marketing plan, you may be persuaded to buy marketing services and products that aren't right for your target market. Every penny that you spend on effective marketing is a penny that you no longer have to spend on effective marketing.

Article Source: http://www.uberarticles.com/articles

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