Creating a plan to market your business may seem like a daunting task. One of the reasons one feels like this is because business marketing encompasses all aspects of running a business. Like any task that is broad in scope it is much easier to focus on one segment at a time. To do this lets focus on some key areas which need to be considered about your business.
The first place to begin to focus in on your business is to think about the products and services your business offers. List your products and services down. If you sense you have too many, then priortize by starting your list with your key products and key services that give the best return on investment to you. Then after you have started your list, for each item on your list, write down a feature characteristic that you believe customer’s appreciate. These could be color, price, size, feel, etc. Now for each one of these characteristics write down how you believe the customer is benefitted.
Here is an example of some characteristics and benefits of my Postcard Marketing Services business:
Product is: Design and Mailing of Custom Postcards
Some key characteristics and benefits:
1. Characteristic: Full color photographic printing
Benefit: Color still attracts more attention than just black and white and photos can offer more information that just text.
2. Characteristic: Professional quality design and printing
Benefit: Our postcards have the look and feel of professionally printed postcards.
3. Characteristic: Postcards offer the the lowest cost to send by direct mail
Benefit: Postage for postcards is lower than most any other materials sent by direct mail.
After you have taken a look at your products/services and the benefits they provide, then do a market analysis. Try to partition your target market by demographics like: age, gender, income, buying habits, and other interests. This analysis will allow you to create better targeted advertisements for your targeted market. For example if your target market is sporting goods for competitive sports for kids in grade school, you might want to target ads to the parents showing how your products help their kids have better performance and keep them safer.
Now with your grasp of your products and the benefits they offer and your grasp of the market you are targeting, set some goals for where you want your business to be. Think about what you want your business to achieve a month out, 2 months, and at least out to one year. This will give you a measuring stick to review by as to whether the actions you take in your plan are moving you towards your goals. Then you can make adjustments on the actions to [spin] improve results towards your goals|meet your goals better[spin].
Finally, you need to take action to make it all happen. List out specific steps needed to hit the goals in your plan. You might have a goal of increasing your customer base by 50% in 12 months. To get this result you are going to create and mail out every other month targeted postcard advertisements emphasizing the values your products/services offer. After each mailing you will watch for an increase in your sales to new customers that have come in carrying or mentioning your postcard ad. When reviewing the effect in your ad campaign you can decide whether you need to increase the frequency and volume of your ad to better hit your goals.
Now you have a plan to guide your business. With this plan you can make changes to correct errors, make changes to increase the rate of growth, or make changes to reduce cost. With the plan you can better explain your business to your self and to others. With the plan the overall scope of your business marketing is no longer daunting.