It’s a system!

And the beauty of a system is that it’s a specific set of steps that, when implemented in the correct order, produce a predictable result.

In business that predictable result is supposed to be a profit!

In order to get the best result out of a proven system, you must follow the steps exactly as the system outlines. Changing the system is fine, but you must track the effect of your changes on the end result to determine if the change was helpful or not.

Getting new customers, also known as “Marketing” is no different.  There is a system that, when you follow it, will lead you to a predictable result, which is business growth.

In our book, Make My Marketing Work: How to Win Customers & Make More Money, we share the complete system along with the required worksheets and exercises to help you do the research, homework and leg work required (yes, you actually have to do some work here ).  But to help you get started right now, while you’re waiting for your copy to arrive, I’ve listed the complete 7 step system below, along with a brief explanation of what it means and why it’s important.

IMPORTANT: Simply knowing the steps to take isn’t enough… for a system to work, YOU have to work.  You’ve got to follow the steps.  This isn’t a magic pill or silver bullet solution.  But it is a process that will work for your business if you’re really serious.

How to Get More Customers, Step #1 – Know Your Business

You must understand why you are in business, what your current strengths and weaknesses are, and you must have a vision for exactly where you want to take your business.  Without a strong vision of where you’re headed, you’ll never be able to tell if you’re getting there!  And you will tend to become sidetracked by every marketing opportunity (or “big shiny object”) that comes your way.

How to Get More Customers, Step #2 – Know Your Market

Who is your “perfect customer?” Being able to definitely answer this will enable you to speak directly to them with every marketing communication you send out. This feeling of personal connection will naturally and automatically attract people to do business with you.

Too often business owners think that everyone can benefit from their product or service and while that technically may be true (as unlikely as it seems) the reality is that when you’re marketing to everybody, nobody is buying it.

How to Get More Customers, Step #3 – Know Your Competition

Who else is fighting for the same consumer dollars? What are they doing differently than you are? Is it working for them? What are their customers saying about why they choose to do business with your competitors?

Answering these questions will give you insight into the ways you can differentiate yourself from your competition.  In fact, there are 3 types of competition: direct, indirect and variable.  How you handle each of them will ultimately determine whether you’re winning new customers… or having your lunch eaten by sharks.

How to Get More Customers, Step #4 – Craft Your Message

The right product and the right potential customer are the first two things you need, but having the right message will hook that prospect and turn them into a customer faster than you can say, “Do you want fries with that?” Do you have a clear, compelling marketing message that speaks specifically to your perfect customers?  Do you speak to their underlying fears, frustrations and unfulfilled desires or are you talking about YOU and YOUR PRODUCT all the time?

A unique message stands out from the noise and says something different about who you are and what you stand for.

How to Get More Customers, Step #5 – Deliver Your Message

Advertising, promotions, yellow pages, internet marketing, public relations – there are hundreds and hundreds of different ways for you to deliver your marketing message into the minds and hearts of your perfect customer. Knowing who your customer is and developing a psychographic profile of them will give you great insight into the types of advertising and promotions that will reach them.

Not every marketing tactic is right for every business.  Yes, you need a website and probably need to be on Facebook… but do you need Twitter?  What about LinkedIn?  Should advertise in national newspapers or more niche targeted local publications?  There’s no “right answer” for every business – your marketing mix is unique to YOU.

How to Get More Customers, Step #6 – Measure Your Marketing

What you measure improves. By tracking everything you can in relation to your marketing efforts, you will begin to see what works and what doesn’t work in certain specific situations. It also gives you a regular indication of where you are in relation to the key performance indicators that you have set out to track your progress.

Every time you implement a change in your marketing, you can (and should) test the effect of that change on your results. Anything that improves your results and gets you closer to your business vision should be kept, while anything that decreases your results or moves your business away from your primary vision should be ceased.

How to Get More Customers, Step #7 – Funnel Your Marketing

Having a marketing “funnel” that gently qualifies your prospect and squeezes them further down into a more intimate relationship with you will help you get more sales with less effort. The funnel is a system unto itself and allows you to respectfully communicate with each prospect uniquely, based on where they are in the marketing funnel. The final phase of the funnel is where you ask for the sale, close the deal and integrate your prospect into a customer relationship with your business.

When it comes to creating a marketing plan for small business, these are the 7 key things that you must address to maximize your campaign. When done in the correct order and when properly thought out and executed, these keys can turn up the heat and unlock your business success.

Are You Ready To Grow?

If it’s time to take your marketing more seriously and develop a strategic plan that can move you to the next level of business growth, it’s time to read Make My Marketing Work: How to Win Customers & Make More Money.  Order your signed copy today for just $20 including shipping and receive the following bonuses:

1. Downloadable exercises and worksheets to help you apply what you’re learning (you’ll develop the knowledge AND the skills, all while creating your customized strategic marketing plan)
2. Millionaire Prep School interview recordings to help you develop the right mindset for success (you’ll learn from 10 self-made millionaires and be the “fly on the wall” as I interview them about their successes and failures)
3. Private, 1-on-1 strategy session to help you answer any lingering questions and figure out the next steps to move your plan (and your business) forward!

But when it comes to marketing themselves effectively, those smart people tend to do some pretty dumb things that mess up their results and leave their business hurting.

Marketing Mistake #1 – Not Writing a Marketing Plan

By far, this is the most common mistake business owners make when it comes to effectively marketing themselves and their businesses – they just wing it!

The thinking, it seems, is that if they write a marketing plan then that will reduce or remove their ability to jump on marketing opportunities when they arise because they aren’t part of the plan.

In fact, the opposite is true!

When you have a marketing plan for your business you are better able to evaluate the potential effectiveness of an unforeseen opportunity when it arises because you’ll have more knowledge and awareness of who your business serves and where they go to find the solution you offer.

Having a marketing plan means you’ve taken the time to identify who your specific target audience is and what is most important to them. You understand their fears, frustrations and desires and have crafted a marketing message that speaks directly to those concerns.

Then, when an advertising representative calls you up and offers you a “great deal” on remnant ad space, you can quickly and easily evaluate whether or not that particular publication reaches your audience effectively.

If so, then you can go ahead with the confidence that this actually is a good opportunity. If not, you can politely decline and carry on with your existing marketing activities.

Either way, you win!

Marketing Mistake #2 – Not Implementing the Plan You Created

The next dumb marketing mistake that smart business owners make is actually creating a plan but then failing to implement it.

After taking all that time to develop a go-forward strategy to reach your target audience, they think that the rest will happen magically. Either that or they let the day to day “busyness of business” get in the way of completing the marketing activities that they have identified as being important.

Once you have a plan for your business, you absolutely must implement it diligently over a sustained period of time in order to determine if your plan is getting the results you’re looking for.

Marketing is a process, not an event and one-off marketing hits generally don’t produce very good results.

Marketing Mistake #3 – Not Tracking Your Marketing Results

Of all the dumb mistakes that smart people make, this one has the most potential to cause serious damage for your business because it keeps you in the dark about what actual results your marketing efforts are having for your business.

You have to create a marketing plan so that you understand, to the best of your ability, who your target market is and what they truly want from you. Then you have to implement your marketing tactics by making a best guess as to what efforts will effectively reach those people and persuade them to want ot do business with you.

But without the appropriate measuring devices in place, you can’t actually make improvements to your marketing efforts over time, particularly if you have several campaigns on the go.

Marketing campaign number one could be generating 5x return on investment while campaign number two is losing 3x ROI. This produces an overall 2x ROI on all of your marketing efforts, but wouldn’t it make more sense to reduce your investment in campaign number two and focus more on number one to maximize your results?

Measuring results means thinking in advance about the specific action you want your prospective customer to take (click a link, call for more info or mention this ad) and then being diligent about actually measuring those actions and running an analysis after the campaign has finished.

The reality of every business is that you need more customers coming in to your business and you need existing customers coming back for more. This is the definition of marketing: the acquisition and retention of customers.

By making even one of these 3 marketing mistakes you are adversely affecting your ability to grow your business.

Are you making any of these mistakes? If so then it’s time to write a marketing plan (or revise an out of date plan) for your business. Get a copy of my Amazon #1 bestseller Make My Marketing Work: How to Win Customers & Make More Money and have a strategic marketing plan for your business in as little as 10 days!

Watch as I open the package and get to touch and feel the book for the very first time!

A huge THANK YOU to David Hancock and Rick Frishman and the entire team at Morgan James Publishing for all their hard work on getting this book from concept to reality.

Get Your SIGNED, Pre-Release Copy Today for $20 Including S&H

It is worth noting that the marketing plan objectives should always lead to actual sales revenue.  If not, you need to re-examine your marketing objectives and restate them so that they relate to sales results.

Marketing Objectives

Your marketing objectives should be:

• Clear and specific
• Tangible and measurable
• Be time-based, with a target achievement date

This situation analysis will provide the context for the proposed plan of action and must be fact-based, not theoretical.  This analysis will include basic market and product information, as well as current and anticipated market conditions, the implications they hold and any major opportunities or risks that may be forthcoming.

Your situation analysis will include the following sub-sections:

• Business/Product Review
• Market Analysis
• Competitive Overview
• Consumer Profile
• Distribution

Let’s look at each section in a little more detail.

Business/Product Review

Questions to ask and answer include: What product service am I offering? How does this meet the needs of the market? Do I have a core product with secondary or supporting products or a complete product line?

The key in this section of your marketing plan’s situation analysis is to clearly define exactly what your business offers and what value you provide to your customers.

Market Analysis

What factors will affect your ability to become and remain profitable in the current marketplace?  What is the size of your potential consumer market? Are there internal or external factors that affect your business’ performance? What sociological or economic factors may affect your customer’s ability to do business with you?

Competitive Overview

Who are your main competitors?  What approach are they taking to reach the same consumer profile as you?  What advantages do they have over you?  What weaknesses exist that you may be able to exploit?

Also consider what secondary competitors exist – those businesses competing for the same budget allocation, regardless of their specific product or service offering.

Consumer Profile

Who is your primary target market?  Who is your secondary target market?  What demographic (attributes & characteristics) and psychographic (preferences & biases) similarities exist that could help or hinder your ability to market effectively? What is the potential size of your market?

Distribution

How will you get your product to market?  Do you require distributors or other intermediaries or will you sell direct to the consumer?  In either case, what factors could impede your ability to deliver your product to market?

Although the situation analysis may seem complicated and involved, it is one of the most important marketing plan basics you will need to include in order to effectively develop a marketing strategy and tactical programs.

Got Marketing Questions?  Get YOUR most pressing marketing question answered free each month by submitting it today at http://www.MyMarketingQuestion.com.

Paul Keetch is co-author of the Make My Marketing Work home study system.  If you want to create your customized strategic marketing plan in as little as 10 days, visit http://www.MakeMyMarketingWork.com today!

The purpose and mission of your business is one of the marketing plan basics because these details will inform the rest of your marketing plan, as well as the team who will eventually be responsible for implementing your plan.

It should be said here that as the owner of your company, you should be intricately involved in the development of your overall marketing strategy and its implementation.  It is your primary job to ensure that you are effectively reaching your target audience with your marketing message.

The Purpose

The purpose statement details the objective (or objectives) you wish to achieve with the implementation of your marketing plan.  You may be introducing a brand new product or service to a market you already serve, re-introducing an existing product that has been improved or re-engineered, or taking an existing product or service into a new market.

In short, the purpose outlines exactly what it is that you hope to accomplish by implementing the plan.

The Mission Statement

In your mission statement you will want to identify the primary reasons that your company exists in the market in the first place.  This section often consists of several short, carefully worded statements that address some or all of the following questions:

• Why is the company in business?
• What market pain or problem does our product or service address?
• What markets do we serve?  Why do we serve these markets in particular?
• What are the main features, advantages and benefits we offer our customers?
• What is our general philosophy for doing business?
• What is our primary point of differentiation from our main competitors?

Being able to clearly convey the purpose and mission of your business is critical to ensuring your team is able to execute successfully on your vision, winning more customers in the process.

When you’ve mastered the marketing plan basics outlined in this and other articles, you’ll be well ahead of many of your competitors in knowing how to communicate effectively with your target audience and motivate them to take action and become your lifelong customer.

Got Marketing Questions?  Visit www.MyMarketingQuestion.com and submit YOUR most pressing marketing question for our next FREE marketing  Q&A.

Paul Keetch is co-author of the Make My Marketing Work home study system.  If you want to create your customized strategic marketing plan in as little as 10 days, visit http://www.MakeMyMarketingWork.com today!