Rules of Productive Marketing

Marketing is the Key to your business' success.
A good 70%-80% of your time spent on building your business
should be pre-marketing planning, marketing, and post-marketing
follow-up including customer service (much of which is a form of
marketing).
Without marketing, you can have the most attractive, most organized
business with the most in-demand products, but you’ll get virtually no
sales.
No sales = no money = business failure!
If you are a home or small business owner and you don’t have a web
presence, you’re missing out on a significant marketing avenue! Even
the simplest of web pages can pull in orders which might have
otherwise gone to a competitor.
So for those who are new to marketing, particularly internet
marketing, and for the veteran marketers & IMers, I’ve developed
some basic fundamental rules for marketing and online marketing.
1. Make Contact Every 30-90 Days
Your customers, prospects and affiliates should hear from you every
30 days; but, sometimes that’s hard for a part-time marketer to do,
so certainly you should contact them AT LEAST every 90 days.
Beyond 90 days and many will tend to forget who you are!
A simple email, or discount certificate, or even a short piece of
pertinent information will do!
2. Remember to Track and Tweak
ALL of your advertising efforts should be tracked and analyzed.
Whether you’re using Pay-Per-Click, eZine, banner, sidebar, or offline
advertising (newspaper, magazine and radio), EVERYTHING should
produce success data and be examined at least once a week.
Rarely does an ad’s first effort pay off. The vast majority of them will
need to be tweaked for keywords, wording and word placement.
Tweaking’s good, so get creative! Track and analyze every single
thing you do to each ad. Keep and rerun the most productive ads.
3. Do Marketing Every Day
Your business makes a profit through your marketing efforts. Yes,
administering your web site is important. Yes, the lines of
communication to your supplier and your paperwork are important.
Yes, a hundred other non-marketing things are important. BUT
nothing gets sold unless you actively market. That’s why your
business marketing efforts should take 75-90% or your time - at the
very minimum, you should spend 50% of your time marketing your
business.
So make, schedule and keep your daily marketing time inviolate! It’s
the thing that’s going to make you money!
4. Don’t Reduce Your Budget During the Slow Times
Marketing is your business’ lifeline during hot times and slow. Do Not
reduce your marketing budget even during the slow times!
Decide how much you can afford on a monthly basis for your
marketing efforts and stick to it through thick and thin! Include all
forms of marketing; pay-per-click, eZine ads, banners on popular
sites, newspaper and magazine ads, and radio ads. Experiment with
all of them and choose the marketing formats which best suit your
own business.
Within those areas, rerun the ads which are highly productive!
When you do have those hot times, stick a little extra money away
into your marketing budget to be used for those rainy, slow periods.
That way you can help smooth out your yearly marketing expenses.
5. Don’t Overload Yourself
One of the biggest mistakes a home or small business owner can
make is to take on too many projects! In marketing, that can be a
recipe for disaster!
Remember Rule Number 2. You must have time to track and analyze
every marketing effort. You’ll also need time to create innovative new
products and services to sell. In addition, you’ll need time to do all of
those mundane home office tasks. So take on just the number of
activities that you can competently handle.
I’ve seen the breaking of this rule play out to the sad end many
times. As small business owners we tend to continue adding new
projects and tasks to our schedules without ever eliminating older
ones.
One of the best ways to maintain your balance is to do a monthly
review of all your discretionary activities (those that are not
absolutely necessary to run your business) and eliminate doing the
ones which produce the least results.
6. Don’t Neglect Your Prospecting Funnel Procedure
Most folks will first view your home business with neutrality, if not
downright suspicion. I’ve rarely seen a small business start right off
skyrocketing because of complete acceptance on the part of the
public. That’s okay. It’s a natural part of building a business.
From that first state, some will become prospects, then customers,
then repeaters and finally referrers. With the newly referred, the
process - the prospect funnel - starts all over again.
Whatever you do, make sure that your prospect funnel is lovingly
maintained and nurtured!
7. DO NOT QUIT!
Most marketing research indicates that a marketer must present their
offer 5-7 times to a prospective customer before that customer
makes a purchase.
So don’t quit a marketing activity before it gets a thorough chance to
perform! Repeat, repeat, repeat. If, after all your honest efforts, an
activity or project just isn’t panning out, THEN you can drop it and
move on to a new one.
This same rule applies to prospects also. 5-7 times before you move
on to the next possible customer unless they ask you not to contact
them again.
8. ALWAYS Thank Your Prospects and Customers
And do it often!
There are numerous ways to offer thanks; a gift or discount
certificate, a freebie at Starbucks, free shipping on their next
purchase, or even just a short email.
Keep your thanks short, but very sincere. Use kind words and focus
on their actions for which you’re giving thanks.
If you follow these eight simple rules for productive marketing, you’ll
see your business grow and become self-sustaining.