Put Some Fireworks Into Your Marketing System

Today we celebrate our nation’s 236th birthday. Hopefully you’ll take time today amidst the parades, cookouts and fireworks to reflect on the sacrifices our founding fathers made in order to form the country will all enjoy today.

As small business owners and entrepreneurs, we also make sacrifices. But just as the Revolutionary War heroes laid the groundwork for what would become The Greatest Country In The World, our work should also lead to a big payoff to us in terms of income and lifestyle.

The start of July also tells us that we’re halfway through the year 2012. If you’re not halfway to your goals for the year, you need to ask yourself if you’re concentrating your efforts in the right areas – the ones that will give you the biggest payoffs.

Years ago, Peter Drucker, known as “the father of business consulting,” taught:

“Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business.”

Sadly, when today’s business owners are surveyed, their priorities in order are: finance, sales, production, management, legal and people. Missing from the list entirely? Marketing and innovation.

Wouldn’t it be nice if all we had to do was provide a quality product or service, keep our finances and legal issues in order and manage our people well, and somehow customers would beat a path to our door?

Especially in today’s challenging economy, providing a quality product or service doesn’t guarantee you customers – it’s just the ante to get in the game. How skillful and relentless you are at marketing is the only thing that will bring you revenue and profits instead of financial frustration.

Here are the three most important marketing tools you need to use in order to get and keep new customers in today’s challenging economy:

1. In person meetings: It’s essential that you meet with your customers/clients/patients in person whenever possible. This shows you respect them and take the time to work with your clients to give personal attention to each of them.
2. Follow-up letters: Always take a moment to send a follow up letter about what you talked about, new agreements or partnerships made and to thank them for taking the time to meet with you. Likewise, you should always send thank you cards, letters or gifts to partners you find success with.
3. Phone calls: Use a telephone call to follow up with them to talk again about the matters you discussed in your meeting and to offer any assistance you can to help their business run smoothly and more successfully.

You can add in many more means of contact, including email, newsletters and social media. But these are the three most powerful and basic media that all top performers use to ensure maximum results.

Once you have this system in place, you can make it a part of your own winning marketing system. Here are the five key steps to putting that together:

1. Do your research. Study potential customers for their characteristics, desires and habits, and study potential competitors to discover their strengths and weaknesses.
2. Talk to potential customers. Take a hard look at your product or service from a customer’s perspective and figure out what it needs to be successful.
3. Use the 3-step process outlined above.
4. Develop systems for contact follow-through, quality control standards and customer service.
5. Develop a post-sale follow-up system to keep the lines of communication open with customers and build on your current relationship to increases future purchases and referrals.

Of course, marketing strategies and systems only work if you take the time to put them together and then implement them skillfully and persistently.

Go for it! There’s still plenty of time left to revolutionize your marketing and make a “second-half comeback” in 2012!

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