The 5 Essential Keys To A Successful Marketing Campaign

If you only study clumsy, greedy, inept marketers, you’d think that the job of a marketer is to constantly bombard people with thinly-veiled sales messages in an attempt to take as much of their money as possible in the short term – instead of building long-term relationships and loyalty.

That may be fine and dandy if you’ve made it clear that your only goal is to extract as much money as possible out of your members in the short term so you can sell your business for as much money as possible and scramoose.

But of course, as your gut tells you, there’s a much better way to go about building a business. And once you have these basics down, you can use them over and over again in all of your marketing campaigns.

Here are The 5 Essential Keys To A Successful Marketing Campaign:

1. Define Your Unique Selling Proposition (“USP”)
2. Create An Effective, “Irresistible” Sales Offer
3. Avoid Common Marketing Pitfalls
4. Develop And Use A Smart Marketing Perspective
5. Get Results!

I’ll guide you through each one of these, so you can see exactly how to use them and how they all affect the overall outcome of your marketing campaigns…

I. Define Your Unique Selling Proposition (“USP”)

I taught this at our most recent Live Workshop [link to sbs.com], where dozens of sharp small business owners came to Chicago from as far away as Branson, Missouri and all went home with their own powerful USP fully created and ready to make them money.

Here’s a quick summary of the process you can use to create your own “Killer USP”…

Take the time to ask yourself some questions from the prospective of your prospects and customers, clients or patients. What frustrates you about other businesses in your industry? What would it take for someone to get your attention? What needs do you have that need to be met? What are the promises you want fulfilled?

Once you figure out the answers to these questions, you can start putting together a plan to cure those frustrations, solve those problems and meet those needs.

Then take a look at what USP’s your competitors are using to help you discover the “opportunity gaps” between what your prospects want and what they’re being offered. Your USP should fill one or more of those “gaps,” so that you set yourself apart from your competition and make yourself The Obvious Choice for people to do business with.

*Remember: your USP is what you are “promising” your customers, clients or patients, so make sure you can deliver – or even better, over-deliver.

II. Create An Effective, “Irresistible” Sales Offer

To develop an effective sales plan, you need to:

• Come up with a headline that will grab the immediate attention of your audience.
• Share the benefits of your products and services – thinking about your customers’ perspective instead of yours.
• Identify the specific needs your products and services meet.
• Make it easy to do business with you by offering strong guarantees.
• Share your specific, Unique Sales Proposition.
• Make it crystal clear to your customers, clients or patients exactly how they should respond and act.
• Motivate your ideal prospects with a strong, compelling call to action.

Here’s the bottom line…

You need to explain what makes your products and services special, and compel people to buy from you. If they don’t feel like they NEED your product or service, they won’t buy. You need to answer a question, solve a problem or feed an obsession that they have.

Finally, you need to provide them with all the information they need to make an informed and confident decision. Buyer’s remorse is one of the worst things that can happen, and there are definite steps smart marketers take to avoid it.

III. Avoid Common Marketing Pitfalls

There are 5 Major Marketing Pitfalls that many businesses fall into which you need to avoid:

1. Ignoring market testing and pushing on with an inaccurate plan.
2. Offering an incomplete case, or reasons, throughout their marketing plan.
3. Failing to notice and figure out the true needs of their prospective customers, clients or patients.
4. Failing to diversify their marketing options.
5. Failing to get market opinions on their offers.

These are all areas to avoid. If you’ve been working through the lessons I teach – both at SSSMarketingUniversity.com and at my Live Workshops, avoiding these pitfalls should be easy and natural.

IV. Develop And Use A Smart Marketing Perspective

Having a smart marketing perspective is important, especially if you want to absolutely crush any or all of your competition and become The Obvious Choice in your chosen marketplace. You can do this through a number of different techniques and activities:

1. Keep a marketing journal and write down anything innovative you see being used – regardless of the industry.
   Keep encouraging your marketing department (and yourself) to try new things and dump the ones that aren’t working.
2. Periodically “mystery shop” your own company by ordering under a different name so you can analyze the process of ordering, shipping, online store, customer service and your product or service itself. This will show you where the areas for improvement are in the customer experience you’re currently providing.
3. Become a student of advertising by reading every ad you can find (I get the funniest looks from people in waiting rooms as I skip all the magazine articles to read just the ads!); and keep the good ones you find in your own “swipe file” to give you ideas to consider for your own future ads.
4. Whenever you’re in a store or a mall, observe how consumers behave in different situations and how they consider their purchases.
5. Step down a notch or two and work on the front lines – in person or on the phones – with your sales and customer service staff.
6. Continuously acknowledge and thank your staff, vendors and customers. Everyone works and shops better when they feel appreciated.
7. Always gather and listen to feedback from employees and customers.
8. Continuously test markets, ads, and marketing strategies and techniques. This is the only way to stay successful by cutting wasteful spending and knowing what’s working – and, more importantly, what’s not.
9. Offer more and more valuable information in your marketing than anyone else. The more information you offer, the more products and services you’ll sell.
10. A great marketing plan can only get better. Continue to fine tune and refine your marketing plan based on testing results and feedback.
11. Be aware of the image your company is conveying through your marketing. Do your prospects and customers, clients or patients feel you really care about them, or that you’re just trying to take their money?
12. Improve your best marketing areas; and drop those that aren’t working.
13. Focus on what you say, and how you say it. The best marketing ideas naturally turn into the best marketing.
14. Develop all your ads, campaigns and sales materials to create and share compelling, relevant and factual information.

By using these techniques, and more that I teach, you can make yourself The Obvious Choice for your ideal prospects.

V. Get Results!

The last area I’ll talk about is creating satisfied customers. If your customers aren’t satisfied, you’ve wasted all your marketing resources and all chance of positive word-of-mouth advertising and repeat business. You can satisfy your customers by:

• Providing quality products and services
• Providing high-quality customer service
• Providing a low-pressure, highly-informative sales experience
• Taking all the risk away with a great guarantee

Is this a lot to learn and implement? Sure it is. That’s why the sharp small business owners who focus their time and energy in these areas are reaping huge benefits – even while the vast majority of small businesses are suffering in this difficult economy.

If you’re ready to stop being a part of the frustrated, confused and under-performing majority of small business owners and start transforming your business into a customer-getting, wealth-producing machine, then take our FREE test drive, where you’ll find all the tools and resources you need all put together for you by some of the biggest names in the small business marketing world.

And you won’t be bombarded with a constant stream of blatant, self-serving pitches by a clumsy corporation that’s clearly interested only in taking your money and then selling themselves to the highest bidder!