{"id":4628,"date":"2010-03-31T07:35:18","date_gmt":"2010-03-31T12:35:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/37d57f8fa2.nxcli.io\/blog\/?p=4628"},"modified":"2010-04-01T07:53:34","modified_gmt":"2010-04-01T12:53:34","slug":"marketing-complacency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.marketingforsuccess.com\/blog\/small-business-marketing\/marketing-complacency\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Ways to Avoid Small Business Marketing Complacency"},"content":{"rendered":"

Standing still is falling behind. I hope that 2009 was your best year ever and that your marketing brought in new business every week. If so, reward yourself and your employees for your successes, but don\u2019t let success make you complacent about your small business marketing plans and strategies.<\/p>\n

To take your business to the next level in 2010, shift your focus to what isn\u2019t working with your marketing.<\/p>\n

In an issue of Fast Company, Charles Fishman describes James Wiseman\u2019s experience as a newly hired section manager at a Toyota plant in the U.S.\"small<\/a><\/p>\n

For the first couple of weeks, Wiseman joined the weekly plant meetings and shared the successes of his team, maybe even bragging a little. Instead of congratulations, his comments were met with an awkward silence. Finally, the plant manager took Wiseman aside. \u201cWe all know you are a good manager, otherwise we wouldn\u2019t have hired you. But please talk to us about your problems so we can all work on them together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Toyota isn\u2019t satisfied with maintaining the status quo. Whether it\u2019s the quality of their products or the number of sales, it\u2019s company policy to look for ways to improve.<\/p>\n

Make continual business marketing improvement your company policy. You\u2019ll find ways strategies, tactics and detail plans to better your marketing results >><\/a><\/p>\n

Want to See Your Company\u2019s Profits Grow Every Year?<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you want to improve on last year\u2019s results you\u2019ll need to improve on last year\u2019s marketing strategies and techniques. To do this you need to identify what is and isn\u2019t working with your small business marketing and what to change.<\/p>\n

The key is to constantly experiment to discover how to improve on your existing performance. Each month, test a new idea against your existing strategy to continually identify better solutions.<\/p>\n

How to Avoid the Trap of Marketing Complacency With Your Business<\/strong><\/p>\n

1.<\/strong> Turn Marketing Problems into Opportunities
\nMost people\u2019s marketing is far from perfect, yet they use the same tired old strategies and ideas over and over.. Break out of this stagnant cycle. Identify the imperfections in your marketing; there are your areas of opportunity.<\/p>\n

2.<\/strong> Reward the Identification of Problems
\nPraise employees who point out the problems in your marketing. Each problem you or they identify represents an opportunity to improve your lead generation and sales.<\/p>\n

3.<\/strong> Seek Solutions
\nDon\u2019t try to reinvent the wheel on your own. Ask for help from the people you work with. If they don\u2019t have the answer, seek out an expert.<\/p>\n

4.<\/strong> Improve Your Performance
\nBased on the number of leads or sales you generated last quarter or last year, set higher, specific goals for this year. You could start with the response rate to your ads or the conversion rates of your web pages or your closing rates.<\/p>\n

5.<\/strong> Make Small Fixes Every Week
\nThere is no magic pill for success. Companies like Toyota didn\u2019t become world leaders overnight. It took years of continual improvement. Improve your marketing each month by making small changes. Overtime the small improvements will result in large increases in sales.<\/p>\n

Not Sure What To Fix?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ready to ditch marketing complacency and embrace small business marketing perfection, but not sure where to start? Here are the most common areas of opportunity.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0Understand what your prospects want
\nWhen was the last time you did a survey or asked your prospects why they buy your products or services?<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0Lead generation
\nHow many did you generate last month? Do you know what\u2019s limiting the response to your marketing?<\/p>\n

Is your copy working?<\/p>\n

Is your layout effective?<\/p>\n

Do the images support the message?<\/p>\n

How could you double your response rate?<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0Conversion rates
\nWhat percentage of your prospects become paying clients? What\u2019s getting in the way of converting twice as many?<\/p>\n

Is your offer working?<\/p>\n

Is your follow-up system working?<\/p>\n

Why aren\u2019t more people buying?<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve started off 2010 marketing the same way you did in 2009, you\u2019ll generate the same results at best.<\/p>\n

Are you satisfied with this? Or are \u00a0you one of those people who is always looking for a better way; a better way to help your clients and customers; a better way to make more money?<\/p>\n

Discover a better way to market your business, find out how >><\/a><\/p>\n

– Charlie<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Standing still is falling behind. I hope that 2009 was your best year ever and that your marketing brought in new business every week. If so, reward yourself and your employees for your successes, but don\u2019t let success make you complacent about your small business marketing plans and strategies. To take your business to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[386],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marketingforsuccess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4628"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marketingforsuccess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marketingforsuccess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marketingforsuccess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marketingforsuccess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.marketingforsuccess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4628\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marketingforsuccess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marketingforsuccess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marketingforsuccess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}