Has your once well-organized marketing strategy, come to resemble the jumble of stuff in your closet (not to mention the garage and the attic)? If you are like most people, each time you come across a new small business marketing strategy you try to adopt it and add it to your existing approach.
Strategies and tactics tend to accumulate and linger even when they may not be working as well as you’d like. Like the ill-fitting clothes that accumulate in your closet or the broken tools still in the garage, they are hard to get rid of, whether because of habit, emotional attachment or just plain not getting around to cleaning them out.
To improve your marketing, you’ll need to clean out some old ways of working. While I don’t want to get anywhere near your closet, and in fact I could use some help with mine, I can show you how to clean up your marketing so you’re ready to take advantage of the New Year to grow your business.
Cleaning Up Your Small Business Marketing Strategy to Increase Profits
Every morning my friend Michael Angier of SuccessNet.org sits down at his desk and asks himself the following three questions about his business.
1. What’s working?
2. What’s not working?
3. What can I improve?
Discover how to write a plan that helps you get attention, improve lead generation, position your firm and sell. With “The Insider Secrets to Attracting More & Better Customers“ you’ll learn what works to get prospects to contact you and how to convert them to clients.
You may not want to review your marketing five times a week, but it is a good idea to do it at least once a year. So take out your pencil or fire up your computer and assess your marketing:
Your Marketing Strategy
1. Is your plan working to generate leads and increase sales?
2. Do you have a well defined marketing strategy that helps you achieve the three phases of marketing; Getting Attention, Positioning, and Selling?
3. Do you need to write or rewrite your business plan?
4. Do you need additional information or coaching to complete your small business marketing plans?
5. What are you going to do to improve your marketing?
Getting Attention
6. Does your marketing message prompt prospects to contact you?
7. Do your ads, letters, and web site motivate prospects to contact you?
8. What are your conversion rates?
9. What steps can you take to improve them?
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Positioning
10. What are you doing to establish your credibility with prospects, to help them know and trust you?
11. Is it working as well as you’d like?
12. What could you improve?
13. Is the value of your products and services clear to your prospects or do they question you about merits and price?
14. Want to learn how to ensure that your prospects understand the value of your products and services?
Selling
15. How successful are you in selling, that is, in getting commitments for everything from appointments to orders?
16. What’s your conversion rate of prospects contacted to clients and customers?
17. Do initial sales generate repeat sales and referrals for years to come?
18. Want to learn how to generate more sales from each client?
Evaluating Your Business Marketing
Use Michael’s three questions to summarize your comments about your marketing and your success in getting attention, positioning and selling.
1. What’s working?
2. What’s not?
3. What do you want to improve?
The hardest part about cleaning out your closet, attic, garage or your marketing is getting started. It may be time to straighten up or throw out some of your old marketing strategies and tactics and replace them with new more effective ones. You’ll improve your lead generation and sales.
Start with a well organized marketing strategy, one that helps you Get Attention, Position your products and services and Sell and you’ll find your business growing in leaps and bounds in the coming year.
