Small Business Marketing Kit For Dummies

Barbara Findlay Schenck

• Publisher: For Dummies
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9781118311837
• Edition: 3
• eBook ISBN:
  9781118383070
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Small Business
• Index: Business

Harness the power of marketing and watch your business grow

Having your own business isn't the same as having customers, and one is useless without the other. Whether your business is a resale store or a high-tech consulting firm, a law office or a home cleaning service, in today's competitive environment, strategic marketing is essential.

If you want your small business to grow, you need a marketing strategy that works. But how do you get people to notice your business without spending a fortune? Packed with savvy tips for low-cost, high-impact campaigns, this friendly guide is your road map to launching a great marketing campaign and taking advantage of the newest technologies and avenues for outreach.

• Using social media as a marketing tool
• Communicating with customers
• Financing a marketing campaign
• The companion CD includes tools and templates to give you a jump-start on putting your new skills to work

If you're looking to give your small business' marketing plan an edge over the competition, Small Business Marketing Kit For Dummies has you covered.

CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of the e-book file, but are available for download after purchase.

Part I

Getting Your Marketing Bearings

In this part . . .

Whether you’re running a do-it-yourself sole proprietorship, a family business, a professional practice, a retail establishment, a web-based enterprise, a nonprofit organization, or a multimillion-dollar corporation, Part I helps you focus on the plain-and-simple marketing truths behind business success.

The chapters in this part give you your marketing bearings. They offer clear-cut definitions and get you going on your own fact-finding marketing mission, helping you analyze your customers, your products, and your competition before setting goals and objectives that will shape your business future.

If you’re in business, you’re a marketer. This part introduces you to your job!

Chapter 1

Framing the Marketing Process

In This Chapter

Taking the necessary marketing steps that lead to sales

Getting your marketing program started

Understanding how small business marketing is different

You’re not alone if you opened this book looking for an answer to the question, “What is marketing, anyway?” Everyone seems to know that marketing is an essential ingredient for business success, but when it comes time to say exactly what it is, certainty disappears from the scene.

People aren’t sure if marketing, advertising, and sales are the same or different things. And they’re even less sure about what marketing involves and how to do it well.

To settle the matter right upfront, here’s a plain-language description of what marketing — and this book — is all about.

Marketing is the process through which you win and keep customers.

Marketing is the matchmaker between what your business is selling and what your customers are buying.

Marketing covers all the steps involved in tailoring your products, messages, online and off-line communications, distribution, customer service, and all other business actions to meet the desires of your most important business asset: your customer.

Marketing is a win-win partnership between your business and its market.

Marketing isn’t about talking to your customers; it’s about talking with them. Marketing relies on two-way communication between your business and your buyers.

Seeing the Big Picture

Marketing is a nonstop cycle. It begins with customer knowledge and goes around to customer service before it begins all over again. Along the way, it involves product development, pricing, packaging, distribution, advertising and promotion, and all the steps involved in making the sale and serving the customer well.

Following the marketing wheel of fortune

Every successful marketing program — whether for a billion-dollar business or a solo entrepreneur — follows the marketing cycle illustrated in Figure 1-1. The process is exactly the same whether yours is a start-up or an existing business, whether your budget is large or small, whether your market is local or global, and whether you sell through the Internet, via direct mail, or through a bricks-and-mortar location.

Just start at the top of the wheel and circle around clockwise in a never- ending process to win and keep customers and to build a strong business in the process.

Figure 1-1: The marketing wheel of fortune.

Marketing: The whole is greater than the parts

Advertising. Marketing. Sales. Promotions. What are the differences? The following story has circulated the marketing world for decades and offers some good answers for what’s what in the field of marketing communications:

If the circus is coming to town and you paint a sign that says, “Circus Coming to the Fairgrounds Saturday,” that’s advertising.

If you put the sign on the back of an elephant and walk it into town, that’s promotion.

If the elephant walks through the mayor’s flower bed, that’s publicity.

And if you get the mayor to laugh about it, that’s public relations.

If the town’s citizens go to the circus and you show them the many entertainment booths, explain how much fun they’ll have spending money there, and answer their questions — and they ultimately spend a lot of money at the circus — that’s sales.

Because marketing involves far more than marketing communications, I’ve added a second part to the circus analogy to show how the story might continue if it went on to demonstrate where research, product development, and other components of the marketing process fit in:

If, before painting the sign that says, “Circus Coming to the Fairgrounds Saturday,” you check community calendars to see whether conflicting events are scheduled, study who typically attends the circus, and figure ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Title Page
• Introduction
• Part I: Getting Your Marketing Bearings
• Part II: Laying the Foundation for Marketing Success
• Part III: Marketing in a Screen-Connected World
• Part IV: Getting the Word Out with Ads, Mailers, Promotions, and Publicity
• Part V: Winning and Keeping Customers
• Part VI: The Part of Tens
• Index
• Cheat Sheet
• Connect with Dummies
• End User License Agreement