Ultimate Small Business Marketing Guide

1500 Great Marketing Tricks That Will Drive Your Business Through the Roof

James Stephenson

• Publisher: Entrepreneur Press
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9781599180373
• eBook ISBN: 9781613080436
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Small Business
• Index: Business

The second edition of this comprehensive guide introduces new marketing, advertising, sales and public relations techniques to the 1,500 proven ideas from the first edition. It adds dozens of new high-tech strategies required to stay one step ahead in today’s highly competitive global marketplace. Off- and online resources have been updated and new ones—including blogs and new websites—have been added.

ADVERTISING, DIRECTMARKETING, ANDTELEMARKETING

Marketing Tips for Your Business

A headline should single out your prospect lobby. like a bellhop paging a man in a crowded hotel lobby.

-CLAUDE HOPKINS

WHY ADVERTISE?

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The following was created by the Michigan Directory Company to promote their publication Home Town Directories. This humorous yet very accurate message clearly demonstrates the importance of advertising.

A man wakes up in the morning after sleeping on an advertised bed, in advertised pajamas. He will bathe in an advertised tub, wash with advertised soap, shave with advertised shaving cream, eat a breakfast of advertised juice, cereal, and toast that was toasted in an advertised toaster. He will put on advertised clothes, glance at his advertised wristwatch, and then ride to his office in his advertised car. At the office he will sit at his advertised desk, in his advertised chair, and write with his advertised pen. Yet this man hesitates to advertise, saying that advertising doesn’t pay. Finally when his business fails, he will advertise it for sale.

Still not convinced of the power of advertising? Then consider the old newspaper story. The first time people look at an advertisement, they don’t see it. The second time they look at an ad, they don’t notice it. The third time, they become conscious of the ad’s existence. The fourth time, they vaguely remember seeing the ad somewhere before. The tenth time, they think someday I am going to buy that. The 20th time they see the ad, they finally get in their cars and head down to the store to buy what was in the ad. Through constant exposure advertising builds awareness and influences consumer buying habits, period.

IMPROVING YOUR ADVERTISING: TAKE A DESKTOP PUBLISHING COURSE

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Taking a basic desktop publishing course will certainly not make you a professional graphic designer, but it will enable you to design simple, yet extremely useful printed promotional materials for your business. Beginner desktop publishing courses are available in just about every community across the nation, either through community colleges or private institutions and tutors. Generally these courses are held nights and weekends and span only a couple of weeks and cost only a few hundred dollars—money that can be easily and quickly recouped by designing your own printed promotional materials instead of paying the printer to do it for you. Likewise, desktop publishing software is widely available and the competition in the marketplace has driven the price of these programs to a level that makes them very affordable for every budget level. Adobe and Corel desktop publishing programs are regarded as the best and most user-friendly in the industry. If you’re not yet convinced, consider these additional reasons listed below and I am sure that you will agree that taking a basic desktop publishing course makes good business sense.

Save Moey

Artwork and layout is very costly; in fact most commercial printers charge in the range of $60 to $80 an hour for graphic design services to create marketing materials like brochures, newsletters, and other printed items commonly used for small-business promotion. But taking a desktop publishing course can put that money back in your pocket and to better use on other marketing efforts. Yes your time is also valuable and has to be factored in, but instead of spending the evening in front of the television, why not put that time to better use creating powerful marketing materials for your business? You can if you have the basic skills and knowledge to do so.

Experiment

Imagine that one day you can design, print, and test a two-for-one coupon offer, the next day a tips sheet, the following day a customer appreciation gift voucher, the sky is the limit. Having the equipment and skills needed to produce your own promotional materials gives you the ability to experiment with various print marketing tools until you find the right mix without having to break the bank getting these materials printed professionally every time you want to experiment with a new marketing message or printed medium.

Professionalism

Imagine being able to print the name of your customer right on gift certificates and other promotional materials, all with the simple click of a mouse? You can if you have the skills and equipment to do so. Personalize every correspondence with your best customers: homemade thank-you notes, greeting cards, and more that have been individually created with the customer in mind instead of a broad, generic, unappealing message. Now that is powerful marketing and customer appreciation.

Timely

Get your message out the same day, sometimes within the same hour if you choose. No working with the printer’s schedule and making numerous trips back and forth to proofread and sign off on artwork. Have a hot idea for a special offer? Get it in front of your customers in a flash, or change an existing offer or message in the matter of minutes. Having the ability to design and print your own marketing materials can save you time and more importantly enables you to react quickly to changing offers or a promotional message.

Freedom

For me one of the best aspects about being my own boss is the freedom. Freedom to make decisions, freedom to devise and implement a plan, and freedom to write my own paycheck based on my abilities rather than a time clock. Therefore having the freedom to design my own basic promotional materials fits in with my plan. I don’t like to wait, I want to have the ability to react right away to a good idea, and I want to be able to test my ideas without having to spend a small fortune in layout and artwork charges to do it. Experimenting and having the freedom to do it is great, but make sure you have someone else proofread your homegrown print materials.

Web Resources

www.corel.com: Corel, a leading software development company with numerous desktop publishing products for a wide variety of user applications.

www.adobe.com: Adobe, a leading software development company with numerous desktop publishing products for a wide variety of user applications.

TEN DESIGN DISASTERS FOR MARKETING MATERIALS

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1. Don’t enlarge your logo so it’s the main focus of the page. People are interested in what you’re selling, not who you are. In fact, the smaller your logo, the more established your company will appear. Check out ads by pros like Nike or Hewlett-Packard.

2. Don’t place your logo in the text of your piece. Of course it’s fine to use the name of your company in the text of any of your marketing materials, but inserting your actual logo into a headline or body copy is design suicide.

3. Don’t use every font at your disposal. Choose one or two fonts for all your materials to build brand equity. Your font choices should be consistent with your image and your industry. For example, a conservative industry = a conservative font.

4. Don’t use color indiscriminately. More color doesn’t necessarily make something more appealing. Often it just makes it loud and off-putting. Most, if not all, your text should be the same color, preferably black for readability. For a unique look, try duotone photographs or print in two colors.

5. Don’t be redundant. Don’t repeat the name of your industry or product in your company name and your tagline and your headline. Potential customers know your industry. Restating it implies you don’t.

6. Don’t choose low-quality or low-resolution photography. A photo may look great in an album, but unless it features balanced lighting and good composition, it’s not print-worthy. Photos need to be at least 300 dpi. And yes, people can tell the difference.

7. Don’t fill up every inch of white space on the page. White space, or negative space, brings focus to what’s important and gives the eye a rest. You may have a lot to say, but cramming it all in creates chaos and minimizes impact. Your piece will end up visually overwhelming. Think less, not more.

8. Don’t focus on the details of your product or service; instead, focus on how it benefits your audience. Unless your product is extremely technical, make your offering relevant to your audience by emphasizing its benefits, not its features.

9. Don’t do exactly what your competitors are doing. When you’re positioning your product, it’s good to know your competition. But don’t copy them. Find out what your customers want and are attracted to. Stand out without sticking out.

10. Don’t change design styles with every marketing piece you create. Strive for a consistent look and feel, keeping the same fonts and logo placement. If you use photos in one ad, don’t use illustrations in another. If you place your logo in the middle of one brochure, don’t place in at the top-right corner in another.

By John Williams. Excerpted from The Great Big Book of Business Lists by Entrepreneur Press.

WASTED ADVERTISING

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Advertising will not put money in your business bank account; it is the follow-up to advertising that will. Yes advertising can make the telephone ring, motivate people to come to your store, and drive them online and to your web site, but all of that will be for nothing unless you are prepared to sell your advertising. Being prepared to sell your advertising means many things such as: Is your sales force trained and armed with the tools they need to turn those advertising inquires into profitable sales? Have you created a system to capture every advertising inquiry and turn it into a prospect database so that you can forge long-term customer relationships? Is your store stocked with a wide selection of inventory, clean, and geared up with customer conveniences and service solutions ready to go and to handle the onslaught of new business your advertising might generate? Have you completely debugged your web site and is it ready for optimum performance to turn visitors into paying customers? And are all employees trained and armed with the information and tools they need to overcome prospect concerns and objections? These are only a few things to consider prior to running that first advertisement, or continuing with an established advertising campaign. The objective is to maximize every single dollar yo...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgements
• Dedication
• Introduction
• RESEARCH, PLANNING, AND COMPETITION - Marketing Tips for Your Business
• EMPLOYEE - Marketing Tips for Your Business
• CUSTOMER SERVICE - Marketing Tips for Your Business
• HOME OFFICE - Marketing Tips for Your Business
• ADVERTISING, DIRECTMARKETING, ANDTELEMARKETING - Marketing Tips for Your Business
• PUBLIC RELATIONS - Marketing Tips for Your Business
• NETWORKING AND REFERRAL - Marketing Tips for Your Business
• PROSPECTING - Marketing Tips for Your Business
• PRESENTATION - Marketing Tips for Your Business
• CLOSING - Marketing Tips for Your Business
• CREATIVE SELLING - Marketing Tips for Your Business
• RETAILING - Marketing Tips for Your Business
• SERVICE PROVIDER - Marketing Tips for Your Business
• WEB SITE AND ONLINE - Marketing Tips for Your Business
• TRADE SHOWS AND SEMINARS - Marketing Tips for Your Business
• APPENDIX - Marketing Tips for Your Business
• INDEX
• Subscribe to Entrepreneur Magazine
• Copyright Page