Marketing For Profit
Develop These Six Critical Marketing Traits...And Success Will Surely Follow.
If you are marketing for any other reason than 'for profit' - STOP! That's right, stop right now. The only reason you market your business is to cause action: make more sales, make the phone ring (and make more sales), make someone visit your website (and make more sales)? Are you seeing a pattern here? Good. The root of all marketing is to 'sell more stuff and make more money' - that's it.
And here's the definition of marketing: "Marketing is all about positively influencing your customer's buying decisions so that they choose you."
Trait #1: Notice Your Own Buying Strategies
Remember, it's about influencing buying decisions, so pay attention to the way the world tries to 'sell you'. Watch for the really good sales pitches, and pay even closer attention to the really bad ones. Pickup magazines - read the ads, watch TV - surf the commercials, join mailing lists and hoard 'junk mail', and when you get telemarketing calls - listen to them carefully because all this stuff is pure gold. Notice billboards, look at pictures (paying special attention to your industry sector) and just for fun, read the Yellow Pages to what's going on in your area.
If you pay attention to what catches your attention, what ads you keep seeing, what radio commercials you keep hearing, you'll start to find things you can incorporate into your own business model.
Trait #2: Cross-Pollinate Business Ideas
Nothing about flowers here - this is powerful marketing 1-0-1. Cross-pollination is all about taking a proven idea from one industry and 'borrowing' it for yours. Essentially you need to get a little creative with ideas and throw things together that might not normally seem to make sense.
Borrow ideas from everywhere. See if you can sell your products and services the same way cell phones are sold, what about selling your products like groceries, get creative - break the mould. Get yourself out of your paradigm of "what you do" and realize that, as long as it's legal, moral, and ethical, if a given idea makes money, then pursue it.
Trait #3: Be Specific
Let's not get into how people are generally lazy communicators - suffice to say that 99% of what's said in marketing and advertising is hyperbole, fluff, non-specific, non-compelling, boring, and flat. Words like best quality, best service, largest selection, #1 and lowest price abound - do you think this stuff really works?
People expect you to claim you're great - no one spends money to promote they're bad at anything! Quantify your claims, be specific. Instead of saying "largest selection of parts", say "We carry 1,478 types of part in stock, in 10 different sizes, and in 3 different finishes."
Trait #4: Look At Things From Your Customer's Perspective
If you've ever bought anything that you knew nothing about, you ought to relate to this. Put yourself in your customers shoes - find out what they feel about the whole buying process (remember marketing = influencing) and create an environment that sympathetically addresses their issues.
Trait #5 Adapt And Innovate
Even if you're the best deal in town today - you might not be tomorrow. After all, the only thing a competing business needs to do is watch you, copy you, and then improve on your offers and service. Constant innovation is required, adapt or perish as they saying goes. Innovation is a process not a destination. The object is to create a business that offers your customer a deal so perfect that they'd be a fool to shop anywhere else.
Trait #6 Systemize Everything You Can
Systemization is the process of making decisions about your marketing in advance so that you are always doing what needs to be done. Instead of trying to create everything as you go, or worse, flying by the seat of your pants and wondering what to do next. Plan, excute, adjust, repeat. And that's it. Six traits that will get you moving in the right direction.
AUTHOR BIO: James Burchill is a freelance marketing consultant and publisher. James helps people 'Sell more stuff, and make more money!' He also publishes informational and Internet products and his main website is http://www.JamesBurchill.com James' newest product shares his insights into the exciting world of freelancing on Elance at http://www.ElanceExposed.com
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