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Is Your Marketing Strategy Killing Your Profits?
Written by Charlie Cook
With the wrong marketing strategy you could be killing your profits and limiting your business. Your marketing strategy is like the driver in a car, with marketing tactics being the engine. If you know where you want to go and how to get there, your marketing tactics will help you attract many more clients, if not you could crash.
Every business uses one or more of the following tactics to attract clients; mailings, advertisements, phone calls, networking, promotional events, a web site and sending email. If you use any of these and arent attracting as many new clients as you want or making as much money as youd like, the problem may not be the tactics. Its your marketing strategy that needs attention.
Without an effective marketing strategy you wont achieve the results you want, no matter how much time and money you spend. A high profile radio ad campaign wont help you grow your business unless it includes a message that attracts your prospects. An article about your firm in a newspaper can bring in business or just be a conversation piece. Email messages you send can end up in your prospects delete bin or prompt them to contact you.
Mailings, radio advertisements or web sites are only delivery vehicles for your marketing message. They are the tactics you use to implement your strategy. Are you using the right strategy to market your business?
What are the fundamental principles of your marketing strategy? If you can answer this question, youre among one percent of business owners who can. Most people think only about their marketing tactics or vehicles and wonder why their profits arent growing as quickly as they would like.
Business-Building Marketing Strategy To grow your business you need to:
Define Your Goals Identify where you want to take your business and what you want to achieve. Other than making more money than you are now, have you written down a vision of what you want your business to be two years from now? Five years from now?
Target Your Marketing Most small business owners waste their time and money pitching too broadly. Do you have an effective method for identifying the people who want your products and services?
Use a Problem Solving Approach Over 95 percent of small business owners focus their marketing on the reasons people should buy their products and services, not on their clients. Is your marketing focused on clients concerns and problems or on yours?
Demonstrate Value Getting your name in front of people is a first step in marketing, but if your prospects dont know what you do or how you can help them, you havent achieved your goal. Past clients and prospects may have only a limited idea of how you can help them. Do your prospects understand the range of problems you solve and the solutions you provide?
Build Relationships Every past client and prospect who has shown an interest can help you grow your business. Most service professionals know this but waste this resource through lapsed or infrequent communication. Do you have a method for staying in touch on a monthly basis with every person who could help you grow you business? Do you have a strategy for growing the number of qualified prospects on this list each week?
Many people find that defining their marketing strategy is the hardest part of their job. So hard that many small business owners use a tactical approach instead. Dont make this mistake!
Once you have clear marketing goals and a well-defined strategy, your marketing will be more focused and you can make more effective use of appropriate marketing tactics to grow your business. Shift to strategic marketing and youll turbo charge your marketing and your business.
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2004 © In Mind Communications, LLC. All rights reserved.
The author, Charlie Cook, helps service professionals and small business owners attract more clients and be more successful. Sign up to receive the Free Marketing Guide, 7 Steps to Grow Your Business and the More Business newsletter, full of practical tips you can use at http://www.charliecook.net
ccook@charliecook.net
Additional Articles by Charlie Cook
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Are You Ignoring These Marketing Principles
Are You Marketing to Your Potential
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Building Web Pages That Move People To Buy
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Creating Marketing Fireworks
Creating Sales Conversations
Explaining What You Do in 15 Seconds
Frugal Marketing
Get Business Now Play by the Marketing Rules
Getting Lucky with Systematic marketing
Getting Noticed by the Search Engines
GOT MEME How to Attract Your Clients and Customers Attention
How to Avoid the Marketing Blues with Your Offers
How To Generate Leads And Grow Your Business
How to Get the Right Clients and Avoid the Wrong Ones
How to Grab Attention with your Headlines
How to Keep Your Business Healthy
Is Your Marketing Full of Holes
Is Your Marketing Message Holding You Back
Let Your Mistakes Improve Your Marketing And Your Profits
Marketing Smarter to Earn More
Moving Beyond Marketing Rituals to Increase Profits
Open the Door to More Business with Your Ideas
Overcoming Objections to Price
Overcoming Your Biggest Marketing Obstacle
Removing Obstacles to Sales
Shift to Full Power Marketing
The Key to Eliminating Objections and Increasing Sales
Use Product Research to Position Yourself as the Expert
Using Your Web Site to Grow Your Business
What Is the Most Effective Way to Advertise
What Is Your Marketing Really Costing You
WHERE TO FOCUS YOUR MARKETING
Which Of These Words Attract Your Clients
Why Some Web Sites Sell and Others Dont
How To Measure Your Websites Perf0Rmance
Marketing Tricks or Treats
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