Self Employed Success

Do NOT follow the herd when it comes to choosing marketing techniques. Doing what everyone else does or doing what’s the latest-and-greatest is a sure path to marketing failure.

People tell me they want a marketing plan, but what they really mean is, “Tell me exactly which techniques to choose and when to do them.”

Guess what? There is no one single perfect, magic marketing plan that will guarantee results for every single business owner. Why? Because everyone’s audience is different, everyone’s marketing message is different, and everyone’s marketing goals are different.

The last time I counted, there were over 30 internet marketing techniques available, and at least 50 traditional marketing techniques to choose from. How can one-size-fits-all come from 80 choices?

Instead, it’s time to do your homework. And the place to do your homework is in crafting a Marketing Plan. A marketing plan takes you step-by-step through all the topics you need to consider when doing the marketing for your business, including:

• defining your target audience
• defining your niche (which is different from a target audience)
• setting your marketing goals
• analyzing your competition
• setting your prices
• determining your unique selling proposition

Whatever you do, don’t just jump on the bandwagon of every new marketing technique that comes along. That kind of knee-jerk reaction will put you in the poor house faster than you can say Shotgun Approach To Marketing.

Let me give you a good example: social media marketing. Everyone says, “Oh, get a Facebook account!” But the majority of Facebook users (50.1%) are 18-34 years old. So why would you market on Facebook if your target audience is a female 45-65 year old CEO if you weren’t sure she hangs out on Facebook? But maybe a 45-65 male CEO of a tech company does hang out on Facebook. Know your audience and find out where they hang out…then get in front of them.

I know it takes time and effort to research and write a marketing plan. But only through marketing planning can you have the confidence of knowing you’ve chosen the best techniques from the 80+ available, will be executing the techniques in the correct order, at the right time of year. I’d trade confident marketing for quick marketing any day.

I’ll be adding to this series each Thursday, and you can check out all the past posts in the Why Marketing Fails series here.

I’m going to be harsh here, so hold on to your hat.

Have you CHECKED to see if people want your product or service?

The first – and ultimately the biggest – mistake that small business owners make is that they fail to do adequate market research. We get overly-excited about a new idea and assume that our customers will love it, too. We ask a few colleagues or a few customers, and base our strategic business decision on the opinion of six people. Then we are bitterly disappointed when no one buys.

Save yourself the wasted time and money (not to mention the anxiety and frustration), and learn to conduct a simple marketing research project to test the waters.

For more help on doing your own Marketing Research:

• Read my article, Ground Truth and the Importance of Market Research
• Listen to my free, one hour how-to audio, Yes, You Can Do Your Own Market Research

I’d love to hear your story, your comments, your questions about market research. Post your comments here!

I’ll be adding to this series each Thursday, and you can check out all the past posts in the Why Marketing Fails series here.

We always want to know which marketing techniques are the best, the easiest, and yield the greatest results for our time and money. Any shortcuts to marketing are viewed with awe and respect.

And yet what can you do when you try the “best” marketing techniques and they just aren’t working for you? Do you ditch them? Or is there a simple tweak you can do that will transform them?

I began to research why marketing fails about a year ago. So far I’ve come up with 35 different reasons why marketing fails, separated into nine categories. In this blog post series, I will review some of those 35 reasons and offer you a quick tip on how to tweak your marketing as related to the “failure point.” Hopefully these insights and tips will help you get your marketing back on track.

See the Why Marketing Fails Blog Series here. I’ll be adding to it each Thursday.

Got a topic you’d like me to cover in this series? A comment? A question? Post your comments…I’d love to hear from you!