12 Crucial Practices EVERY Business Owner Should Be Doing

How to increase sustainable sales revenues now……

www.internetmarketing-media.com

“even if you do nothing else….do these”

Table of ContentsIntroduction

What is Marketing?

Why Marketing is Worth the Investment

Understanding Market Research

Why Marketing Research is Important to Your Business

UNDERSTANDING why your buyers buy what they buy!

Marketing a Product vs. Marketing a Service, Understand the difference

Develop a Marketing Plan

Creating a Marketing Budget - How Much Should I Spend on Marketing?

Why Reinvent the Wheel? Don’t Be afraid to Copy Your Successful Competitors

Testing for ROI is Crucial

CRM - Customer Relationship Management Is a Must

Persevere With Business Marketing Until It Pays Off - STICK with the program!

CHAPTER ONE

How to increase sustainable sales revenues now……

12 Crucial Practices EVERY Business Owner Should Be Doing

“even if you do nothing else….do these”

Internet Marketing Media understands how difficult it is to start a business, let alone learn how to properly market it. It’s not uncommon for new business owners to find themselves in the marketing role and quickly become overwhelmed. Don’t worry, here’s some tips to help you understand your best solutions.

There are a lot of marketing basics that are very important to every business owner no matter what the size of the business is. Marketing should never be considered an expense, it’s actually an investment in your company, and it’s important to have a clear understanding on where to start that investing. If you can comprehend this, you’re on the right path! Many business owners quickly forget to work on their business, most time is usually spent working in their business. I hope this book helps you better understand the basic marketing principles that will grow your revenues year over year!

Let’s start with the basics, since that’s where I was taught to start by my best mentors. By the end of this article you should have a much better understanding of not only what marketing is, how and why you should market your business, but you’ll also be well on your way to creating your own marketing plan. With a basic understanding of today’s digital marketing, and a well thought out plan in hand, you will eliminate a lot of the risk regarding where you’re investing those marketing dollars.

“Marketing should never be considered an expense, it’s actually an investment in your company, and it’s important to have a clear understanding on where to start that investing”

What is Marketing?

We hear about marketing in so many conversations, and as business owners we all know it’s something we are supposed to do. However, that question remains for so many, what is marketing exactly? There are so many definitions that describe marketing to business owners, trying to understand it can leave us really confused. We hear about sales, advertising, public relations and marketing. Is there a difference? YES, there is a difference, and when you are better able to understand the difference it’ll be a lot easier to understand what tasks should be handled by whom within your business, and under the specific actions appropriately called marketing. Good marketing is critical to the success of any business and understanding what it is will help you get your business started on the right foot.

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Why Marketing is Worth the Investment

Many companies view marketing as an expense. The truth is, when a business understands the importance and the role marketing plays in growing a business

it’s much clearer to comprehend why it should be considered a necessary investment. Maybe THE most necessary… Marketing is crucial when it comes to

gaining the attention of prospective customers (your target audience), developing product or service demand and turning those prospects into customers.

Marketing always has a direct effect on your pricing, promotions, advertising strategies, and ultimately influences your sales revenue. When

the business owner better understands the importance of marketing you can use it to promote the ongoing transition of your services and products to the consumer; this can create great success

in your business. Marketing expense is no different than paying sales commissions.

Understanding Market Research

Market research helps us all to determine how our products or services will be embraced among different demographics. This information can help you in establishing which segment of consumers will have an interest in your product and services and ultimately end up becoming your customer. You can use market research to gain specific information such as determining the age group, gender, location, and income level of potential customers that you should target using your marketing message. Market research enables you to create a marketing plan for your business that is not only effective, but also cost efficient.

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You’ve done your homework and invested a lot of time in your marketing plan, so why should you care about marketing research? Let me try to explain the difference. Market research gives you the information needed regarding the demographic, or target audience you are trying to connect with. Marketing research is delving into the behavior and buying habits of a specific segment that you have decided to target. When understood, this will save you a lot of non performing time and money, by helping you avoid costly marketing mistakes. Marketing Research may possibly be the most important process in your marketing strategy.

UNDERSTANDING why your buyers buy what they buy!

The digital marketplace is changing every month these days. We see this in retailers advertising campaigns, consumers spending habits, as well as in the economy. Consumers are looking for something more than a flashy ad or attention grabbing commercial when considering where to spend their hard earned dollars. They want information, which leads to authority. Using in-depth marketing research helps you to figure out why consumers buy what they buy and how you can influence their decision before they buy in order to answer their questions before they ask them. If you are lacking a marketing research budget ask your current clients with a questionnaire.

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Why Marketing Research is Important to Your Business

Develop a Marketing Plan - What is a Marketing Plan?

a. What is a marketing plan. It may be the most crucial step to consider. Just like a business plan, your marketing plan serves as a roadmap when it comes to your marketing initiatives. It details the success route that you will need to follow to get your business noticed by potential customers. A well-defined marketing plan will show you what to do and help you understand why you are doing it. It will also help you navigate away from the marketing and business mistakes that’ll cost you money, time and future growth potential. As a business owner equipped with a marketing plan, you’ll be way more organized, have more confidence and a clear vision when it comes to your marketing goals. Put in simpler terms, a marketing plan increases your chance to achieve success for your business that you expect. Hopefully!!!

FIRST CREATE A 90 DAY MARKETING PLAN

b. If you’ve never created a marketing plan, I’d start with a 90-day plan. It’s less intimidating and helps you properly focus on your immediate marketing needs. I always make sure my clients understand the first 90 days of a campaign strategy are spent testing; testing medias, sales copy, graphics, videos, even colors and website layouts and functionality to make sure the prospects visit delivers the most comfortable, enjoyable and informative investment of time as possible. This takes time, but there’s shortcuts too! See the topic, Why Reinvent the Wheel? Don’t Be afraid to Copy Your Successful Competitors There are a lot of benefits in creating a 90-day plan, it will help you better formulate your long term strategy after 90 days.

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Marketing a Product vs. Marketing a Service, Understand the difference

Marketing a service is much different than marketing a product. Marketing a service is a value proposition, whereas marketing a product might only be a question of price, location, or level of service. There are certain things you need to consider and different steps you need to take in order to help the consumer feel comfortable.

1. You need to figure out what you need to do differently in order to market your service effectively as a value proposition.

2. Why are your services better than your competitor?

3. Why is your product better than the next one?

4. You have 1-3 seconds to engage your prospect, make sure your value proposition is well thought out, answers prospects questions BEFORE they ask it, and creates a feeling of authority and within your prospect.

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Creating a Marketing Budget - How Much Should

I Spend on Marketing?Determining how much of your resources should be committed to marketing within your company can be one the biggest obstacles most businesses face. It can also be a key component that can make or break a business. There are guidelines that will help in allocating your resources, learn what is generally recommended when it comes to marketing budgets. Harvard business school recommends 12-15% of gross. I have many customers who spend much more and less with good results. Testing perfects this. Once again we go back to looking at your competitors and see what their successful marketing campaigns are returning on the monthly, quarterly or yearly expenditures.

Why Reinvent the Wheel? Don’t Be afraid to Copy

Your Successful Competitors Marketing a business can prove very challenging at times; especially in rough economic times. However, many companies are finding success by utilizing new techniques to market their businesses. These strategies usually include social media marketing, online marketing, traditional marketing and even direct mail. Learn all of the options of the many new ways to market that you have not previously considered. Also, find out how other business owners started marketing their businesses. There’s no reason to reinvent the wheel. Look at the top 10 competitors in your industry. How are they marketing their services or products?

Why would a prospect choose your company over another company?

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Testing for ROI is Crucial

Return on invest¬ment, or ROI, is one of the most crit¬i¬cal and chal¬leng¬ing met¬rics you can mea¬sure dur¬ing any marketing and optimization cam¬paign. ROI not only val¬i¬dates the results of your test¬ing, but it also proves the value of the invest¬ment in that particular campaign or opti¬miza¬tion pro¬gram to the busi¬ness owners. How¬ever, it can often be chal¬leng¬ing to cal¬cu¬late ROI based on test¬ing activ¬i¬ties, and many business owners fall vic¬tim to “leav¬ing money on the table” by not tak¬ing into account all of the forms of ROI that opti¬miza¬tion and focused A/B testing produces. How will your business do in 2014? That really depends on how well you plan and test your marketing, including print media, CRM and your sales staff close ratios. It’s time to pull those marketing dollars back that aren’t working for you and begin to invest them in ways that will give you a better return on your investment. This is where testing is so important. Testing will be an entire lesson in itself, but possibly

Customer Relationship Management

1. You should communicate with your past and existing customers, as well as the many visitors to your site regularly with informative content?

2. How effectively do you maintain your current customer relationships? CRM is so important in your sales funnel, it enables you to automate communications designed specifically for your prospects and existing customers, building authority and relationships.

3. How often do you communicate with your prospects and existing customer base?

4. What do you provide them in your communication?

5. What information are you giving them to help them with a solution?

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Persevere With Business Marketing Until It Pays Off - STICK with the program?

An effective marketing plan is essential to the success of any business. Marketing plans, just like business plans, change with the results of our tests and strategies. A lot of times business owners become frustrated and don’t persevere with their marketing plan. This happens for any number of reasons and many business owners simply give up too soon. Learn how to persevere with a set marketing plan and chosen marketing strategies, until it pays off. Thomas Edison failed 10,000 times, 10,000 TIMES when he was inventing the lightbulb. Each failure he perceived as bringing him closer to success. 10,000 TIMES? Geez, I’m not sure I have that in me! Testing helps with the focus and understand why there is failure, as well as success. There’s a reason advertising and marketing has been around so long! Don’t quit! Stick with it, it WILL pay off in the long run.

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