The importance of strategically marketing your business cannot be overstated. Find out how you can create value for your clients, improve your brand, retain existing customers, attract new customers and ultimately increase the profitability of your business. Check out http://www.business-plan.co.za

1. Small Business Marketing Plan
Small Business
Marketing Plan -
Increase Your
Business Profit
Without Breaking
Your Marketing
Budget
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2. Small Business Marketing Plan
The importance of strategically marketing your business cannot
be overstated. Find out how you can create value for your
clients, improve your brand, retain existing customers, attract
new customers and ultimately increase the profitability of your
business. Click here
Most small business owners fail when it comes to
their small business marketing plans. They've got
excellent technical skills in their line of work, but
that just doesn't translate to having effective
marketing skills.
As a result, profitability of many small businesses
has been declining over the years. Ever increasing
competition is making it more challenging in many
ways. For those businesses that aren't losing money,
most are not producing the profit they could be if
they knew how to market themselves properly.
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These business owners usually just copy what they
see other businesses doing, or they follow the
advice of some media sales person. The problem is
they copy the wrong types of businesses, and the
media sales people typically only know as much
about effective marketing as the business owner
does.
Without the right kind of marketing system in place,
the success of any business is by pure chance. To
help remedy this situation, below are seven things a
small business can do to increase profits while
spending less on marketing.
1. Use the power of free stuff
Everyone likes getting free stuff and you can use
that to your advantage. If your business lends itself
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to giving away free samples of your product, do
that. It helps get people hooked on it. Business
profits have boomed on this marketing model.
As Chris Anderson author of the book titled, "Free:
The Future of a Radical Price" says, "You can make
make money giving things away."  In his book
he talks about how businesses are giving away
products and services they used to charge for, and
in return, a percentage of their customers are
buying something else. As a result, they are making
more money than ever.
When you give something away, you often activate
a universal law called the "Law of Reciprocity." It
says that when people get something free, they feel
obligated to do something for you. Obviously it
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doesn't work every time, but it does work enough of
the time.
But there is another way to give away free stuff that
can greatly benefit your business. When you do it
right you get something very valuable in return:
customer contact info...which leads us to the next
tip.
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2. Start capturing customer contact info and use it
One of the biggest mistakes small business owners
make is not tapping their current customer base.
They let customers visit their business (online or
offline) all day long without ever trying to capture
their contact info so they can continue to market
products or services to them.
You likely know how expensive it can be to get a
new customer. But you can market to your current
customers for little or no cost. Capturing and using
customer contact info can mean the difference
between a profitable business and one that barely
gets by.
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Your business has more customer value in it than a
customer can possibly digest in a short visit so if you
aren't continually marketing to your customers, you
are throwing money away!
You can make customer contact capture easier
simply by using the power of free from tip number
one. Simply start a monthly drawing to give away
something free and print some registration slips
visitors can fill out. Also have people register online
on your website.
Tell customers they only have to register once for all
drawings and you will contact them monthly via
email to let them know who won. Of course you will
always include an offer for a product or service!
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What do you give away? Anything with a perceived
value makes a great free item. Free items do not
have to be expensive. Buy something on sale at
WalMart or at eBay and offer it. You can also offer
free informational reports that help people solve
their problems. People are always looking for ways
to solve problems they are having.
Of course, once you capture this information you
have to do something with it. If you're too busy to
take on any more work, then the next tip will help
you out.
3. Use automated tools to keep in touch with
customers
Once you have a customer list, I recommend you
send a minimum of 25 "messages" a year to it. A
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message could be an email, direct mail piece, fax, or
phone call.
If you don't use an automated tool to do the work
for you, you'll likely be too busy to get the job done.
When you automate, your messages go out
regardless of how busy you get (the more messages
that go out, the busier you'll get).
One tool you can use is an email autoresponder,
which is a web-based system that sends out emails
when someone signs up. It sends out emails at
intervals you set up. You can also set it up to send
an email on a specific day, such as a holiday.
The great thing about an autoresponder tool is that
you enter your messages in the autoresponder one
time, then it automatically sends emails to your list.
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You can also broadcast messages any time you
want.
Using this tool, keeping in touch with your
customers is easy and it will help keep the
competition from creeping in and stealing your
customers because they've forgotten about you and
the services you provide.
4. Stop marketing like you're a big business.
Marketing a small business like it's a big business is
something almost every small business owner does.
They just copy the marketing they see being done at
large companies with big brands. This kind of
marketing is called "brand identity," "brand
building," or "image" marketing.
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This is a HUGE waste of advertising money for a
small business. You simply don't have the resources
you need to support a successful branding
campaign.
Brand advertising typically has no "call to action,"
(they don't ask you to do anything). They just give
you features of the product or service, or they
entertain you without asking you to do anything.
Brand advertising is usually benefit free. The viewer
has to determine if there is a benefit to them. It
may contain a list of features and the user will have
to assign their own benefit to each feature. It is
usually focused on the product or provider of the
product instead if the customer.
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A successful marketing campaign for a small
business is created around direct response
marketing techniques.
5. Use old fashioned direct response techniques in
new ways
The kind of marketing plan that works for a small
business is direct response marketing. It doesn't
require a huge marketing budget to use effectively.
It can be used for all types of products and services.
And the good news is that you don't even have to
hire an advertising agency to do it since it doesn't
require creativity. All you have to do is learn the
basic structure of direct response marketing and you
can easily increase the sales your business makes.
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Direct response sales copy always asks the reader or
viewer to take some sort of action i.e. "Call in the
next 5 minutes, and we'll include a free set of Ginzu
steak knives!".
It may ask for the sale directly if a full "sales
presentation" was done (one-step advertising), or it
may ask them to request more information (two-
step advertising). It will at a minimum, ask the
reader to take some form of "traceable" action so
you know if it is working or not.
There should always be a headline for written
advertisements! Never put your company logo at the
top of a direct response advertisement. That's brand
advertising.
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Whenever you create an advertisement in any form
always look at them from the customer point of
view. Look it and ask "Who gives a crap?" about
everything in it. Do you think the customer cares
about your logo. No! They care about what you can
do for them. Put in benefits and not features. Let
the customer know what's in it for them. A
successful direct response ad for a small business
includes several things:
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An offer to buy something
Sufficient information for the consumer to make a
decision to act now (or directions on how to get
more info)
An explicit "call to action" sooner rather than later
A clear way to respond such as a telephone number
or web page
A means of tracking the response.
Direct response advertising is not just used for mail
campaigns. You use it in all forms of media: print,
web, mail, and broadcast. Take a look at all the
advertising you are currently doing no matter where
it is and start making the change now.
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6. Use the Internet to advertise for free
Even though websites as we know them have
existed since around the early 90s, only 49%* of
small businesses currently have a website *9/08,
Barlow Research. It's surprising how many
businesses do not understand how powerful this
marketing tool is. If you don't have a website, get
one because there is no better source of free
advertising!
The Internet has hundreds of "Web 2.0" websites
where you post "content" for free. The content can
be text, videos, or audios you create and it can lead
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people to your business. Plus, it helps establish you
as an expert in your field.
EzineArticles.com is one such place you can post
content. There was no charge to post this article. All
I had to do is write it, post it, and then you found it.
You can put links in the "author resource" section, to
drive traffic to a page on your website. The articles
you post in EzineArticles can rank extremely well in
Google search results with a little help from you.
You also want to get your business listed in places
like Google Local if you do local business. Once
again this is absolutely free.
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Once you learn how to do use the Internet for
promotion you'll have a head start on the future of
advertising and you get customers for free!
7. Outsource routine marketing tasks so you can
work on the growing your business
One of the biggest problems small business owners
have is that they get so consumed by working IN
their business, they don't have time to work ON
their business. So no growth can occur.
When it comes to marketing yourself on the
Internet, there are ways to use "virtual assistants"
to do most of the work for you. A virtual assistant is
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someone you hire on a full or part-time basis who
does the work for you.
But a virtual assistant is not a direct employee so
you don't provide benefits or have the normal
hassles of an employee. They are usually located
somewhere in the world that has low-cost wages so
they are very affordable. That's the beauty of the
Internet and the communication it provides.
Virtual assistants aren't just confined to small
business marketing plan tasks though. They can do
almost anything for you: reservations, schedule
appointments, answer phones, customer service,
send flowers, buy a present for your spouse, find
someone to fix your car, website development,
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accounting, software development, writing,
graphics, or anything you need.
There are lots of resources on the Internet that can
help you find a virtual assistant.
Create Your Small Business Marketing Plan Now!
Use these seven marketing tips to start building your
small business marketing plan right now. If you
procrastinate, your busy life will get in the way of
business growth. Even if you only take a little of the
advice you've been given, you'll find it can have a
big impact on the profitability of your business.
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21. Small Business Marketing Plan
The importance of strategically marketing your business cannot
be overstated. Find out how you can create value for your
clients, improve your brand, retain existing customers, attract
new customers and ultimately increase the profitability of your
business. Click here
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22. Small Business Marketing Plan
Tim Bruxvoort is an ecommerce entrepreneur who operates a full-time ecommerce business
called http://www.IntercomsOnline.com. He also is a partner in a small business marketing plans
consulting business that helps small business owners improve their marketing.
For more information go to http://www.fastbusinessprofits.com.
Article Source:
http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tim_Bruxvoort
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