Lessons

Lesson Info

Marketing Planning

This will not be the most overwhelming section, but it will be a very jammed section because, here's, what I know about marketing, I know how to market. I also know it is one of the top two things on the minds of most small businesses, most small businesses. When asked what do they wish they knew more about if they have staff, they say human relations and all of them say marketing ah, and so in this session, we're going to talk about bringing you up to speed on what marketing is and how to do it and how to planet to go into your business plan. Yesterday I dealt with this first question, I'm going to deal with it again in case people are catching up with the course today and not yesterday. This is one of the most common questions that I get when I help people with business plans. What is the difference between a business plan and a marketing plan? A business plan tells how you're business will succeed. A marketing plan is how you'll get and keep customers, which happens to be the case. ...

So how you'll win business and make your business succeed. So therefore your marketing plan needs to be a plan you create, and then you summarize it in your marketing plan and that's what we're going to help you do today. What this course is is an abbreviation of the course that's included in the bundle pack of my courses if you purchase for ninety nine dollars you can get powerful business planning plus fearless marketing fearless marketing is a two day course you're going to get less than a probably a forty five minute compressed version of it but enough to make you knowledgeable on what's involved with marketing because when you even ask accomplished marketers what is marketing they draw a blank people cannot answer the question what is marketing they say well is it advertising is that sales I don't know is it advertising and sales is it here's what it is marketing is the process through what you get and keep customers important word it's a process it's the key to customers and not just getting them but keeping them marketing is the process through what should get and keep customers when I wrote small business marketing for dummies which is now in its third edition as small business marketing kit for dummies that was the question when I turned in the manuscript they asked it's really good but we still aren't positive in a sentence and you know me about sentences what is marketing so I came up with that sentence and then I thought, you know not everybody some people prefer things visually so I came up with a drawing of what is marketing marketing starts with research and from research based on everything you know about your customers, your competition in your market environment you create a product once you create a product you price that product based on the value that product's going to deliver and what you know about the competitive environment, customers and market conditions after you've priced that you come up with labels and packaging that accurately reflect the price point the value proposition and appealed to the customer that you know from research you're trying to reach once it's packaged do you get it into distribution? How do you get it to customers? Do you decide you're going to do it online? Are you going to do it through distributors? Are you going to do it through retail to retail relationships through affiliate marketing? How are you going to distribute it? That's the next step in the marketing process research product development, pricing labels and packaging distribution and then you get to advertise people tend to want to start here you cannot start here for a bunch of reasons number one if you do get them interested, they can't obtain it if you don't have your distribution in place if you get them interested here and then they go to buy it and it doesn't reflect everything that they thought they needed to know or it's not priced right or whatever then this is a waste of time the on ly way this is a valuable step it is if it follows those steps first, after advertising the sales process moves on to the sale, you cannot jump to this point unless you're doing an infomercial that covers everything. At one point, you have to I have multiple efforts to get through to here and then after sales you go to customer service and customer service gives you the information you need to compile research to refine your product, expand your market, do whatever you need to do. This is what the marketing process is all about. And so if you leave, just knowing marketing is the process that involves everything from product development, pricing labels, packaging, distribution, communication sales, customer service and that it's the process getting and keeping customers you're on the right path, summarized from small business marketing for dummies and fearless marketing. I'm going to give you twenty marketing truths, and I'm going to go through them quickly because it'll keep everybody awake after lunch. And because it's just twenty things I think you need to know it's, a cheat sheet in one of the books and it's important number one marketing isn't about talking to customers it's about talking with customers that was always true even before social media, the more you are talking and people have to listen, the less engaged they are. It's a two way street social media has made it an essential two way street they don't want to just talk with you they want rapid response to whatever they're saying marketing isn't about talking to it's about talking with small business owners don't work for themselves they work for their customers every time somebody says I just want to be my own bus you will not be your own bus you will be your you serve your client and you just have to have that mindset it is all about in a job it's about keeping a boss happy in a small business it's about keeping customers not just happier but happier every day than they were the day before because you are very vulnerable to them migrating to competitors and competition is coming up much more quickly competitors are growing more quickly than new customers in most of the world customers expect your products to be competitive on price quality and speed there used to be a little sign that you'd see in dry cleaners and all kinds of places price quality speed choose any too and it used to be if you wanted price and quality you had to compromise speed if you wanted speed and price you had to compromise quality customers now want you to be competitive on all three but they only expect you to be exemplary in one of the three nordstrom is exemplary in service costco in price you figure out which of those three you're going to be exemplary and but how are you going to adequately compete in all three? Because customers have so many options? All businesses face the same phantom competition the customers ability to choose to do nothing whenever you do anything realized the customer doesn't have to buy anything if today's economy on lee. If the today's economy was based on lee on what people need, it would collapse not enough people need things, and a lot of people who need things aren't in a position to buy them. So you have to think this customer who has the money to buy also has the option to do nothing and that's an easier option. Frankly, it's easier to do nothing than to do something. So you have to figure out what am I going to do to inspire them and sent them entice them to do it now to buy versus do nothing because that's, a phantom competitor we all face when it comes to budgeting in marketing you khun budget time, or you can budget money or you can budget both to get where you need to go. But you need to budget and whatever your budget you need to spend, so if you are primarily a networking type business developer you budget time you say every week I will give this many hours to contacting people this many hours to marketing my business if it's money you set the money aside and when times get tough you do not reached for marketing first because the minute you quit marketing that was the one thing you were spending that could deliver forever because customers just keep coming once you get them once you cut that you really cut your business life lines so really give thought to how much you're going to spend in time and or money and then how you're going to spend it how you want to commit to spend it next thing and I've said this earlier if your customers are online and mobile, those who influences their decisions are and they expect to find you there too if they look for you on line and you're not there with your open hours, your directions, the things they most want to know they will find someone else so you have to be online. I get this a lot from professional service providers, accountants, attorneys that type thing do we really need to be online? Yes, at least a placeholder page and fearless marketing has whole, you know, two segments I think on what you need to know about that most of your first impressions happen when you are nowhere around, especially now that online is the player that it is in marketing but even before that some little little league that you're sponsoring some little kid is wearing your your businesses shirt that's the impression that it's being made some employees is taking a call someone's going by your business at nighttime and notices whether the windows air clean or not somebody is shopping in a retail outlet and the lights are burned out these air impressions that are being made when you're nowhere around most of those impressions air online where they do a search for your business and up comes a bunch of results and that becomes your brand in their mind at that moment so it's really important to really inventory how you look do I tell everybody doing incognito search go to a search engine on google it's literally called incognito you go to the right you open the little settings thing you click incognito and it says you are now incognito it takes away all the cookies you ever put in so you could do a pure search for your name because as you know, if you search for mexican restaurants they're going to give you the restaurants in your environment they know where they are but not when it's and incognito search all of the information is taken away nobody knows who you are so therefore you can get an accurate representation of what anybody sees when they google your name, other search engines being yahoo, they all have a way to go incognito do it see how you look online don't just search overall search images, search blog's search video see everywhere they confined things about you, and if you don't like what you're saying, then make it part of your marketing goal to improve your online presence with information that you can control and keep updated, because those are the things that will come up first. It's why it's so important to have a linked in page business, personal and personal and business facebook page, a twitter feed these are things that are very, very highly optimized, they come up very quickly in your results and they shut down, you know something from whatever it's a party you were at that you really don't want on there. The other thing is your logo isn't your brand businesses spend enormous amounts of f on their logos they should. Logos are important locals or not brands logos air like a key logo's and names both are like a key than unlock a brand image in a consumer's mind, which is where brands live. All your brand is is a set of beliefs that a customer conjures up when they hear your name or come in contact with your name through your logo sign anything else, your name unlocks a set of beliefs about you and that set of beliefs issue brand if it's what you want that's great keep going if it's not what you want if they think she's always late, then you're going to have to do something and I don't know why I didn't mean to look at anybody over that, but whatever they think aboutyour business is your brand in their minds, so learn what it is so that you can start improving it with the same kind of questions I said earlier asked people what three words do you think about or have your staff ask or ask your staff to be honest, give something that they can fill out? If you had to guess this about our business? What would you say? People say branding for dummies has a lot of worksheets you can follow and they are also in the fearless market. In course, customers care about benefits far, far more than features we've gone over this every time you get ready to do a feature, convert it with, which means this is our feature, which means this is what you get and you stress what they get. Number ten in marketing, hiring help is an indication of your commitment to invest in success you can't always do it yourself, you can't always build your own website or create your own ad or logo there comes a point where you have to say one of my good at and maybe you need to spend your time doing what you need to do I'm not the only one I'm sure who's been countless undue hours updating my website for instance once somebody who knows what they're doing could do it in forty five minutes sometimes you have to say I commit to the success of my business to pay for this service participate in social media no matter what business you are I think you need some participation level but participate to build relationships not to place intrusive promotional messages it's called social for a reason it's why I said to you in your hundred sixty word or twenty word one hundred sixty character twenty word descriptions why would they want to do business with you? What makes you likable people like people that they friend people who seem likable and the other thing is it's reciprocal friending reach out start friending people or businesses and they'll start coming back to you push versus pull marketing those were the words these days you can't push your messages out especially on social media intrusive messages you all know you just got you start you start unfollowed people or at least hide their feet because you don't want your social feed plugged up with a bunch of sales messages don't do it you put out messages that have interesting information that they might click on that pull them to your business, and at that point you capture the lead or you make the sale, and I always use the same example. I don't say my new book is out by it, I say cool! They just released the cheat sheet to my new book, free twenty things to know. Here it is, they click on it if they do nothing but read it, I'm happy, but conveniently you can click to buy the book on that cheat sheet that's pull marketing versus just pushing out in interests of message, useful information they can act upon. And for all that action, you need an online hub for content generation and a foundation for customer interaction. Your own website with an interactive capability, preferably a blogger, is really the gold standard, but this is where both facebook business pages and linked in there so valued well, they do give you a chance, particularly a facebook business page gives you a chance for interaction there's a there's, a lot that freelancers and one person businesses have to do to consider. How do they separate their personal page from their business page so that you can keep your personal page personal? And one of you told me that you've done a lot with groups pushing out your messages, only two groups, so that not everybody sees us. Your father's birthday party or whatever, but I try really hard to keep all of my facebook contacts for business on my business page, where they're getting the information they need. So think about that no matter what you're doing, keep your message simple. This comes back to the same thing I showed with the infographic earlier today that people have extraordinarily short attention spans. They also want one clear message tell them two things, and they'll understand nothing they want overlays the other, and they walk away very, very unclear come up with the one thing you want them to know. Four of the five people read only a headline you saw today, social media messages that are one to eighty characters perform best in a billboard. They will take seven words, not that very many people use billboards, but just so you know, seven words radio ad one message um, and and if you want him call, you have to give your phone number three times because they aren't just sitting around waiting for your ad, and particularly when it comes to radio or any kind of broadcast media it takes reached in awareness, but it takes communication frequency to change minds. Let me tell you what that means the two words that you hear in any kind of media, even social media is reaching frequency reach is how many people you're getting too it's? How many people not even in your facebook feed or your linked in feed because especially on facebook, only a percentage and they're now telling you that this message reached eighteen people or some phenomenally small number that's the reach of your message that's how many people you reached it takes that to gain awareness, but to change minds it takes frequency, you have to reach them three times generally, which often means you need to put out nine messages because they're absent three of the times and if you're using radio, they say twenty seven times twenty seven times on the ad has to air so that people actually hear it three times to get the desired action. So just remember that one shot deals don't work even if you're putting your one shot ad in the super bowl, which happens to be coming up and everybody on the west coast is crazy for it. Um even on the super bowl people caught in the bathroom they go get the guacamole bill bowl refilled they're not there for your ad, so it takes frequency don't try any one shot deals don't try something once and say it didn't work it didn't work because you didn't give a frequency tv ads keep compete for awards social media builds buzz, but direct mail winds return on investment contests um lots of lots of research on this, particularly by and I mentioned earlier hub spot dot com. If you're trying to stay up on a lot about social media and pull marketing, follow the hub spot feed. It really is very good at u b s p o t dot com they put out tremendous research, and among their research is that direct mail by surface mail and by email is the most cost effective way now sixty percent of e mails are not opened, so it tells you there's a lot of discarded mail out there on dh part of the reason it's discarded it's because of really crummy subject lines that don't get past spam filters or that just look high p or they look spam, even if they make it past the filter. So you want a good sir subject line and short message that can be read on any screen if you want it to work, but when it works, it works better than anything else. A lot of people still published brochures, printed brochures, and then, if you wonder, you can put in online printing options and the number of places online that can help you produce a brochure for almost nothing are amazing. The on ly worthwhile brochure is one that moves a customer either I say here closer to a purchase decision but I would add to that or to greater loyalty car ads for instance are red best by the person who just bought the car they go home with a huge sense of pride and read the ad so if it moves a customer closer to the buying decision or makes them more loyal to your business than produce the brochure otherwise you doing it for yourself public relations public relations is not free advertising first of all it's not advertising if it even smacks of advertising it'll never see the light of day on any kind of media it's not free advertising nor is it free public relations takes an investment of your time your follow up even money to get there but when it works it works because you did something right and you leverage publicity's to talk about it. Public relations is telling what you can share with the world that's useful and you know you're doing something that's positive for the consumers. For the readers or viewers of a medium be it a blogger or a television station or magazine or anything else you give them some information and then once you get the publicist eu leverage the heck out of it through sending it around putting on your social feeds everything else but first you have to do the right thing by sharing information that is truly worthwhile to an audience and that's where the expense comes networking I know this is really important to small businesses who don't have employees teams and this becomes their team when networking you have twenty seconds and twenty words online to introduce yourself and make people want to know more be ready with those twenty words when someone says, what do you do? And you say I sell insurance they're looking across the room who else they can talk to but if you say I help people build nest eggs and I do it by you know or whatever all of a sudden they're intrigued by that um so figure out something and test it with people what when did they most interrupt? How did you get into that? Who that's what you want to hear? What did it take to get the first book contract or whatever? Then you know that you've engaged their interests so in twenty seconds your twenty words or even twenty seconds your job is to kevin go wow, you know, like I'm glad I got to talk to this person so that's what that's how you build your network, the number of people you reach matters much less than the number of qualified prospects you're talking to and influencing this is really important for social media where everybody's just on a race to collect connections and how big is their facebook feed and how big is their twitter feed and how and even how big is their mailing list their lead generation? It really doesn't matter if they're not qualified ah qualified prospect is someone who wants her needs what you sell is capable of buying what you sell either because they have the money or in some other way they are capable. For instance, if you're selling, if you have a bar and they need to be twenty one in the u s so they're capable of buying, they have the money to buy, they have the desire to buy and their prak accident you can reach them with your offering either you can reach them because they're near your business or because you are set up to distribute to them. Those are the only people that really give you any hope for a return on investment. Now you may want among your qualified prospects to have publicity qualified prospects who might call on you you know it's not always for a sale it's against your goals they're qualified to help you reach your goals. Those are the ones you worry about, not how many people you're getting too marketers with clear goals and written marketing plans market best because they're directed and focused this is this is where a business plan and a marketing plan are exactly the same they both require direction and focus so this is what's involved in a marketing plan first and foremost you state your business purpose this is nice because whatever you did in your marketing plan is true for your business plan as well. I put this as the first step in this one because a lot of times the marketing plan stands alone when it stands alone it still needs to start with what is our purpose? What is our market situation? This is a little different than business situation it focuses on customers, competitions and market environment not economic that type thing step three is it still it states your goals and objectives and this is your marketing goal and objective your business goals might be something like it determine a new product you're marketing goal is how are we going to market that product? It becomes the marketing goals that support the business goals and again it's the same thing but particularly the business the marketing goals deal with the four piece and promotion publicity distribution and pricing then you define your customer profile and competition where is your market? And even if it's an internet even if you're an online business in your market is all over the place they're still concentrations you need to know where they are so that you have sensitive messages to their wants and needs even their languages minimally if you do it, if you communicate only in english make sure it translates well in the market environments that you target you start with who they are your demographics demographics are fax there simply facts about that customer, the gender and age of your customers even if they're broadly divers they're probably some similarities on who comprise your customers or even your best customers the ones that are most profitable profitable by the most often cause less least trouble gender and age, ethnicity and language education level in status and actually this is educational and status are they currently a student? Are they a part time student? These are important things to know their income level they're professional career and their household competition the composition the's are among the issues that you need to know and in in the various books that I have really goes into extremely strong detail and you go to my website for yet more information but you have to know demographically who is your customer actually then where are they that's called geographics what are their addresses? Track your inquiry's if you if you actually receive orders track the addresses on the orders you can ask for zip codes but you have to be careful following there were regulations of your state california has some issues with it in other parts of the world you well, wherever you are in the world, check your google analytics to see where your web track that is coming from khun b a little deceiving because, for instance, when a well was even a bigger I asked provider than then they are now are more dominant there's all show west virginia. I mean, a lot of them come through wherever they are, so there are some anomalies that happened, but you can begin to get a sense. What browsers do they use? Google analytics will even tell you that what browsers air they using, and you could begin to determined something's about who your customers are, even by their choice of that, and what pages they spend time on. You can learn a lot about your online market by studying that one report inquiry addresses areas of concentrations with your prospects and here's where I mentioned it earlier, the s r d s, which stands for standard rate and data service. Thie sardi s lifestyle market analyst. It is worth it to go to your library if you're curious about what motivates your customer because you can go to your interest area golf, whatever it is, find out where concentrations are, and it also tells you an awful lot about what else they participated, so you could begin to know for even cross promotions that people who golf are also drink wine, and that would begin to let you know how you might do line events that bring and I don't know why I bring up golf, but I guess because the stable gulf flint but wine events that bring prospects too the club and therefore you convert them so you find out what their cross interests are, and sometimes it gives you a nice way to get to your clients through other interests thie other book is called the c a c I sourcebook of zip code demographics you simply look up your zip code if you have originally a geographically cited business, look up your gyp zip code, and it will tell you everything about the trends of your market area from whether people in your age group were going up or down in number two. What there interests are it's kind of an interesting thing to do to go to check out those two books? Unfortunately, neither one is available online without paying for subscriptions that takes care of demographics and geographics. The third thing you need to know it's psychographic ce demographics tell you who you're talking to geographics tell you why where you're talking to them and psychographic ce tell you what you need to say to them. It is their beliefs and behaviors, those things that affect their decisions to buy what they value, how they decide how they shop and purchase. The purchase channels, they come through current awareness and need levels. These are things you need to know especially this one current awareness and need levels helps you project that time time frame between now and when they might actually by, um, if seasonality, all things like that that affect how they buy become important to how you market to them purchase channels do they come through referrals through your website, online search, social networks, direct response affiliates, other retailers by knowing that you know where to project your messages, purchase tendencies, how they shop and purchase do they tend to buy spur of the moment, in which case putting out some buy it now offers work? Do they tend to have careful consideration in which case needing more? Few have frequently asked question pages on your website or even brochures that they can take home and do the homework on to figure out how it compares her which one they're going to buy once you know how they buy, you know how to help them buy who buys what is the next thing you need to think about segmentation these air? The fact did that help you aim your messages and promotions who's buying each of your product categories if you learn that personal consulting in brigitte's case that personal one on ones are a certain kind of person in a certain income level they tend to cluster around that it helps you figure out even what environment to surround them with when they come in what caliber of message they need to get so you figure out who's buying what how are they buying if they're consistently buying with a friend inspire more purchase with some friend discounts it's your birthday for your birthday bring a friend in you know inspired the way they want to buy purchasing patterns and again that is um everything from do they do they buy three times a year do they buy seasonally do they tend to buy a little bit and come back when they run out by sales channel what which how do they get to your product and which sales channels air going up in attraction and by current awareness and need levels you're going to come up with a customer profile template every business should do this and I even think it's a good idea to come up with to a customer profile template and ideal customer profile template this is who your customers are predominantly and then the ideal one is who is your really profitable easy to get in maybe not even easy to get but easy to serve and profitable client and you can begin to look at the differences between the two our customers are predominantly thirty five to fifty year old women living in predominantly in our area but about twenty percent of them reaches remotely who purchased our offerings and this? You really this is the important part why and how they buy. They're psychographic ce their wants and values their decision, process their shopping and purchase tendencies, their current awareness and need levels put this in writing because that helps you know, if they're if they're awareness levels are low, you need you, you know you need to do more awareness building if they're need levels are low, you need tio put more emphasis on the value proposition and why to do it now, even in sent some purchase, since they don't have the need to buy it. Now you need to incentive to at least take advantage of an offer by putting this in writing you no more about what to say to your customers. Competition is the next step, but I want to stop and give rudy a break and see if anybody has any questions about the customer part. We actually had a question coming from joe joe in regards to e mailing is asking, do you legally have to get special permission to email people? Or can you? I assume if they have purchased from you, that you can just send them an email they had you, if they have purchased from you, they actually have. Made contact with your business there's something called the can spam act and I urge everybody to go to the website, can spam act and check it out because it gives all the restrictions. What you can't do is just reach out to someone who has never opted into your business. They do opt in when they buy from you. They do opt in with an inquiry, but read the can spam rules anyway because you need to also, when you email people, give them an out and the out is, you know, you man subscribed and you must follow up within subscription, or you can get it under the can spam rules. People absolutely despised vamps. So even if it worked the can spam law, you still shouldn't do it, and the way you get them to opt in is through lead generation. They come to your side, they ask for information and you capture their email address and then most good email marketers do a double opt in. They then send them thank you. Before we put you on our list, for sure, double check that this is what you want, you can unsubscribe it any time when it comes time to unsubscribe ing what a lot of people have learned is, when you purge lists, if you give them a chance to get out, they often choose to stay in it's a funny thing, but if they ask to get out, you get him out quick, and really, truly, if you do, email marketing, go to the to the can spam rule. Also, if you do, email marketing, do follow hub spot, they're really very good with information on how to do it, but don't just gather up the list of everybody who participated in the marathon in your city and put them on your list, because that spam great, different customers, I'm assuming you would have to go through this process if you have different customers participating in different elements are buying different products, that's, the segmentation, right? And so, in that case, you would not just having our customer profile, but it's still worth it to have an overall customer program, because you need to be sure that your overall brand a line's well, with the profile of kind of everyone, the composite profile, everyone who buys from your business, but then you have segments of who is buying this kind of product? Who is buying that kind of product? Because in a good marketing program, you decide which products that we're going to emphasize this year, and therefore you talk only to those in, particularly in a time when people hate spam so much the more you can customize it, the more they know it's, not spam in in one of my books, I used the example it's one thing to say computer sales computer sell this weekend, another to send a thing saying, calling all mac owners in sausalito. Well, if I'm a mac owner in sausalito, I'm more apt. Open the one than the other one. At least I know that they know about me. There's. Some so most small businesses can afford a lot more customization than that. But it's an example of why it's worth it to know everything you can possibly know about your overall customer composite profile and the profile of each product line.