subject: Why Small Business Marketing Fails [print this page] Very few small business owners see marketing as anything other than an inconvenient, expensive but regrettably necessary evil.
But in fact, it is neither.
The idea that marketing costs anything at all shows a serious lack of understanding of the whole point of marketing in the first place - which is to add to the business's profits.
And from this, it therefore follows that far from being a "necessary evil", marketing is actually the most important and exciting activity a business owner can ever engage in, simply because it's marketing that brings in the customers and clients who are ultimately responsible for the business's profits.
Exciting?
Sure - because if you can double the effectiveness of your marketing, you can easily double your profits. And I really do mean easily - because the standard of marketing in the business world is, in the main, terrible (why it's so terrible is the subject of an upcoming article).
However, it's also true some marketing strategies and tactics do require a substantial investment to get them running. Advertising, direct-mail, and even SEO and Adwords all require money upfront and entail some risk should they not yield the results required to make a profit.
Fortunately there are several things we can do to mitigate this.
Let's keep it nice and easy and look at the most important one - testing.
Testing and measuring is something most business owners simply don't see the need for - instead, they're locked into the mindset of "failure or success". Now, I'm not being a Pollyanna here, but it's much more useful to think in terms of "feedback" rather than "failure".
Because even if your marketing efforts don't turn a profit, it can still be a profitable exercise you've conducted, because you're now armed with information you didn't have before.
And that's valuable.
But even so, if you've just sunk your life-savings into a direct-mail blast or run a "make-or-break" ad in the national newspapers and you find it's all gone pear-shaped, then "feedback" and "failure" can seem to be uncannily alike.
The key is in testing, and in testing small.
For reasons I understand but still find completely insane, most business owners don't test, not in any meaningful sense of the word. They might "try" an ad or a mailing, but they won't test - meaning they risk too much on a big, expensive campaign without first checking to see how effective it's going to be with a smaller sample-size.
By this I mean they'll sign up to a full year's worth of an untested ad (say, like a full-page in the Yellow Pages - don't laugh, because I've seen it done), or send out thousands and thousands of expensive postcards or letters without knowing what kind of response rate they can expect.
Madness.
The way to do it is to test small - say one insertion of an ad, and 500 or 1000 mailed pieces. If it works - meaning if you make a profit - then do it again, only this time be prepared to invest more into it.
If it doesn't, test something else.
And, no, you can't "test" with the Yellow Pages, but you can start thinking about the ad you're going to put in there long before the rep. calls, and test and measure how effective your YP ad is in different media, first, yes?
Fact is, none of this is hard - but most business owners don't and won't do it either because they're too lazy, they're too impatient, or they're too scared they're going to find out their marketing doesn't work (which is a good thing to know, even if it's scary).
Bottom line: successful businesses are successful because and only because they have their marketing down pat.
Fact.
by: Jonathan McCulloch
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