How do you get started with a marketing plan for a small business?

First, know your audience or “target market” and understand their needs.Second, position yourself to meet those needs with a solution-oriented marketing plan.Decide on how you’ll connect to customers and begin developing your brand.

 What is the best way to learn your audience or “target market”?

You must conduct market research: both primary and secondary research.Primary research is research you do yourself.  It’s a good way to learn more about your specific market. Secondary research is research such as statistics and information from other sources like libraries, Chambers of Commerce, local and federal government publications, etc.  This is best for getting a general overall view of the market or industry you’ll be operating within.

What is the best way to conduct market research?

 You can conduct primary research by reaching out to current, former, or even potential customers and asking them pertinent questions about their needs via surveys, focus groups, or in-person interviews.  If your budget allows, you might consider hiring a market research firm who might conduct telephone polls and focus groups. Secondary research (the least expensive of the two) can be conducted by visiting libraries, internet searches on sites of the U.S. Census, Department of Commerce, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Small Business Administration, Chambers of Commerce, and local governments.

Once a business owner knows their target market, and how to meet their needs, what should be the next step in the development of the marketing plan?

 Defining your brand and tailoring your products and services to your target audience are the next steps. This includes developing your brand’s vision, mission, and company message in ways that are meaningful to your core audience, and this includes branding your company’s insignia on logos and creating websites. Armed with what you learned from your market research, tailor your product and service offerings catalog to meet the stated needs of your target market.

With a defined brand, targeted market, and products or services ready to sell, how do I put my marketing plan into action steps?

 Start by clearly stating your goals (e.g. attracting new customers, retaining old customers, encouraging repeat business).  Prioritize long and short-term goals (set time limits and stick to them). When describing how you plan to achieve your goals.  Be specific; break it down by activity (branding, promotion and sales strategy, email marketing, affiliate marketing, networking, etc.).  Create monthly and weekly sales goals and activities to execute your strategic marketing plan and achieve your revenue goals.

What is the best way to execute my action plan?

Start by reviewing your priorities and the timelines you’ve set, and address each priority in order of importance.

 How can I implement a small business marketing plan on a limited budget?

 Maximize your dollars spent and look for creative ways to implement marketing steps that don’t cost money (e.g. social media, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), blogging, podcasting, video blogging).When hiring someone for marketing help, use your hourly rate and time saved as the litmus test and price threshold for what you’re willing to pay.  For example, if you charge $100/Hour as a Consultant and you estimate it will take about 10 hours for you to review your customer records, could you find someone to effectively do the work for you for $1000? If so, then it’s definitely worth it to use them, since it will free up your time and you can continue running your business and servicing your customers.

 If my number #1 priority is getting new customers, how can I do that?

To attract new customers, you could offer an incentive or free giveaway for them to sign-up for your newsletter (e.g. 10% off first purchase, special report, or free sample.) Then use the newsletter to keep in touch by providing helpful information and informing them on new products and services. Use a blog and/podcast series with topics of interest to your core audience. You could also begin an affiliate marketing program with a complimentary business that refers business in exchange for a commission of sales.

 What are some other ways that I can creatively market to my business?

Contact the media to pitch stories about your business or your customers who have been successful using your product or service; Offer to speak for free at local speaking events (e.g. Rotary Clubs, Chambers of Commerce, Women’s groups etc.); Start a community for your core customers on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter.

What are some of the big mistakes entrepreneurs make in small business marketing?

 Be sure to track marketing efforts.  Make note of where customers learned about you and how they found you. Conduct ongoing primary market research by asking for customer feedback; Use surveys as another marketing tool in your arsenal (e.g. The MiniMarketing Survey).Be sure tooffer customers an incentive to complete surveys (e.g. Free item/service).Use feedback to help shape future marketing efforts.

Door-to-door marketing is a canvassing technique that is generally used for sales, marketing, advertising, or campaigning, in which the person or persons walk from the door of one house to the door of another, trying to sell or advertise a product or service to the general public or gather information. People who use this sales approach are often called traveling salesmen, or the archaic name drummer, to “drum up” business. This technique is also sometimes called direct sales. A variant of this involves cold calling first, when another sales representative attempts to gain agreement that a salesperson should visit.

With the realization of telephone “Do Not Call” lists it is becoming increasingly more difficult to connect with consumers and business people. An emerging trend is the deployment of very professional, highly skilled door-to-door canvassers to drive product sales and brand awareness.

Coordinating, training and motivating these teams to produce results are at the very core of Fulcrum’s proven capabilities. Fulcrum has the knowledge and experience required to implement these programs, such as best days and times to canvass, who will sell the most product; male, female, young or mature and what geographics and demographics respond best to door-to-door marketing. Put Fulcrum’s experience to work for you and avoid the costly mistakes of trying to manage these programs in-house.

Hire and Train Door-to-Door Marketing Team

If you’re in charge of hiring people, that typically means that you’ve found success in Door To Door Marketing yourself. You know what it takes to be great, but now you’re stuck with an entirely new problem. How do you find others who will be just as good (if not better) and will stick around and grow into important influencers invested in the long term growth of the company? A great D2D sales company is a great recruiting company. So what does that greatness look like?

First off, you need to realize that you’re not going to hire a superstar every time. If you think you have found one, be careful. It’s not hard for someone to seem golden during one interview and you don’t want to be fooled.

Even if you think the candidate does have a lot of great experience working in the field for other companies, you have to realize that success doesn’t always translate. What worked for them at previous companies probably won’t work as well for you. In fact, their success will probably make them stubborn; after all, what reason do they have to follow your approach when they’ve figured out their own?

It’s also possible that the rep’s previous company might have had much better-developed training and selling systems than you do, and that system was the key reason they killed it. If you’re not developing a competitive system, what does that communicate about your company? The more dialed-in you are about a rep’s success, the more likely you are to attract and keep strong performers.