The Eight Musts Of Marketing For Building A Million Pound Business

Most businesses during the good times at the start of the Millennium took a relatively laid back approach to their marketing virtually relying on the fact that clients would find them in order to spend their money! However, those good times are now a distant memory and the signs of any great improvement in the economic position are yet to be seen so in today’s business environment things are a lot different. In today’s cut-throat economic climate to develop a successful business you need to have strategies in place that are constantly building both your own professional profile as well as your customer base and in order to maximise your success you need to be targeting as many of the following areas as you can:

1. Word of Mouth Referrals. None of your other marketing efforts will be a powerful as this one strategy. This is the most potent form of advertising either via you, your staff or your existing clients – it is free, it uses others to convince your prospect clients how great you are and nothing beats it! Remember when you use this technique that testimonials are everything and should be used in everything.

2. A presence on the web! You need to be using your site to capture email addresses as it is a free way to do direct marketing and to keep your presence to the front of your clients mind. Send newsletters, tips of the week, or any other information as long as it is beneficial and content rich. The whole idea is to get your material forwarded to their friends as this is viral marketing in action. Get people to know, trust and like you that way they stay and refer.

3. Great off-line communication pieces, brochures, articles, reports and hand-outs. Although there are printing costs involved very often there is nothing quite like having a physical source of information in your client’s hand. Just remember that everything you put out must have a call to action.

4. Build your public relations (PR) by using as many different approaches as you can such as paper media, radio and television as well as talking and public speaking.

5. Direct mail – use this approach to target local residences, businesses and other professionals. This needs to be consistent – at least monthly – in order to build momentum and top of mind awareness.

6. Advertising. Although this can be expensive if done incorrectly the major problem I have found with the way it is approached by small businesses is that it is often done sporadically. Most businesses will use it to make themselves busier and then once they are the advert is pulled until the business quietens again and then it is re-run… this produces an on-going yo-yo effect of peaks and troughs.

7. Build referral relationships with other professionals and mutually beneficial joint ventures. Done correctly these are very cost effective and very viral and produce amazing results for all involved.

8. Social Networking. Interact both on a professional and personal level with your clients and show them both your personal and professional side

You must have multiple streams of marketing and client generation! Most businesses have four or less and this is why so many of them are struggling!

Ask yourself the following questions to see if there are any changes you could make to the way you are marketing:

What would you do if one of these stopped working?
How many times do you actively use the methods you have – are you putting a marketing strategy out once a month, twice a month – more or less often?
Do you want to be busy?
What is different about your business can you market it?
What is unique about you and what you do?

The answers you give to these questions will determine how far you stand out as the main business in your town.