Your Small Business Can’t Survive without Effective Marketing
Posted by: Cheryl Clausen in sales marketing coaching, tags: sales marketing coaching, small business marketingCan your business succeed?
Do you have a good business idea?
Will your business survive?
All good questions every business owner asks at some point. Ideally you should ask and answer a lot of good questions before you ever start. Chris Brogan developed a nice list of questions everyone thinking about starting a business should review and answer.
Presuming you have a good business that does good things for the people who buy your stuff.
Presuming people are willing to pay to get your stuff.
Presuming you are capable of making good on what your stuff is supposed to do.
There is one thing that will keep you from succeeding. That one thing is an inability to promote your business to the people most likely to buy your stuff.
If no one knows about your business or your stuff your business is history. You will fail before you ever get the opportunity to succeed. You are shining your lamp under a bushel basket. No one will know you exist.
You must be able to respond “yes” to these questions:
- Can you explain in simple words why someone would want to buy your stuff?
- Can you explain in simple words why your stuff isn’t just another warmed over version of the same stuff they can get elsewhere?
This can be a real challenge especially when:
- you are too close to your business
- you haven’t defined a specific group of people willing to buy what you have
Yet, it’s entirely doable. Let me show you how you can uncover your slice of the market even in a crowded competitive market. There are literally millions of blogs. There are lots of blogs about blogging.
However, in that crowded market there are bloggers who have carved out there slice by establishing blogs for bloggers about…
- how to write a better blog
- how to build a blog
- how to develop blog readers
- how to create blog membership sites
While the segmentation would be different in other industries the ability to create this type of segmentation exists in every industry.
photo credit: azrianna azmil
Entries (RSS)
September 8th, 2009 at 3:23 am
I so agree. The person who teaches somebody else how to do what others are doing will have a job forever. How to’s will always be on high demand. Of course some how to’s are more popular than others. That’s where research comes in, to find out what How To is the best to invest marketing research into.
As far as a product itself, focus groups are good for that. It detaches you a little bit from your product and allows you to see through other people’s eyes whether your product will be successful or not.
September 9th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
Let me first congratulate you on another great article!
Blogs and microblogging really are essential tools for businesses as sales marketing methods nowadays. First of all, it’s free and you can express your thoughts on why should your target audience buy your service or products in your own personal way. It’s also internationally widespread so I suggest to all those who wants their businesses introduced to use it.
As what you have stated on this article, if providers doesn’t know or hasn’t defined their target audience yet, they are lost. To market your business, what you have listed about how to set-up a blog on your article is a must.
October 22nd, 2009 at 9:44 pm
executive business coaching…
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May 5th, 2010 at 8:41 pm
i run a small business both online and offline and they serve as my primary source of income. my small business at home is a mini hyrophonics vegetable farm.~;,
July 12th, 2010 at 3:52 pm
it is easy to get Business ideas, just look for a product or service that has demand and fill it*~,