June 19, 2010
By Bill Cherry
Many business owners and managers think that sales is marketing. That’s not exactly correct. Sales is part on marketing. In business classes there is a principle called the four “P”s of marketing. They are Price, Place, Promotion, and Product. All marketing activities fall into one of those categories.
Marketing means different things to different business people. If you ask ten business professionals what marketing is, you will get ten different answers. My view is that a business exists to earn money, not to improve a community or employ people. That being the case, my view is everything that happens in a business should be to help the marketing effort.
Marketing for a small business involves many things. The first thing is knowing who your target customers are. What are their demographics, psychographics, media habits and everything you can learn?
Demographics- describe a group of people such as age, race, marital status, income, education level, where they live and more.
Psychographics- describe what a group of people thinks, their beliefs, attitudes, and why and what they buy.
Having a clear knowledge of your customer’s demographics allows you to pick the right kind of advertising to use to reach them. Knowing the psychographics allows you to determine what the advertising message is and how to craft it to influence the customer.
Advertising is an important part of marketing. Which kind of advertising to use is a difficult thing to know? Should you use radio, TV, newspaper, direct mail? Which will get the best results? You have to learn about media to avoid wasting thousands of dollars.
But there is more to marketing than advertising. Nothing happens until something is sold. As a business owner or manager you need to learn about sales. If you have no sales skills, get some good CDs and learn about it.
What products or services do you sell? Is there a demand? What is the competition like? How does your pricing compare with the competition? How is your customer service? These are just a few issues that must be analyzed.
The most important marketing tool is to create a unique selling proposition; how to make your product, service, or different from the competition. Do you have the cheapest prices, deliver products fastest, or are your products or services the best? You must fine some way to be different from your competition or else why will people buy from you?
As a small business owner, learn all you can about marketing. It is a life time process.
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