How to create a marketing plan for your small business - build a brand, target customers and set prices that will maximise sales.
The internet has transformed business marketing. No matter what you do, the internet is likely to be at the heart of your marketing strategy.
Good advertising puts the right marketing message in front of the right people at the right time, raising awareness of your business.
Customer care is at the heart of all successful companies. It can help you develop customer loyalty and improve relationships with your customers.
Sales bring in the money that enables your business to survive and grow. Your sales strategy will be driven by your sales objectives.
Market research exists to guide your business decisions by giving you insight into your market, competitors, products, marketing and your customers.
Exhibitions and events are valuable for businesses because they allow face-to-face communication and offer opportunities for networking.
New sales leads are the lifeblood of many businesses. To successfully generate them, you'll need to actively prospect for marketing leads - then quickly identify and follow up the hottest prospects.
Simple lead generation usually starts with desk research. You might find sales leads in directories (on- and offline), or by buying a targeted mailing list.
Networking and encouraging your customers to provide word-of-mouth referrals can be more powerful ways of generating sales leads, however. They don't just provide you with the names of potential leads, but also with useful introductions.
Alternatively, you can rely on repeat custom and responses to advertisements and other promotional activities. Enquiries can be seen as "hot" or at least "warm" leads, as these potential customers have already expressed an interest in what you offer. Be careful not to depend too much on this kind of passive lead generation, though, as it may blunt your ability to actively source prospects when you need to.
You may be tempted to focus your efforts on getting as many sales leads as possible. But the key to success is getting qualified leads - people you have a good chance of selling to. Remember, that the overall aim is to make sales, not just leads.
The faster you can discard unpromising leads, the less time and money you waste on them and the more you can focus on better prospects. You should try to qualify leads before you start selling to them:
Unlike selling, when you aim to overcome objections, you should accept that not every lead will meet your criteria. Focusing on a small number of qualified leads can be far more effective than trying to sell to too many prospects.
For many businesses, the most important factor in successful sales lead generation is to commit resources to it. You can then decide whether it's more effective for lead generation to be part of a general sales role within your business, or carried out by dedicated researchers. Outsourcing to a lead generation service might also be an option.
Whoever is doing the prospecting needs to understand what they are trying to achieve and how to go about it. A typical approach is to qualify leads before requesting a meeting or following up with more information in a sales letter. There should be clear agreement on when a lead is handed to a salesperson.
Sales tools like customer relationship management software can help you track contacts and follow up on leads at the right time. Systems like these can also help you monitor lead generation numbers and sales conversion rates, so you can identify what is and isn't working.
