Simple SMART Marketing for Small Business – Free Training Part 2

This is Part 2 of my free training on how you, as a small business owner, can prepare your own focused, targeted Marketing Plan by following 7 simple steps.

It is based on my S.M.A.R.T. Marketing system which I designed using 30 plus years’ of experience helping small businesses increase sales.

Last week I went through the first three steps which were:

1. Know your real product;
2. Know your real customer; and
3. Meeting your customer’s requirements.

This week I will take you through steps 4 to 7, which are:

4. Your Selling Price as a marketing factor;

5. Choosing the most appropriate marketing activities;

6. Scheduling your campaign plan; and

7. Finalising, then implementing and monitoring and evaluating.

If you missed part 1, you can read and follow the video lesson here.

Let’s not waste any time and get into it straight away.

 

 

Step 4: Using your Selling Price as a marketing factor.

Usually, we may think that setting your selling price is something left to our accountants.

You may know how much it costs to make or buy your product, so your accountant knowing what you want to make as your markup will advise on the recommended selling price.

While this is arithmetically the right thing to do – you do not want to set a selling price too low that would lose you money – your selling price is also a key factor in your marketing because your selling price itself is a marketing message.

If you were a high-end dress designer, despite the fact that making a dress may only cost you a hundred dollars and your accountant may be satisfied at a 100% markup to $200, this may not “look” aligned to your marketing messages and brand.

Will your target customers look down their noses at a $200 dress? Will they in fact, because of your brand and messaging, expect a $1,000 dress?

For marketing purposes, you can set your selling price based on:

• branding and messaging;
• perceptions of quality;
• your skill;
• your experience, and so on.

Get your accountant to do some numbers so that you have the facts –

• What are your costs of production or purchase?
• What is your break-even price?
• What is your target goal price?

Then, think about the factors above and how they fit in with the characteristics of your target market and make your decision on your selling price as a marketing factor.

You can download our free Pricing Strategy Worksheet to help you make this decision.

Step 5: Choose the most appropriate marketing activities.

You need to consider the range of marketing activities open to you, and then you need to choose the most appropriate for reaching out to your customers.

When small business owners think of marketing activity, invariably they think of advertising.

However, that’s only one type of marketing activity.

You can choose between a wide range that includes broadcast activities like letter-drops or email to target market lists.

You can choose varieties of screening marketing activities like holding seminars or face to face coffee meetings.

You can decide on targeting activities like meeting customers and taking them through your list of benefits, or holding a sale or offering discount vouchers.

Here’s some additional free reading providing a large list of potential marketing activities.

Once you have identified what marketing activities are appropriate for your product, and your objective (whether to broadcast information about your business, or to screen interested prospects,  or to target warm prospects so that you can have a sales conversation with them), you then need to filter your choices to see what meets the characteristics of your target market.

A high-end dress designer would not advertise in the local newspaper but in a high-end magazine; they would not run a mass mailout campaign but instead may consider cocktail evenings by invitation only.

A high-end dress designer may hold a “once-a-year exclusive event” (read annual sale to their customers), but not general everyday discount sales.

Choose your range of marketing activities for your target market at the broadcast level, the screening level, and the targeting level.

Step 6: Schedule your campaign plan.

A list of marketing activities is only a list.

You need to schedule them into an annual campaign plan and write action plans so that you know what steps you need to take to implement your campaign.

Your campaign plan will need to consider the target market at the different levels of your sales funnel, any special occasions or launches relevant to your product, seasonality, and other calendar factors.

For example, the high-end dress designer will schedule activities around the school ball season and other party seasons.

Marketing is about consistency and ensuring your message tells a story at the right time.

Your campaign schedule may need to start at the beginning, broadcasting messages about the benefits of your product to a wide range of people, by letter-drop or advertising, then progress to screen people who have responded by holding more targeted activities like cocktail evenings, before moving into the targeting phase with highly focused activities like offering free-fittings and “at home” shopping.

Take out a diary or preferably a wall calendar and taking your chosen marketing activities, schedule them into a logical set of consistent activities through the year.

Step 7: Finalise, implement, and monitor and evaluate.

Finally, review the results of steps 1 to 6 according to the S.M.A.R.T. model.

Are they Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Result-oriented and Time-based?

Write down your marketing plan so that it is recorded properly and not kept in your head.

You can download our free SMART Marketing Plan Contents here.

Once you start implementing, it is important to monitor the activities to see what results you are getting and to review them for effectiveness.

If you are watching the results, you can adjust future activities or even change them for something else. If it doesn’t work, don’t just keep repeating the failed attempt, try something else!

Marketing is about consistency – and about watching to see what works!

I designed the SMART Marketing system after years of experimenting and combining my studies with my practical learning as I worked with small business owners.

I can assure you it works!

I use it myself and grew my consulting business from a few thousand dollars of sales at the beginning to a 7-figure a year business, and you can too if you follow the step-by-step process using your own knowledge of your business.

Try it out – follow Part 1 and Part 2 of this free training.

You can also buy my book “SMART Marketing – 7 Easy Steps To More Sales” and, if you really want to work on your marketing plan, I offer a step-by-step online workshop that you can follow in your own time and finish in 7 half-day sessions. Learn more about this online program here.

Stay in touch – I’ll see you next week at teikoh.com!

 

 

 

 

Cover image by Campaign Creators on Unsplash