The Challenge for Business Owners

This article focuses on helping you to master the concept of Marketing your business and provide you with marketing ideas and tools.

It is a simple fact that how well you Market your business, determines the level of wealth that you will create through your business. If Marketing is one of the only wealth creating functions in a business, why is it that so few businesses ever really master it, and as a result deny themselves of the profits that are rightfully theirs?

The Challenge for Business Owners

That fact is that whilst having only two jobs as a business owner sounds good in theory, it is not so simple in practice. First of all, as a business owner, you probably have many more than two jobs to start with. In fact, as the Chief, Cook and bottle washer you probably struggle to find time to put your Marketing Manager and Innovation Engineer hats on. Secondly, ‘doing' good marketing is not as easy as it seems. In fact, what in the hell is Marketing anyway? Isn't it just about putting an ad here and whipping up a brochure there? In fact Marketing is really just a fluffy waste of time…. It's sales that bring the dollars in right…..Wrong!

Your Beliefs about Marketing shape your profits

In fact, the biggest thing that may be holding your business back is the false beliefs and confusion about Marketing. The only thing that is stopping you from tripling your profits is the stories that you are telling yourself about why marketing doesn't work.

Demystifying Marketing

There are many definitions of marketing around. Here is my definition.

Marketing is an all encompassing philosophy that places the customer at the centre of business. Marketing is about generating an abundance of profitability by meeting your customers needs and wants innovatively and better than your competitors. Marketing is about having a strategy that takes you from where you are today to where you want to be in the future, by using an integrated and synergistic arsenal of tools such as product, price, promotion, distribution. Marketing is about having a formalised system that is proactive and works on the key areas that lead to geometric business growth.

You can break the first and most fundamental aspects of Marketing down into one simple question.

What business are you in?

The answer to this question ultimately shapes how you market, advertise, and communicate with your customers. It determines the words that you use in a sales letter, the headlines you run in a press ad, how you speak to your clients on the phone, what you put on your website, and all of your stationary. So you can imagine, that if your answer to this question is way off, then so to will be your marketing.

What happens if your Marketing is off you may ask? It simply fails to communicate effectively to the people you want to speak to. What does this mean? Potential customers will pick up the phone and call your opposition instead of you, or not click enquire now on your website, or not purchase from you in a retail front, or not go ahead with your quotation.

The fact is that even if your Marketing is close but not quite right, then you will get close to getting the customer, but you wont get the customer. You see in Marketing you either hit, or you miss. There is no in between. You either get the sale or you don't. So unless you are hitting the mark exactly, then even if you have pretty good marketing your business will fall victim to someone who has outstanding marketing.

So what business are you really in? We now understand that the degree to which you answer this question will ultimately determine your success and profitability as a business.

The founding father of Marketing Theodore Levit once said that “people don't buy ? in drills. They buy ? inch holes”. So rather than thinking in terms of what you are selling, think in terms of what people are buying. How does that make them feel? What are the emotions that your product or service engenders?

So if you were previously in the photography business, perhaps now you are in the business of providing memories. If you were selling suits then perhaps you are now helping business people to succeed through image. This may sound like semantics, but the implications for a small change like this are remarkable.

When you start talking your customers language, coming from their point of view, touching their hot buttons and thinking about what it is that you are really doing for them, then your business changes. With this change you create a whole new future landscape for your profits and you pave the way towards living the lifestyle that you have always wanted. When this occurs you will know that you have succeeded in your vocation.