Marketing has become the heart and soul of both the small and big businesses as most businesses today are leveraging on marketing to scale up fast and those who do not are crushing down with it.
Make no mistake about it: Marketing is the secret weapon for most of the successful business we see today, do it well and you’re accelerated to the top, do it wrongly and you’re down to the bottom. Simplicita! The small businesses space has always been something like the promised land for every nation but many small and growing businesses (SGBs) unsure of how to use marketing to achieve their business goals or objectives from the onset.
Starting, running and marketing a small business can sometimes be overwhelming and stressful, meanwhile, without marketing your product or service, you will need luck to survive. Not only that, without marketing your product or service will be like you’re just spinning tires without going anywhere. But when thoughts are calm, most SGBs owners begin to contemplate the answers to many significant questions! Where should I begin and how? But an easy-to-follow process makes marketing a small business feel more manageable and fun. The above significant questions build the basis for this article that formulated five (5) simple cardinal pillars that can help SGBs build a strong and a big marketing win from the scratch.
Specialise
Any business can be special to its customers, its market with a specialised product or service. The key to successful marketing and doing it more effectively is identifying your specialty and focus on your specialty area. As a small business you can’t or it’s impossible to be omnipresent, your marketing activities, policies, and programs should be centred on your target market, target customers and products or service offered to the target market and to the target customers. Marketing requires that you built a specialty as soon as you enter into business so that a competitor cannot copy that specialty.
Therefore, you have to make a strong decision and choice to develop a narrow focus on the products or service you offer, the customers you serve, and the market you entered. This is because if your marketing involves too many attributes, it will be unclear to the target customer. Your marketing should do only one thing, otherwise, it confuses. Even as a business that creates new users, your marketing should be directed toward a specific, clear, designed specialty. Don’t open your doors and hope for the best, target your efforts to specific customers or position and products or service on specific benefits.
Differentiate
In marketing, ‘’you can’t be everything to everyone” or if you think everyone is your customer, then no one is your customer. The competitive environment today is a “noisy time” but you have to find ways to differentiate your product or service from the noisy crowd. The key to successful marketing is to make yourself special to customers or way to differentiate yourself. Focus on certain customers and be different from those you’re competing with in your marketplace.
The secret of being better is to have a sustainable differentiated advantage over time in particular marketplace. Pick out the market leaders or fast-rising firms in any market, and you’ll always find they have one differentiated edge from the rest of others. With intense, widespread competition, and ever informed customer, you don’t have to better at everything, or every market-you just have to be better in one aspect of your business and in one market. It is the key to business success.
Segment
Segmentation is the heart of your marketing effort. This in the process of profiling your target customers into smaller, manageable, sustainable and repeatable units to help you better understand their needs and wants to better serve them than any other one else. As a small business, if you try to focus on the entire market, you may spread or deploy your scarce resources too thin to the extent that you can’t make impact or you may not succeed in any of these markets.
The key to successful marketing is to select a group of customers who have similar or technically the same need as well as profitable in your area of specialisation and differentiation. The essence of this is to help you make your customers feel special by giving them personal attention and recognition they may need and to help you build programs around their identified needs, wants and preferences.
Concentrate
A long-time military precept is “concentrate your fire power”. This precept holds in marketing as well, as marketing is about the “battle of mind’’. The key to successful marketing is to focus and concentrate all your resources (time, opportunities, knowledge, energy) on specific customer, product or service, and market appropriate to your specialisation and differentiation. “If you have never said no to anyone, you do not have a marketing strategy because you have not focused your efforts’’ Don Sexton asserted.
Achieving your goals might require that you concentrate in your area of superiority; that is specific ways your product or service is superior to that of your competitors with same or similar product or service in the marketplace. The key to successful marketing is to concentrate on what your customers know you well, leverage on your differentiation, raise the buyer value, reconstruct market boundaries and industry structure to the extent that no one can easily kick you out or away.
Communicate
People respond best when they understand what you are saying and why you’re what you are saying. When communicating your specialisation and differentiated point it must be succinct, clear and accurate information verbally and in written to both internal and external customers. Internal customers who are the employees of the business must understand upfront what marketing standards will they be judged by, the goals of the marketing campaign, who is responsible for what? When people clearly understand what is expected of them, they can focus on executing the marketing campaign rapidly.
According to Gerald A. Michael and Steven Michael “regardless of your level, simplicity clears the mind. Keep in mind the rule of three; never make more than three points about an issue. The problem is that long lists are confusing and as a result, nothing is remembered.’’ As you market your product or service constantly to your customers, do it right and people will adore you, do it wrong and you create doubt, indifference or even anger. The key to successful marketing is, keep it simple, tell a great and captivating story, and inspired customers to take action. Give your customers a small taste of what your company does well (product/service benefit), but leave them hungry for more, don’t over communicate.
Conclusion
In finishing up, marketing is necessary, it gives you the power to find new markets and show people why they should do business with you. At every time, you’re always marketing your business either knowingly or unknowingly. With the help of the simple tips above, I believe you can develop a strong and a big marketing win from scratch with ease.
About author
Albert Shiebila Mali is an early-stage start-up coach and mentor, business development facilitator and practitioner of entrepreneurship with deep-seated background in accounting, sales and marketing. Believes in building and fostering entrepreneurial culture, and providing the start-ups with a much-needed push. Passionate about helping start-ups or SMEs deliver high-level performance through unravelled business development services.
Personal email:malialbertking@gmail.com
