Marketing – Know Your Place!

One of the big mistakes that so many people make in business, large or small (or even ‘micro’), is understanding the value of ‘Positioning’. It’s a simple marketing strategy that every business owner can and should adopt. It costs very little, or nothing really, as it’s about making some simple decisions.

Let me explain…

Positioning is the fancy term we apply to the concept of deciding how you want other people to think about your business. It’s part of the fabric of your branding but it’s even more than this. It will help you to target the right audience, with the right message.

When we engage with a company, their brand and their products or services, we always adopt a perception of what type of business they are and how we choose to think about them. Positioning factors would include things like; being seen as budget, good value, or even exclusive and ‘high-end’.

Other aspects might be how a business like to relate to its customers; is it friendly and relaxed, or more ‘professional’ and traditional in the way it presents itself?

The reason this is important is because it defines the type of customer that it attracts. For example; if I run a therapy service, am I aiming for a particular type of customer? This could be on the basis of age, gender, needs, interests, locality, etc.

These features really do make up your business personality. And yes, every business has some form of personality and your aim is to make yours as attractive as possible.

However, the real key in position is to be clear about the specific target audience you want to attract. It could be that you want to specialise in certain areas, for certain needs or with certain types of services. This is the very opposite of trying to present yourself as a generalist. Very few customers are every attracted to a business because they are ‘generalist’, whereas we much prefer to spend money with people who we believe match our needs specifically.

So here are a few questions to help you find your best Positioning:

1.    How do we want people to perceive our value of service; top-end, budget, exclusive?
2.    What type of customers are we looking for; by age, gender, need and other demographic?
3.    Are we reflecting our best assets as part of our Positioning; and are we actively promoting these?
4.    How can we improve and refine our Positioning to be more specific in our marketing?

And finally…

How will we know when we’ve got our Positioning right; will we test it and if so how?

With these questions as a simple place to start I’d recommend looking at other businesses that are in your space, perhaps your competition, and look to see if they have any clear Positioning. How do you, and other, describe their business personality and is it working for them?

By Nial Adams
of Make Marketing Work and PUSH Academy

Time To Take A Fresh Look At Marketing?

So the start of a new year is always a good time to adopt some fresh thinking and even better when you turn that into action.

I’m going to take a wild guess here but I’m thinking that when you hear the word ‘marketing’ you feel the same way as a lot of people I meet and talk to. “I really don’t get it”, or “I don’t know where to start” tend to be the most common reaction.

So if either of the statements above sums up how you feel as well, then relax, you’re not alone.

What I’d like to do is give you a really simple recommendation of the best place to get started. And it makes no difference if you’re completely new to marketing or you’ve been in business for years.

The very first thing I encourage you to do is stop focusing on marketing how-to ideas. And what I mean with this is don’t become preoccupied with yet another great idea for marketing activity. Before you start with the activity you really want to learn what makes marketing work in the first place. This is even more important if you’re currently spending money on adverts and promotions.

What you really want to be learning is how do you approach marketing in the first place. There are various elements, all of which are important, and here’s my list:

• What are you actually selling; not the product or service you offer, but the perceived benefits and what are these?

• What makes people want to buy what you have to offer? What emotions drive this action?

• Who are the types of people that typically buy what you have to offer and how do you know this?

• What makes your biggest competitors good at what they do – what makes them different to you?

• Why should people buy from you – what makes you and your business really different?

These five questions are all fundamental to deciding how to think and feel about your marketing. You need to get a clear sense of what each one means before you can start to think about any sort of marketing plan or campaign.

Above all, the really important thing here is to be totally honest with yourself. You’ve every reason to be so. If you find yourself stuck on any of these questions then perhaps you need to take a step back and start asking more questions; what do you know about your business and how well do you understand it?

So if marketing all seems a bit of a confusing subject, or something you still struggle to get to grips with, then use these five questions and gain a bigger sense of awareness and confidence before you dive it.

This is a great exercise for every business to go through once a year and the best time to do that is always now!

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By Nial Adams
of Make Marketing Work

Why Do So Many People Struggle With Marketing?

Let’s face facts; so many business owners and managers, and the self-employed, really struggle with marketing. And that’s to be expected. The good news is that it doesn’t need to be like this

There are three simple reasons why I believe this happens.

1) So many businesses, a much larger proportion than you might expect, actually don’t do any proactive marketing at all. They may benefit from a form of reflective marketing, where they have a foothold or reputation in the market but they don’t really control or influence it.

This is a bad thing in many ways, because they can’t improve it or enlarge it, but even more dangerous is that they can’t recover it should it start to decline. I’ve seen this happen a lot of the past few years. Especially as there has been a declining market in many sectors.

2) The second reason is that many businesses spend money on marketing ideas and actions without really knowing why or doing this as part of a plan. In truth, a large proportion of money in marketing is spent on ideas that are sold to business owners. They weren’t part of a thought-out process.

This is also a big problem, as it seems to suggest that marketing is just pot luck; keep buying ideas until one or two of them become successful. Yes, it’s true that marketing is a lot about trial and error but you still need to have a process to follow in doing this efficiently.

3) And the last reason is very specific. This is because the focus of the marketing is completely on the wrong thing. All too often business people focus on product and price, mistakenly believing that this is where they need to concentrate. It’s not.

I believe that marketing is an inside-out job. Before you can start promoting your products or services you need to focus marketing who you are and what you’re all about. People buy from people, no matter how big the company is. They want, above all, to feel a sense of trust, confidence and comfort. Then they are able to consider what value you have to offer.

This last of the three points is the one that will really help you to re-calibrate your whole approach to marketing and the way you design your business. So I encourage you learn more about this.

You can read my blog on this – “Are you focusing on completely the wrong thing in your marketing?”, where I explain one of the most powerful business concepts I’ve learned over the past two decades.

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By Nial Adams
of Make Marketing Work

Give Enough Time To Your Marketing and Reap The Profits

If there’s one thing I do know about getting your marketing right it’s this: you’ve got to be prepared to give some time to it.

It’s not so much that people are bad at marketing, it’s more a case that they simply don’t do it. And I understand that. For most people it’s simply because they don’t know what to do, where to start or what the priorities are.

With the Winter very much on its way there may be a good reason to focus your efforts and concentrate on your marketing over the next few months.

That may mean a lot of time at your laptop but trust me it will pay off in the end.

So where should you start, well here are my Top Five actions that you can get on with straight away:

1. Stop and take a good look at all the things you have that you’d list as being part of your marketing. That will probably be things like your website, brochures, letter, business cards or packaging. You need to check that these are all consistent. Make sure that your branding and images complete a whole picture, rather than a jumbled and confusing collection of ideas. And check out The Brand Kitchen from Sophie for lots of sounds advice on this.

2. Think about your customers. Find out what they really look like and who they are. Try to identify the profile of your average customer, or at least put them in groups. Are they what you expect or are they completely different? Perhaps your best customer profiles are not what you thought your business would all be about.

3. Think about your product or service. When was the last time you actually did an audit on what makes this different and interesting. Perhaps you’ve changed something recently, or added new features to these, or the way you do business. Does your marketing reflect this? Are you including all the main points that your customers would be interested in?

4.  Think about the way you actually approach your marketing. Do you have a plan, are you confident that you know what you should be doing first? If not then start reading. There is a wealth of great ideas and advice out there. Seek it out and start taking your learning seriously. Learning new skills and ideas is one of the most rewarding things about running your own business.

5. Decide what you want. This may seem strange but ask yourself this question, and be honest with the answer. Do you want to get more involved with your marketing? Do you want to put it at the heart of your business? Perhaps you feel you want help or support. You might even want to engage someone to work with or for you on this. Just be careful though, marketing isn’t something you should abdicate your responsibilities on.

These five points cover most of the main subjects that makes marketing work. Each one is a large subject but you can still make a start with them. I’m not suggesting that you should try to do all at once. In fact, you should probably only concentrate on one or two at a time.

Once you’ve scanned this list, go back and look over it again. Decide how you feel about each area and start with the one that makes the most sense to you.

And above all give yourself some time. Investing time in your marketing is about investing time in your business and the time you put in will be rewarded. Marketing, just like business in general, isn’t something that comes together overnight. It can take months or even years before you really feel comfortable with it.

So get started now. Begin by opening your diary or calendar and prove to yourself that you’re serious about your business.

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By Nial Adams
of Make Marketing Work