Poor Marketing: #3 Reason for Small Business Failure

October 21st, 2007 | Posted by Paul Miser in Marketing,Paul Miser

The Problem:

Entrepreneur.com has named Poor Marketing as the #3 Reason for Small Business Failure; right behind lack of funding and bad management. 

The Solution:

Marketing is defined by Theodore Levitt, the marketing guru, as the ability to create, keep and enhance a customer.  I have defined three strategies to get your company closer to creating, keeping, and enhancing your customer.  They are:

1. Know your Customer – I know you’ve heard this more than you would like, but it’s true, especially for the small business.  Segmenting and Demographics are for the Larger Corporations with a large marketing budget, but for you it’s actually knowing your customer.  Know who they are, what they do, where they buy, why they buy, what else do they enjoy, what are their day-to-day activities, etc.  This information is easy to get…just ask.  Build a relationship that is so strong that you can ask anything from your customers and you will get this valuable information needed to grow your business and beat failure.
2. Create a Plan and Execute Daily – Understanding your customer is only the beginning, now we need to put that information to work.  By fully understanding everything about your customer, you will know where they research your product, how they buy your product, what are the key factors for the purchase decision, etc.  With this information, you can strategically create a structured step-by-step marketing plan that will reach your customer at key focal points during the purchase decision.  You can find marketing plan templates online if you search for "Marketing Plan Template" on Google or Yahoo!.  With the plan ready, you need to Execute the Plan daily.  I’ve seen too many small business owners make a marketing plan and then letting it collect dust and then complain about their marketing.  YOUR PLAN WON’T WORK IF YOU DON’T USE IT!  It’s that simple.
3. Evaluate as if Your Business Success Depends on it - One of the main components of successful companies is the evaluation of their marketing efforts.  The business environment changes constantly and if we don’t change with it we will fail.  We have to learn from all of our marketing strategies in order to adapt and grow.  To have an effective evaluation strategy, you need to create a list of goals and metrics (ROI, % of new customer inquires, etc) that you can compare and contrast at the end of your marketing campaign to identify successes and failures and what needs to be changed for the next campaign.

Well, this might sound like a lot of work, that will just take away from your core focus of you business.  But, if you don’t get it taken care of, there will be no business to focus on. 

Each week, I will be posting tips, tricks and strategies that I have found to be highly successful over the past 10 years for small businesses much like your own.  Please feel free to create a discussion based on my postings and don’t ever hesitate to contact me with any questions or ideas you may have about your marketing.

Paul Miser is the President of Miser Advertising and Marketing, a small business marketing company in Carlsbad, CA.  He can be contacted by emailing pmiser@miserad.com