As a small business owner, you have lots of big decisions to make everyday and have a lot of time and money invested in your business venture.  You may not have a marketing degree or have anyone on staff with any formal marketing training, but it is still vital for you to create and implement a marketing plan and set a realistic budget for your business to ultimately achieve your goals and be successful.  There are several steps you can take to develop and implement an effective marketing strategy while staying within your limited marketing budget. 

Step 1: Define your target market and positioning statement

Who is your target customer?
Where are they located? 
What are their defining characteristics? 
What are their needs? 
How do we want to be positioned in the mind of your target customer? 

You need to answer these basic questions before you can develop or implement any of your marketing objectives and strategies. 

Step 2: Develop a SWOT Analysis

It is important to know what you do well, and what you still need to work on.  You also need to identify factors that are within your control and those that are external to your business.  A SWOT Analysis breaks down a company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. 

• Strengths are the internal attributes of the organization that are helpful in achieving objectives and can be used as a basis in determining your competitive advantage.
• Weaknesses are the internal attributes that are harmful or unfavorable to achieving objectives.
• Opportunities are external conditions that are helpful to achieving the objective.
• Threats are changes to the external environment that may damage your business’ performance. 

Once you have completed your SWOT analysis, you need to evaluate each component individually.  You should decide how you can use each strength, how you can improve upon each weakness, how to exploit every opportunity, and mitigate each threat. 

Step 3: Know your competition

After you have determined who your target market is and evaluated your SWOTs, you need to know the ins and outs of your competition. 

Where is the competition located relative to you-local vs. national vs. global competitive landscape?
How do their products/services compare to yours?
What is their competitive advantage and how does it compare to yours?
How does their product/service offering compare to yours?
Do they utilize the web?

Answering these types of questions will help you learn what your competition does right and adopt some of these practices, while also learning what your competitive advantages are and learning how to leverage these. 

Step 4: Define your marketing objectives

You need to determine what you want to accomplish from your marketing plan and set goals and objectives to measure your success.  Marketing objectives establish the goals and standards of marketing efforts pertaining to products, sales, and marketing that must be achieved in order to fulfill the overall objectives of the company.  These objectives will help measure marketing success and gain insight into underlying conditions facing the company that cannot be seen with financial measures. 

What are your target market objectives?

You need to determine how many new customers you expect to gain with respect to your marketing efforts.  This could be defined by an increase of 100 new customers this year, or increase new customers by 25% over last year. 

What are your objectives for existing customers?

Everyone always says it’s cheaper to keep an existing customer than gaining a new one.  It is important to focus your marketing efforts towards your existing customers.  Upsell. Upsell. Upsell.  Your objectives could be defined by an increase in existing customer spending by 20%, or increase existing customer spending by $10,000 this year. 

What are your promotion objectives?

Examples of promotional objectives could be to build brand awareness in a certain area or among a specific target market, increase website traffic, increase traffic to your store, to differentiate your product or service, etc.  Promotion is just one aspect of the Marketing Mix, which is also known as the 4 P’s (Product, Price, Promotion, and Place).  Make sure that your promotional objectives are clearly stated and measureable.  To achieve these promotion objectives, keep in mind that there are four main ways to promote your business: advertising, publicity, sales promotion, and personal selling.   

What are your research and development objectives?

Do you plan on developing new products or services in the future?  It is important that you continue to conduct market research to make sure that you are coming up with the products and services that meet the needs of tomorrow’s customers.  Consumer preferences are constantly changing so it is imperative that you stay on top of consumer trends and continue to create better products, and improve your overall operational processes.
 
Step 5: Implement your marketing strategies

In order to achieve your marketing objectives, you need to determine the programs and methods that will be the most effective while still staying within your budget.  Some inexpensive suggestions include:

• Direct Mail
• E-newsletters
• Contests
• Sponsorships
• Trade Shows
• Development or Redesign of your Website
• Publicity
• Networking
• Distribution of Marketing Materials (Brochures, Business Cards, Flyers)
• Product Demos
• Search Engine Optimization
• E-promotion
• Develop Programs to retain existing customers (preferred customer programs, referral programs, etc.)

Be creative.  Every business is different so test out different methods and figure out what works best for you.  If your business is really limited on budget, but are willing to put in the time, energy, and imagination, you can also use a more unconventional approach toward promotion called guerrilla marketing.  Guerilla marketing involves targeting customers in an unexpected way that is memorable, generates buzz, and is in turn spread virally.  Guerrilla marketing has also been referred to as buzz marketing and viral marketing.  Check out this blog for a list of 50 guerrilla marketing tactics you can try. 

Step 6: Set your marketing budget

Setting your marketing budget can be difficult, especially as a small business with a limited amount of money available to allocate toward marketing in the first place.  One of the biggest mistakes a small business can make is to cut back on the marketing budget first when money is tight, or neglect to establish a budget and play it by ear.  How do you expect to grow your business if your target market doesn’t know you exist?  Many businesses will set their marketing budget as a percentage of net sales, typically ranging from 1 percent up to about 10 percent of net sales.  Here are a few factors to consider when determining your budget:

• Are you a new competitor in the marketplace?  If so, you will have to spend more to establish market share.  Likewise, if you have an established market share, you may need to spend more to maintain your share. 
• If you are competing in a fast-growing market, you will need to spend more on marketing.
• Are you competing on price?  Both very high-priced and low-priced products and services require higher marketing expenditures to convince your target market that your product is a good value.
• If product quality is one of your main selling points, you will need to spend more to convince customers that your product is unique.

Step 7: Measure your success

In order to track the progress of your marketing plan, you need to establish a set of controls to measure success.  Some measureable controls include customer surveys, monitoring website traffic, performance of promotional activities, budget analysis, sales analysis, etc.  Setting controls will allow you to monitor your proposed plans as they proceed and make adjustments as needed to get back on track.

We’re doing something a little different today - if you go to our site right now you can register for a chance to win a free web site - from design to HTML files!

Yes, a free site for one lucky New York state resident - a new design for a new company, a new site for an existing company or a redesign of your current website!

Of course it’s a contest and all contests have to have some rules, so here they are:

OFFICIAL RULES:

• No purchase necessary.
• Contest begins 11/01/08 and ends 02/28/09.
• To be eligible, must be a resident of New York State and website must be for legitimate business purposes only. All others need not apply.
• Limit one entry per person. Multiple submissions will nullify entry.
• Contest registration available through online submission forms only.
• Winner will be selected at random and notified on Monday, March 2, 2009 by e-mail.
• Odds of winning will depend on the number of contest entrants.
• Website valued at $3000 which includes forms, graphics, text, and design. Website does not include photography, logo design, domain registration or hosting.
• We reserve the right to withdraw prize if winner does not intend to use site for legitimate business purposes, or fails to meet eligibility requirements.

Want to know where to register!

Visit our site and use the form to register: daly-communications.com/website_giveaway
Good luck!

Contest is sponsored by Daly Communications Group, 8195 Cazenovia Rd., Manlius, NY 13104.

Can people move around your site and get the information they need? Or do they get lost and leave as quickly as they arrived?

Everyone knows they need a navigation bar on their web site. They know it forms a structure that allows visitors to move around the site and find that important piece of information they’ve been looking for. But what many people don’t know is that a lot of visitors may be getting lost on their site. The links are not clearly identified, are somewhat hidden, or simply don’t go where the visitor wants to go!

So how do you go about keeping visitors on your site? How can you be assured they are finding the information they need? When do you start to think about your site’s navigation - which comes first - design or the site’s navigation structure?

A common misconception about the website design process is that the starting point for any web project is how the site will look. What colors are going to be used, what typography will be used, what photos and illustrations will be used etc. But any experienced designer will tell you — it’s not.

The real starting point in the overall design process is outlining how visitors are going to move through your website.

The way information is presented, especially in larger sites, must be carefully planned. Anyone coming to your site from a link found in a search engine, a link a friend sent in an email, or a link found in a trade directory must understand where they land on your site and how they can move easily from that point.

We designers who approach design projects from the perspective of the visitor will work with you to help determine your primary navigation’s links and categories. From there, you can determine your secondary navigation’s links and subcategories. Keep your navigation simple and make all information accessible within one or two clicks. This helps ensure that visitors find information quickly without getting frustrated and deciding to search elsewhere for information or products.

Does all web navigation have to look the same?

Another misconception is that all navigation links must be positioned on the left hand side of the web page and no where else.

The real rule is that all navigation must be obvious - all primary navigation must be easy to locate. That doesn’t mean it must be on the left hand side and it must be in 12 point Arial, it must be underlined, and it must be blue.

Your site navigation must be highly visible and accessible. It should not be hidden in confusing graphics or appear in different places on different pages. You want visitors to find information quickly and clicking through as many pages as possible because they are finding the information they need – not lost and looking for a way out!

Linking within your content is also highly recommended and should be utilized not only for visitors but for search engine web crawlers as well. Nevertheless, you need to use these links with care and help visitors find answers to the questions they came to your site asking. Don’t randomly link from the body of your text; use discipline in your selections so you are sure users will know where they are, how they got there, and how to get back to where they were.

Can your site navigation benefit from a web designer’s point of view?

One final misconception is that only sales managers or marketing personnel are able to outline your website’s navigation because they know the product/service and how to best present the information.

From the perspective of your overall business, this is true. Your sales and marketing teams are saturated in your company philosophy, products/services; they live and breath it day in and day out. However, this may work against them when it comes to designing your site’s navigation. They may have a tendency to organize information the way they understand it, not the way customers need to learn it.

An experienced designer can help you understand how visitors will move through your site by offering a “fresh” perspective. From the outside looking in, designers can look at all the information you need to present. They can work with you to be sure that the information people are looking for on your site is well represented and presented in your website’s navigational structure.

Does all this time spent on navigation pay off?

In closing, creating your website’s navigation is the most important first step in the overall design of your site. The process of establishing primary and secondary categories and subcategories can be difficult and time consuming, it can be directly related to the amount of time visitors spend on your site. Once the navigation is set up, then its time to play…I mean work… with your designer on color, typography and don’t forget the amazing pictures that will truly let visitors know who you are!

You already know the answer – of course not. The web is full of small business sites and it’s actually a great way to level the playing field with larger competitors. Large companies can afford to spend thousands of dollars on gaining web presence, but they are unable to change the web’s conventions or the behavior of human beings. You have the same space and the same tools at your disposal to get your business online and capitalize on those millions of eyes out there looking for something… anything at all. If your business has something to sell – you can find customers on the web. That’s it. That’s the whole secret.

With knowledge, planning, and attention, you can develop a site that will perform marketing, sales, informative, documentary, and even entertainment functions. Presumably, your small business is developed from an idea or a passion, or maybe even just some practical experience. Whatever product or service you sell, there is a market for it.

In the future - do you think people will look for services/products in the yellow pages? By driving to the mall and shopping? Well, that’s a simple question; the statistics already prove the efficiency and ubiquity of the increase in web commerce.

So you’re worried about the cost or necessary expertise of setting up a site? Or you already have a site that doesn’t bring you any business? Well the bad news is that it’s not free or super easy - but the good news is that it’s not still 1999. You don’t need cadres of programmers or slick-suited advertising sharks to be able to compete on the web like you did back then. Hosting, video, blogging – all these things can be set up quickly and inexpensively by someone who knows what they are doing. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is nothing more than a few simple concepts, some practical common sense, and care and attention paid to your business. The pace of technology development on the web has slowed a bit – and the famous stories of people getting rich on the web are not prevalent or important (or long-term). They don’t represent the deeper, more democratic nature of the web. There’s no need to give up and think that “it’s all been done before.” Did people stop increasing their business through print media after a few years? No! – it’s a few hundred years later and printing is still going strong.

Look in your hometown for the little guys – they know what it’s like to do more for less and that’s the goal of your site right? I’m not saying to hire “Fred in the shed” – you know, the badly dressed, sulky techie that “does web sites”? There are many small web marketing and web development businesses that know their customers are in the small business market; they are comfortable in it and they rely on service and repeat customers in their cities/towns. The small professional web company isn’t trying to make a killing with each site – they are more interested in developing your business, because if your business doesn’t grow, neither does theirs. Look at sites they’ve done and talk to some of their customers. If you get attitude about a “small” job, you’re talking to the wrong person.

Small business web professionals are out there. Find them.