A Crash Course in Marketing

We’ve recently run across a nice marketing refresher article written by Nate Moller of Moller Marketing. Nate highlights in his blog post a book he recently read titled, “A Crash Course in Marketing” by David H. Bangs and Andi Anxman. Thanks for the informative read Nate.

• Perception: how your products are perceived by you target market may be more important than any other single factor in marketing. Finding out what your market really thinks about your product is crucial; what you think doesnt really matter if your target audience doesnt like it.
• Positioning: how can you position your product or service in the minds of the consumers you are trying to reach? How does what you offer differ from your competitors? Do you even know who your real competitors are?
• Potential: a sure way to lose money is to plunge ahead and market a product without making sure theres demand in the market. Dont waist effort on duds. As a small business owner, you dont have the luxury or financial means to toss a product out there hoping people will all of a sudden want it.
• Professional help: theres a really good reason why smart business owners invest in expert advice from people that have been there and done that. Think of professional help as an investment in future profits.
• Planning: planning beats hoping and wishing for business success. You need two plans - a business plan and a marketing plan. The business plan helps identify broad opportunities. The marketing plan is the plan of attack, putting the goals in motion.
• Product Knowledge: If you dont know your product (or service), how do you plan to sell it? I really liked this point because far too many times, clients want to sell whats hot at that moment. So does everyone else! In order to avoid multiple learning curves, do something you have some knowledge about. Good presentations move product quickly. If you cant tell a consumer why your product is good from them, why would they ever buy from you?
• Prioritizing: Marketing can be so overwhelming and complex. Setting priorities is so crucial to the success of your start-up business. You have to set priorities to assure progress toward a certain goal or objective. Some things have to be done before others: market (keyword) research, finding suppliers, setting up the business entity - things like this definitely come before the actual site will be live for all to see. Our main job as business owners is to make sure the important jobs are done first. For this reason, we set goals with timelines on when we want things done.

Read the full article, A Crash Course in Marketing, here.