Marketing in Less Than 1000 Words Probably the most condensed primer ppt

Marketing in Less Than 1000 Words Probably the most condensed primer you’ll ever read on building and marketing your business. By Rob Burns Smashwords Edition Copyright 2012 Rob Burns www.reactor15.com Smashwords Edition, License Notes Thank you for downloading this free ebook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. If you enjoyed this book, please return to Smashwords.com to discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.   ### What is marketing? It’s the art of finding buyers for products and services at a profit. Find, build or create a great product which people want. How? Identify a buying audience with an itch that you can learn to scratch better than anyone else. Simply, solve problems at a profit. The greater the problem you can solve, the greater the potential profit. Forget you are selling merely a product/service. You are actually marketing an experience. That is, the entire experience of a) learning about the product b) wanting it c) ordering it d) getting it and e) satisfaction in using it. Create the experience which your customer wants to have throughout the entire time they are in contact with you. Identify interested buyers. Aim only ever to speak to the people who are most ready, willing and available to buy your product. Focus your marketing resources ruthlessly on converting these people for maximum return on investment. Don't waste money talking to people who won't buy and who will never buy your product – even if you think they would benefit. You must communicate and dramatise what customers are going to get out of your product to convert them. Clearly picture your ideal customer. This is the person you want to find and speak to – and all of your communications should be about speaking to them. Your job in marketing is to make it easy for the customer to choose to spend their money with you. How effectively you do that is the ultimate test of marketing. Your marketing must focus on your customer’s concerns, problems, anxieties, hopes, frustrations and how your product will bring more/less of each. Identify marketing channels (ways of reaching customers) most likely to convert strangers into customers. Offer real value. Value is how much benefit your customer gets out of something, it’s not about the price they pay. A cheap thing can be of no value to your customer just as an expensive thing can be of enormous value. The price you charge is determined by the value you actually give and strive to be of more value to your customers during the buying process. You cannot offer real value until your customers understand the real value you offer. Your greatest commodities are time and money. The trick is to use both wisely and to best effect. Outsource accordingly. Do the numbers. Make sure your product pricing reflects ALL of your costs - including the costs of marketing effectively. Work out your numbers before selling a single thing. If your numbers don’t work out, then you’re running a charity, not a business. And it’s best to find this out on paper beforehand. Stand out. There are many products like yours. Create points of differentiation that make you stand out to your customers and make customers want to buy. If you have an established product - find out what customers like most about their experience of your company - this may identify a killer point of differentiation. Customers can only judge you on whatever image you present to them. Give them a second rate website, a poor sales experience, sullen customer service, rubbish marketing - they can only judge what your product is like based on that - even if your actual product is vastly superior to the quality of your marketing materials. Again, marketing is about the total experience you give a customer. Find out where your previous customers came from. Some marketing channels will always be more cost-effective and profitable than others. If you can identify the most effective marketing channel, you might focus your efforts (and budget) into making that channel an even bigger success. You have to invest something to accumulate. Continuously spend at least 6% of your revenues in better marketing. Every single business needs customers to work. Get good at getting customers, or find someone who can help you get customers, or prepare to go out of business. Every business has a rate of attrition. Your marketing goal is to beat whatever rate of attrition you have. Look after and grow your reputation. What people say about you to each other behind closed doors, or publicly (such as online reviews) matters. Look after and focus on improving your reputation, satisfying unhappy customers promptly, fixing and preventing problems re-occurring and making sure people understand the good you’ve done when you’ve done it (testimonials, case studies, white papers and reviews). Some marketing initiatives work better than others. You must test and find out which ones create you the greatest return on investment. Look closely and measure what works and what doesn’t. You are responsible for people understanding why they should buy from you. They will not know unless you make sure they know. Move your customers to a psychological point where they have no reasonable objections to doing business and spending money with you. Most people hate the idea of “selling”. So don’t. Stop being a salesman. You only become a ‘salesman’ when you don’t thoroughly believe in the power your product has to improve someone’s life. Everything else is just helping people. Either start believing in your product or stop selling it and find a product you really can believe in. Any marketing failure is a learning opportunity. Use it wisely. The history of all trade is about finding something where it’s abundant and taking it to a place where it is scarce – and wanted. This is the basis of all business success. Your job is to solve actual problems and fulfil real world needs – showing people how your product makes a difference to them. Thank you for reading. Word count: 999 ### Want more? Visit blog.reactor15.com/1000 Comments welcome: rob@reactor15.com . Marketing in Less Than 1000 Words Probably the most condensed primer you’ll ever read on building and marketing your business. By Rob Burns Smashwords Edition Copyright. actually marketing an experience. That is, the entire experience of a) learning about the product b) wanting it c) ordering it d) getting it and e) satisfaction in using it. Create the experience. accordingly. Do the numbers. Make sure your product pricing reflects ALL of your costs - including the costs of marketing effectively. Work out your numbers before selling a single thing. If