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How To Write A Marketing Plan or The 7 Non-Negotiable Laws of Small Business Marketing

By John Jantsch

When small business marketing fails, it's because the small business owner breaks non-negotiable laws of small business marketing. Let's take a look at these seven laws, remembering that their real power comes from using several of them in chorus.

The Law of Market Focus

Small business owners sometimes attempt to be all things to all people and never really establish any brand or notoriety for doing something well.

You must narrow your market focus in order to grow. Take a look at your current client mix. What most business owners find is that they have attracted several types of clients that make up most of their business. Other firms find that a certain service or product accounts for most of their profit.

Take the hint and drop out of everything else. Become known as a specialist in a niche market and you will find that as your reputation in that market grows, you will be able to charge a premium for your services.

The Law of Differentiation

Most buyers assume all businesses in a certain industry are alike, so they use the only thing they can think of to choose one business over another: price.

If you can't find a way to differentiate your firm, you'll be forced to compete on price.

Specializing in a market niche is one way to differentiate. Creative marketing can set you apart. Offering to deliver your product, packaging your product with other products, having your client's car hand washed while you meet, baking cinnamon roles in your office, or sending handwritten thank you notes are all ways to set your firm apart.

Ask your current clients why they do business with you. They may be able to tell you how you are different in ways that will make sense to other potential clients.

Finally, communicate that difference and make it a central theme in all of your advertising efforts.

The Law of Education

People don't like to be sold to. Your advertising and marketing must offer them useful information that addresses a need.

Any follow-up marketing must continue to show them how your firm is different and how it is uniquely suited to solve their problems.

Make sure your marketing materials include examples of how your customers benefit from doing business with your firm. Offer testimonials from satisfied clients or provide information that describes your firm's processes and procedures.

The Law of the Prospect

Once you define your target market, you have really only identified a group that you suspect needs what you have to offer.

Your advertising efforts must focus on getting a group of those "suspects" to raise their hands and tell you that they want to know more about your firm. Once they do that, they become your prospect group.

Your advertising should create prospects first and sales second. In two-step advertising, you first offer free useful information to generate leads.

Those who respond, your prospects, have now given you permission to sell to them.

The Law of Testing

Eighty percent of an ad's success comes down to the effectiveness of the headline. In some cases, changing one or two words dramatically impacts the results. Every ad your firm runs must have a powerful headline.

Run the same headline in a split group of direct mail pieces. Change your offer and measure the impact. Change the information in your two-step ads. Smart advertisers test and measure everything they can. In advertising, you can't tell what works and what doesn't without testing.

The Law of Doing More

Most businesses spend the bulk of their time hunting for new clients. However, focusing on your existing client and looking for ways to get a larger "share of client" is where the money is.

As you build your reputation in your narrow target market, begin to look for more ways to serve them. You have already built a great deal of trust with your existing clients, so expanding with their needs in mind is the simplest way to grow. As you meet more and more of their needs, they begin to view you as a crucial resource and are more willing to help you build your business by other means such as referrals.

The Law of Referral

Make providing referrals an expectation and condition of doing business with your firm and you will double or triple your business.

Each time you acquire a new client, tell them that you build your business by referral. Ask them to agree to provide you with a certain number of referrals if they're satisfied with your business. When they know that referrals are part of the deal going in, they will accept it.

Now that you know the rules of the marketing game, go out and win.

~~~~~

John Jantsch is the owner of Jantsch Communications, a marketing consulting firm located in Kansas City, Mo. He is the creator of Duct Tape Marketing, a fully-customizable turn-key marketing system. You can reach him at 816-561-3931 or john@ducttapemarketing.com

You may reprint and distribute this article freely as long as you print it in its entirety including the author's bio.