The Business Prep Guide: Everything the business startup gurus never tell you in their expensive seminars and inadequate books
Your Small Business Development Program is a threepart comprehensive Roadmap for Learning. It provides you a unique set of tools and opportunities for personal and professional growth and development.Visualize your Business as an automobile traveling from segment to segment as you learn and complete the various sections. Each section will help you learn more and more about the processes of Marketing and Advertising.
Part 1 of your Roadmap consists of the Goals Report, the Business Success Marketing Wheel, and SWOT Analysis.You will be furnished with templates which can assist you in planning for your personal and professional costs over the near term horizon, and a template for a SWOT Analysis – where you will actually analyze your business, based on a series of questions which test the business Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats, prior to developing the Business Planning Process for Marketing of your Business.
Within the Goals Report are fill-in-the-blank sections to help you develop a simple and creative personal marketing plan. We ask the questions, and you fill in the answers. After you have completed the Goals Report, simply transfer the information to any format you choose to develop the Marketing and Advertising Plan which will grow your business.
The Marketing Success Wheel 23
In your Business Success Wheel, we have illustrated a variety of marketing attributes and address how each of them impacts your business. These are not different types of marketing, but true definitions of marketing. You can learn how each of these sections of the Success Wheel builds upon themselves and can help you create stronger success than would be possible from each of the sections of the wheel individually.
The SWOT Analysis Tool and Template 38This template will help you define your business, and offer you the basis for development of your own, personalized marketing plan for your business. Within the SWOT Analysis (Strengths,Weaknesses, Opportunities,Threats), we help you take an objective look at your business and define where your business has areas it can utilize (the strengths) and improves upon (the weaknesses, opportunities, and threats).
Part 2 of your Roadmap is your Workbook
Your personal answers in your Workbook help you fully customize the learning tools to your needs.Your Workbook reinforces the material learned in a way which will create a long-term document for your business. Answer the questions honestly and fully; the more information you are able to plug into your Workbook, the better the results you will achieve with your program.
Step 1 45
Assess your current business or identify targets for your new business.
Step 2 52
Identify expectations for future improvement.
Step 3 58
Complete the SWOT Analysis discussed in Section 1.
Step 4 64
Part 3 of your Roadmap is your Manual of Study The Manual offers not only the background and basis for your program of study, but also offers over 50 new and exciting ways to improve the marketing and advertising efforts for your business.
Section 1:The Old Marketing Adage Updated to the 21st Century 82 Section 2: Creating Ideas Which Will BuildSection 3: Other Marketing Concepts
for Consideration 140
Appendix: Due Diligence Checklist 146
This book is about marketing, advertising and promotion of business in any small business environment. It describes various marketing and advertising strategies,tactics,and techniques that can be used to promote your business as profitably as possible, and thereby increasing your wealth. Many business people have applied the principles outlined in the following pages and have succeeded beyond their wildest expectations, just as you can.
This book will inspire you, open the door and lead you in the direction of success.This book is not the “read me once and file me away to be forgotten” kind of book. Read the book once carefully and highlight sections that you need to review. Once you have read the book apply what you learn along the way. Only then will you benefit from this book.
This book consists of the Business Success Marketing Wheel, a template for a SWOT Analysis and a Workbook. In addition, you have been furnished with templates which can assist you in planning for your personal and professional costs over the near term horizon, and – where you will actually analyze your business, based on a series of questions which test the business Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats, prior to developing the Business Planning Process for Marketing of your Business.
9 • ForewordThe book is divided into three parts. Part 1 is a comprehensive introduction of what is contained in the book. It focuses on basic marketing and advertising concepts, goal setting, planning and other marketing topics and issues.The material is mostly standard but it is supplemented by the Goal Setting tool, Marketing Wheel and SWOT analysis templates to further enhance your understanding of the marketing and advertising process.
Part 2 lays the foundation for discussion in Part 3 of the book. In each case the basic tools of marketing and advertising described in Part 2 are used to explain and analyze certain important marketing and advertising issues. At the same time the entrepreneur is introduced to the major concepts and ideas of marketing and advertising.
In Part 3 those concepts are joined together in a series of marketing and advertising models. The advantage is that entrepreneurs will at the end of the book become thoroughly acquainted with all the individual marketing and advertising elements by the time they start working with the models.
Reading this book can be fun, provided that you approach it correctly. You will not gain much by simply reading the material but you have to understand and apply the strategies contained in the book and also design your own.
Begin your trip down the learning pathway as defined in the introduction. The book offers not only the background and basis for your program of study, but also offers over 50 new and exciting ways to improve the marketing and advertising efforts for your business. If you are currently in business, this section will prove invaluable for development of ideas and opportunities. Don’t just stop with the ideas we’ve offered… create your own. Develop more and more extended ideas from our starting point.
Making your dreams a reality is the ultimate outcome of this book.10 • Boost Your Sales and Attract New Customers
For more information about the author visit the following websites:
www.mystudent4life.com
www.longlife4learning.com www.businesslearning4life.com
Marketing is defined as creating a need in the mind of the consumer for a product or service for which one can receive compensation.
Marketing is done on several levels. It occurs on a level between the supplier/vendor and the client/purchaser. It occurs on a level between the various employees within an organization. It occurs on a level between the supplier/vendor of goods and services and his/her purveyor or producer of the goods or products. Marketing can even occur as an internal function between a supervisor and a subordinate.
Within the study of marketing, you will discover there are a variety of ways available to market to consumers or clients, but one of the most important is by setting goals for attainment of certain objectives. Creating this set of goals for achieving both our short term and longer term business objectives is one of the key ways we create an internal climate of motivation for success.
Written goals are extremely important in helping us achieve our successes – much more so than merely “planning for success” or “thinking about success.” Although one must consider all the concerns and obstacles involved in planning for success, research has demonstrated that written goals are much more likely to be attained.They furnish us with written, solid examples of expected action, and they help us define the roles required to make those actions occur.
Corollary One: One must write down the overall goals being sought, and create his/her plan around these goals.The easiest way to begin our goal-setting is by creating the Initial or Overriding Goal. Let’s view how this might work in practice.
As you begin thinking about your business, you decide that you must grow your sales by 15% in the next year.How will you achieve this? Let’s start by developing your first, Initial Goal.
My objective for my business is to grow my business by 15% in sales over the next calendar year.Congratulations! You’ve just taken the first step toward improving your business sales.
That is an excellent starting point, and this overriding objective will give rise to all the next levels of objectives we must set in order to attain this goal. But first, we must quantify the various elements which will impact the growth of your business.
Corollary Two: The Goals developed must offer a time constraint … that is to say, they must be measurable within a given time.
Simply growing My Business by 15% could be attained in a variety of ways. If you live in an area where there is television or radio broadcasting, you could pay for advertising – more commonly referred to as ads to let the general public know about your business. But what about your business is unique enough to draw customers or clients to you so that you can sell them a product or service their needs? This strikes at the center of Marketing – creating the need in the mind of the Consumer.
If your product or service is unique,you have the opportunity to stress its unique qualities. If your price is lower than the competition, you have the opportunity to stress your pricing considerations. If your method of distribution is unique, you have a very special opportunity to demonstrate a new business model for your product or service.
You could call a newspaper or magazine and tell them your story about what makes you different. Printed media is always interested in new and different ways of doing business, or new and different approaches to consumers. How you do business may,in fact,be a newsworthy idea….And if so,you may want to develop a Press Release to alert the media to your offering.
Corollary Three: Focus on Key Result Areas and how they impact your marketing and advertising opportunities.But all these concepts, although helping to demonstrate differentiation – how you are different – don’t strike at the heart of helping to create a major goal.To create this major goal for your business, you must look at all the Key Result Areas surrounding your business and take these into consideration as you develop your major goal. Remember, all your secondary goals must connect in some way to your Primary goal.
Taking the same stated goal:To Grow My Business by 15% over the next calendar year, one must think through all the various concerns which must be addressed – and this helps to expand your Primary Goal.This process is important, because one should not look at goal setting as being a negative or should not allow goals for marketing and advertising, for example, to negatively influence other parts of your business. Let’s think for just a few minutes about these concerns, and itemize them here:
1. Can you successfully source the necessary
products or services to support your growth of sales? If you are selling leather, for example, is an ample supply of leather available at a price and quality that will meet your needs?
2. Can you produce the products from the leather which will be in demand by the buyers or consumers?
3. Is the market already full of leather vendors or is there room for market expansion?
4. Do you have the necessary number of employees, or can you contract for the labor to be done on an outplacement basis so that you can
meet the demands of the marketplace?
5. Do you have a production facility for the production of the leather/leather products, and if so, is it large enough to successfully meet consumer demand?
6. Do you have access to enough capital to help you expand your sales to clients by this 15% growth amount? If not, do you have a Business Plan developed for either raising the necessary capital or doing either a joint venture or a leveraged offering to the public?
7. Do you have access to distribution of the products developed so that they can be shipped, delivered, offered, or serviced in a way which will meet the connectivity between the source of supply and the source of demand?
8. Do you understand who your customer/client is and what they really want? Often, a business will complete two different types of marketing studies: Demographic studies, which demonstrate who the customer might be for a product or service, and Ethnographic studies, which tell a business what changes or opportunities exist with a product or service. Ethnographic studies actually look at the product or service through the eyes of the consumer – and, in so doing, tell you specifically what the consumer/client likes or dislikes about your offering.
So now,you’ve come up with at least eight different contingent marketing concerns in expansion of your Initial Goal. Let’s see how a review of this list might change the Initial Goal.
My objective for my business is to increase the sales by 15% during the next calendar year, focusing on prepared leather goods, shipped from the Northwestern provinces.
And against that new, more expanded Initial Goal, we could start listing the key elements which would impact that goal.1. My objective is to increase sales 25% in the South, 20% in the North, and 5% in the Western part of the country by December 31.
2. The ability to ship the product to markets will not be negatively impacted by any distribution challenges since we are now using two different distribution partners.We want to expand this to multiple distribution partners throughout our region.
3. The objective will be made more easily attainable by an additional line of capital to be sought from East Side National Bank.We will use this capital only for expansion of market share.
4. We will sign a long term supply agreement with XYZ partners, assuring us a supply of leather at the quality levels we require for a full two year period and a fair price point.
5. We have full employment, full production capacity, and additional potential employees waiting to come onboard as employees with us.
Corollary Four: Be certain that the subordinate goals are supportive of the Initial Goal developed for marketing and advertising support.
One can see how adding these various subordinate goals to our initial goal help to create a climate where we are more assured of meeting this Initial or Primary goal. In addition, the fact that we have taken the time to develop these, write them down, and commit them to our internal planning process greatly enhances the opportunity for them to be achieved.
We’ve demonstrated how your secondary goals will offer key elemental support for the Initial Goal. Now, it’s your turn to write goals for your business.
Create your first Initial Goal, with a target date for completion.Support this Initial Goal by no less than three secondary Goals. Be sure that your secondary goals support the key result areas required by the business.
1.2.
3. After you have completed the first Initial Goal, replicate this with two other major goals, and related secondary goals. If easier to think about, plan on the Initial Goal being a broader, longer term accomplishment which you wish to achieve, and the secondary goals being measurable objectives which are attainable and support the initial Goal. Use your Workbook for major goal setting in your marketing efforts.
Why should you place so much emphasis on setting and attaining goals? Let’s look at a list of the reasons:• Developing written goals enables you to plan your future in advance.
• Developing written goals which are time driven allows you to use the goal as a map for actions and alternatives.
• Setting goals for action helps both the conscious and the subconscious mind become focused on one action and creates synergy for both parts for action.
• Goals help you to direct your focus in a specific direction of activity.• The process of setting and achieving goals leads to a clear understanding of the Planning Process for your Business.
The Planning Process is a continuous process in business by which you guide the ongoing processes of your business – in this case, your Marketing and Advertising objectives. The Planning Process follows a pattern and allows you to develop the specific strategies as well as the resources needed. It also allows you to set the minimum acceptable standards you will accept, and is part of the 4 Step Cycle of Management: Planning, Organizing, Leading and Controlling.
When we look at these four cycles of management, it becomes quite clear to us that the focus we place on goals and the attainment of those goals – whether initial or secondary – helps to define the job that we as Managers accomplish. Small Business Owners and Managers are finding that the job functions expected in the defined roles have changed in the recent past. Owners and Managers who fully understood their roles in running a business are now finding all sorts of different Marketing and Advertising challenges facing them on a daily basis.
Should a small business participate in social media and market online? Is the Internet a valid place to advertise your business, and if so, what ratio of dollars you invest should be invested in each type of media advertising? As a part of the Controlling function of management, these types of decisions face small business owners and managers on a continuous basis.
Let’s think about the process of setting Goals for your Marketing and Advertising from what is called the 30,000 Foot Level, or as if you are looking down on your business on a “big picture” basis.
You have a vision for your business that can best be explained as the “why” of your business. It’s more than a goal, and more than an objective… it’s the reason your business is in business. If you are the owner of your business, you have the responsibility for this vision, and for being able to express the vision you have to others. If you lose the vision of your business, you will not be able to market or advertise your business effectively.The vision gives you a sense of purpose.
Corollary Five: Be certain that your goals work in tandem with your business and do not create short term demands which are not in the long-term interests of the business. You must be certain that your vision helps guide the goals and objectives of your business and creates synergy between the marketing and advertising needs for the growth of the business. Be sure that the goals you set do not create such a climate of “requirement” that they lead to unethical behavior on the part of your employees.
Let’s use, as an example, the target of 15% growth by a certain date.
What if that percentage of growth hasn’t been achieved? If, for example, only a 12.5% growth has been achieved – would employees be tempted to “stretch” financial results in order to show a 15% growth? This is the flip side of development of goals and objectives if the process is not viewed as a tool, but as a means to an end. In viewing the process of setting goals, a Manager or Owner must recognize that although easy to measure, the results are sometimes not what are intended.
With that having been said, let’s do some goal development. Q1:What is your principal objective for studying this material?
Q2:What specific objectives do you want to achieve from this material? Please list at least five.1. 3.
4.
5.
Q3: Have you set targeted dates for the achievement of these goals? If so, attach the dates to the goals at this time. If you have not, add the dates now.
Q4:What specific issues could hinder your accomplishment of your goals?Q5: How can you minimize the impact which these issues might have on attaining your goals? Please offer at least three ways and explain how they will minimize the impact. 2.
3.and Measuring Results
The creation of business success for any small business is predicated on many factors, not the least of which is the development of a marketing expertise for your specific business type. All sizes do not fit all businesses.There are some general rules which can be followed, but development of your specific marketing expertise is not a given, however.
Using the Success Wheel
to Help Chart Success in
Marketing
Let’s look at the components of the
Business Success Wheel and what it
can mean to your business success.
As with any wheel which is supported
by various spokes, the center of this
wheel centers upon and presumes Business Success. Business success is a transitory term – how you measure success one day may not mean the same thing as how you measure business success the next day, or the next week, or the next month.
As a matter of fact, success probably won’t mean the same thing to you or your business from one day to the next. Success achieved today is generally viewed as baseline performance in the next reporting period, a sort of “benchmark” against which performance can be based.
If you view business success as generating “X” in sales revenue, once you have achieved that level of revenue, you will not be satisfied until you can achieve “X+” in revenue. If you view business success as bringing an additional 100 customers to your business, you will – from that point forward – use an additional 100 customers as the benchmark against which future results must be attained.
There are a variety of marketing points which comprise the spokes of our Marketing Wheel,however.Each spoke represents a specific attribute which must be addressed and mastered in order for business success, your objective, to be achieved. Let’s examine each of these spokes in a way which highlights their importance to the process of bringing you business success.
The First Marketing Success Attribute: Marketing AcumenThe first attribute we will address is Marketing Acumen. Acumen is defined as being able to “demonstrate keenness and quickness in understanding and dealing with a situation.” Acumen is a characteristic which you develop over a period of time in running your business which allows you to summarize and decide quickly on several different levels, measuring your success against both your own expectations, and the expectations of others.
How can you use Marketing Acumen to your benefit?
Marketing Acumen Rule #1
You must examine the marketing being done by your competitors and understand whether what you are offering in the marketplace meets and exceeds what they are offering. This can be based on price, offering, value added or even personalized service on goods or services.
1. Is your marketing program directly in competition with others on an item by item basis?
2. Does your offer directly compete on a merit basis with what they are offering?
3. Does your offer meet your own expectations, or what others tell you that you should
offer to be competitive in the market?
This goes beyond simply looking at the offer in the marketplace and determining whether or not you are competitive. It extends to the process of analyzing the competitor. Let’s say, for example, you own and operate an automobile tire store. You sell a well-known tire, manufactured locally, at what you believe is a competitive price.Tires are not your only business, but you generate a significant part of your income from their sale. A direct competitor, who not only sells automobile tires – but also services autos – has opened up in your primary trade area. You have noticed that the competitor is running newspaper and radio advertisements for their tires. The tires that they offer are also brand name, and are priced at about 20% below what you are charging.What do you do?
Marketing Acumen Rule #2
Your Marketing Acumen leads you to recognize the competition, understand what he/she is doing, and create a response. Direct competitors offer you several options. You can compete on price – which will generally drive the competitor’s price even lower, or you can compete on service, quality and standards. For the sake of profit in your business, it’s generally better to compete on service, quality and standards…not on price. Decreasing price also diminishes revenue and profits.That is to be avoided at all costs.
One must also look at Question #2 (above) – Does your offer directly compete on a merit basis with what they are offering? If the tires in this instance are both well-known,wellpriced, and offer the same attributes in terms of guarantee, service warranty, etc. then you find other ways or methods to market to your potential clients.
Marketing Acumen Rule #3
In assessing Question #3 (above) – a business owner must always listen to what his sense of value tells him/her about the service or product being offered, and must always look at what his clients are telling him. If his clients tell him that there are better tires available at a lesser price, he needs to determine what must be done to meet that challenge.
This leads us to the concept of Marketing Analysis. Marketing Analyses take several different forms. A marketing analysis can help you assess whether you
should or should not introduce a product or a service into an area.If you are planning to implem
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