Reversing the model

Jun 28 2008

When putting together a marketing plan, many small businesses look at their budgets and try to think of where they can advertise to boost sales.

Instead of taking that approach, here’s a different angle… Look at your marketing plan and look at your budget and try to think of all the ways you can improve sales WITHOUT advertising.

It’s true that there exists no better and more efficient way to put your business’ name in front of a lot of eyeballs. But at the same time, it produces low ROI in comparison with other types of marketing like public speaking, networking, PR or even direct mail for example. And it’s usually terribly wasteful.

Consider this: in your local community newspaper, your ad can probably be seen by 10-20,000 people every week. But how many of those 20,000 are really ideal customers for you? It likely isn’t 20,000. For example, if your product or service is geared more towards women than men, you can already cut that 20,000 in half. Geared towards women with young children at home? Take another significant cut. Odds are that when you really narrow it down, you’ve only got a couple thousand people left out of the 20,000 you’re paying for.

And, taken on it’s own, independent of a bigger strategy, most small business owners can count the number of times that the local newspaper made their phone ring on one hand.

Advertising on it’s own can’t be a marketing plan for small businesses. Instead of going to advertising first, do it last… For a small business, advertising works best as the icing on top of working strategy, filling in the gaps and finding the people that your other initiatives just can’t get to.

So as you enter the new quarter and think about your marketing, think about how you can reverse the model and do it differently this time.