How To Market Your Small Business

Do you have a clear small business vision?

A small business vision can be compared to planning a holiday! People usually decide where they want to holiday based on the offerings of the destination.

If it’s a relaxing holiday they are after, they may go to Fiji. But if it’s for shopping, then Dubai may be their choice. If it’s to climb the Sydney Harbour Bridge then they will go to Sydney, Australia.

Holiday destinations are determined by desires, with a few restrictions like budget and time available.

The same should apply to your small business. In 5 years time what do you want your small business to look and feel like?

Do you want a large street frontage or small office at home?

Do you want to be actively involved or have a manager controlling your employees?

How many employees do you want?

Do you want a business with excellent cash flow or a business that is worth a large sum of money when sold?

Answers to these questions and much more will help to provide a clear vision of your small business in 5 years time. And often this will completely shape your growth.

The majority of small business owners start a small business based on their trade or what they know. They never usually give much thought to their small business vision.

While it’s comforting running a small business using the skills you have, sometimes this can be a recipe for disaster.

Business is a game – it should be simple and fun. But Business Owners tend to complicate things and the business ends up controlling them.

Owning a small business should mean a better lifestyle – flexible and shorter working hours and more money.

But this is hardly ever the case; it’s more like working 60+ hours a week for about $4 an hour. Why is this so?

Because small business owners don’t have that vision. They don’t know where they are heading, they have nothing to aim for.

They have no idea what the finished product will look like, so the business eventually takes control. Decisions are based on what happened that day, instead of the business vision you are working towards.

Take the time now and think of your small business vision. What will your small business look like in 5 years?

Why will your customers continue to buy from you?

How will you beat your competitors?

What will make your small business attractive to any buyers?

What are all the potential risks?

Think carefully about these questions and then write your vision down. This will immediately tell you, the universe and anybody else, exactly what you are creating. It gives you a defined target to aim for and achieve.

So you’ve spent your hard earned cash on a great copywriting course.

You know exactly what to do and what not to do.

You have collected a file full of great example ads and created a great ad for your business.

You run it in the local newspaper every week for a month… But the phone does not ring, the customers don’t come rushing in the door…

WHY?

You may have all the knowledge about copywriting, but there will always be times when your ad or sales letter just does not get that phone ringing or the customers rushing through the door.

And it can get frustrating especially when you have spent hours creating the ad.

But remember this: Persistence is the secret to this game!

When you test and measure your advertising, you can afford to fail many times more than you succeed.

As an example, let’s say you invested $400 in an ad, and the phone doesn’t ring, and the customers don’t coming rushing through the door.

You write another 4 ads and they all crash and burn as well.

You don’t get ANY results from them. Not one enquiry.

You’ve now spent $2,000 and don’t have any enquiries?

However on your 6th ad, you hit a winner and the phone runs hot and you struggle to deal with all the customers coming in.

So, you ‘failed’ 5 times out of 6.

Was that a successful advertising campaign?

‘YES’ without a doubt!

Why? Because all along you would have been testing and measuring the return on investment of your ads.

You would have been making adjustments along the way until that winner came along.

But once you find that winner, how many times would you continue to run that winning ad or sending out that winning sales letter?

As often as you could, until it stops working.

There are ads that run in newspapers and magazines, on TV and online, they run week after week after week, for years and years.

There are sales letters that are mailed to millions of people month after month, year after year.

Think about it. If every time you spend $400 on an ad, it produced $800 worth of profit. Would it not make sense to run that ad as many times as possible, until the return on investment dropped off?

That’s what a winning ad or sales letter gives you the ability to do.

Yet many business owners stop after one failure, and never see the real rewards of effective advertising. They give up and say advertising doesn’t work!

Remember we said ‘Persistence is the secret to this game.’

Well, it is truly worth persisting because the rewards, when you find that winning ad or sales letter, are huge.

Success in advertising is as much about ‘mindset’ as it is about skill.

The right mindset to persist until you find that winner that you can use over and over again.

And never make the mistake of changing the ad because you believe people are bored of seeing your ad or sales letter.

You will get bored with it long before they do.

Let the numbers do the talking.

When that return on investment drops to an unacceptable level, that is when you make the changes and only then.

The secret is Persistence.

Ian McConnell is the author of Instant Small Business Profits – compulsory reading for any small business owner. This step by step guide contains valuable information on… "How To Dominate Sales In Your Marketplace, Create a Flood of Customers Chasing You For Your Product or Services And Turn Your Business Into a Powerful Profit Magnet!" For more information click here => http://www.small-business-secrets.com/main.html