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Other Added - Your Own Business: Marketing and Advertising Plans
The number of people today posting used car classifieds ads shows an upward spiral. Looking at the used car classifieds they write and guessing the amounts they spend to advertise their product (used car), one will naturally wonder how these people sell their car for a decent price. By closely following the ads, one can find more than 80% of the classified ads make one or more of the seven mistakes listed below.1. Not Describing the CarWhile writing used car classifieds, classic car classifieds or muscle car classifieds, a lot of people tend to miss out the exact model name and year of manufacture in the ad. Include such details in a positive manner and it doesn't take too many words.2. Not Leaving a Phone NumberMany people who write used car classifieds today think they can manage their used car sale with just an email address. People like to talk to potential sellers before they make a decision to buy your car. Never make a mistake by not including your phone number.3. Bragging About the Condition of the CarExcessive bragging fends people away. Write factual ads telling readers its mileage and age.4. Trying to Sell the CarMany people think they can sell the car through a classified ad and they write their classified ad as a sales letter. Keep in mind that people don't buy based on what they see at the classified ad; instead they take a decision after seeing the car in person and after talking to the owner of the car. Thus the used car classified ad can only generate a lead to you.5. Not Including a Price TagClaiming a price for your used car in your used car classifieds is a tricky task. As
This point will basically be those that you plan to use at launch and soon after. You’ll develop a longer list in Point Four that will be your guidelines for the future during your growth phase.
Point Three – The third Point is to whom you will be targeting your marketing. Not surprisingly, this is called your target market. These should be the people who have the desire, need, or potential to purchase your product or service. Make sure this is who you are after; it makes no sense to market to 50,000 people if only 10 are possible customers.
Your target for the tire shop
Can we inspire teens to choose to do something with the same methodology that convinces them not to do something? For example, does the same decision-making process lead to teens buying $15 Starbury One basketball shoes and to not buying the designer $130 Nike Zoom Kobe I sneakers? Is there a common denominator in how teens choose to start smoking cigarettes and how they choose not to? Can we as marketers reach them at the pivotal decision-making moment to inspire desired behavior? Denver-based Cactus Marketing Communications thinks they have uncovered the simple truth about effectively altering teen behaviors by redefining empowerment as a marketing strategy.I. Background Youth empowerment has been defined as an attitudinal, structural and cultural process whereby young people gain the ability, authority and agency to make decisions and implement change in their own lives and the lives of other people, including youth and adults.Over the past decade, the word empowerment has become a buzzword in business and youth development, but the word has different meanings for different people. According to the Journal of Extension, "empowering teens" refers to a process through which adults begin to share responsibility and power with young people… It is the same idea as teaching young people the rules of the game…Youth development professionals are helping young people develop non-academic competencies that will help them to participate in the game of life.Traditionally, most campaigns that employ youth empowerment as a strategy actually encourage social movements through advocacy and activism. They encourage teens to speak out for causes and
You’ll notice that I said “basic marketing plan” and not “full blown business plan.” This is because I am not of the belief that a micro business needs to spend the time on a lengthy business plan right at the start. You do need to commit some concepts to paper so you have an initial plan to start, but a detailed business plan is quite simply out of most people’s reach at this point of the game.
Unless you are investing and borrowing large sums of money, I say keep it simple and invest your time doing activities that get you closer to making money. Creating a detailed business plan will eat up the time that is better used doing such money-making activities. Plus, creating a detailed business plan now may misguide you down the road unless you already have intimate knowledge of you business.
If you’re starting on a shoestring, I say build the business plan as you go along and learn. You can start with a basic marketing plan, which will become part of the business plan in the future. When you grow more, know more and maybe need borrowed capital, then finish your business plan. If you still feel you need one now then do it.
The marketing plan that I use is a simple seven points. It is short but powerful. It is your roadmap at launch and beyond. The budget and specific details may change as you grow, but the basic principals will most likely remain the same.
As always, run your marketing plan and business ideas by your trusted support group. This includes friends, family and experts such as your accountant and lawyer.
Creating Your Marketing Plan
As I mentioned before, your marketing plan is your roadmap to success for launching your business and beyond. And although I don’t think you absolutely must have a formal written business plan in place before launching your micro business, do not attempt a go at it without a written marketing plan. Your marketing plan can be as lengthy as you wish to make it, if that fits your specific needs, but basic seven point marketing plan should be enough with which to start. You probably will expand it with more details later, but the only one you are impressing with a 15-page plan to start with is yourself.
Here are the seven points I suggest for your marketing plan:
Point One – The first point explores and explains the reasons for your overall marketing strategy. By “reasons” I mean the purpose you are doing marketing and what you wish to achieve in general.
As an example, a reason for your marketing may be to attract customers to your shop to fix their tires. Another reason may be to get interested traffic to your website to browse and consider your products or services. Yet another is you may want to let the decision makers at many corporations know about you and your new company. These are the basic reasons for your marketing campaign. Obviously, you will never reach every single possible person for your business, but you will continue to reach out to as many as you can.
These reasons are not the same as goals. Goals are specific and measurable, while reasons are general and not measurable. The goals become the measuring sticks for the reasons you are in business. Some goals based on the above reasons might be informing 25 car owners about your tire shop or getting 30 new visitors to your website.
Point Two – If Point One is your broad marketing strategy, then Point Two are your tactics. The second Point offers an explanation about how you will achieve the reasons you laid out in Point One.
For example, for your attracting customers to your tire shop, you may choose to use ads in the phone book and newspaper, you may mail out coupons or have them placed on care windshields, or you may place billboards. For a new website, you might list that you will purchase keywords on Yahoo and Google, place banner ads on similar websites, or issue a press releases about happenings at your business and on your website.
This point will basically be those that you plan to use at launch and soon after. You’ll develop a longer list in Point Four that will be your guidelines for the future during your growth phase.
Point Three – The third Point is to whom you will be targeting your marketing. Not surprisingly, this is called your target market. These should be the people who have the desire, need, or potential to purchase your product or service. Make sure this is who you are after; it makes no sense to market to 50,000 people if only 10 are possible customers.
Your target for the tire shop e
Let’s say you have an auto business up and running and you are looking to make more money, but adding on new services. You are not sure what you want to do, but you have a pretty good customer base and you want to provide a service that people want and that they are willing to spend top dollar for. Well, let me suggest auto detailing type concepts.Once you are up and running with a co-brand, business opportunity, independent business or franchise fixed site or mobile unit then what; what can you add to your set of services which will be an easy sell to your current customer base? Where do you go from there? Luckily in the detailing business your possibilities are truly unlimited. If you own automotive repair shop you can go mobile without taking up another bay in your shop. If you are mobile or have mobile service available you could branch out and detail aircraft. National Detail Systems has a comprehensive manual for this market niche as a business opportunity. Greg Dumond of National Detail Systems; www.nationaldetail.com , formerly Polish Masters has plenty of experience to back up his system. Another system Aircraft Wash Guys is an aircraft washing and detailing franchise, website www.aircraftwashguys.com although they have decided not to franchise anymore and keep the money from services to themselves. (FYI; I own this company).Perhaps you are a fisherman or a nautical type. How about Boat Detailing and services? Well there is Q-Lube Marine out of Salt Lake, UT; Nauticare out of Newport Beach and The Boat Wash Guys at;http://www.carwashguys.com/boatlaunch.shtml(FYI; I own this company and due to Marine Liability Insurance Rates
If you’re starting on a shoestring, I say build the business plan as you go along and learn. You can start with a basic marketing plan, which will become part of the business plan in the future. When you grow more, know more and maybe need borrowed capital, then finish your business plan. If you still feel you need one now then do it.
The marketing plan that I use is a simple seven points. It is short but powerful. It is your roadmap at launch and beyond. The budget and specific details may change as you grow, but the basic principals will most likely remain the same.
As always, run your marketing plan and business ideas by your trusted support group. This includes friends, family and experts such as your accountant and lawyer.
Creating Your Marketing Plan
As I mentioned before, your marketing plan is your roadmap to success for launching your business and beyond. And although I don’t think you absolutely must have a formal written business plan in place before launching your micro business, do not attempt a go at it without a written marketing plan. Your marketing plan can be as lengthy as you wish to make it, if that fits your specific needs, but basic seven point marketing plan should be enough with which to start. You probably will expand it with more details later, but the only one you are impressing with a 15-page plan to start with is yourself.
Here are the seven points I suggest for your marketing plan:
Point One – The first point explores and explains the reasons for your overall marketing strategy. By “reasons” I mean the purpose you are doing marketing and what you wish to achieve in general.
As an example, a reason for your marketing may be to attract customers to your shop to fix their tires. Another reason may be to get interested traffic to your website to browse and consider your products or services. Yet another is you may want to let the decision makers at many corporations know about you and your new company. These are the basic reasons for your marketing campaign. Obviously, you will never reach every single possible person for your business, but you will continue to reach out to as many as you can.
These reasons are not the same as goals. Goals are specific and measurable, while reasons are general and not measurable. The goals become the measuring sticks for the reasons you are in business. Some goals based on the above reasons might be informing 25 car owners about your tire shop or getting 30 new visitors to your website.
Point Two – If Point One is your broad marketing strategy, then Point Two are your tactics. The second Point offers an explanation about how you will achieve the reasons you laid out in Point One.
For example, for your attracting customers to your tire shop, you may choose to use ads in the phone book and newspaper, you may mail out coupons or have them placed on care windshields, or you may place billboards. For a new website, you might list that you will purchase keywords on Yahoo and Google, place banner ads on similar websites, or issue a press releases about happenings at your business and on your website.
This point will basically be those that you plan to use at launch and soon after. You’ll develop a longer list in Point Four that will be your guidelines for the future during your growth phase.
Point Three – The third Point is to whom you will be targeting your marketing. Not surprisingly, this is called your target market. These should be the people who have the desire, need, or potential to purchase your product or service. Make sure this is who you are after; it makes no sense to market to 50,000 people if only 10 are possible customers.
Your target for the tire shop
For organisations who have dramatically changed their working environment or culture (such as the Health Service or Civil Service) the introduction of coaching can be viewed as one change too many. However, coaching can help organisations deliver change in a more positive way by coaching leaders in how to deal with change positively. There is also confusion over what coaching is and what its purpose is.Coaching can also help leaders to work effectively within teams through openness and understanding of the real issues that may prevent the efficient standards of delivery that are now required in many organisations.A recent series by the BBC, where Gerry Robinson took on the task of trying to reduce waiting lists in the NHS, highlighted this issue. Gerry Robinson has a very successful track record with improving the performance of large multi national companies. He believes that “any business no matter how large can be made to work well”. The series itself highlighted that real positive changes failed to materialise because, although there were many good ideas within the organisation about how to improve things, these ideas often failed to get off the ground, for a whole variety of reasons – often for amazingly petty reasons. Robinson became very frustrated about how even simple, practical ideas to improve things go absolutely nowhere, due to bureaucracy, self-interest and sheer bloody mindedness - you could say there was ‘analysis paralysis’ and nothing got done as it might fail. Channels of communication across departments were blocked and there was little belief that positive change could actually happen. It was refreshing to see a coachi
Here are the seven points I suggest for your marketing plan:
Point One – The first point explores and explains the reasons for your overall marketing strategy. By “reasons” I mean the purpose you are doing marketing and what you wish to achieve in general.
As an example, a reason for your marketing may be to attract customers to your shop to fix their tires. Another reason may be to get interested traffic to your website to browse and consider your products or services. Yet another is you may want to let the decision makers at many corporations know about you and your new company. These are the basic reasons for your marketing campaign. Obviously, you will never reach every single possible person for your business, but you will continue to reach out to as many as you can.
These reasons are not the same as goals. Goals are specific and measurable, while reasons are general and not measurable. The goals become the measuring sticks for the reasons you are in business. Some goals based on the above reasons might be informing 25 car owners about your tire shop or getting 30 new visitors to your website.
Point Two – If Point One is your broad marketing strategy, then Point Two are your tactics. The second Point offers an explanation about how you will achieve the reasons you laid out in Point One.
For example, for your attracting customers to your tire shop, you may choose to use ads in the phone book and newspaper, you may mail out coupons or have them placed on care windshields, or you may place billboards. For a new website, you might list that you will purchase keywords on Yahoo and Google, place banner ads on similar websites, or issue a press releases about happenings at your business and on your website.
This point will basically be those that you plan to use at launch and soon after. You’ll develop a longer list in Point Four that will be your guidelines for the future during your growth phase.
Point Three – The third Point is to whom you will be targeting your marketing. Not surprisingly, this is called your target market. These should be the people who have the desire, need, or potential to purchase your product or service. Make sure this is who you are after; it makes no sense to market to 50,000 people if only 10 are possible customers.
Your target for the tire shop
So, you need to submit employment references. A simple task, right? Sure, you could contact three of your closest friends and ask them to be your references. They may be able to testify to your character, but do they know how well you would perform on the job? Probably not. Let's explore the types of references you must seek, the number of people you should include, and to whom references should be submitted.Whom To SelectWhen selecting references, it is always a good idea to find those people who know how well you work. Supervisors you reported to directly or co-workers are some of the best choices. However, some companies frown on supervisors from being a reference and, instead, require that they list the Human Resources department as the contact point. Legal issues play into that decision.Co-workers can be a good choice, especially if they held a position of authority even if they weren't over you. The company's receptionist may know you best, but oftentimes it is the title [position] of the person that pulls the greater weight.How Many References?A minimum of three references should be garnered. Four or five if each one is solid. You need to inform the person you select that they are a reference in advance. Of course, that means you need to get their permission first. Do not put someone on the spot -- kindly ask if they would be a reference; if they decline don't take it personally. There could be any number of reasons why someone won't be your reference; speculating will only cause you to formulate a reason which could be entirely false.Furnishing ReferencesNever, ever list references on
These reasons are not the same as goals. Goals are specific and measurable, while reasons are general and not measurable. The goals become the measuring sticks for the reasons you are in business. Some goals based on the above reasons might be informing 25 car owners about your tire shop or getting 30 new visitors to your website.
Point Two – If Point One is your broad marketing strategy, then Point Two are your tactics. The second Point offers an explanation about how you will achieve the reasons you laid out in Point One.
For example, for your attracting customers to your tire shop, you may choose to use ads in the phone book and newspaper, you may mail out coupons or have them placed on care windshields, or you may place billboards. For a new website, you might list that you will purchase keywords on Yahoo and Google, place banner ads on similar websites, or issue a press releases about happenings at your business and on your website.
This point will basically be those that you plan to use at launch and soon after. You’ll develop a longer list in Point Four that will be your guidelines for the future during your growth phase.
Point Three – The third Point is to whom you will be targeting your marketing. Not surprisingly, this is called your target market. These should be the people who have the desire, need, or potential to purchase your product or service. Make sure this is who you are after; it makes no sense to market to 50,000 people if only 10 are possible customers.
Your target for the tire shop
With the recent corporate scandals of Enron and WorldCom, the popularity and necessity of executive background checks has greatly increased. In order to protect themselves from potential disasters later on, many companies are now requiring extensive investigation on prospective executives to verify their employment and educational history as well as information regarding any past wrongdoings.As with any other type of pre-employment background investigations, employers need to have the appropriate disclosures available. According to Federal law and the Fair Credit Reporting Act, applicants must sign and date specific disclosures regarding the various types of background checks employers desire. It is important to respect the privacy of potential employees while maintaining the company’s hiring standards.Although executive-level background checks are becoming increasingly more popular, there may still be some hesitation as to how far to take them. Many high-level executives seem to think of their atmosphere as more of a society, or ‘country-club’ feel. They may not feel comfortable about performing checks on executives and in many cases, do not feel it is necessary. Human Resource managers in the executive level seem to also have some hesitations to conducting extensive background checks. Many of them feel as if their network of peers is enough to get the information they need and may neglect to further investigate a potential employee. The Wall Street Journal suggests that many top-level hiring managers may ignore the reference list provided by the would-be-executive to utilize their own connections in their past companies.Whatever the reaso
This point will basically be those that you plan to use at launch and soon after. You’ll develop a longer list in Point Four that will be your guidelines for the future during your growth phase.
Point Three – The third Point is to whom you will be targeting your marketing. Not surprisingly, this is called your target market. These should be the people who have the desire, need, or potential to purchase your product or service. Make sure this is who you are after; it makes no sense to market to 50,000 people if only 10 are possible customers.
Your target for the tire shop example might be all car owners within 15 miles of your shop. If you are offering custom-made promotional products for companies, then your target market might be heads of marketing. If your website sells items featuring university football teams, then you probably want to reach university alumni and fans of the team.
By knowing to whom you will target your marketing, you will be able to better create an effective marketing message and spend your money more effectively by utilizing methods that get right to the people that are most likely to become your customers.
Point Four – This is basically a list of every marketing and advertising avenue that you think you will employ in the future. This is not necessarily at the early stages of your business because some may be cost prohibitive or you may not have grown to the point to where you can actually fulfill the demands of the numerous customers that may respond.
Basically, this can serve as a guideline for the future and as a wish list of methods you’d like to utilize at some point. But try to be realistic about costs, needs and even your willingness. TV may either be too costly or just wasteful for your particular business. Or perhaps you’re shy, so you won’t be speaking at the Chamber of Commerce nor doing newspaper interviews.
This list can be as long or as short as you desire. Try to think as broadly as you can about what might work for your business. Look at what other successful companies do. Think about all of marketing, which can include advertising, publicity, promotions and publicity. Take your time at this Point and really give it some thought and research
Some examples that you may not consider at first include things like using your circle of acquaintances to help with word-of-mouth, classified ads, fliers that can be placed around town or on doors, flea markets, joining community and business organizations for networking, trade shows, bumper stickers, and direct mail.
Point Five – This Point explains what makes you special, or what your niche in the marketplace is going to be. You will have to decide on this because you will have to communicate it to your customers. Your focus should be on what differentiates you and your business from all of your competition.
In marketing terms, this is known as your unique selling proposition, or USP. Your USP/niche can be based on speed, customer service, prices, quality, selection, or whatever you determine you can offer better than anyone else. Do focus on reality and be reasonable in your own expectations. Make sure your USP/niche is valid, within your capabilities, what you will really do to make your business unique and also what will actually matter to your target market.
Point Six – The sixth Point focuses attention on what you wish the overall public perception or identity of your business to be. This most likely will be an extension of Point Five and you USP/niche. Once again, make it real and make it what you can attain and deliver.
Your identity is basically how the public perceives your business and the way that they will feel about it. It doesn’t have to be one single point. For example, you may want to be considered the fastest and friendliest in town. Or maybe you wish to be considered the least expensive with the widest selection. On the other hand, you may want to be the most exclusive with the highest prices and best quality.
Point Seven – You’ve been waiting for this one, your marketing budget. This is especially hard at the beginning because you may literally have no idea. But it is generally true that you have to spend some money to make money. If you can’t get enough people to know about you, you’ll have a hard time getting the paying customers you need to survive and flourish.
In the beginning, it is probably what you can afford. But you need to esta
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