If you have either been thinking about starting a business or you already have one running, you need to be aware that, not only is a business plan essential to your success, but that also you need a creative marketing component inside your overall plan.
Why? A great marketing section of the business plan is crucial to any business, because it makes you focus not just on your product and service offer, but on your market …the customers who you want to serve and what message to send to them.
So, what you have to do in your business plan is start with an attainable goal, what you want to achieve in financial terms, and support this with a positive attitude based on what your business stands for in terms of your ethical mission, values, opportunities, strengths, weaknesses and threats.
Which brings us to your important marketing strategy. So, how do you do this?
The marketing system below gives you five important principles to push your business in the right direction and help you strive to achieve those overall business goals and then monitor and check your outcomes with the aim to improve, and then exceed those goals.
- Offer great value quality products and service in specific customer markets. At first, this may seem obvious and yet, it can never become too important. If the quality is above your market average, then your customers will certainly know that and reward your business with their faithful repeat visits and refer you to others.
- Determine how you are going to find and attract your target audience and then speak to them in their language through words, stories and images. And then get them to stay within your chosen market niche, your precise customer group and nurture them for the most effective marketing results.
- Always, always put your customers first. If the customer is made to feel special, and they can see that you and your business is serious about serving them, then they will continue to return, bring friends with them and write you great reviews, testimonials and case studies for others to read or watch on video.
- Be memorable in your promotional messages because customers won’t remember to tell others about you if they can’t remember what was special about your product and service. So create fantastic pictures and images in their mind that they feel good about and want to talk to others about.
- Listen and respond to your customers promptly. Hopefully you won’t have any complaints and yet if you do, remedy them immediately to satisfy your customer. If you get numerous complaints regarding the same product or service, then you will need to re-evaluate your product and service satisfaction and delivery method. Just remember that negative word of mouth advertising travels faster than positive results and can be extremely expensive.
In summary: A business plan will give you an overall big picture plan of action to focus your attention on attaining your business financial goals and values.
The wisest business owners have looked to their marketplace for customer data and information and turned this into marketing wisdom in their business plan because it cuts through all the trial and error and potential lost revenue because it focuses on what customers want and their needs to achieve long-term results.
What if you don’t have a business plan with a marketing element? Then take a few minutes each day or night for the next week to work on one or get a mentor who knows about business planning and marketing to help you… It cold make the difference in your business.
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