How to Start Marketing Your Small Business
As small business owners, we've always got multiple balls in the air, and for me, systems allow me to keep those balls flying while also giving me some time to enjoy life.
Before we dive into things, let me share with you who should leave now and not bother reading any further, any business owner or manager who's prone to relying on how you've done things in the past.
Why?
Because the IPA Marketing Approach will require you to change some things, you will need to do some foundational work. In my experience, upon being hired by a new client who always wanted to tell me how they've done things in the past may have thought they paid me money to implement new ideas and strategies. Still, in reality, they gave me their hard-earned cash with the hopes that I would validate their previous efforts, even when those efforts have not worked.
A Better Way to Market Your Business
I'd say this mindset's extremely common. And, I'm not here to convince you to change. In fact, if you've got all the business, you can handle it, and you're not looking to have more free time. Not wanting to make the marketing efforts for your business more manageable and less time-consuming, please ignore everything I'm sharing.
Well, since you're still reading, let's dive into this and start transforming your business's marketing!
Smart Business Marketing - A Little Effort Now = Enormous Results Later
Before I dive into explaining the IPA Marketing Approach, I want you to know you will need to do some foundational work outline some things that will help you draw certain conclusions. This effort and time will pay off handsomely in both time-saving in the future and put an end to wasting ad dollars.
What is the IPA Marketing Approach?
IPA stands for:
Identify
Position
Appeal
When you've set up your IPA, every marketing effort flows in, and your perfect marketing message comes out the other side.
As mentioned, the IPA Marketing Approach takes some initial work, but then you have a system in place that effortlessly creates sales-generating the content, over and over again!
What's Wrong with My Way of Marketing My Business
Most businesses find themselves in some or all of the following positions:
Trying to market a business without any buzz or excitement for their products or services
Stuck without any customer attracting methods except discounting or giving things away
Your company, skills, and expertise are reduced to just pricing when this happens. Using this approach eliminates all of the expertise, experience, and value you and your staff offer.
Small Business Marketing Help
If any of the above resonates, know that you're far from alone. Groupon is a service specifically for people suffering from the above afflictions, and Groupon's a publicly-traded company with an 800+ million dollar market cap!
If you're looking to promote your business and you feel like your only choice is to make less, or give things away, devalue your time, I'm so happy you're here!
By the way, never once, after decades in business, I have never given out a coupon; in fact, I've never lowered my prices across the board. Yes, I've been very gracious, giving many things away to people in real need, suffering, or other hardships. But, I don't know, nor would I ever give my products or services away for free!
Now, let's break down the IPA Marketing Approach
Identify - You, Your Products/Services, Customers
If you're rolling your eyes now, stop. Before working with a client, I'd never known a business that has all this thought out and implemented. What seems simple isn't. So, here's how you frame out your Identity:
Take the time to sit alone and answer each of the above in complete sentences. You might need assistance from your accountant, but getting that information is critical.
Save Time and Money Advertising Your Business
Think about this:
Isn't it financially reckless to spend money to acquire customers without knowing the one-time and lifetime values?
How could I spend money effectively if I don't know my customers and the people who offer me the most profitable business experience?
Am I just burning money if I am not hyper-targeting my ad budget directly towards potential customers with as little waste as possible?
Small Business Sales Process & Marketing
Does your sales process seamlessly move both your typical and ideal customers through the critical elements involved in a purchase decision:
Discovery
Understanding the benefits
Exchanged information
Satisfying the desires that initiated the shopping process
All of that encompasses your sales process, benefits, features, how it's sold, what misconceptions exist, and your Customer's emotional factors.
If you and every person that works for you had all of this engrained, do you think your business would be more profitable?
Positioning Your Business for Success
With the above information, you can position your business for success. When you have this strategic approach to your business, the 'position' is multifaceted; position refers to:
In front of your customers typical and idea
Your product and service to make it as appealing as possible
Your business is the only viable solution for all of your Customer's needs and wants
When you properly position your business, you NEVER search for customers; customers search for you! Remember, any marketing efforts are self-created with the framework in place, taking almost no time.
Appealing to Customers, the Easy Part
Yes, the appeal is easy once the work is done!
Listen, when you spend your ad dollars, you still want to track everything, test things, and ensure things are going as planned, but you don't find yourself scratching your head, wondering what to do next.
When this is done right, your product has a buzz; people will get excited. You may even hear people talk about the benefits of your product or service.
IPA Marketing Strategy - Example
I want to give you an example of a fictional business that everyone is familiar with and has experience with, so after giving it some thought, let's put a Pizza Parlor into the IPA Marketing Approach.
Now, if this Pizzeria opened using the traditional approach, they would run ads saying they have delicious pizza (every pizza ad says that) and run ads with coupons and free give-aways. There's no more challenging time for a business than when you first open, and with all the money spent opening the company, it's awful to be giving things away!
A Small Business Marketing Strategy that Works
Now, let's use the IPA Marketing Approach to open Trip's Pizzeria!
What's my sales process - we sell pizza via table service, counter orders, take-out, delivery, eat-in. We accept cash and all major credit cards, and we work with all popular delivery apps.
Typical Customer - someone in my area when they're hungry and enjoy pizza—the one-time value of this Customer $3.00, lifetime value of this Customer $4.50.
Ideal Customer - A family of four living in one of the four closest towns to my location. This family recognizes the difference between authentic pizza and a chain pizza restaurant. - One-time value of this Customer is $8.00, lifetime value of this Customer is $800.00.
Features - 100% semolina flour pies; all of our dough is made fresh each day, using imported yeast, and your pie is made to order, allowing total customization. We only use imported tomatoes from Napoli, grown in the shadow of Vesuvius, and our sauce is made each day, meticulously following a highly guarded secret recipe developed in Italy and handed down from one generation to another. All toppings used are fresh, never frozen.
Benefits: When you use the freshest ingredients, you experience pizza the way it was intended, and after just one bite, you discover why authentic pizza, pizza-like ours, is one of the most popular foods in the world.
Misconceptions - pizza crust that is not hand-tossed minutes before entering the oven can not hold and develop the exceptional flavors of semolina flour. Frozen tomatoes do not defrost evenly, meaning the full flavors and nuances that can not entirely exist on a frozen pizza. These are just two of the many factors that make our pizza so different from the frozen pizzas chain restaurants serve.
Now, of course, the above must be true, and if the pizza's not delicious at the end of the day, the business will struggle.
Putting Your Marketing Message Together
Using the above, your sales messages will flow, for example:
Trip's Pizzeria is not a pizza shop but a culinary experience designed to give you a literal taste of Italy's greatest export, the pizza.
Simply put, you can find a cheaper pizza, but you're not going to find a better-tasting pizza, I guarantee it!
If you want fast food and pizza, we can't help you. But, if you want the most delicious pizza you've ever tasted, we're your new favorite place!
In addition to getting hungry, I'm guessing you can start to see the power of taking the time to put the Identity framework together. I created this pizza parlor example in about 15-minutes. If there really were a Trip's Pizzeria, I'd delve deeper and refine and grow this 'identity' over time.
Let me ask you this if we were sitting at the above Pizzeria, assuming it existed, is it far-fetched to imagine people bringing their friends? We hear people at other tables talking about why the crust is so delicious, where the tomatoes are from, what their favorite toppings are. In other words, there would be a buzz in the restaurant!
Now, how do you move forward with this information?
Simple, build out your business's Identity Framework and start tailoring your messaging. Know that this messaging has to be consistent. My Pizzeria is not fast food; it's exceptional. I offer a hand-crafted culinary experience many have never experienced. This messaging is omnipresent in all my marketing inside the restaurant, from the menus, signage, pizza boxes, to every marketing message I spend money promoting my business.
Now, here are some links to creatively and effectively spend your marketing dollars to get the biggest bang for your buck!
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