Welcome to Step One of the One Grand Smart Marketing Plan, where we'll learn how to market your business, group or event from start-up to success for $1,000 or less.
And most of the strategies can be accomplished for $0 - like this one:
Everyone's fingerprints are unique. Your enterprise will be just as unique because it will have your fingerprints all over it. It'll reflect your style, your values, your talents and your desires.
It'll be different if it's a brick-and-mortar concept or a Web-based enterprise. You will have different considerations if you sell products or if you offer services.
So, the way you distill your enterprise down to its strongest and best form will vary.
But I can give you three proven tips:
1. Make sure you have an opportunity, not just an idea
To quote Tim Berry, the founder of Palo Alto Software:
"Ideas are a dime a dozen. Opportunities are much more important. An opportunity is an idea that's passed the test of planning. It has potential. You can implement it. An opportunity has some of the following elements:
- Industry and market potential: look at market structure, industry structure, growth rate, margins, costs, etc.
- Economics: capital requirements, fixed costs, cash flow, return on investment, risk.
- Competitive advantage: degree of control, barriers to entry, availability of sufficient resources.
- Management team: people who know the industry, the market, the operations, the logistics, the road to market.
The business planning process is about filtering the opportunities - a precious few, requiring focus, and planning - from the ideas."
2. REDUCE your opportunity
Did you notice Tim Berry's use of the word "focus" in that last sentence? It's crucial.
All through my career in marketing, I've encountered clients who wanted to be all things to all people. Don't make that fatal mistake. It never works.
Today, probably the busiest word in marketing is "niche." For a great reason: the surest road to success is a narrow one.
Be a specialist. Pick a strong but focused category. Then narrow it.
As Rutgers business professor Richard Mammone put it: "A successful entrepreneur must be a reductionist."
3. DOMINATE the niche
Your aim is to become the very symbol of that narrow category - to own that audience.
What we will do in the coming phases of this marketing plan is to establish you (or your company) as the Supreme High Potentate and Guru of that niche. THE name. The go-to guy or gal.
AKA: the BRAND
So, look at your business concept with a dispassionate eye and ask yourself truthfully: Is this a niche I can dominate?
If it's not, go back to the planning stage. If it is, let's start building your brand!
Check back on Wednesday when I'll put what we've discussed here into practice on my own new business - and let you watch over my shoulder as I operate on myself!
Further Study:
Check out Tim Berry's good advice on business planning here.
Read more from Richard Mammone at BusinessWeek.
The Small Business Administration has lots of helpful free information on starting a venture.
And there's more at Entrepreneur's website.
Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites
