Small Business Marketing Strategies

This is a great article I found here:  http://www.originalquill.com/blog/

Here’s a simple tip to increase your small business revenue:

Don’t think outside the box… make your own box.


Here’s where most people go wrong and make costly mistakes in their marketing: they find their most successful competition, copy their marketing strategies, and sit back and wait for success.
While there’s nothing wrong with copying successful strategies from your competition (in fact, it’s a topic I’ve blogged about in the past), by limiting yourself to that strategy, you’re limiting your potential for success.
Pioneers in any industry are the ones who make it big. Copycats can find success, but the ceiling is often lower than that of the people they have copied.

So what’s the solution? Create your own marketing paradigm within your industry.
What’s the easiest way to become a pioneer in your industry and set the gold standard for success? Look to the successes in other industries and apply them to your industry.
By looking to other industries to see what’s working and applying their successful marketing strategies to your small business, you’ll stand out from the crowd and uniquely position yourself in your market.
Example: About a year and a half ago I decided to put my house on the market. The housing market had already started it’s down-swing, but I felt that if I could market my home differently, I’d have a great chance to sell my house at a price I was happy with.
What did I do? I looked to the web for examples.
Most successful internet marketers use a lead generating product that’s free to collect leads, then a follow-up system to close a sale or make an upsell. I followed that example in real estate.
I set up a website offering a free e-book on selling homes in a down economy and collected leads. My follow-up system sent out a series of auto-responders that talked about selling strategies and promoted my house. To get even more local leads into the system, we called local real estate agents to tell them about the free e-book and our house.
Within a couple of weeks we had shown the house on a daily basis and had offers coming in.
By thinking outside the real estate paradigm, I was able to set a new precedent that generated more interest in my house than anyone else in the region was getting. It was easy to do (didn’t require unique, earth-shattering ideas) and it worked.
So how can you come up with an outside-the-box marketing strategy that will work for your small business? Here’s an action plan:

1. For the next five days, keep a sharp eye out for good marketing strategies that you encounter in your every-day life. Pay special attention to local commercials, sporting events (minor league baseball is a gold mine for unique marketing ideas), the internet, and local excursions to places like the coffee shop, breakfast cafe, and home improvement store.
2. Jot down the 10 best ideas you encounter (even if you don’t think you can use them for your business).
3. At the end of the 5 days, go through the best ideas and narrow the list to the top 3.
4. Talk to your mastermind group (or a group of trusted associates) and share your top 3 marketing ideas. Ask them to help you brainstorm how you can apply them to your business.
5. Take action! Once you have your ideas and a strategy for implementing them in your business, take action and put them to the test. Brainstorming is great, but what separates the cream of the crop from the rest is action… so make sure you implement those ideas!