An effective marketing plan is one that gets results. To be effective, any local business marketing plan must be a part of a sound overall business plan that realistically focuses the user on specific goals. Those goals must all be established with a clear understanding that reaching each goal is a step in helping the user achieve the ultimate objective. The steps can’t be skipped. Skipping steps jeopardizes the effectiveness of the entire plan and ultimately your entire business viability.
For example: You have a cool widget to sell. You create a local advertising campaign and sign a contract with a local advertising provider for 6 months’ worth of advertising. The advertising contractor told you that their clients continuously get some rate of return on their advertising and you should expect the same. After two months you haven’t seen any return on investment. With no return on investment you realize that you won’t have enough capital to pay the advertising contractor and pay all your other bills at the same time. Now what do you do?
An Effective Marketing Plan is Part of a Business Plan
In our world today consumers are in control of the marketplace. New research indicates that those people and businesses that have a business plan are twice as likely to succeed as those that don’t. The Small Business Association (SBA) statistics show that 75% of all small businesses are gone before they turn 15. When you consider the statistics, it becomes more and more apparent that people and businesses generally don’t just fail, they fail to plan. Click the links to learn more about how a business plan can help you not only get found online, but how to make money selling products and services locally.
Harness the Power of the Internet
One of the most effective ways to market yourself and the products you sell and services you provide today is online. An online marketing plan is not only one that enables you to effectively market your product and services affordably, but also provides a platform to perform other tasks generally incorporated in successful business plans and required to ensure you reach your ultimate objective. Some of these tasks are related to product research, product pricing, customer service, public relations, affiliate and referral networking, video advertising, picture marketing, and social media marketing. All of these tasks can be performed online with little or no cost. More importantly, conducting these tasks online naturally improves your overall online visibility and helps consumers find you.
Consider This
The argument for local online marketing becomes more compelling when you consider this: consumers are in control of the marketplace and using the Internet to find the products and services they want when they want them. In fact the average consumer is subjected to more than 1000 commercial messages every day and physically unable to absorb all the information. As a result they ignore them. So unless you have the financial ability to produce enough messages and place them in front of enough people that want to see them, you are wasting your efforts.
Click on the link to learn more effective marketing plans.
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