Sales Marketing Advertising
For any small business, it is must to have quality marketing strategies and you must also implement new sales marketing strategies to expand your services. By creating an effective business sales strategy, you can enjoy more sales from your small business. Here in this section, you will find information on business sales marketing, sales marketing advertising tips and more.Does your sales pitch convey the idea that you want to put across to your customers or do you try to ‘push’ your product to your customers due to which most of them turn off? What you need to do is to design an effective sales pitch!
When I say that your pitch should be effective, I mean that it should be such that it answers your customers’ needs. What you
Research their needs: Before pitching your products to your customers, make sure that you talk to them first, either over phone or through emails to find out their needs and requirement. Once you have a good idea of what they require and what are their preferences, you can then customise your pitch to suit their specific requirements. Try to be as precise as possible. Make sure that you know about your competitors and their products well and what is it that makes your product superior to theirs.
Use layman’s language: Whenever you talk to your prospect either over phone or in person, try to keep your language as simple as possible. Your pitch should be straight and should be addressing their specific issues and not describing your product features. Try to explain technical things in layman language so that they develop a relationship of trust with you.
Sell benefits and not the product: The biggest mistake that most sales people commit is that they try to sell the product and its features and not their benefits. Whenever you approach your customers make sure that you stress more on the benefits that they can have by purchasing your product and not on your products features.
Don’t push or interrupt while they speak: This is also something which is very commonly followed by sales people. They try to ‘impose’ their products on their customers without listening to their problems and their specific needs. What you need to understand is that the customers today are not ignorant; if they want to buy something they would research on every competitor of yours to understand the pros and cons of their product. So you need to understand their requirements before pitching your products.
Talk as a friend or a well-wisher: While approaching your customer, sound like his well-wisher or a person through whom, he can have some advantage. The advantage could be in terms of convenience or in terms of cheaper facility.
Marketing Material: Magnet that pulls customers
Get your small business the material it requires to become a bran
What makes a small business surpass the heights of a long standing organisation? The right material used to market its products! The marketing material as it is referred to is important to set the small business inch towards the heights of the big organisations.
Marketing material
Marketing material includes those tools that can bring profit to a business. They bring in profit because they get the clients to know
about the business. These materials comprise the following:
Logo
The logo of a business can make or break relations. This may not be true for a big organisation that has already made its mark but the small businesses require to be very careful about what they pick up to represent the business. It is important to have a polished look; express what the business deals in through the logo. A tagline with the logo will add to the quality.
Website
The website is an important marketing material because one can reach out to a lot of people though it, but it is important that the website, one sets up, is made to get the customer. The business details and what the business has to offer, should be well expressed in the website. The design and layout of the website should be carefully set up to get the potential customers.
An added advantage of having a website is that one can have a blog and talk to customers about the business. If SEOs are set to work on the website, they can make the business get a lot of customers.
Brochures
A brochure can irrefutably be said to be a good marketing material. This is because the brochure can have in it more details and information about the business than the other marketing material. Having a brochure can make the business get the customers easily and effortlessly.
Elevator pitch
Elevator pitch is a very innovative form of marketing. It is speaking about one’s business to a client one meet, who he/she believes can add to one’s business.
One, while marketing about the business, should give the detail of the business clearly and credibly to make the target audience think about the business. If it works then one can get a good customer in a short time. Elevator pitch may not have a professional approach but it is effective, nonetheless and can get one’s business the required profit to take the business to anther level.
Be careful
It should be noted that these marketing materials may not prove their worth if one does not work on the marketing strategy well. The most common mistakes that people engaged in marketing make are:
· Preparing will not get one customers. One should execute what they prepare.
· Do not try and spend a lot on a thing that is not proven to bring in good results.
· Do not try to take to innovation to promote small business. Innovation is advised to be taken up by big businesses because even if it fails it temporarily mars their image.
· Do not overlook the requirement of the previous customers in the greed to acquire new customers. It is important that the requirements of the previous customers are met with. This will fetch more customers, effortlessly.
· It is important that one does not target a market that one cannot afford because that may get customers if the marketing is good but it cannot get long-term customers.
Marketing is an important step in business and small businesses can be at par with the big businesses with proper marketing. It is important that one does a proper research of how to go about marketing a business. Follow the tips above and you can have a flourishing small business in no time!
Tips to enhance Brand Visibility
Have your customers seen your productor have you made efforts to put your brand’s name and image before your customers eye every time they step out
Studies show that greater the brand visibility, the greater are the chances that your products get sold as the greater is the brand retention in the minds of the customers. For increasing the sales of your products, you need to put these before the people so that they gain inquisitiveness and eagerness to know more about them. “Keep the images in attracting and tempting colours to create excitement among your customers” mentions, Tarun Garg, Managing
Director, KonsultingIT
The following are a few tips, which will help you in making your brand visible before your prospects:-
1. Promotional festival gifts- In a place like India where there are many festivals celebrated throughout the year, you can take benefit of them to promote your business through gifts, cards, e-cards, mails, cakes, dry fruits, etc
2. Television Ads- In this most widely used means to make your product visible to your customers, you can develop an effective and an attractive ad to show your product features and benefits. You could also sponsor social welfare and awareness messages through ads to enhance viewer visibility, something which Aditya Birla Group’s Idea Cellular does by associating itself with forest conservation.
3. Newspaper, magazine and journals add- You can design your company’s logo on various print mediums, through an ad in newspaper, magazines and other print media, you can show what your product really looks like. Like in Television Ads, you could also associate your brand’s name and logo with different social welfare and awareness messages.
4. Viral Marketing- This means of marketing, wherein the more a person sees a company’s name, logo and other details the more he uses it, is adopted by many online companies. The more you use online sites like yahoo, YouTube, Google, etc the more it gets advertised and visible.
5. Sponsoring events- You could promote your brand through events, seminars and other functions. You could sponsor and host beauty contests the way Ponds and Femina do or sponsor and host award functions like CNBC, Filmfare and other brands do. If you don’t want to host a big event you could go with a regional or Zonal event something like sponsoring Miss. Delhi or
6. Joining groups and communities online- You could create a group on Yahoo and other mailing websites and send promotional messages to your friends during festivals or some event. You could also join online communities and send messages to your client and customers whenever there is something new happening in your company.
7. Company’s logo in your signatures- This is perhaps the most simple way of making your customers and other people see your brand. Put your brand’s name or logo on your signature and whenever you send a mail, your brand gets promoted. “We have kept our logo different with unique colour scheme and fonts so that it stays back in the minds of our clients”, says Tarun garg, Managing Director, KonsultingIT, an IT services company.
8. Hoardings, banners- You can also promote your brand through various billboards, hoardings, banners on the most posh and crowded streets of
9. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) - You can create brand visibility through original and informative content. If you are designing your site, stress on putting quality content and the right keywords. Create keywords that identify your site content.
10. Other Innovative means- Following are some innovative methods that you can try.
· Vehicles- Put your company’s name, logo or products, slogan on cars, buses, cabs, taxis, bikes, etc to promote them wherever they go.
· Canopy of Umbrella- You can promote your company’s name, logo, slogan, etc on the canopy of umbrella. You can either distribute these to businessmen and customers so that whenever and wherever they use it, your company or product gets visible.
· Online niche directories- There are certain online directories that provide contact details of a particular sector; you can promote your products here so that people of our industry visiting the site can see and know about your brand.
· On popular blogs- There are various people who contribute regular articles on their blogs due to which their blog attracts much traffic. If the blog is specific for your industry, put your ads on it. This would really help in promoting your brand.
· Latest Events- Due to events like Commonweal th Games, 2010, Cricket World Cup 2011, people from across the world are looking at
EiEight Plus-points of Newspaper Advertising
In tIn This age of digital marketing, can a newspaper be a good option to advertise your products?
In this age of digital marketing, can a newspaper be a good option to advertise your products?
With a tight budget and an expectation for a maximum out of your investment, you should give a thought to have your advert in the newspaper. The following eight points will help to gain an insight.
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2. Paid source of news- As a newspaper is a directly purchased source of news so the people tend to read it properly. And this gives a good chance to your ads too to get noticed by the readers.
3. Ability to reach ‘your’ audience- Reach your specific target audience through pages or columns that are targeted at them, take for example the sections of lifestyle, property, sports, comics, classified, etc are targeted at a certain audience. Doing this opens up countless opportunities to enhance your sales figure. If your company produces products for the rural market then advertising in a regional newspaper or in the ‘yellow pages’ is a good option. Mr. Achin Kansal, Co-founder, Adrunindia adds, “If I were to advertise in a newspaper regarding job opening in my company then, I would prefer the employment section of the newspaper and not the classified and if there is some advertisement for the business class then business newspaper like Economic Times, Financial express, and Mint, etc are the suitable options”.
4. Affordability- An advert in a newspaper is generally less costly than a radio or TV advertisement, but it hugely depends on the prestige that the newspaper carries, its circulation and the prominence it carries. The cost incurred to develop an effective ad in a newspaper is also minimal, often just a bit of research and know-how are the skills required for it.
5. Position your Ad- In the newspaper advertising, a person can request a special ad positioning, which means that you have the liberty of advertising your product on a particular page or a particular position under a section or column through which you can ensure a maximum visibility.
6. Retention- Unlike TV or radio, an advertisement in a newspaper does not have a limited exposure and the ads therein can be cut and stored for reference in future. If you are a company into real estate and have advertised for an upcoming residential apartment then a person, who is interested to buy a house in the future has the benefit of storing that ad for future reference and you get a reserved prospective customer.
7. Offers variety- A newspaper ad offers a variety of ad sizes. If you do not have enough budget and still you want to advertise your products then you can do it in a series of small ads in the newspaper.
8. Credibility- Over a time, newspapers create a vast pool of loyal readers. You as an advertiser of the product can target these loyal readers by advertising your product again and again on the same page/ section so that they gain an inquisitiveness to know more about your products and company.
9. Long life span- Certain newspaper and their supplements like magazines, etc are treasured by some organisations for a long time as a valuable reference and so are your company’s ads.
6 Steps to a Successful Marketing Plan
A qQuick snapshot to effective marketingA marketing plan serves as a roadmap for your marketing activities to reach your goals. To lay out an effective plan, begin with understanding the market and then plan out the tactics and strategies required to reach out to your ultimate customers. To put it succinctly, a marketing plan should cover the strategic four 4Ps- Product, Price, Place and Promotion.
Chalk out your marketing plan by following a simple step by step procedure as
under.
1. Identify Your Business Goal
The first step is to spell out your business goal in your marketing plan. Say if you are company producing shoes, then your business goal could be like, “producing 1000 units per month” or “diversifying you business to other sectors”. The objective should be clear, feasible and realistic and not exaggerated or overambitious.
2. Define Your Target Customer
The marketing plan should have a clear picture of the target customer. ‘Are they individuals or a company’. Lookout for some clearly identifiable and unique characteristic features. Do they fall into a certain age group, income group or geographic location? How do they buy your type of products or services? How often do they buy them? What features are they particular about?
3. Leverage Your Product’s USP
You do not market the product or the service, you market the benefits attached to them. Describe these here. Do mention the distinctive and unique features (USP) that your product has which sets it apart from your competitor’s product. While thinking of the USPs, you must keep in mind to market the strengths of your product and minimise your product’s weakness and at the same time develop strategies to take advantage of your competitor’s weakness.
4. Position Your Product
It is very important to understand as to how you want your product to be perceived or positioned in the minds of your end customers and your competitors. Base your positioning on the benefit your product provides, your customers and the positioning of your competitors. Ask yourself- Do you want to promote your product as one having the best quality with little reference to price or do you want to promote your product as the cheapest in the industry?
5. Decide Your Marketing Tactics
Here, you should describe the marketing tactics that you intend to use to reach out to your customers. Take for example advertising (print, radio, television), public relations, sales promotion, Classified ads, Contests, Public relations, Free samples and many others “The means of marketing should depend on the type of product that you are selling. Online or web marketing is best suited for us” says Mr. Vishal Bisht, CEO, Marksman Technologies, a company into E-learning and IT services.
6. Budget Your Marketing Expenditure
Here you need to mention the amount of money that you plan to invest in your marketing activities. You can break it into monthly, quarterly or annual basis. The amount that you have allocated for your marketing activities will depend on your type of business and the goals that you have set. Keep track of how effective a marketing tactic is as you need to get maximum returns on your investment.
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