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7 Steps to Marketing Your Business

Marketing and advertising are somewhat interchangeable.  Let me define marketing as simple as I can.

Marketing is anything you do to get your business to your potential customers and convert them into customers.

Marketing covers everything from how you answer the phone, how your ads look, how your webpage is designed, how you dress…etc.  Another way of looking at marketing is:

Marketing is how your business is seen by an outsider and how it is experienced by a customer.

Marketing should be a preemptive strike to your target audience.  If you wait till you ‘need’ to market, it is already too late.  Marketing takes time and strategy is a big part of that time.

When talking about marketing, everyone has their own idea of trying to make it memorable.  Depending on who you talk to you can have 3 P’s or 6 P’s or 5 M’s or 3 M’s…they all boil down to how you approach marketing.  In my notes today, we have the 7 M’s of marketing from the Ziglar Legacy series of seminars.  These are meant to be done in this order since they are sequential.

7 Steps to  Marketing Success

Mindset

You must start with your own mindset. Your goal in marketing is to attract prospects and deliver to them consistently.  Ultimately, your mindset must start with your home base: your passion for your business.

Mindset is the attitude you have about how you engage your customers.  Your attitude about marketing should be exciting because it is your opportunity to let customer know how much you have to offer them.

Mission

You must have a unique selling proposition.  It should be built on passion.  It is the one thing you do better than anyone else.  Your customer should have an ‘aha’ moment when they see your mission because it should be engrained in everything you do.

Market

Your market is where you identify your target audience.  Here is where you identify your ideal customer.  What is it that you offer your ideal customer?  Not everyone wants to pay for phenomenal service, so your goal is to build yourself into the market where your customers are living.

Message

Your message should resonate with your ideal customer.  They should inherently think,
“That is exactly what I was thinking.” Your message must ‘sound like’ it came right out of their heads.  If you properly identify your market, then the message will come out pretty easily.

Your message in marketing is all about connecting to the potential customer so deeply, that they can only think of your company when they want to do business.

Methods

Many people start with methods.  You must cover everything before this statement first. Then, the methods will arise.  It is a pretty simple strategy: go where they are.

If you can be where your customer is and have the right message, the method will reveal itself.  You will find it easy because you will be ‘living’ in the world of your customer.

MAP

If you want to get somewhere, you need to have a MAP:  A Marketing Action Plan.  Develop a series of contacts with your customer.  Don’t just rely on one ad in one place, develop a wholistic campaign that takes your customer from the point of thinking about buying all the way through the buying processs and into referring their friends.

Initiation, Engagement and Follow up are all an important part of what you do.  Take care to develop a marketing plan of action that engages your customers through the whole buying process.  Then, and only then, will you stand out in market and be the logical choice for a buyer to choose.

I have so much more about marketing on my business page.  Feel free to check it out here and if you need help developing a marketing plan, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me.  I would love to help your business grow.

So, what does your marketing look like?  Do you have a marketing plan of action?

How important is marketing to your business?  Share with us on Youtube or GooglePlus?