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Summary: Your marketing supports your business. Stop marketing, and your business bleeds to death. it doesn't matter what marketing you do, just market.

Total words: 750

Category: Small Business

DDT: Do, Don't Think. Just market

Copyright (c) 2002 by Angela Booth

You see funny things when you're walking your dog. A couple of summers ago, late every Sunday afternoon, I'd be out walking my dog and I'd look up to see a sky-writer.

Puffs and streaks of white smoke against a blue sky spelled out name of a local telecommunications company. Every Sunday, for months.

I wondered what it was costing them, and whether they were getting results.

Guess not. That winter, telecom went bust in spectacular fashion.

Sky-writing's one way to market your business, but what's best way? The short answer is that there's no best way. Nothing works all time. Some things work sometimes. Many things work most times. Constant marketing works all time.

So here are my two rules of marketing:

* it doesn't matter what you do, just do some marketing every day; and

* watch your mental images, because your images control your emotions, and your emotions determine how much energy you'll put into marketing.

=> It doesn't matter how you market

That's a lie. It does matter. If your marketing efforts consist of expensive advertising and gimmicks like sky-writing, you'd better have deep pockets.

Ideally, you'll use a mix of paid and free (except for your time, which is in no way free) marketing tools.

I'm not going to give you a long list of marketing tools. You can use everything from sky-writing to sticking magnetic letters onto your car.

(Check out Marketing Diary in each week's issue of Creative Small Biz, to see what I'm doing --- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Creative_Small_Biz/ )

What's important is that you put major time into marketing each day. This is because results of your marketing take time to kick in.

Let's say that you start by sending out a couple of hundred direct mail letters each week. You combine that with making 30 telemarketing calls to businesses each day.

You're dogged about this. You don't think about it too much, you just go ahead and do it, because you want your business to be a success, and it is a business, it's not a hobby.

The answer to this question really hinges on another question: "Do you work for a boss or do you work for yourself?"

If you work for a boss answer must be a resounding NO! You see, you cannot possibly be paid what you are worth because your boss is being paid what you are worth. He or she then pays you at a discounted rate.

For example, say your hourly rate is $12.00. You do your job and when a profit is made, boss looks at business figures and realises that you are actually worth $25.00 per hour. The boss keeps $13.00 "over-ride" on your services.

That is only fair as boss is one putting up all money, taking all risks and accepting all responsibility for viability of business.

Going back to above example, if you were being paid $25.00 per hour you are unprofitable to your boss and it is pointless for him or her to retain your services. Put simply, they cannot make money from your efforts.

When it comes to occupation and employment, there are basically two types of people:

1 - those who are employees, and 2 - those who work for themselves.

Now, if you like comfort zone of a five day, nine to five job with no responsibility for viability of business, that's fine. But what if you don't?

It would seem that most people begin to question their employment and future prospects between ages of 35 to 45. In this ten year time zone, many people get "itchy feet." They feel like they want to experience something different. Some will move on to a better or more highly paid job, still working for a boss. But others want to get into a business of their own and be their own boss. They want to "call shots" - so to speak.

Sinking all your life savings into a business can be a very risky move. Just think - a large percentage of any savings you might have accumulated, plus any redundancy payout (if you are that fortunate) from your former employment, accrued annual leave entitlements plus a visit to your (friendly?) bank manager.

Before purchasing or developing your own business you had better be certain of one thing. Is it a winner? Have you done your due diligence research?

Sadly, many people attempt to start a venture of their own, usually based on a hobby or interest of some sort. Often these businesses fail miserably. A large percentage of businesses fail within first two years. This seems to be critical time. If you can get past first two years then next critical time is at five year time period. After that, most businesses will survive.

The three things critical to any business are: