When I was writing How to Give Your Business an Extreme Marketing Makeover, my focus was exclusively on exactly what the title implies: helping established businesses replace worn-out, ineffective marketing with marketing that would and could accomplish more in less time.
Throughout the months that followed publication I started to question: Why does a business have to wait until it makes mistakes before employing the principles of the extreme marketing makeover? Why can’t a startup business or a new business apply my simple but effective process for building a better marketing process?
After all, if a business plans and implements marketing properly from day one, knows where it’s likely to break down and what to do when it does, they could avoid the need for a major marketing makeover later on.
So where’s the problem. As I see it, owners of startups and new businesses have a couple of misconceptions about marketing that stands in the way of early overall success.
First, they seem to think about marketing primarily as it relates to the client attraction process. They’re concerned about how to get people in the door, to call, or go online, but that’s it. But marketing can and should do a whole lot more than just bring people in. It should speed and shorten the sales process and assure that each new client becomes a client for life.
Second, owners of startups and new businesses tend to see marketing as a separate standalone activity from everything else –– especially (and unfortunately) the sales process. But for best results, marketing and sales must march hand in hand, not be in competition with one another.
Third, they see each marketing element as separate and apart from the other marketing elements. For example, they see client attraction as a standalone marketing activity and follow-up after the sale as another individual marketing activity. But marketing is a process. It may begin with client attraction, but it should be working continually throughout your relationship with a client.
Now, in working with startups, I begin by having them focus on the sales process –– to create what I call “the ideal sales process.” I use a logical, orderly, analytical approach to create a structure that moves a prospect to become a client and ultimately a loyal client for life.
Owners of startups have two things in common. They’re short on time… and they’re short on money.
I solved both issues by creating a Marketing Master Class for Startups and New Businesses. In five weeks, we analyze strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
I work with them to design an ideal sales process that takes into account their primary points of constraint –– that is, those places in the sales process that seem to bog down the process, sidetrack it, or kill it altogether.
After that’s completed, we create a marketing strategy that directly supports the sales process. The goal is shortening the sales process and fewer moving parts. The final step in the Marketing Master Class is to create the implementation plan.
Will they get it totally perfect the first time? Probably not. But they will be a whole lot closer than if they had taken a more conventional “let’s try this or that” approach. For sure, they’d make fewer mistakes.
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Gil Effron has a Marketing Master Class for Startups and New Businesses starting in June. For additional information, go to https://www.10dayMarketingMakeover.com/startups. Or contact Gil at 347-920-3272.
