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Small Business Strategy For Determined Entrepreneurs Who Want To Be Wealthy

By Jonathan McCulloch

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Published: 26Feb2012
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The key element of your small business strategy is effective marketing.

If I was able to give you only a single piece of advice it would be this: focus at least as much on your marketing as you do on your "real" business.

If you're serious about succeeding with your small business marketing, it's essential to have a plan and a strategy. The way most business owners tackle their small business marketing is shameful - they do it only when they can be bothered.

At best they have a vague notion of what they're up to; at worst they simply hope things will turn out well.

But, as I say often: marketing is the most important thing you can do in your business. Because no marketing means no clients; no clients means no income ... and no income means you rapidly have no business left!

In this artice I want to dispel the myths about your marketing. You must understand these ARE myths if you want to make your marketing profitable.

Small business strategy tip # 1: Marketing makes money

Most small businesses work with a marketing budget. That's mistake No. 1, and a very dangerous small business strategy. Yes, you read that correctly: I am saying you should be willing (and even eager) to invest an unlimited sum of money in your marketing.

Here's why: marketing is meant to make money. If it doesn't, you shouldn't be doing it. So, if it makes money, then from that it follows for every pound you put in, you get more than a pound back, right?

That's your return on investment. Just like the bank paying you interest

Small business strategy tip # 2: see your marketing system as a money machine!

So, imagine you have a marketing campaign or system you can "crank the handle" of, and know, to within a few percent, the Return on Investment you're going to make. Sounds good, yes? (it's eminently possible for your business, too).

My question is this, and it harks back to the point above: given you have a system reliably and consistently pumping out more money than you're putting into it, why on Earth would you want to limit your investment to an arbitrary budget? Obviously, you wouldn't.

No, you 'd run down to the bank and borrow as much as they 'd lend you to invest in it.

This is exactly how a good marketing system in a coherent small business strategy behaves.

Sounds to good to be true, but I swear to you by all that's good and holy, it is true.

Small business strategy tip # 3: Don't leap without looking

There is one caveat: never invest more than you can afford to lose. Sometimes -- it happens -- external events conspire to kill your campaign with no warning. That's why you limit your exposure per run of your campaign.

That's why you should set your "budget" as a percentage of turnover, but always be prepared to change the figures as circumstances dictate.

I have had supposedly intelligent business owners tell me they could not afford to re-run a successful marketing campaign that was making them money ... because their "budget" was all out.

Madness - a small business strategy doomed to failure.

Small business strategy tip # 4: make sure your marketing pays (here's how)

OK, so how do you know your marketing is making you money ?

Well, you track it and measure it. In fact you shouldn't be doing any marketing where you can't measure exactly how much it cost you and how much money it brought in. No exceptions.

And this is where the problems stem from for small businesses in their marketing: their marketing isn't measurable. They copy the big-business marketing and waste their money on useless "image" ads which don't bring in any business.

So the trick is to design your small business strategy so you can tell where every sale you make came from. By doing this, you know what's working and what's not working.

Jon McCulloch is perhaps Europe's top direct response marketer. Visit his website now and take just 3 of his 52 FREE small business promotion tips he's giving away now, and actually put them to work for you and you'll be amazed by the results. They've all produced substantially improved profits for small businesses like yours over the past two years.

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