Small business marketing is not like taking a family vacation.

Did anybody take a family vacation this summer? Do you have children of your own, or do you remember what it was like when you were a kid taking a trip somewhere?

I can still remember the family vacations as a youngster growing up. Our famous treks across America in the family station wagon or the rented RV, when the station wagon became impractical. Now with my own family we’ve taken some similar but generally smaller scale trips.

It seems like one of the most asked questions from a child - “Are we there yet?” Or the other favorite is, “How much longer?” Even families that fly to their vacation destination I’m sure can relate.

What does this have to do with marketing?

I think sometimes (maybe many times) service business owners can become like that child in regards to their marketing. Are we there yet? How much longer?

You work on a web site, or a brochure, or go to networking events and send out letters. Then you wonder when you’re going to start getting results. When does the fun start? You know, the fun — when prospects start calling and others refer and send business your way.

And much like the family vacation, continual asking of are we there yet or how much longer often leads to unplanned stops or detours. You stop to work on other things because there is so much to do and it’s sometimes hard to see how this marketing is going to work.

Marketing shouldn’t start and stop.

Most people say they understand, even if their actions say differently, that marketing is an ongoing activity. Marketing isn’t like a vacation where you have a final destination and then you stop traveling because you’re there.

Unfortunately, many small businesses get frustrated or burned out when they work on their marketing. They want to know, “how long this is going to take”. Are we there yet?

And far too many times, they abandon their marketing “campaign” because it wasn’t getting them results and taking them where they wanted to go. But even worse than that, many times the “are we there yet” mentality didn’t even let them finish planning or put the idea into action.

Eventually they start planning, or maybe just take off on, another marketing trip. Once again, they start wondering how much longer it will be. Are we there yet?

Marketing needs to be an ongoing, lifelong kind of journey for your business. It takes regular and consistent effort to keep your pipeline full of good, high-quality leads and to keep moving your prospects forward until they become paying clients. That means continuously marketing even when you have clients you’re busy working with.

Keep Moving On.

The question “are we there yet?” needs to become “how do we keep going?” Yes, you do need to monitor results so you can assess how well things are working to get you where you want to go. When your measurements show you that something is working, keep doing it. In fact, do more of it.

But you can also keep striving to reach new heights as well. How can you continuously improve even the things that are working to get even better, more consistent results?

If you continue to ask the question, “Are we there yet?” you might just stall out on your journey. You see, eventually you’ll discover some marketing strategies that will start to attract attention and generate the response you’ve been hoping for. It might seem like in fact, “you are there” and so you put the marketing on cruise control.

How to keep moving forward.

When you find yourself asking this most asked question, consider any or all of the following ideas to keep you continuously moving forward.

Study up on marketing. There is no shortage of resources out there. You need to find them and begin consuming them. There are lots of books available on the subject. Look for the ones that offer proven, hands-on strategies and tactics. Remember, one or two good ideas now and then could make a significant difference to your business.

Form or join a “think tank” or mastermind group. Find a group of people who care just as much about your success as you do, just as you’ll care about their success. This is not a group of friends who will simply stroke your ego. Look for an honest group who will ask the tough questions and demand accountability from each other while supporting each others’ efforts.

Attend talks and workshops. If you go and participate fully, you’ll often get just as much from the other participants as you will from the session itself.

Get hands-on assistance. Working with a coach or marketing consultant who can help you focus, set goals, prioritize, create action plans and help hold you accountable could be an invaluable experience for your business.

Support from outside resources like this can help you shift from a mindset of “are we there yet” to a mindset of “how can we keep going.” They’ll help you continue to see possibilities beyond where things currently stand in your business.

(c) - Kevin Dervin, KPD Marketing

About the Author:

Kevin Dervin is focused on helping small businesses that are ready to grow, but struggle with how to consistently attract more clients. Visit http://www.proven-small-business-marketing-solutions.com for more great marketing information you can put to use in growing your business today.

Find Kevin’s Kansas City based KPD Marketing practice at http://www.ABCDgrowth.com and subscribe to his free ezine called ABCD Grow.

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Have you ever been to a car wash fundraiser and when you left you could not see out your streaky windows? Well, so much for quality and customer service. If you are running a car wash fundraiser, as your next nonprofit activity to raise the funds you need to grow your organization and perhaps pay for a very expensive the events that you are also planning then you will need to consider customer service as part of your car wash fundraiser.

If you have a youth group or a group of kids in a nonprofit organization a car wash fundraiser in the summertime, this of course is one way to raise the funds you need to propel your organization forward. If you care about customer service during your fundraising activities it makes sense that you will have a greeter or when the customer enters their car in line to get washed.

It also behooves you to have someone who goes in cleans the windows to their perfection after the car wash is completely done and the car is dried. I recommend that two adults go to clean the windows and one of them hold a donation can, which says donation right on it and is the size of a coffee can with a hole in the top.

If you do great customer service you will find more people putting more money into that can and that proves that you are giving good customer service and it also shows that you care about your nonprofit group and you want the person to come to the next fundraiser and that is a sure way of thanking them. Please consider this in 2006.

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In direct mail, the offer is the incentive or reward that you dangle in front of your prospects to motivate them to respond to your mailing. In business-to-consumer direct mail, for example, a magazine publisher will offer a yearly subscription to its magazine at 60% off the newsstand price. The discount is the offer. It motivates prospects to subscribe now and save 60%.

Offers are vital to the success of your business-to-business (B2B) direct mail campaigns as well. You need to motivate action. Without a clear, compelling offer, your response rates will be low and your mailing unprofitable. Here’s why you need an offer.

1. Your prospects are preoccupied
The people you are trying to reach are just as busy as you are. They avoid salespeople. They avoid things that waste their time. They use call display. You need a compelling offer because you only have a second or two to grab your prospect’s attention at work. Don’t expect that your company name, or your product name, or your top product feature, will grab their attention. Use a compelling offer instead.

2. Your prospects don’t care about you
That sounds kind of harsh, stated like that. But your prospects don’t care about your company, your extensive client list, your qualifications or your product features. That means your direct mail package has to meet your prospects where they are, not where you are. You have to start by saying “you” rather than saying “we.” Your offer, clearly communicated, shows prospects that you care about them.

3. Your prospects are skeptical
Tired of advertising hype? Your prospects are, too. They read all sales messages with their built-in hype detector in full operation. Your offer helps to overcome this skepticism by showing your prospects that you will reward them for taking action. You are not asking them to believe your sales pitch, just to respond to your offer, and to take the sales process to the next step.

4. Your prospects are self-interested
Your prospects are interested in themselves. They don’t want to hear about what your product or service does as much as what it will do for them. When you offer a free report that promises to save your prospects time, money or effort, or promises to make them more efficient and look good in front of their managers, you answer the “what’s in it for me?” question in a satisfactory way.

Alan is a business-to-business direct mail copywriter and lead generation consultant. As President of Sharpe Copy Inc. (http://www.sharpecopy.com), Alan specializes in helping businesses generate leads, close sales and retain customers, using cost-effective, compelling direct mail and email marketing. Alan also uses his direct mail advertising services to help charities raise funds and raise awareness of their causes, using fundraising letters.

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A marketing tag line is the one or two line descriptor that often comes after a product logo or company name. It is one of those things that looks simple but isn’t. Large companies pay advertising agencies a lot of money to develop tag lines for their companies and brands.

Many companies, however, do not have a large enough budget to hire an advertising agency. If you belong to one of these small budget businesses, do not despair. With some creativity and persistence, you can develop your own tag line.

First, decide what you want to communicate with your tag line.

If you have a positioning statement and/or unique selling proposition, write them down. Your tag line should reinforce them.

Ask yourself these questions.

1) Who are your customers?

2) What benefits do you give your customers?

3) What feelings do you want to evoke in your customers?

4) What action are you trying to generate from your
customers?

5) How are you different from your competition?

Try to get one or more of these across in your tag.

Second, prepare to brainstorm tag line options.

Gather tag lines from other companies and brands. Look in other categories besides your own and try to find tag lines from both large and small companies.

As you find tag lines, write them on index cards or individual slips of paper. You will be mixing and matching them and pairing them with unrelated items as you brainstorm.

Pay attention to the words used, how they are put together, and which of the above questions they address. By doing this, you are more likely to come up with a unique angle for your own tag line.

NOTE: You are looking at others’ tag lines only to spark ideas. Do not plagiarize. You must come up with your own, original tag line.

To find tag lines, look around. You may find them anywhere there are advertisements, packaging, or logos. Look in cupboards, around desks, in magazines, on TV/radio commercials, in print advertisements, and on Web sites.

To get you started, here are some tag lines I found in only a few minutes:

- hp - “invent”
- Craftsman - “Makes anything possible.”
- Kenmore - “Solid as Sears.”
- Hersheys.com - “The sweetest site on the Web.”
- WebSiteMarketingPlan.com - “Marketing Plan and Web Promotion Strategy.”
- Marketing Best Practices - “The Web’s leading small
business marketing newsletter.”
- Nike - “Just do it.”
- TLC - “Life Unscripted.”
- Surprise by Design TV show - “We’re not just changing
rooms. We’re changing lives.”
- Schnucks (Midwest Grocer) - “We make it easy.”
- Berry Burst Cheerios - “Naturally sweetened whole grain
oat cereal with real berries.”
- Altoids - “Curiously strong peppermints.”
- The Name Stormers - “Company and Brand Name Development.”

Find your competitors’ tag lines - look at them and strive to be better and different.

Gather together books to help you come up with different ways to phrase similar ideas. My favorite is “Word Menu.” Others likely to be of help are “The Describer’s Dictionary” and “Twenty-First Century Synonym and Antonym Finder.”

Third, brainstorm.

This works best if you can get a small group together, but can also be done solo. Set up a place with a lot of writing space - use dry erase boards, easels with big paper pads, note cards, etc.

Go through your props. Look up words or concepts in the books. Rearrange your various props so you can look at them in different ways. Write down *everything* that comes to mind and all the new ideas each phrase sparks. They do not have to make sense. You want a large number of ideas.

Fourth, consolidate your list.

After brainstorming, go through all of your ideas. Pull out those few you think have the best potential. Try to reduce longer ones to fewer words.

Fifth, choose the one best tag line.

You should be left with a short list of possibilities. To pick the single best tag line, get others’ opinions. If you have some funds budgeted, work with a market research firm to test the tag lines with your customers.

You can also conduct informal research. Set up a free survey at SurveyMonkey.com and encourage people to take the survey. If you have direct contact with customers, ask them what they think. Give them an incentive to help you, such as a discount or small freebie.

When you are done, you will have a tag line that will help your business thrive.

About the Author

Bobette Kyle draws upon 12+ years of Marketing/Executive experience, Marketing MBA, and online marketing research in her writing. Bobette is proprietor of the Web Site Marketing Plan Network http://www.WebSiteMarketingPlan.com and author of the marketing plan and Web promotion book “How Much For Just the Spider? Strategic Website Marketing For Small Budget Business, howmuchforspider.com/TOC.htm .

Copyright 2003, 2004 Bobette Kyle. All rights reserved.

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1. Personal
Unlike an advertisement in a trade publication, which can be read by anyone, your sales letter arrives at your prospect’s place of business as a piece of personal communication from your mind to his. Also, unlike any other medium, direct mail can be personalized (Dear Mr. Smith) and customized to each reader (”As an IT manager, you know that . . .”), showing your prospect that you know about him by name and understand his business in particular.

2. Cost effective
Advertising by its very nature is expensive. To reach a lot of people, you need to spend a lot of money. Direct mail, on the other hand, only targets the prospects you want to reach. Instead of pitching your product to a huge audience of potential buyers, you aim your sales message only at prospects most likely to buy.

3. Breaks through the clutter
Your ad can easily get lost among dozens of competing ads in a trade newspaper. Your sales message is also easily forgotten on radio or television unless you repeat it many times, which is expensive. But a simple letter, addressed to your prospect by name and arriving on her desk in the morning mail (which she must open), cuts through the media clutter and gets her attention.

4. Measurable ROI
Direct mail is one of the best mediums for measuring the return on your marketing dollar (or pound or yen). Simply code your business reply cards, and count how many return to you in the mail. Then calculate how many of those replies generate a sales meeting or a sale. Now you know immediately—and exactly—how effective your mailing has been. Direct mail numbers never lie.

5. Predictable
One advantage of knowing the success rates of your past mailings is that you can predict the success of future mailing. If you mail the same package with the same offer to a similar group of prospects at the same time of year, you can predict how many responses you will receive, and how many of those will translate into sales.

6. Can be improved through testing
Because you can measure your direct mail results, you can also test your mailings. Test one package against another, one list against another, one offer against another, and you’ll discover what works and what fails. That way you’ll spend your marketing dollars where they are most effective (without relying on guess work or hunches).

7. Immediate
General advertising builds brand awareness. Sales brochures inform. But a direct mail letter asks for action now. So if you need to generate sales leads, and don’t have time to wait for your ad to appear in “IT Buyers Quarterly,” send a direct mail letter and wait a week or so for a response.

Alan is a business-to-business direct mail copywriter and lead generation consultant. As President of Sharpe Copy, Inc. (http://www.sharpecopy.com), Alan specializes in helping businesses generate leads, close sales and retain customers, using cost-effective, compelling direct mail and email marketing. Alan also uses his direct mail advertising services to help charities raise funds and raise awareness of their causes, using fundraising letters.

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