The Xplor View - October 2008 - (Page 14)

send me this document that looked like a university thesis, that was five or ten pages long and had all the correct terminology, but I thought ‘How can you make money, how can you grow your business using this?’ I suggest that in marketing you never copy what other people do; what we do is we emulate what other people do, so I creatively emulated some other people. There is a book out there called “The One Page Business Plan” and another book called “The One Page Proposal.” I thought, if you could have a one page business plan and a one page business proposal, why couldn’t we have a one page marketing plan. The plan will start off at the beginning, and at the bottom of your marketing plan will be a simple To Do List of what you are going to do over the next six months. So, the reason to have a marketing plan is it helps you know what you are focusing on and tells you what you are going to do for the next six months—that is my vision of a one page marketing plan for a small business owner. • How much of what they could spend with you do they spend with you? So, as much as you can; what’s the size of the business, what are their demographics, what market are they in, who are their clients? Include as many details as you can to describe your ideal client. The more you know about your best client—your ideal client—then the likelihood is you can start to build up your target market. Once you have established your target market, the next thing to think about—and this is the thing most people never do—is to think about strategy. When people say strategy, most people’s eyes glaze over. ‘I’m a small business owner; why do I need to think about strategy?’ Well, in my view, strategy answers the following question: what position do you want to own in your prospect’s mind? So, when a prospect thinks of you, what do you want them to think of? When the prospect thinks of Rod Sloane, what do I want them to think of? Now, they are not going to think about you in some sort of grandiose management speak way; they are going to think about you in a very normal, ordinary way. To give you an example of that, if I was to ask you “What is your favourite pub, your favourite restaurant, or your favourite coffee shop?” Maybe I should be saying to you, “If you could just describe to me your favourite restaurant, pub, or coffee shop, what sort of words would you use to describe them?” “Warm, relaxed, informal, and good service” Okay, I notice you did not use the words “best price.” You did not say “They are the cheapest or most effective.” In fact, you might say, “Yes, actually they are more expensive than other places, but I prefer to go there.” If it is a pub, you might reply “We may have to drive a bit further than our local but we like that place.” So, the words that we use to describe a pub, a restaurant, or a coffee shop are the words that our clients are going to use about us. Okay? “Oh, we like so and so because they’re friendly, they’re approachable. They get us out of difficulty. They use simple language. They don’t talk down to us.” Those are the sorts of words they are going to use. Now, if you have been in business for some time, I encourage you to survey your clients to find out what they are saying behind your back. Often the clients that like you will be saying very positive things behind your back, but probably not the most exciting things. If you are new into business, then you can decide what you would like people to say about you. Let me give you an example of what I do and what I would like people to say about me. “Rod Sloane offers no-nonsense marketing that’s practical.” That is basically what I think people probably say about me behind my back. Now, if I went around saying, “Oh, I offer no-nonsense marketing that’s practical to people” I think people would water that down to say, “Well, Rod offers stuff that sort of works.” Once you have your marketing strategy, the next step is to decide what I call your ‘core message’ or your marketing message. I think your core message needs to be one step further out, one step more extreme than what your marketing strategy is. So, if I think people say, “Rod offers no-nonsense marketing that is practical.” then my marketing, my core message has to be more extreme than that. The Key Components I think the first thing to start off with is to decide what is it you are trying to sell? Now, I don’t care whether it is technology or it is service; we are always trying to sell some sort of stuff—so what is the stuff you’re trying to sell? The next question you ask yourself is: what is your target market; who ideally do you want to sell to? Now, that might be a vertical market; you might work with, say law firms or cleaners or technology companies, or it might be a more geographic market. I am based in West London and I decided I’d like to deal with the MDs of printing businesses who are a ninety minutes commute from where I live in Ealing. Ideal clients for me are based in either West London or out probably as far as Maidenhead, down maybe as far as Guildford. For some of you, your target market might be the UK, it might be the world, but the more accurate you can be with your target market, the better. Also, if you think about your target market, what are these people like? If you are marketing digital print or services, then you will want your target market to be people who buy digital, and where speed is as important as quality. Do they have a pain that you can solve? Now, for some people that might be easy; for a lot that is a real hard scratching exercise—to write down your target market. So, the quick way, the cheating way, the Delia way so to say, is if you cannot think what your target market is: • I want you to think about your existing clients and I want you to write down a description of your best current client. • The size of business they are, the number of individuals they are, how much they spend with you; what do they spend it on? • What’s the name of the person you have contact with; what’s their name in the organisation as a business to business environment? • How did they start doing business with you? So, what was the sort of process, what was the journey that they went on after they began doing business with you? Was it a cold call, was it a referral, was it from your website, was it through speaking, or was it through an article? It can be in many ways. To receive a copy of the special report ‘How to write a marketing plan that wins new clients,’ visit www.RodSloane.com Rod Sloane Author ‘121 Marketing Ideas to Grow Your Business’ rod@rodsloane.com “Once you have established your target market, the next thing to think about—and this is the thing most people never do—is strategy.” 14 The VIEW Journal Xplor European Edition Issue 6 October 2008 http://www.RodSloane.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of The Xplor View - October 2008

The Xplor View -� October 2008 Contents TPE Master Class: Three Ways to Tame your Print-to-Mail Workflow Right Now Mission Impossible: Embracing Environmental Concerns TPE Master Class: Implementing a Lean Working Environment Improving Business Processes Yields Award-Winning Business Performance How Do� You Effectively Win New Business Writing a Marketing Plan to Win New Printing Clients How Buying Strategies Have Affected How the Industry Sells Let's Talk About Integrated Customer Communications Management:�Transpromo...It Takes a Village! Knowledge Management Part 3 XDU: Leading the Education Revolution Kodak plus Xplor equals XDU Around the World Xplor Europe News:�Short News Items for the Xplor UK�Programme and Europe News

The Xplor View - October 2008

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