It's Time To Start a New Conversation

With the book moving out to shelves at book stores in a neighborhood near you shortly, I thought I would transition the blog back to tips and techniques to help entrepreneurs stay current with some important marketing concepts. Since so many people found the book project interesting, I will continue to keep you updated on our progress over the next few months.

Since the summer is over and its back to school, lets start from the beginning and see if we can't review some marketing fundamentals too. This should get all of you thinking along the right lines and hopefully will motivate you to take a look at your marketing programs now for a strong finish to 2008.

The fall is a great time to start thinking about planning for 2009. Having a marketing plan is critical to ensure your marketing tactics drive to your overall strategic objectives. If you start working on both strategic goals and marketing to support those goals, its likely that you will be done in time to get a head start on 2009 and hit the ground running in January, instead of trying to catch up after the holidays.

We will talk about the plan for a couple of days, but here are the components to consider when working on a marketing plan.

1. Who do you want to sell to? Is that different than who you are selling to now?
2. What do those people look like? Yes, I said people and not companies, because people do business with people. You have to understand what the people who make the purchase decisions look like. If you have a consumer sale, then it is actually people. So, how old are they, were do they live, where do they work, are they male or female, what titles do they have? Actually create a profile of what these people look like.
3. What problems, challenges or "pains" do these people have?
4. How do you satisfy those pains?
5. What do you do that is different than you competition? Be hard on yourself. If your competition says the same thing, you have to work harder to find something that's different. Make sure you have at least 5 things that make you special.

These are the building blocks for what you will "say" to your prospects when you market. This is the essence of your messaging and differentiation strategy, two very important aspects of a good marketing plan. Make sure you actually write these down, putting pen to paper is critical.

Next steps in tomorrow's blog. If you want to learn more and work on your own, our book has much more detail. Visit www.realitymarketingrevolution.com to buy the book!

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