Do Business Owners Have Marketing Plans?

What a compelling question. Do business owners have marketing plans? Written documents, even if they are one or two pages, anything, something, notes on a napkin. Well friends, the answers is....NO! I had the pleasure of being in front of 15 business owners. These are entrepreneurs. These are people who have successful businesses. Some of them are multi million dollar businesses and when I asked them to raise their hands, if they had a written marketing plan of some sort, NOT ONE HAND!

I had my suspicions, but I thought a couple would have something. WOW! How can you possible expect to grow your business without a plan? Come on people! Haven't you been listening? Haven't you been reading? You need a plan!

Ok, so no one has a plan. How do we get a plan? First, you have to decide what your goals are and then what tactics are required to achieve your goals. A list of marketing tactics is the start of a plan. Each tactic will lead to other questions like...when do we implement this? How much will we invest in this tactic? What are our expected results? What action items need to be done and by who and by when to get this tactic up and running? Before you know it, you should have 4 to 6 tactics with all the details outlined. Guess what, you now have a marketing plan. Get to it will you, it is embarassing.

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GM - Who's Fault is It?

I don't often blog about larger companies. But I think there is a lesson here that needs to be mentioned. We all know about GM, it is in every paper, on every station, on every radio. But what happened? How does this company go from mega-behemoth to the content of jokes and ridicule.

I was watching CNN last night and they interviewed one of the workers who was so upset at all the people who's fault it was the company was in bankruptcy. Here is who she identified.

• The American car buying public for not purchasing GM cars
• The American government for not acting quick enough to bail them out sooner
• The American media for not supporting the company while they were in trouble

WOW! Talk about someone who missed the boat. If this is any insight into the way our citizens think about business we are in big trouble. Lady, I think you might have missed a couple of people who have blame in this situation. Let's start with just the obvious ones.

• How about the leadership team for GM, like the Board, President, VPs and Managers who continued to make outdated cars of sub standard quality, who ignored the trends to buy more fuel efficient vehicles, more interesting vehicles?
• What about the employees who fondly referred to GM as "Generous Motors" for their lucrative compensation packages and union deals. Deals that definitely contributed to the financial issues at the automaker?
• How about the stockholders, the actual owners of the company who never challenged the leadership team and the board of directors to push the company?

In fact, I will take this one step further. The customers DID send a message. The American care buying public DID try to help GM. By not buying GM, buy purchasing foreign cars they sent a message loud and clear. WE WANT SOMETHING DIFFERENT!

Unfortunately, no one heard the message, or worse...and more likely...they ignored it. Entrepreneurs, don't make the same mistake. Listen to your customers!

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Experience Mapping

Experience mapping is a term I learned from a Disney workshop a few years ago. In short, it provides a framework for drilling down to the smallest aspect of your customer experience and working to improve it, even to the point of being able to deliver a little WOW! in the experience.

Our team works on this almost every single day and it has impacted different aspects of our business including, our referral program, our client kick off meetings, our responsiveness and even our new office all provide little WOW!s for our clients.

If you have practice experience mapping, let me know...comment here or if you want to learn a little more about this, let me know via email at mike@square2marketing.com. If you agree, we can share your story here for others to benefit from it.

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Marketing Blunder

I know its been a while since I blogged, but now that our move is over (more on that tomorrow), I want to get back in the habit of blogging on a regular basis. So let me tell you a story of a marketing blunder that will teach us all a valuable lesson.

My home is on a 1/2 acre lot with a nice yard and a fair amount of grass. I love having a plush green lawn and am constantly talking about how to keep it cut, weed free, and looking great. I have a guy, who comes weekly to cut the grass and he is fine...but nothing special. I am sure many of you can relate.

So the other day, I get a postcard in the mail. It was creative and it caught my eye. It has a couple of small pebbles in a clear plastic bag...and the postcard was in the bag. Since I appreciated the marketing and I am not thrilled with my current lawn guy, I called up Madden Lawn Service.

The owner was nice enough and I agreed to let him come out and look at my lawn, give me an estimate and chat about a couple of other services I needed. Sounds great right...well here is where we ran into trouble. After seeing my lawn, the owner told me..."your lawn is really nice but I don't think I have anyone to take care of it, the way it deserves. I am already over extended and the only guy I have to send your way, probably wouldn't do a good enough job for you."

WOW! Do you believe that? An honest guy! But a guy who spent money on marketing in an area he can't cover. This is why, we ALWAYS tell our clients...strategy before tactics. It is imperative to think through your marketing plan, before you start spending money getting people to call you, only to have to tell them...sorry, we can't really handle your work.

Think about it before you start marketing.

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Recognize Strong Marketing

Yesterday I noticed a new marketing campaign for a large company that we have all heard of before...Kodak. The TV ad wasn't particularly cool, but it DID practice Reality Marketing. How might you ask? Well, it poked at a pain we all have.

When was the last time you had to buy ink jet cartridges for your printer? Did they cost $25, $30, or even $60? Yes, they did. I know because I bought the big package with all the colors and black a few days ago. WOW! That is really expensive.

Check out Kodak's new marketing campaign for their new line of printers. Here is a link for you to see it on their home page.

I know this is a major pain for me and I would like to see a solution for how I can save money on printer cartridges. If it bothers you, check out their printers and support a fellow Reality Marketing fan.

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A great resource for fellow business owners

Michael Michalowicz has a new fan. As one entrepreneur to another, this guy rocks. He launched a website with a fantastic blog. Check it out...yours truly is quoted in his 163 Tips for Entrepreneurs blog posting. I got 21. Not to bad, huh? Click here to see my post on his site.

His site provides the Toilet Paper Entrepreneur's “get real”, actionable approach to business with a swift kick in the pants attitude. Check out this video, great stuff! Love the contributions from his audience. Click here to see it.

I know the blog has been neglected over the past few weeks...but we have been super busy here at Square 2 Marketing. I will do my best to get back to the blog over the coming weeks.

Square 2 Marketing - We Help Entrepreneurs!

Being Remarkable - It's The Only Thing

I really appreciate the comments on the last post. It's great to hear from all of you. In addition to the comments, I did get a few emails, so I know you are out there. Today, I read a very interesting story in the Philly Inquirer.

It was about a kid who started a fresh cookie delivery business for colleges. Now that is remarkable. Even more remarkable is that he didn't open a store, but built a bus to make the cookies and make the business even more mobile.

It's that kind of thinking that makes entrepreneurs really interesting people. Push your business to the EDGE. Make it SO remarkable that people HAVE to talk about it. A bakery on wheels, that delivers hot cookies to hungry college kids at all hours of the day or night. WOW!

If your business isn't as WOW! as this business. You have work to do. The good news is...our company happens to be really good at making businesses remarkable. It is usually the business owner who can't get their head around the changes. If you want to see how I can make your business remarkable, try me. Comment here, or email me directly. Challenge me!

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Anyone Out There?

I don't mind blogging for the sake of blogging and I know people read the blog because its one of the most popular pages on our website, but for my sake...how about a comment every now and then?

Is anyone out there? Hello? McFly? Drop me a note from time to time to let me know you like it, hate it, don't care about it...something? Come on!

Here is something for you. If you are out of work or know someone out of work, this might just be interesting to you. Did you know you can apply all the Reality Marketing principles to your job search and to you. After all, a job search IS a marketing exercise with the product being...you!

• Contacting the hiring manager before the interview. Ask them questions.
• Find out what their pains are and what challenges this role is designed to cure for the company.
• Figure out how you, uniquely satisfy their pains.
• Create "remarkables" for you. What makes you special?
• What are you prepared to do if you get the job? Go into the interview with ideas.
• Actually do some work, create something, write something, do one of the tasks associated with the job and send it to the hiring manager, then follow up for feedback.

I interview and hire people at our company all the time. If anyone ever did something like this...they would get the job...hands down.

Now come on! Give me a comment, let me know what you think. Even if its to say hi, we like the blog, keep it up.

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Progress on the idea

Today, I wanted to keep all the blog readers updated on the progress of our small business owner who visited me last week. We worked with him to create two very important spreadsheets.

The first is a projection of business activity and the related revenue associated with it. This model (another word for an interactive spreadsheet) can be used to see what the average sale per person will be, how many people need to come into the store and what monthly revenue would look like when the store opens. I was a little surprised to see the relatively high volume of people required to deliver about $200,000 for the year.

The second was a marketing budget that outlined all recommended marketing programs to launch and sustain the store through the summer and into the fall. The budget also broke each of the program expenses out on a monthly basis. The result was an estimated investment of $27,000, when the owner and I had previously discussed $10,000. Now at least the owners can plan their monthly costs.

Stay tuned for more.

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An Idea...Is Not A Business

I had a visit from a prospective client on Friday. He is opening a local retail business and wanted to chat about marketing that business. I was happy to help, unfortunately the conversation quickly became around to his lack of planning, instead of how to market the business.

While this is typical of new businesses, I was disappointed and concerned to see this nice guy in this situation. He hadn't created a budget for the business. He hadn't created a marketing plan. He didn't have any idea how much money he needed to launch the business and had no idea of revenue projections or customer counts for the first year.

Needless to say, I was hesitant to move into marketing tactics without these key elements of a business plan in place. I counseled him to think about these issues and then we should meet again to review their plans.

What can we learn from this experience? Don't start a business and don't invest ANY money without a good solid financial plan, revenue projections, cost budget, return on investment analysis and solid business plan. It works as a guide to keep the business focused. Without it, most businesses will fail.

I will continue to help this guy with his new business and keep all of you posted on the trials and tribulations, it's a great learning lesson.

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