Kinda harsh I know.

I have heard this many times from friends and other small business owners. “My Marketing sucks but…”. But what?

The problem I have with that statement is that I have a firm belief we are all marketing businesses at the core. Regardless of what you sell, or service you deliver. You could be an accountant, technician, or caterer…Doesn’t matter in my book, we are all marketing businesses.

So what happens when you declare and then dismiss that your marketing sucks? In my book, you are making a very bold statement to yourself and your employees that you don’t take the growth of your business seriously. You may have a desire to grow your business, but your actions aren’t congruent with your marketing efforts.

When I hear this statement, what I now hear is that the business owner doesn’t have time. That they are too busy. There are so many tactics that they don’t know where to start. They start one tactic after another without a strategy behind their efforts.

This has never been more true with Internet marketing, Social Media, and all the other bright and shiny marketing tactics available to us. If you are stuck, and maybe even paralyzed in the “marketing sucks” mode, here are three (3) tips that might just get you out of it.

1) Find The Path – Take 30 minutes and write down all of the paths your current customers took to find you. This will do two things. One, it will help you identify those efforts that don’t suck and are working now. Two, it will help you focus on the 20% of your effort that is getting you 80% of your results. If you are a new business, this might not take you very long but it is still worth the exercise.

2) Create A Simple One Month Plan – While I do recommend you create a complete marketing plan, one good way to jump start your efforts is a simple one month plan. Chart out one thing you can do consistently in the next month to market your business. An example is make a habit to write in your blog and promote it once a week. Start getting some momentum and build on it. You will be surprised how fast this can build and kick you out of the “my marketing sucks” mode. Remember, what you focus on expands…

3) Create Habits – Make marketing a habit. Build on the success in your first month, and make it a habit in your marketing system. Focus on adding one habit at a time. In one year, you will have a system. Many of the smaller tactics when done consistently will surprise you. One blog post, one sales letter, one newsletter at a time. Break it into small manageable pieces, and you will see results.

Us Entrepreneurs have a tough time sometimes with the marathon. Remember that the only way to eat an Elephant is one piece at a time…

Have a successful week!

~Matt

From a marketing perspective, how do you know if it is broken or not without split testing, otherwise knows as A/B testing.

As a small business owner you need every marketing dollar to pack the biggest punch possible. You don’t have the marketing muscle and budget of a Fortune 500 company. As such, your marketing system must have a split testing company to verify you are maximizing your results and ROI on every dollar spent.

The obvious goal is you put $1 of marketing in and you get $2 out. Otherwise known as 100% ROI.

Do you even know what the ROI is on your existing marketing? Do you track your performance?

If not, you aren’t being a good steward of your marketing dollars. Worst yet, you may have a piece of marketing that is pulling and converting leads into paying customers but it hasn’t reached it’s full potential. Imagine if you increase the performance of each piece of marketing by 10-20%. Imagine what that would do for your revenues and profits.

Bring in A/B split testing…

Split testing has been used by sophisticated marketers for a long time. The thought is that you take your first piece of marketing and establish a “control”. The key part of establishing the control is gathering the data and the metrics in the first place. If you aren’t doing this right now, build that into your system now.

If it is direct mail you are using, start using a unique 1-800 number, or on your marketing piece specify an extension. Make sure your office tracks these individually so you have a better understanding as to what ad, direct mail piece, or online advertisement created the lead in the first place.

Now that we have our control, it’s time to tweak our original offer. If this is a display ad or direct mail piece, my advice is to start with the headline. If you aren’t grabbing their attention, they won’t read any further. The 2nd item I usually focus on is the offer itself, and the call to action.

It is shocking how many marketing pieces I see from small business owners don’t even have an offer, let alone a strong call to action.

The key here is to change one item at a time, and start comparing your results to the control. When you find a new winner, THAT is now your new control. Your marketing system should be a process of continuous improvement. If you are happy with the results in one marketing campaign, advertisement, or promotion move onto the next one and leverage A/B testing to maximize profits there as well.

The key here is to integrate A/B testing as part of your marketing system, not a one time event that you do once a year.

To Your Prosperity,