Starting A Business and the Importance of a Marketing Checklist for Increasing Sales
June 29, 2009 Leave a comment
The focus of this article is marketing as it relates to starting a business and it serves us well to start at the conceptual planning stage of a business because marketing is often an after thought that occurs after a business opens. This article argues that the right time to start thinking about marketing is much earlier during the research and planning stages prior to the actual opening of the business. Specifically, this should occur during the time that you spend gathering your facts and during the same time that you are performing a very detailed and strategic analysis of your market and the region within which you plan to open your business. Of course there are a variety of things that you the astute business owner should be analyzing and thinking about and this article serves to reinforce that one of the most under estimated and therefore obviously difficult subjects that business owners neglect is marketing.
Marketing is a subject that most business owners under estimate and conveniently dismiss into the background. It is under estimated and ignored because it is a squishy subject that requires forward thinking and so rather than think now it is more convenient to dismiss and do later. It is a subject that requires more aptitude and acumen than the relatively simple act of selling. Of course, some might argue that selling is hard, but really any person can sell with varying degrees of success. The real question that has to do with selling is how effective you are in the moment during your selling engagement. By contrast, marketing is harder because it requires much more thought because you’re thinking beyond the moment. Marketing requires insight and forward thinking on a scale that eclipses business functions such as operations or the act of selling. Marketing requires you to think ahead and apply the skills of conceptual penetration or observation so that you can tap into hidden opportunities.
Operations and the management of line staff is relatively simple by comparison though people spend an enormous amount of time on these functions when compared to marketing. Of course they are very important functions, though again by contrast to marketing, they are hardly difficult subjects as most business owners make them out to be and when they speak of the difficulties of operations or managerial challenges relative to marketing, they really are not doing themselves justice. They don’t know what they don’t know. By contrast, most would prefer to deal with any other business function but marketing because other functions are more obvious (less conceptual) and so easier to deal with.
A lot goes into opening your very first business. Much time and effort should be spent researching your project prior to turning on the open sign on your front door particularly if you’re opening your very first business from ground zero. Certainly buying an existing business has challenges, but there is no comparison to opening a brand new business. When you open your very first (not second or third) business you’re starting with nothing and to be successful you have to create and capture a market for a business where none of that existed before. Compared to purchasing an existing business that has been functioning, your very first business will have no customer database from which to cull opportunities and so you have to develop those relationships from scratch.
In the good times of the past several years one could pick a stock and it was virtually guaranteed to go up. A monkey could arbitrarily pick a few stocks from a list and the odds were in the monkey’s favor to make a profit. You could literally hire a monkey as your stock broker and probably do quite well. By contrast, in today’s economy, that is not quite true. If you open your very first business in today’s economy, then you had better be prepared to work hard and find that customer because he or she is not coming to you and is certainly not motivated to rush. Alternatively, you can wait until the next up cycle though even then you should still plan. Or, you can do your marketing homework today and make strategic and tactical decisions to ensure that you give yourself the best bet to succeed. Be prepared to think about marketing.
The moments prior to opening a business should be spent thoroughly planning. The more planning, research and effort you put into this moment, the better off you will be the moment you open. One of the things that must be well understood and planned is your Project Plan or your Pro Forma. You will need to itemize out all of the various things that will go into opening your business. Being thorough in the checklist is extremely important and so is being accurate. The Project Plan is the chart by which you will navigate the successful execution of your start up. It is the reference document that not only you will use, but also your various other business partners. Certainly you will refer to it probably more frequently than your Business Plan. The Project Plan (or Pro Forma) is the document that will keep you honest and on track. It is crucial to keep it accurate and to refer to it often to benchmark your progress. This document will serve as your central repository of items and costs to kick off your start up and so if you want your venture to have some chance, then start with putting this document together as thoroughly as you possibly can. The document might contain such things as construction, tenant improvement, permits, inspection fees, attorney fees, liquor license, inventory, office furniture or working capital.
One of the categories that should be on this plan is a marketing budget. That category should contain several line items and the most obvious example is signage. It is precisely this category that is not planned out well and is therefore the thesis of this article. It is a topic that is not too difficult to understand in meaning, but certainly is a topic that is hard to understand in its implication towards business consequence, impact and growth. This article explains why you need to think of marketing up front and well before you open your doors.
Speaking relatively, operations deals with objects that are much easier to identify, explain and measure. Because it is measurable, you can do things to continually improve it by refinement. For example, equipment output can be measured and once determined that output is in need of improvement, then the equipment can be improved or replaced with something more efficient. The business process workflow that is executed by a department to get today’s business job done can be measured, then analyzed and ultimately improved through a combination of functional changes or software changes.
But what about the subject of marketing? Can you identify its attributes? Can you explain it? What about measure it? Be prepared to ask yourself these questions and to throw out all the rules. Simply put you cannot easily measure the subject of marketing.
Let’s first draw a distinction between the subject of selling versus the subject of marketing. The role and focus of marketing is to bring motivated customers to your sales people. By contrast, the role and focus of sales is to close the deal and not chase the deal. If your marketing is doing its job, then your sales effort becomes more efficient because it is easier to sales close motivated customers. However, in reality, both are not done well. Sales is always complaining that the marketing department is not bringing in quality leads and marketing is always complaining that the sales department is squandering the opportunities that marketing brings.
Once a lead is brought to sales ultimately sooner or later one thing is going to happen. The lead will be won or lost. That is something that you can measure your sales force against. But, by contrast, how do you measure marketing? The objects that define marketing, and therefore the market, are competitors and customers. Operations, equipment or selling is fixed and so you can measure and improve the outcome. But, marketing is dynamic and ever changing. Your competitors are never standing still. They change and evolve all the time. Your customers are never standing still. They too change and evolve all the time. Trends come and go as do customer tastes. What is more is that they are fickle. Give a customer a reason to change and they will drop doing business with you and go to your competitor. They don’t have to inform you or tell you that they are leaving. What can add to the complexity are regional differences. Or worse, big game changers like the economy which can completely change the market psychology. For example, customers changing their view of credit and borrowing. Or pulling back on what is perceived to be nonessential luxury goods that can be delayed or deleted. In other words, competitors and customers are not easily predictable. Therefore, marketing is a hard subject precisely because it is a moving and squishy target.
It is precisely because of this reason that you should begin to form your assessment of your competitors and customers during the research and planning stages of your business. Don’t ignore it and instead actively think and plan for it. Look to see what your competitors are doing or not doing. Think about and define your customers and in doing so also begin to define your own brand identity. Do so early while you have time available to you in the planning stages of your business. Evolve your marketing plan as you proceed. Probe your competitors for weaknesses. Think about how you can separate and differentiate your brand identity so that you can make yourself more visible and attractive to your potential customers. When thinking about your customers you should be concentrating on the kinds of messages that you want them to see. Do this job right and you will start your venture off on the right foot. That means you should do your market planning early during your research stages and you should include it within your Project Plan. This is an important step because you need to ensure that you have set aside an accurate amount of budget for purchasing your marketing needs. That way you send out well thought brand identity messages to the public during grand opening day.
As a suggestion, at Signs Now Mill Creek we have a Resource Center in the lobby that is free for your use so that you can plan more efficiently and effectively. Come in and spend 20 or 30 minutes going through the Resource Center on your own so that you have things to think about. Feel free to ask for additional ideas from our onsite experts who are there to help guide you.
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