As you are marketing your business, one of the most important things that you can do is to give your customers and prospects a reason for wanting to do business with you.  Marketers call this your unique selling proposition or USP.  The USP is the position that your company holds in the mind of your prospects.  This position will determine whether or not they decide to do business with you.

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The USP is not a tagline.  It is not just a different way of advertising.  In order to work for you, it has to convey the way you truly to do business.  If you use the USP to attract a customer to your business and they don’t get the experience that you talked about that will be the only time that you see them.  You can expect that they will never return to you...

As a small business, you obviously have to be aware of how much money you are spending on advertising. In addition to that, there is no guarantee that the capital that you spend will end in higher profits.  The traditional thinking with respect to spending on advertising tends to go according to this logic.

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1) Our company spends 100 and gets 30 prospects

2) Of those 30 prospects 10 become customers

3) Those 10 customers give us $5 in profit

4) Therefore, if we want to double our profit to $10, we need to spend twice as much (200) on advertising and promotion.

If you can get every customer to buy one or two times more per year than they would have done otherwise, you will have significantly increased your profits without having spent more money on advertising.

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One of the best ways to do that is to have a customer database of some kind.  There are a number of ways to build one and you should use every available avenue to reach your potential customer.  Some of your clients will like to get notifications by email some will like them in their social media streams, still others would like to receive SMS contact.  Regardless of how you do it, you need a way to communicate helpful information to those who have purchased or may be interested in purchasing from your business.

In the last lesson we discussed the advantage you gain in building a customer contact database or list.  We talked about the fact that to build and maintain a successful database that a company needed to capture, communicate and reward.  A company with a good contact database will be able to make sales even when they are low on money to spend on advertising.

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One of the best ways to start building that contact database if you don’t have one with lots of customers and prospects is to gain leverage from those who already have a list.  In other words, you will be building strategic alliances with other companies.  In other circles this kind of arrangement can be called a joint venture or an affiliate marketing relationship.

One of the things that small businesses need to have is a way to reach lots of people very quickly. Once you have grown your business to a certain level, it will be necessary to use media advertising.  However, media advertising does require that some very important thinking be done before it is fully used.

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One of the things that companies must do is to put in a very reliable, simple to understand tracking system.  This is because when you step up to media advertising, you will be spending a considerable amount more money than you spend on the web or with PR.  With a good tracking system, you will know where each of your new customers is coming from; you will also know how they came to decide on your company.  When you do this consistently, you will be able to know the return on your advertising investment.

One of the reasons that media advertising is so expensive is because it takes a lot of repetition in order to make an impact in people’s mind.  Therefore a television campaign can’t just run once, it needs to run several times.  The same thing is true for radio, billboards and newspapers.

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However, smaller companies typically don’t have a budget to spend money for branding .However, companies can have just as powerful an ally in community relations and PR.  When small companies are consistent about using media relations, they can easily position themselves to be experts in their niche or field.  This will create a very positive brand with those who make decisions in the media.

When you are direct marketing, your messaging is to one person instead of many.  Simply put, direct marketing is one on one messaging between the buyer and the seller.  Instead of waiting for the buyer to come to the seller, the direct marketer takes their message to the buyer to present an offer to them. 

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Direct marketing can be effective when it is done correctly and within a system that is being tracked carefully so that the owner knows where their results are coming from.   There are several forms of direct marketing used by business that are available to you.  The primary methods for direct marketing are:  1) direct mail and 2) telemarketing. 

The most important part of what you do online is to be everywhere that your prospect is.   This may sound elementary but it is true and it is also doable. 

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For instance, some of your customers may like to ‘hang around’ on social networks.  You want to make sure that you, at least have a presence there (we will discuss specific strategies later).  Some of your customers like to spend time on their mobile device.  Therefore, you will want to make sure that you have a presence in having a mobile website and mobile app.  Still others do most of their web activity by surfing the internet on their personal computer.  Therefore you will want to make sure that your website presence is inviting.

In most cases, having multiple corporate sites online makes sense: website, social media, and forums.   However one aspect of business that is going unnoticed is publication in books, e-books and trade publications.

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Businesses need to make themselves available in print, not just because it will increase awareness of their personal brand.  But also when they become available to solve problems that people are having they place themselves and their company in the position as being an expert.  And should the readers actually get the help they needed they will also further solidify their brand.

In our last lesson, we discussed making sure to take advantage of the opportunity to be published.   Now that Amazon Kindle has opened up the possibility for business owners to easily write and publish their own books, this is not a daunting task.

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That means that if business owners are willing to take the time to create some content in a book, then they can expand their customer base to those who download books from kindle.  They are very likely to reach a significant number of new prospects in that way as people are interested in finding solutions to things that confuse them. It is for that reason that businesses can and should think about how to incorporate a “how-to” part to their business...

In our last lesson, we discussed how to create an educational wing of your business.  The fact that you could teach your customers, your peers or even your competition makes for an ever expanding business model.  Additionally, what it also does is gives you a product to sell to everyone. Not everyone will want your products when they first see them.  Additionally, not everyone will be able to afford them.  When you have education for sale, you will be able to provide everyone with something to purchase from you.

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One of the best places to use your publications is to expand your professional network.  Having a book or information product is great.  Being able to use that product in the context of meeting more people who can refer you to others is even better.  That is why one of the things that we suggest you do is to build your professional network...