Regardless of the size of your marketing budget, there are some business principles that should guide what you do, when you do it, and how you bring together the various elements of your business marketing.
The tendency for many new small businesses is simply to strike out and begin spreading the word about your product or service in a random hodge-podge manner, jumping from this to that depending upon where you think you'll get the most bang for your effort.
Your marketing "plan" has no real thinking behind it . . . you just figure the best you can do is to spread the word as quickly as you can to as many sources as you can and hope for the best.
Now that game plan certainly beats doing no marketing at all, but it lacks the leveraging power of a unified and comprehensive approach that ties all your different marketing efforts together and cements your brand in the minds of your customers.
How do you do that? You may have heard of the "Five Rs of Internet Marketing."
It's not a new or particularly innovative approach, but it's a framework that a solo business owner can use to make sure that each part of his marketing feeds upon the other parts or elements. When all the "Rs" are working together and complement each other, your marketing plan becomes much more than the sum of each separate part.
Here are the five Rs of Internet marketing:
1. Recognition. As you begin to market your business products and/or service, you should first pay attention to "recognition" which means you put your brand in front of the target audience in an effort to show them (for the first time) that your company produces a certain quality product or line of products that should be of interest to them.
At this point, it doesn't matter that the customer only has an overview of your company and what it does. It doesn't matter that he can't recite specifics about product offerings or advantages over competitors.
You just want the customers in your niche to begin to recognize your brand. You won't have history on your side. So take advantage of what you do have: the opportunity of using "newness," "the latest technology," or the curiosity factor of something like "amazing new product makes others obsolete."
Capitalize on the fact that customers are always looking for something better, or cheaper, or easier to use, or with added new features, etc.
Your customers may not be able to explain your product to someone else quite yet, but you want them to recognize that you are a new company and a name that they should keep in mind in their niche. When they are ready to buy, you want them to consider your brand.
2. Recount. Recount refers to telling your story over again in a more detailed and specific manner. After you have announced your company, products, and brand initially, you need to begin retelling your story, but this time being very detailed and specific. For Internet businesses, this step is usually accomplished through full details being presented at the web site including pictures, narrative, specifications, benefits, pricing, and the like.
You attempt to market your product by driving traffic to the source of your message - your home base - where the prospect can find all the details, testimonials, features, benefits, your latest offer, and the shopping cart and check-out system if he decides to make a purchase.
It will help to recount your message in a number of ways. Besides the full story on your company web site, it will pay to recount the message in:
- articles that you write and submit to online directories,
- press releases sent out to announce your new business and products,
- newspaper, magazine, or e-zine articles you write and others publish,
- product announcement bulletins and "What's New" columns,
- audio message files that you distribute online,
- video clips that both show and describe your business and your products,
- any other opportunities that you encounter (paid or otherwise).
We'll continue this marketing discussion with the final 3 "Rs" in our next segment. Stay tuned . . .
