The real goal of any marketing/advertising campaign is to make potential customers aware of your business so that when they need the type of product/service you offer, they will think of your business first.

A Marketing Quandary

I had a fabulous (and self-made rich!) business mentor for 3 1/2 years. One of the first pieces of advice he gave me was that I needed to advertise more. I said, "But I can't afford to." His reply was, "If potential clients don't know about you, how can you ever expect to grow?"

After months of haggling, I finally took his advice. Even though I had to scrounge for money to advertise more, over time, it paid off. And, that's where most small biz owners fall off the wagon.

When I polled other small business owners about why they don't advertise more, the responses I get ranged from, "I can only show one product in the type of ad I can afford," to "I just don't have the money." These responses miss the true objective of marketing and advertising -- branding.

What is branding? You know when you see the "swoop" that it's Nike; the big yellow "M" that it's McDonald's, etc. This branding.

Why would you want to brand your business? Because branding leads to awareness, which leads to a relationship, which leads to trust, which leads to sales.

Most small business owners make the mistake of trying to make the sale when they haven't made themselves known to their customer base. In effect, they do not brand their business.

A very inexpensive marketing tool are postcards. Obviously, you can't put the details of every product/service you offer on a postcard. So, why bother with them? Because, by featuring popular products/services, you get a prospect interested and aware of your business. Then, via the postcard, you can invite the reader to "visit us online to see our complete line of ...."

Once the visitor is on your site, invite them to sign up to your mailing list via a subscriber box. Many of them do. In this way, you can begin to keep in touch via an e-newsletter, which can offer sales, discounts, articles, etc. Thus, a relationship is born.

Over time, the customers gets used to receiving your mailings. When they need the type of product/service you offer, whose name do you think will immediately come to mind? Yours, of course.

So, the initial cost to snag a customer who may later on give you a $1,000 assignment was was only 23 cents (the cost to mail a postcard). Further, once a customer purchases from you once, they are 70-80% more likely to continue purchasing from you. The reason can be attributed to the fact below.

NOTE: Most customers don't do much comparison shopping. Research suggests that many only check out an average of 1.2 brands before purchasing. So, if you're top of mind, you have an excellent chance of making the sale.