Small Business Marketing - 9 Work 'On' Your Business Ideas To Stimulate Growth

Running a business requires you to wear many hats, be in numerous places at once, and keep multiple balls in the air. Not only must you keep up with the rigorous demands of working 'in' your business, if your goal is to build a solid, valuable business, you must also continuously work 'on' your business.
Marketing is one of those things that could be considered working on your business. In fact, marketing is quite possibly the MOST important working on your business activity you could be doing. This is mainly because without marketing, it's extremely difficult to get new customers. Without marketing, it's extremely difficult to get more business out of your existing customers. In other words, without marketing you won't be in business for very long.
So what kinds of things should you be doing to continually market your business and keep it moving along?
Here's a quick list to give you some things to think about:
1. Creating and sending out marketing campaigns (postcards, letters, flyers, etc.)
Marketing is a year round activity. In order to keep a constant flow of customers coming to your business, you need to be constantly presenting prospects with your products or services. Sending postcards, letters, or flyers is a great way to build name recognition that will keep a steady stream of prospects flowing your way.
2. Creating and sending a newsletter, ezine, or other communication to your existing customers
The biggest reason a large majority of customers leave a business is not due to poor service, an error, or some other misunderstanding. Believe it or not, the biggest reason customers leave a business results from feelings of apathy. They just don't feel like the business would know one way or another if they left or not.
In order to stop these feelings of apathy from happening, you need to find some way to maintain contact with your existing customers. A monthly newsletter or weekly ezine are excellent ways to keep in contact and remind them how valuable they are to your business.
3. Creating new 'widgets' or packages you can present to new or existing customers
One key to building a solid, long-term business is to continually sell to your customers. If all you're doing is finding new customers, you're leaving boat loads of money on the table.
In order to keep selling to your existing customers, it's critical you continually present them with new products, services, and offers. Creating new 'widgets' out of your existing offerings is a great way to repackage what you already sell.
4. Putting together valuable offers for presenting these 'widgets' to your new or existing customers
You need something to motivate your prospects and customer to buy and there are few things more effective at this than presenting them with valuable offers. Don't just list the services you offer. Present them in a way that excites, interests, and motivates them to take action.
5. Writing articles to submit to local newspapers to enhance your status as the lawn care expert
People love to work with experts because it's easy to put your trust in their knowledge and experience. While you are most likely already an expert in the services you provide, if no one knows it you'll have to work twice as hard to demonstrate just how knowledgeable you are.
Writing articles for your local newspaper or other publications is an excellent way to quickly establish yourself as the local expert. The buying public puts a lot of stock in what they read in the paper and when they see your company name next to an article about your field of expertise, you've bridged a gap with your prospects and customers that will make selling your services infinitely easier.
6. Calling current customers to make sure they're satisfied with your service
As sad as it is, customer service is almost non-existent in today's marketplace. The simple act of picking up the phone to call your customer and find out if they're satisfied will go a long ways towards creating a lasting the relationship.
7. Meeting with other service providers, not competitors, about forming a joint venture
The most difficult part of marketing is capturing the attention of qualified prospects. All around you are businesses providing services to the exact customers you're trying to reach. Getting in touch with these other businesses about doing some cross-marketing is an excellent way to effectively get in front of countless prospects that you may not be able to reach otherwise.
8. Performing service or charity work in order to create some goodwill for your company's name
Just as people love to work with experts, they also love to work with people that are about more than just making money. Performing service or charity work within your community is a powerful way to build a reputation as a company that gives back to others. When your customers and prospects see this, it builds goodwill that will carry over to increased business and profits for you.
9. Learning about direct marketing in order to enhance your knowledge and ability to better market your business
Even more important than providing your product or service is learning how to market your business. With no new customers, you won't have anyone to provide a product or service to. That's what makes learning HOW to market your business vitally important to your ability to reach the goals you've set.
Here's a list of 9 different things you could be doing to help move your business forward. Each one of them individually will surely create positive results. However, done together the results will be phenomenal and you'll soon reap the benefits of these working ON your business activities.

Business To Business Marketing - B2B - All You Need To Know

Business to business means the relation between the two businesses that is a business relation in which the end consumer is not involved. It is more popularly know by its abbreviation B2B. Business to business refers to the relation between more than one business institutes specifically for the marketing. This is in contrast to the other known marketing relations that exist between the business and the end consumer. Prior to the evolving of the term B2B, these kinds of relations between two enterprises are known as industrial goods marketing or capital goods marketing. These terms distinguish it from the business to consumer or B2C type of marketing.
How Does It Differ From B2C Marketing:
There are several major differences between the B2B marketing and B2C marketing. The involvement of so many people in the process of decision making in the case of B2B marketing makes it very complicated. On the contrary, in case of B2C, marketing only one person is responsible for making the final choice and when some special package is offered, involvement of only person facilitates quick buying decisions. Another major difference between the B2B business marketing and B2C type of marketing is that a business makes a buying decision when it needs the thing. On the contrary, the buying decisions of the end consumers are based more on wants.
Growing Competition:
However, there are few similarities also between the B2B marketing and B2C marketing. For both types of marketing, the competition is growing and the resources are reducing. This growing competition is resulting in the loss of market share for most of the small businesses. Along with this, the margins of profit are also going down. This has created a great demand for marketing data for the purpose of business-to-business marketing data, small business marketing research and B2B marketing research.
Importance of B2B Marketing:
To be successful in today's competitive world of business, having a very good product, best available technology and competitive process is not sufficient in itself. They have to focus on business-to-business marketing strategy. This will help them in identifying, locating, quantifying, segmenting and targeting the B2B customers that are really significant for their businesses. Only by adopting this kind of B2B marketing techniques, small business can achieve their set goals.
Eliminate Ineffective Marketing Channels:
marketing, you must concentrate on performance of the different marketing channels. These marketing channels may include a network of resellers, service partners, retailers and distributors. You not only need to develop new channels for marketing but also have to monitor and evaluate their performance on a regular basis. Then you can eliminate the marketing channels that are performing weak and focus on the channels that are producing desirable results.