Redwood's Top 5 Essential Principles of Marketing

What's in it for me?

One of the biggest mistakes small businesses make when they're trying to market is that they talk about the features of their product or service rather than the benefits their customers will reap by using their products or services. When somebody visits your website or reads one of your advertisements they're not doing it for you! At the forefront of every prospective customer's mind when they're considering what you offer is "what's in it for me". Answer that question for them and you'll be far more successful.

Customer is key!

Or more importantly the relationship with your customer is key! This is all about chasing the sale for the customer and not the other way around. If all you're doing is chasing the immediate sale then what you're not doing is trying to build a lifetime relationship with your customer so, in effect what you're doing is cutting yourself off from the opportunity for repeat business, for referrals, for upselling, for product or service improvement, for cross selling, etc. If you don't have a relationship with your customer that gives you these opportunities think about ways to begin establishing one!

Burst the marketing budget bubble!

It's time to turn the idea of a marketing budget on its head! Consider this instead: if each and every one of your new customers is worth say £100 profit to you on a first sale, how much do you think is reasonable to spend to 'buy' that customer? A typical small business owner often allocates the marketing budget on what they think they can afford over the year but the budget should be all about the potential return on your investment and nothing else. If you know for instance that after a first sale that customer is likely to be worth another £700 worth of profit to you over the next three years then doesn't it become worthwhile to rethink how much you're willing to invest on him/her at the outset?

Mix and match marketing - always have a fallback

This is the time for an acid test. Write down a list of all the ways you currently use to attract new customers - be honest here. If one of the ways is word-of-mouth consider whether you are proactively asking your customers to recommend your service, if you're not, don't include it. Now count them all up. If you haven't got at least 8 things on your list then it's time to rethink! The more methods you use to attract customers the more chance you have of actually attracting their attention - always have a fallback.

Test and monitor your marketing!

Testing and monitoring are absolutely crucial to any marketing activity because without them how will you know if what you're doing is working, and working the best way possible? Testing allows you to compare what you're doing and allows you to constantly improve your marketing while monitoring provides you with the evidence upon which to base your marketing decisions.