:: Home
> Library
> Business
Ideas/Section-1
A friend of mine told me one day, "I
hate marketing". I just want to do the work. I replied to him,
Then go find a job and work for someone else!
There is no way an entrepreneur can make
money or be successful unless they learn how to properly market
their product or service. Without marketing, you won't get any orders
to process and you won't make any money. Plain and simple!
Advertising is one small way to market.
But placing a few ads, doing a few co-op print and mails and completing
a 1,000-piece direct mail to a mailing list is only the beginning.
At this point, you have only opened your eyes. Now you have to get
out of bed and walk!!
Unfortunately, there is no clear-cut, step-by-step
methods for marketing. What works for one company may not work for
another. What ad works for one may not work for the other. The variances
every step of the way are wide. And you can go from one extreme
of the scale to another.
Marketing is like opening a safe, to which
you have lost the combination to. How many tries and different variances
will it take to unlock the safe? For some, it might take 10 tries.
But for you, it make take 2 million tries.
Don't Be Discouraged
But don't be discouraged. Marketing is
much safer than playing the lottery. And the great thing about marketing
is that you get BETTER every time you make a mistake. That's why
it is extremely important for you not to brow-beat yourself and
think you are a failure when a marketing mistake is made. All you
have to do is analyze why you made the mistake and try something
different. (Personally, I talk to others about the mistakes I make.
It helps me to not secretly hold it inside and brow-beat myself
over it. Plus it helps the other person not to make the same mistake
I did and we learn from each other.)
The best way to start out learning how
to market is to analyze YOURSELF and your buying habits. Why did
you buy Wonder bread this week at the store instead of Nature's
Own? Why did you shop at Winn Dixie instead of Kroger? What really
made you buy that new CD at Wal Mart yesterday? Why do you really
go to Sears for your tires?
When the junk mail comes in your mail this
week, analyze why some are immediately thrown in the trash and others
opened. While thumbing through a card deck, analyze why the ad you
stopped to read caught your eye. Was it because you needed the item
or was the headline too interesting to pass up? On those rare occasions
when you are drawn to an advertisement to the point that you read
the whole thing and are excited about ordering the item, keep it
in a reference file so you can use it for ideas when writing your
own ads.
Summary
This is only lesson one in developing a mindset to getting started
in marketing. There are a zillion more ways, techniques and methods
we cannot cover in this report. But remember: it will take some
time to be successful as an entrepreneur. So if you don't have the
patience to wait that's okay. There are lots of jobs working for
somebody else. Not all of us can be sellers. We
have to have people like you to buy from us.
