In today’s Q & A Thursday we’re going to talk about a question that comes in pretty frequently, in various formats, including, “How to market a small business?”

First, let’s talk about the concept of a ‘small business’ vs any other type of business.

There’s this idea that somehow, because you’re ‘small’ or a ‘solo-entrepreneur’ or you don’t make $100k yet that you have different marketing needs than other businesses. While you may be at a different stage in business, most of the fundamentals of marketing will still apply – in fact, you are even more likely than most big businesses to have the opportunity to take better care of your marketing. So, while most things will be similar, there are a couple of things we can discuss from that perspective.

The most important difference is that it is imperative to small and growing businesses that we market SMARTER than other businesses.

We have to market smarter because we may have less resources, in terms of money, team members and the like, but what we do have is the time to figure it out and the ability to really dig in and learn what works and what doesn’t. So let’s first address what doesn’t work…

‘Madison Avenue’ style advertising generally doesn’t work.
Kitchy, cute or funny taglines, videos or ads don’t necessarily work (there’s more to it than entertaining and being memorable).
Throwing your crap at the wall by shoving your message into as many faces as possible doesn’t work very well, and might not work at all.

So, what’s a small business owner or entrepreneur to do?

Get down and figure it out.

Let’s look at each of these and why they aren’t the best bet – so this is how you will be behaving differently that many big businesses, that have big budgets…

1. Instead of ‘Madison Avenue’ style advertising (like a woman laying, scantily clad, on a beach with a small picture of a bottle for some perfume on the bottom corner of the page), you want to use advertising and marketing that EDUCATES your prospects on what desire you can meet or what problem you can solve. Ads with lots of text sell, and they sell well.Image ads? No one really knows – they cost a fortune, and generally serve to build ‘brand awareness’, but how many times have you looked at one of those ads and said, “Oh my gosh – I HAVE to get that right now!” That’s the response you want from the targeted people who see your marketing/advertising.
2. Tag lines are extremely important – but they need to speak to a benefit that your product or service delivers, and, even more specifically, they need to address a benefit that your target prospect REALLY REALLY wants.It can’t be something they only care about a little bit. It’s got to satisfy something important. It’s your 2-3 second chance to land your message and make them want to know more.
3. Reaching ‘many eye balls’ seems like a good practice – in theory… but what if I told you that you just won $1000 dollars to spend on direct mail marketing. Would you rather send that direct mail piece to any old household in a suburban area and hit maybe 10-20% of the people who are your target prospect – so 80-90% of the people couldn’t or wouldn’t use what you offer at all? You’ve wasted 80-90% of the money, and you probably won’t have enough coming in to even try again.Or would you rather identify that most of the people who buy from you turn out to be married men, between the ages of 50 and 65 who own their home and have children in college? Now, you can send that direct mail piece to only the people who can be identified as fitting that description (using one of the many list services available). Now, closer to 80 or 85% of the mail delivered will land in the hands of someone who is much more likely to want and use your product or service.Now you’re chances of making money on that mailer are significantly higher. ‘Many eye-balls’ is relative – you can lose money on your efforts, or you can hit the right people and make money – it’s your choice.

A couple of weeks ago I offered free access to a Target Market exercise download. If you haven’t already, you need to get it. You can do that here.

You need to get clear on who your target market is, what they want and need that you can provide and how to share that with them, which is, essentially, your message (that ‘benefit’ driven tag line). THEN you can figure out what kind of media you want to use (social media, email, direct mail, post cards, banners, billboards, magazines – you get the idea).

So, when we start to get clear on how to market a small business, we have to simply start with the basics.  Once you have them in place, your next step is to plan and layout strategies to reach the right people with your properly identified message.

One key small business marketing strategy, as you begin to build and grow your business, is to lay the proper foundation for all of your marketing efforts. If you don’t, you could find yourself like the Titanic – everything looks beautiful, you have all the pieces in place and you are starting out on your voyage, only to find out that suddenly you are taking on water.

Knowing the lay of the land, having that foundational information in place, can make the difference between squeezing by that ice berg because you saw it in time, and ramming full throttle into it. Where would you rather be?

The most important step in laying the foundation for your business marketing strategies is getting super clear on your Target Market.

And, this is a place many entrepreneurs let slide – it’s not easy, it requires some thinking, some research and some work. But like putting up a skyscraper, you have to lay the foundation deep into the ground, you have to use solid steel and good concrete or your building won’t go up tall and strong. If you have questions about who you are speaking to, or even worse, if you think, “What I have is so great, it’s for everyone,” you are headed down a path with a very dodgy destination.

So, how do you get that clarity and lay the foundation so every marketing effort you make speaks to the right person? So each moment you spend and ever dollar you fork over for marketing efforts is worth it? You put yourself through the paces of figuring out who the people are that want and need what you’ve got.

If you haven’t done a series of exercises (or even if you have, this is a good thing to go through quarterly or at least bi-annually for your business), then I’ve got a special gift for you. I’ve created a series of questions and exercises that will help you understand exactly who you want and need to speak to so that your marketing reaches the right person and they immediately recognize the value of what you have and come asking for more information, primed and ready to buy.

Click here to get instant and free access to the Target Market Exercise – this is one small business marketing strategy you’ll be really glad you took the time to do. It will illuminate a whole lot for you, help you figure out where you are wasting time and money in your marketing efforts and get you on track to making your marketing work for your business.

As someone who believes and knows that marketing strategies for small business are the key to success, I figured it was time to do a series of tips on how to get more marketing done.

I’ll be speaking tomorrow at the Savor the Success Female Entrepreneurs Rock the World Annual Event here in New York City (I can’t wait!) and I’m going to reveal something new for attendees there, and thought I’d give you a ‘sneak peak’ – without giving away the farm, of course…

One of the things I’ll be discussing with the participants is one of the most important key marketing strategies for small business that I know – it’s making time to do your marketing.

Marketing can feel very overwhelming, pushy and hard if you don’t have the right approach (which I’ll get into in the next post), and if you don’t set aside the time to learn what to do, build systems and plug them in, you’ll find that your business stagnates and doesn’t really move forward very much.

So, how do you make time for marketing? You schedule it.

I know, it sounds simple, but in practice, it’s not that easy. I know from my own experience, and from the hundreds, if not thousands, of other entrepreneurs I’ve talked to, that finding the discipline to create a schedule and sticking to it is really hard, sometimes it’s something we can manage and sometimes we’ll do almost anything BUT what is on our calendar to get done.

To me, the reason we avoid certain things is because we don’t think they will be enjoyable or fun. If you don’t know how to market your business, it most likely won’t feel like fun.

So, what’s an entrepreneur to do? Break it down into smaller steps.

If you are avoiding your marketing, chances are you are feeling like it’s going to be hard and like it won’t be fun. If you step back and take some time to figure out just one system that you want to start with, like perhaps social media. Then you break that down – just start with Twitter. Now, set aside a couple of hours to learn everything you can about Twitter – get a book, take a course (you can check out mine if you like – so far 100% positive reviews!), read blogs, read posts about Twitter on Mashable - dig in. Now, set up a process you can follow, so you know exactly what you want and need to do each day.

For example, in my Twitter course, I teach all the basics of what people need to do to make Twitter successful for their business – including getting press, building relationships and making sales – once they have the foundation, I put it all together in a one-page, 12 minute a day, plan. All that it requires is that you follow the simple steps each day (there’s only about 6 steps), and you’ll see Twitter start working for your business almost immediately.

Think about the marketing strategies you use for your small business. Are they written out? Do you have procedures and systems you can follow to make it easy for you? Could you hand them off to someone else to take over once they are up and running?

If not, it’s time to set aside a chunk of hours to get this done.