Marketing 101. More than Super Bowl ads.

If you watch the Super Bowl every year, you'd think that you are seeing "marketing" with all those big budget commercials. Those entertaining moments are the end result of the marketing process, sometimes. Often they are attempts to be different or funny that don't resonate with the customer, and then they simply don't work.

You can do better. It's easy to market your business. Just follow a few simple steps.

1. Who is the current customer? Answer these simple questions:

• Age
• Male or female
  
• Income
• Geographic area or neighborhood
• Key factors (e.g.- car owner, student, mom)
  
• Why did they select your business the first time?
• Why do they come back?
  

2. Build your business by targeting the following groups:

• Current customers (by creating more revenue per person)
  
• New customers like the current customers (a good target for ads)
  
• A whole new group of people likely to become customers (only after you have reached out to the first two groups above. Going off on advertising tangents is an expensive mistake.)
  

3. Communicate to each of the groups targeted in Step 2 as follows:

• Pick one logo, one color scheme and one tag line and put it on EVERYTHING. Your money farther when people can identify you.
  
• For current customers, use low cost items like gifts with purchase for buying new products or services and loyalty punch cards that increase visits and sales.
• Get all the attention you can from potential customers (including car wraps, signs on the building, cards and postcards you leave everywhere, appearances at events and festivals)
  
• Do not buy ads unless you know, really know that you will be reaching the right people.
  

4. For every marketing effort, include a trackable feature, like a special offer. Measure them.

5. Make sure that your web site is user friendly. Don't bury the important information, like the phone number, to look techno-cool. People will click off!

Those are the basics. More on the fine points of buying ads in a later post.