When you think about it, marketing touches almost every aspect of our day-to-day lives. From the moment we wake up, to the moment we close our eyes at night, marketing surrounds us. Whether it's a commercial we hear on the radio as the alarm goes off, a direct mail piece we receive in the office, a billboard on the drive home or a telemarketing call during dinner.

But marketing activities are not just restricted to the traditional sales approaches such as direct mail, advertising, or cold calling -and they don't have to be intrusive to get results. Marketing can be a win-win opportunity; you are acquiring the type of customers you want more of, and your customers are getting their needs fulfilled.

Tapping into the many facets of marketing

There are so many other opportunities to grow your business that you may not have considered in a marketing context-or perhaps you thought them beyond your budget-things like prospecting, special offers and e-commerce. Interestingly enough, you may already be incorporating some of these facets of marketing in your daily operations but not fully capitalising on the enormous business development potential.

It's important to ask yourself that question. How you feel about marketing is impacting how you are doing it (or not doing it) right now.

It's not surprising that when small to medium sized business owners are asked if they feel comfortable with marketing and sales, only a small percentage respond positively. A much larger percentage is decidedly uncomfortable with the concept.

This is a shame because besides being the lifeblood of your business, avoiding the sales and marketing aspect of your business is really doing your customers (and would-be customers) a disservice.

The good news is, you have a great product or service to sell. The bad news is, people don't buy products or services.

What does that mean? Customers don't buy products or services. They buy solutions to problems. As an example - when a builder enters a hardware store to buy a 9-inch drill, what s/he really needs is a nine-inch hole. Master that way of thinking and you've mastered the secret behind successful marketing. Marketing is nothing more than understanding what a customer really wants and needs and then showing them how you'll provide it.

Think of it this way. If potential customers call you, they have literally raised their hands to be helped-and they think your business can actually do that! It's your job then, to do everything in your power to fill those potential customers' needs. If you feel your products or services are good quality, failing to sell them does your potential customers a disservice. Because if you fail to sell them, those customers walk away with their problem or need unresolved. It means they have to go out again and spend more time and more money to find someone else to solve their problem. Worse yet, that somebody might be a competitor who does not offer products or services as good as yours.

What if those potential customers aren't banging down your door in the numbers you'd like? What are some things you can do quickly and easily to generate additional leads?

Prospecting is crucial to business survival. In order to grow, your business will need to expand its customer base. To get started, try these nine techniques:

1. List the firms that compete with your customers. Each company on that list is a potential new customer.
2. Solicit referrals. Offer discounts, freebies or other incentives to customers who bring you new business.
3. Build up your mailing list. Mailing lists are a convenient way to identify targeted sales leads for your business. It's important that you continue to expand your mailing list and update it regularly. There's no gold in a mountain of incorrect information.
4. Seek out host-style relationships. Prospect-sharing with related industries or other spheres of influence can provide benefits to both parties. For example, an alliance between a body shop and an auto repair shop lets each company recommend customers to the other and creates a more complete service offering. A word of caution: Before you enter into this type of alliance, make sure you can vouch for the other company. Otherwise that company's mistakes could damage your good reputation.
5. Look outside your niche. Think creatively about other markets that may want your product or service. Visit trade shows in crossover industries for ideas. A good example of a company that expanded its niche business is Amazon.com. It began by selling books online with amazing success and quickly expanded its horizons to marketing and selling all kinds of products via the Internet.
6. Consider modifying your product or service. One way to expand into new markets is to appeal to a broader range of customers. Keep your eyes peeled for opportunities that are related to your current business. Case in point: Mercury Interactive invented the testing-tools software industry. These tools let customers check for bugs before computer programs go to market. Not content with its leading market share, the firm made small modifications to its software to cheque for Y2K problems. Later, Mercury again refined its software to make it applicable to the exploding e-commerce testing market.
7. Go global. Don't ignore potential customers just because they live in a different country. Selling overseas has become much easier in the last several years-particularly with e-commerce. Trade barriers have fallen, while technological advances have simplified cross-border communication. Consider whether your product or service might work well in another country and explore opportunities there.
8. Do good deeds and inform prospects of your philanthropy. Community service is always a great way to help your local area, as well as market your business. Environmental groups, for example, will provide your company with referrals if they know you provide environmentally friendly services (your oil-change station recycles used oil) or products (your paper store sells chlorine-free products).
9. Position your business creatively. Consider special promotions, different media or other new ways of getting your message out.

When you're striving to grow your business, it's easy to get caught up chasing every lead that comes your way. But all prospects are not created equal. Some are more likely than others to turn into sales.

To avoid wasting precious resources, you need to weed out the long shots and concentrate your efforts on prospects apt to yield a return on your investment of time, money and energy.

The following five techniques will help you distinguish good prospects from bad prospects:

1. Define your target market precisely. Break your market down by demographics, geography, industry, company size, budget or other relevant criteria. This will let you focus on the prospects that closely match your target.
2. Assess need, budget and buying authority. Ask basic qualifying questions that will help you determine whether a prospect is ready, willing and able to buy:
   • What's your time frame for this project?
   • Who else will be involved in making the decision?
   • What's your budget for this type of product?
   • How will you make your decision?
   • Are you ready to buy if you find the right product?
   • If you determine that our service meets your needs, what will your next step be?
3. Go for "no." Conventional sales wisdom says that as long as a prospective customer hasn't said no, then the sale is still alive. But when it comes to rating prospects, you should push for a decision even if it's no. Better to learn sooner rather than later that the odds of closing a sale are slim.
4. Evaluate financial or business status. Creditworthy prospects are preferable to high-risk customers. And stable prospects are better than those in crisis or flux. A company that is merging, downsizing or shifting its core business may be inclined to put off buying decisions.
5. Develop a grading system. Rate prospects as hot, warm, lukewarm or cold or use a letter grade (A, B, C, D) based on the probability of closing a sale. Concentrate on hot prospects and upgrade or downgrade the others as their circumstances change.

The real purpose of any marketing strategy is to elicit a response. An offer can be simply described as a proposition you make to customers to obtain a response from them. Often this can mean the difference between success and failure of a marketing strategy such as advertising. Depending on the offer, the number of responses can increase by 25, 50, 100, 300 even 1,000%. The good news is that you don't have to spend a lot of money or effort to achieve these kinds of results. The increase in sales traffic will more than make up for the free items you give away. Better yet, these new customers are in an excellent position for you to upsell other items and can be added to your mailing list.

Seven offers to put a glimmer in a prospect's eye

1. The special offer. Offering something extraordinary for free if potential customers respond or take a certain action. For example, buy one and get one free.
2. The free item with purchase offer. Giving something to a customer for making an inquiry, for testing or trying, or for buying your product is one of the most commonly used incentives. An example is the classic bag of coffee beans with the purchase or testing of a new coffee maker.
3. Host-style relationship free offers. Here you use each other's products or services as the offer to both your customer groups. For example, free oil change at Company A when you get your car washed at Company B and vice versa.
4. The early bird incentive offer. An incentive or reward is offered to the customer for getting in early. It can be either a reduction in price or a free item with purchase. For example, the first 50 customers get a cosmetics gift set with the purchase of perfume. This works especially well when the free item is a sample of something else that the customer is likely to want to buy later.
5. A time limit offer. By creating an offer and placing a legitimate time limit on that offer, you create a sense of urgency and force a response-either positive or negative-NOW. This doesn't let readers think, "Hmm, I'll do that some day."
6. Find slow-moving inventory to use for free offers. One way to find an item to give as an offer with purchase and keep your costs down is to look to a supplier or other businesses for slow-moving inventory and buy it from them at low cost.
7. The referral or bring-a-friend offer. Here you make an offer to your customers based on their referring people to you. Referrals are an invaluable source of inexpensive leads. And when your existing customers recommend your business to their friends and associates, you'll build a customer base of more of the type you want to serve.

IntelliQuest Information Group [http://www.intelliquest.com] recently released the findings of its e-commerce survey, including consumers' e-commerce activity, attitudes and plans.

Eighty-one percent of those surveyed intend to shop or buy online in the coming 12 months. Sixty-three percent have shopped online, and 22 percent report buying online in the past 90 days. The survey indicated three to five times more people intend to shop or buy online than are currently shopping.

If you're online you've probably experienced IT-direct mail campaigns via your email inbox! You too can use this technology to reach prospective clients or nurture existing ones.

At a recent Effective Email Marketing conference in the U.S., Geoffrey Ramsey, partner and resident statsmaster for a company called eMarketer suggested that the best opportunity for marketers is email. In fact, he went so far as to say that the results from email marketing - where you send an email message to a list of prospects' email addresses-are an average of 23 times higher than banner ads (online ads you see at the top of a Web site that promote other businesses) with an 11.5% click through rate from email versus a .5% rate with banner ads. (A click through rate is the percentage of people who receive the email and use its links to visit other promotional pages or Web sites.)

Looking at these figures brings back memories of the marketing success many businesses had when fax machines first arrived. Businesses began mass fax outs of promotional material to reach individuals. Interestingly, that strategy worked for several years as people usually responded to faxes with more urgency than other means of contact. These days email has taken that position. Most people who are online can't go without checking their email daily or at least every few days. It has a sense of urgency and importance to it because it is used in so many ways -personal contact, business contact and so on.

Geoff believes there are several reasons for the success of marketing campaigns via email:

1. It's ubiquitous. It's now so common, most of your customers will be online or at the very least aware of email.
2. It can drive traffic to your site.
3. It's the ultimate PR medium to bring news and information onto your prospective customer's desktop.
4. It gets a response.
5. It's targetable and customisable -you decide who it goes to, when and why.
6. It's measurable -you know exactly how many go out versus how many responses you receive. Remember "what you can measure, you can manage."
7. It can drive sales.
8. It's very effective for customer service and relationship building.

"The very essence of the creative is its novelty, and hence we have no standard by which to judge it."

Carl R. Rogers, On Becoming a Person

While every effort has been made to provide valuable, useful information in this publication, this firm and any related suppliers or associated companies accept no responsibility or any form of liability from reliance upon or use of its contents. Any suggestions should be considered carefully within your own particular circumstances, as they are intended as general information only.

The team at GNS GROUP have systems, programs, turnkey solutions and one-on-one business development programs tailored to get results for you, address many of the ideas outlined here and, ultimately, build the business you've always wanted. Call Cameron Lamb or Gavin Shaw on 1800 996 322 before 5:00pm, Friday the 10th of November and receive 2 complimentary tickets, valued at $125 each to our next Business Development Workshop absolutely free. That's a $250.00] value.