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Starting A
Small Business Marketing Service
4 Critical Steps For Success

Providing a small business marketing service to local merchants is not rocket science.

Local businesses need marketing assistance whether they recognize it or not. Many will use your business marketing services if they understand it is not going to cost them an arm and a leg.

Initially, your first task is to visualize their problems and provide solutions. I was fortunate to meet Phil, in of all places, a cruise ship!

He was in his 10th year of his small business marketing service.

I interviewed him.

 

Phil’s Second Career as a
Small Business Marketing Service Counselor

From Dayton, Ohio, for over 35-years, Phil has worked for multiple employers mostly in the retail field.

He had been a sales person, a cashier, a department manager, store assistant manager and a store manager mostly for national retailers.

He is now retired.

Through his experiences, he realized local independent merchants could improve their brand, sales and profits if they would only follow some basic steps.

He wanted to help.

As a store manager, when people who wanted the company’s advertising dollar approached him, he only wanted to know the answers to four questions.

    1.  What will you do for me?

    2.  How do I know what you propose to do for me will work?

    3.  How much will it cost me?

    4.  What will be my return on investment?

Phil’s Approach to Local Business Owners

He decided he needed to give away free marketing info in order to make money.

Here is an example he gave me.

In his town there were 3 butcher shops. He visited and made notes about each of them: cleanliness, presentation, product offered and services given.

He then visualized what opportunities each had to improve their business, to gain market share and ways to differentiate their business from other two butcher shops in the market place.

Their competitors were not only other butcher shops but the supermarkets too.

Phil said he  approached butcher shop one.

He told the owner of his background and said he wanted to help grow his business for free.

That is, he would gather some information from the owner and the general public and then share his findings.

If the owner wanted to pursue growing his business, then they could reach an agreement on what to pay him for developing and implementing a plan of success.

Fortunately, this owner said yes. Phil had his first small business marketing service client!

Initial Questions Phil Asked (These questions could be asked of any type of company.)

These are the questions he asked of the shop owner:

•  Write down the specific objective of the shop. He could not say simply, to make a profit.
• What is the target market for his butcher shop?

• Who are his competitors? Do they serve the same market as the owner’s business?

• Do his competitors have less, about the same or more sales that he does and why?

• What are the owner’s perceived strengths and weaknesses of each competitor?

Phil's responsibilities were to conduct a series of surveys:

• What do customers and others in the shop's marketing area think about the business? This was achieved by passing out to customers a brief survey, a postage paid envelope and a coupon as a reward for taking the time to respond.

• In addition, a survey, stamped return envelope with a coupon was mailed at random to about 200 local area residences asking different questions like have you heard of the AAAAA Butcher shop, have you ever shopped there and why you have or have not.

• Lastly, Phil had a person stand outside a supermarket in the area and ask the same questions outlined above until they got about 50 responses.

Phil then correlated all the responses and presented the info to the owner.

That was the end of Phil’s free service.

If the owner wanted to continue with Phil developing and implementing a local small town shop marketing plan, then a fee was presented to the shop's owner of $2,500, an amount the business owner, who was committed to growth, could afford.

Phil and the owner implemented the plan.

I hope this has been helpful to yo as you start your own small business marketing service.

Free Help To Get You Started

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Helpful Professional Resources

 

Small Business Administration: Marketing 101

 

Additional Small Business Ideas