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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. This is how you do it.

 

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 decided that he could spend less than $150 to acquire the answers to those questions. Using this knowledge plus is own experiences he decided this is what he want to do now that he was retired.

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.

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 approached butcher shop one.

He told the owner of his background and said he want 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.)

• He asked the owner to 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?

• What your customers and others in your marketing area think about your business? This may be achieved by passing out to your 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 coupon should be mailed 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. Have a person stand outside a supermarket in the area and ask the same questions outlined above until you get 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 an appropriate fee was to be arrived at. This was generally in the neighborhood of $2,500 to $3,000, an amount a business owner, who was committed to growth, could afford.

How Phil Educated Himself for his Retirement Business

Note: You may obtain these low cost treasures in confidence knowing that each provides a money-back guarantee if you’re not completely satisfied.

 

Phil told me that these two resources gave him much confidence when he started his own small business marketing service.

• Dan Kennedy’s Magnetic Marketing Systems Kit has a boatload of effective local business marketing strategies.
• Gary Gnapp’s Home Business Marketing Institute offers a monthly membership of $9.97. For this Phil receives a ton of business marketing info with emphasis on starting a home business. Why this resource? While using the home business as a topic, his information is greatly transferable to any business anywhere.

Free Help To Get You Started

Thank you for visiting starting a small business marketing service.

Helpful Professional Resources

 

Small Business Administration: Marketing 101

 American Marketing Association

 Business Marketing Association

Additional Small Business Ideas