The Art of Marketing

The art of marketing is the never-ending challenge to answer this question: What emotional needs do my customers have that my business could fulfill? To help you find the answer, we suggest that you start by collecting information on your customers through a variety of techniques, including conducting customer surveys and performing demographic research and analysis.

“One size fits all” is not a business strategy

No business can possibly expect to be all things to all people, and any that tries will likely have portions of their business siphoned off by specialized businesses that can better meet the needs of particular customer segments. “One size fits all” business strategies don’t work because customers tend to belong to distinct product market segments that have their own set of common characteristics, and unique needs and preferences.

So, how can you optimize your profit centers and gain a competitive advantage? It really won’t be possible until you begin to notice and distinguish the common characteristics that most of your customers possess, and to match your product offerings to the needs of the customers.

Surveying what makes your customers tick

The most important thing you can do is to start collecting as much information as you possibly can about your customers. A good idea is to create a survey that will help you find out what they have in common. Are they mostly male or female? What age ranges do they fall in? What is their education level? Are they married or single? Do they have children? If so, are the children at home, or grown and gone? Most importantly, what kind of emotional gratification are they looking for in return for their money, and what do you have to offer that can meet their emotional needs?

Research tools at your fingertips

Another tactic is to conduct research about customer demographics. The U.S. Census Bureau has a treasure trove of demographics broken down by counties and major metropolitan areas. You can find the U.S. Census Bureau website at http://quickfacts.census.gov. If you do business outside the U.S., check with local government agencies to see what information they have available.

The more accurate and complete information you have about your customers, the better able you’ll be to craft a marketing strategy to meet their needs _ and to draw more of them to your business. Now doesn’t that paint a nice picture?

I’m an information systems consultant. Market research makes sense to me because, as a systems analyst, amongst other things, I know you need to analyse the system first before you design a better one, or create one from scratch.

However , I find that I resist doing pure market research because of the time it takes. At the end of the market research you don’t expect any sales, although this reminds me that one book I read that said that some consultants get their first sale this way.

I have tried though, on prospects, not on customers. I tried with local IT Managers over the phone ‘What do you need right now more than anything else?’ (A question suggested by a book) and got nowhere. They generally answered ‘nothing.’ Later, after having a lot more of straight selling offers rejected. I mentioned it to a marketing consultant. He said it was the wrong question, and to ask what there biggest problem was. Trying this, I was amazed to find I got a much better response. However, on a test of 100 contacts of local IT Managers in companies with staff of 100-499, I got a very diverse range of responses. It was nothing like those graphs you see in trade newspapers, showing that say, 30% of the sample were interested in ’X.’ So I got nothing definite to go on. Also, when they did mention issues that were particularly appropriate for my consulting service, they weren’t interested in using an outside service. Someone has said, that companies of 100-499 employees are such very different range of companies that this was to be expected. Although I’m not sure if I could get enough companies if the range was narrowed.

It seems it might have been cleverer to ask what were their 10 worst problems and then I might have got some better correlation.

While I found your comment useful, it seems a bit too theoretical and removed from reality to me. It’s OK, if you have a lot of time to wait, but I don’t. I don’t just want to know what emotional needs my customers have that I can fulfil, I want to know what they want NOW. I realise you need to think long term as well, but surely not exclusively?

An author in a consulting book suggests telephone calls that are initially sales calls but if rejected fall back to market research questions. I am unsure if this compromise will work.

So what do you suggest might be a better way forward for me and does he E-Myth Academy recommend any publications on this?

Steve, I understand your frustration with developing a "big" Strategic Objective alongside your crucial day-to-day operation. I had the same frustration in my company. It's a problem nearly every small business faces.

Keep running your business. But dedicate a percentage of your time to educating yourself on rethinking your entire business purpose. You can keep running your business as it is AND you can discover how to spend part of your time learning why a Strategic Objective is going to give you the insight into why your are doing the work your are doing. And what measurable results it's going to bring.

> "requires such a large amount of time up front"

Self-education and constant evaluation, discipline to create goals and objectives has guided my work habits and allowed me to envision my real position in the business. In my case, I wanted to use my knowledge of my industry to make business decisions and not necessarily be involved with packaging products. So that's where it evolved over time. You have to make conscious decisions that those things are important to your time.

Don't be afraid to work "IN" your business when you have to. But you'll always be happy when you are working "ON" and redesigning it to be smarter. That's what most people don't get around to doing. Combining working ON your business with your Strategic Objectives results in more success.

This has turned my company www.ChessHouse.com into a constantly growing, profitable enterprise. I credit many things that I've learned to Emyth principles. I also love Mindmanager Pro as an extremely useful goal/mind management tool

In part 1, I'm not sure I understood why you realized that you had made a mistake. You made it sound like things were going well, sales were $1,500 a month and you were on track to make $175,000 that year from ebay alone. So why did you realize you had a problem? What was the problem? Why did you feel you had to rebulid it?

In part 2, I'm not sure I understand what is meant by a strategic objective. Is it a bunch of goals that have specific targets to them, or do you arrive at the goals through a strategic process -- instead of just daydreaming and making wishes without any research to quantify them and ensure they are reachable?

And what kind of problems did you have when the new site went live, were they related to the operations of the website, or operations in order fulfillment, or something in your rules that you realized you were not going to hit your target so you had to take corrective action?

I'm always debating the benefits of the e-myth way because it does require such an large amount of time upfront, and in my super small micro business, I hardly have time to get my invoicing done, so making a strategic plan seems like a pipe dream. It's like a catch 22...

Hi Paul,

Congrats on your eBay success! I just want to mention that you can research your eBay competitors' sales to make sure your strategic goals are truly possible.

I operate www.esellerstreet.com to help online sellers set realistic goals based on market research. There is no substitute for accurate information in the ever changing online marketplace.

Best wishes,

Michelle

hello Paul: Its david kunkel from WSI > it's very small world. you and i spoke a few mths ago when oyu ahd submitted a request for search engine optimzation ie organic rankings. i thought i recognized the name and the url. good for oyu. i am happy to see you are living your dream:)

much success in 2007 and if need any more help to rank on the search engines feel free tocontact me. my email is dkunkel@creativewsiebizsolsutions.com

david

ps: beatiful site you have

Dear Paul, thank you for your success story. I'm so glad for you and your company. I've been so far from a thechnlogy world, however, your story indicates great opportunities for entrepreneurs.Six monht ago I closed my business and was exploring the idea of selling a local medical apparatus abroad.I came across 3 question: first, how to inform more people(now I know), second was big customs payment or even double one form Russia and into the other country(an order looked resonble only in big amounts not for 1, 2 or 3 pieces), next a certification standards-the manufacturer said that thier certification standards are acceptable in Europe but not in America or Austrailia.Do you ever deal with similar questions when you ship abroad? Do you mind clarifying one more point -how does eBay protect customers from fraud, as far as I understand any company can register and sell in the site and as people pay in front they can be at risk not to get a product.In Russia people trust only big well known supermarkets or companies they know and don't get used to buying through the internet.

Tank you , Svetlana, form Ekaterinburg, Russia

Svetlana,

Thank you for your comments. Fraud can be a problem when selling on the internet. Ebay understands this and goes to great lengths to make sure buyers and sellers are legitmate people. I suggets you go on the ebay site and look for fraud policies and procedures. I am certain you will find a large body of information on the topic of fraud and what Ebay requires of its bueys and sellers.

Let me know if i can be of further assistance.

paul@valleyacehardware.com

I know marketing research is so important, but why don't more small business owners do it? I guess I have always thought I was the best judge of what my target market wanted. If it made sense to me, why wouldn't it make sense to my target market? Since then I have been detrailed from those assumptions. I know you can pay to have target market research, but it is more money than I can spend on market research. And asking my customers directly is kind of scarey. I guess their comments would be a direct reflection of how my assumptions went wrong.

"but why don't more small business owners do it?" -- That is a question I have been asking business owners for the past few months. Generally, it comes down to time but emotionally, it comes down to "I don't want to do it." Or "I don't like doing it." I pushed the partner owners of a shoe store to start doing research in our market and they all baulked. The operations guy even said, "all the planning in the world won't help us sell more shoes." (And he also refused to read E-Myth, guess that's why we're closed.) It's just not something that people feel is important. My observation since reading E-Myth is that research, innovation, quantification and so forth are desperately needed by most small businesses. In many cases, they are too busy putting out the fires, or they don't see it as a priority at least enough to sacrifice something else. Basically, the concept scares them to death, it's too complicated, too time consuming, too scary and so many other things need to get done first. I think I know the solution but I need more time to test it. Basically, "bite sized" is what people want.

But Esi - wouldn't you WANT to know if your assumptions are wrong? Market research doesn't have to be expensive or over-thought (an entire consultancy profession has been dedicated to making us think so).
I bet you could come up with some simple and inexpensive ways to figure out who buys from you and why they choose you instead of a competitor. Think about what great decisions you could make about how to allocate your time and resources if you knew those answers...

What amazing figures you have come up with.

As a business that helps small business owners outsource some of their basic tasks. The fact that this many people are wanting to start businesses is very exciting.

Gavin Allinson
www.outsourcesuccess.com

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