Guerrilla Marketing, Ideas That Will Get You More Sales

There are many small business marketing strategies that when implemented will get you lots more new business. However as you are considering various sales prospecting techniques, it is important to also remember what not to do. Here is the most the common mistake small businesses make with their marketing. If you avoid this, your small business marketing solution will pay off with lots more new clients.

The most important trap to avoid is to make sure you do not focus on activities rather than developing a business development process. Here's the scenario. Business is a bit slow so Mort the Business Owner wakes up one morning and says to himself, "It's about time we got some new business." So when Mort arrives at the office he immediately puts in place his Marketing Strategy. "Let's make some cold calls. Or write some letters. Or update the database. Or write an article." The list goes on and on.

What Mort has done (which virtually all of us do at some point or another) is to confuse activities with strategy. But why is this a problem? Well let's say that Mort sends out some letters or emails. And maybe a few people respond. And maybe Mort actually calls one or two of them. But then he gets busy (or decides that following-up really isn't that much fun) and he lets the leads grow mold.

Now obviously that's a waste. But here's what's even more wasteful. What do you think the reaction will be from those who responded the first time, when Mort decides to send them another letter during the next slow season? Probably not much.

Getting people to raise their hand and self identify themselves as having interest in your services is a time tested method for effective business development. But whatever method you use to make people aware of who you are and what you do is simply an activity. Sending letters. Making cold calls. Writing articles. Giving a speech. None of these are your marketing strategy. They're parts of your marketing strategy. It's important to always remember that they are simply activities.

A marketing strategy has three components to it. A method for making people aware of you. A method for capturing data about those people, and a method for staying in touch. When you have those three components linked together, then you have a marketing process. When they're not, then all you have is just have a bunch of activities. And the results speak for themselves.

One of the main reasons that marketing fails to yield the results we want is because we focus on the wrong things at the wrong time. If you start to drive traffic when your marketing trap is not established, the result will be that visitors will simply bounce off your site. That is a great waste of money, time and energy. Thus, make sure you're thinking about a marketing system rather than focusing on marketing activities.