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The Web Design Business Kit Chapter 6 - Market Your Business
Your Marketing Strategy
Take a look at the marketing options available to you, and leverage what you know about:
- your target market
- how your market finds out about Web development firms
- how your competitors advertise
- each marketing option
Competitor information is relevant to your marketing strategy in a number of ways. First, when you review a competitor’s strategy, you need to ascertain whether simply copying their approach will be enough. It works for them, so it should work for you, right? Well, it sounds reasonable enough, but in practice things can be a little different.
Established businesses have established names. There is an element of trust associated with their longevity in the industry (I don’t think I have ever seen an industry from which so many people have dropped out!) and that equates to sales, often via referrals.
As we know, referrals are often the best way to generate new business. If you do exactly what the competition is doing, as the new kid on the block, you’ll almost certainly fail. You need to identify successful strategies that you can apply to your business, and apply them with a twist.
If your competitor generates business through direct mail, then perhaps a direct mail campaign that incorporates a competition might work better for you. As long as you can develop your own unique angle, your campaign’s potential for success will soar. As long as you’re noticed, you are known. That’s half the battle of attracting clients.
The information you’ve gathered on your competitors might also help you decide to adopt a strategy of competitive opposition. This can be highly effective in helping you move from a saturated and cluttered market to one where you may well be the only industry voice.
Let’s say your competitor has a strong presence in the local newspaper. By the sheer volume of ad space they’ve bought, and the length of their association with the paper, the competitor may have that particular market segment covered. Your small advertisements may not be able to make a big impact.
However, if you know that this advertising works for the competitor, it may be time to
commence an advertising campaign in competing magazines and journals. You have the advantage of knowing that print advertising works for your competitor, along with the added benefit of having a good chance at winning a decent slice of an uncluttered parallel market.
Take what you can learn from your competitor, tweak it, and apply it to your own marketing to suit yourself. Importantly, you need to make it different so that you, and your business, stand out.
Go get ‘em, tiger!
Your Marketing Message
What message will you communicate through your marketing efforts? This is a key consideration—the quality and clarity of your message can mean the difference between an excellent response and an ordinary one.
When you’re promoting your business you have to grab people’s attention. Be outrageous. Be provocative. Be shocking! After all, you have to be the highest profile Web developer or programmer or graphic artist in your region.
The old advertising formula for communication is Attention, Interest, Desire, Action (AIDA). Each represents a stage that your prospects must move hrough before they will buy from you:
- Attention The prospect must be attracted to your message.
- Interest The prospect has to become interested in what you have to say.
- Desire Your message must spark within the prospect a desire to obtain the benefits you offer.
- Action Ideally, your message will prompt the user to take action towards procuring your services.
The important point here is that nothing is going to happen as a result of your advertising unless you grab people’s attention. Do whatever it takes!
Once you have the prospects' attention, you should restate their problem (that is: they don’t make enough money through their current business channels).
Next, you offer them a solution to that problem (that’s your pitch).
And finally, you ask them to take action (ask them to contact you).
Being outrageous gets attention, and it’s attention that you’re after! A by-product of being outrageous is that you’ll often be entertaining as well—and a lot of clients like to be entertained.
They want a good job, a real solution, and professionalism, but they also want to be entertained. Make your prospects enjoy themselves—make them laugh—and you’re off
to a great start!
Measurement
OK, now we’ve got a good picture of advertising, promotion and PR for the freelance Web designer. The point here is that you need to implement many different marketing techniques on an ongoing basis. Running seasonal campaigns is good, but continual promotion via a number of means is far more effective. Only then will you generate a healthy number of prospects for your business.
This brings us to an important point: the whole idea behind marketing is to generate
interest among your target audience. More than that, the purpose of marketing is to
generate leads—leads that will evolve into sales. In order to ensure you use your marketing budget to your best advantage, you must do one thing:
Measure the cost of every response.
Measure the response to every marketing technique you implement. It’s a simple process to analyze the benefits per dollar of everything you do—and it's even easier if you use the Marketing Budget in the Budget file and the Marketing Activities Analysis Sheet included on this kit's CD-ROM.
Look closely at the dollar benefits and tweak your marketing tactics accordingly. For example, let’s say your $40-per-week classified advertising campaign generates two, $3,000 Website sales within a couple of months. You’ve spent around $200, and generated $6,000 in income. Sounds great, doesn’t it?
But don’t forget the other, hidden “costs” of the advertisement. The cost breakdown may look something like this:
- Time spent writing the ad – 1 hour
- Unproductive leads generated – 14
- Time spent following unproductive leads – 10 hours
- Time spent on winning proposals – 8 hours
- Travelling time – 4 hours
- Overhead costs – postage, letterheads, envelopes, telephone calls, etc.
Assuming you generate a healthy 30% profit on the jobs themselves—that’s $1,800—you need to deduct wages for twenty-three hours of extra work (a minimum of $690). Also deduct $200 for the advertisement itself, and maybe another $100 for overheads such as postage and petrol.
That reduces your $1,800 profit to a return of just $810 for your original investment of $200. This is a fairly simple example, but keep in mind that the benefits you receive from many strategies may not be so easily quantified.
Whether you follow any of these advertising, promotion, and PR suggestions is up to you. You can forget this information, or do something with it. Just do it! Think big. Isn’t it time?
Key Points
- Make a plan! Identify your objective, and how you'll get there.
- Consider the market, and your competitors. List the tools you'll use to market your business, and the message you'll promote.
- Measure the results of everything you do. Trial and measurement is your path to successful marketing!
Chapter Summary
We kicked off this chapter on the theme that doing something was better than hypothesizing about what you could do. This is definitely the case when it comes to marketing.
If you have an idea that a particular tool or approach might work, try it, test the results, and adjust your future activities accordingly. Don’t procrastinate! Get out there and do something!
We qualified this (apparently reckless!) approach of mine with some key marketing theory, beginning with a discussion of how to target your marketing efforts. We talked about defining and reaching particular target audience segments, and how you can attract prequalified leads through targeted marketing.
Next, we discussed in detail your marketing options. First, we addressed the issue of assessment, so that you could identify which marketing tactics and tools might be valuable for you. Then, we launched into a review of the more popular and affordable marketing options available to the budding freelancer or small business owner, and I provided a Public Relations Primer for your use in attracting media attention to your work.
Lastly, we looked at developing a marketing plan that contained goals, a market and competitor analysis, a detailed strategy, the marketing message, and addressed the all important aspect of measurement, without which your marketing efforts would lack direction.
Let’s continue to discuss the ways you can work to establish your freelance or small Web design business. In the next chapter, we’ll cover the development of a strong competitive advantage, or Unique Selling Proposition, which will help you distance yourself from the competition and really stand out from the crowd.
Don't stop now! /#l#/http://www.sitepoint.com/article/1201/#nlt#/Read Chapter 11 - Handle Client Complaints/#enl#/.