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Let me get right to the point. The single most powerful small business marketing tool on the planet is a marketing system.

But when I talk about a marketing system I am not referring to those academic exercises found in college marketing books.

A marketing system by my way of thinking is a simple (in many cases one page) document that specifically answers who you are, what you do, who needs it, how you plan to grab them by the throat, when you plan to do it and how you plan to pay for itin a way that everyone in your organization, network, and client base can clearly understand.

So, let’s break it down into some simple steps.

1) Narrow Your Focus - create a description of your ideal client. Describe them as though they are sitting across the desk from your at this moment. Define only the market that you know needs what you offer and values what you have to offer. It is just as important to understand who you don’t want as a client.

2) Find and Communicate Your Core Difference - Even if your make it up, you’ve got to find something that makes your business stand out from the pack. Once you do, you’ve got to build your entire marketing program around this difference. Is it red trucks, is it an unheard of guarantee, is it a very specific market niche. You can’t stand out trying to be all things to all people.

3) Package Your Business - Look for ways to build your unique difference into the experience your client or prospect has with your firm. Everything about your firm should communicate and deliver your unique promise. Package your services as products, communicate your unique process, name your service offerings.

4) Educate - Throw away the sales brochures and create marketing materials and web site content that clearly speaks to your ideal client and gives proof that your indeed uniquely qualified to solve their problems. Create case studies, testimonial sheets, client lists, process description, service descriptions, the story of why you started your business.

5) Install the Lead Generation Trio - Advertising that generates permission, public relations that provide proof and referral systems that guarantee trust. Each of these three lead generating tactics works hand in hand to create a non stop flow of highly qualified leads.

6) Automate and Dominate - Once you start to create a flow of leads let technology do the heavy qualifying and selling for you. Ezines, email, blogs, web sites, white paper delivery, subscription lists - all must be automated in order to most effectively communicate as consistently as is necessary in today’s advertising message onslaught.

7) Live by a Calendar - Create the system and then work the system. Do whatever you must to make sure that you do at least one marketing activity every single day. Create a monthly calendar and give each month a marketing system theme. Get everyone in your organization involved - put the calendar in a very public place.

Copyright 2005 John Jantsch

John Jantsch is a marketing coach and creator of Duct Tape Marketing. You can find out more about the Ultimate Marketing System at: http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/Ultimate-Marketing-System.htm

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Cold calling doesn’t work, it’s no fun and often you end up with leads, or worse yet, clients, that don’t really value what you do.

Having said that, leads are the lifeblood of growth, without a lead, there is no client.

Set-up a 2 step lead machine and you can say goodbye to cold calling while generating all of the qualified, permission based leads you can handle.

The basic idea behind the 2 step approach is to create one or more valuable reports, workshops, evaluations, trial products, checklists, newsletters, courses or tip sheets. You know, something like, “How To Tell If Your Roofing Contractor Is Lying To You” or “What Every Senior Must Know About Bush’s Social Security Changes” or “101 More Things You Can Do With Your iPod.”

Now that you have your value packed written report or audio CD, every bit of your advertising - that’s Yellow Pages, direct mail, back of your business card, letterhead, email signature, web site - should focus on getting people to pick up, request or download that report. Don’t try to do anything else with your advertising, let the report sell you. See, that’s step 1.

There are several reasons that this approach is so much more effective for the small business owner than the traditional “image” type advertising.

First off, if you only buy a 2 x 3 ad or send a 4 x 6 postcard, can you really tell your story very well?

Secondly, this approach allows you to demonstrate your expertise in a non-threatening, on the prospect’s own terms, way. Nobody likes to be sold to, but if they take the time to read your report, understand what you do that has value, have an 8-10 page conversation with you, the relationship and trust has begun.

A person who has requested your free information in officially a hot lead. When a prospect visits your web site they are effectively raising their hand and identifying themselves as someone who is very interested in what you do. Half of your sales job is done!

If your advertising is focused on gathering the lead into the free report funnel, then your sales efforts are focused on taking that group and only that group that raised their hands and taking them to the next step in the process. That may be an appointment or just a series of more advanced mailings. By the way that’s step 2.

So let’s recap.

Create a free information product that your target market would see as a valuable read or listen.

Advertise the free report in everything you do

Capture the names and emails of those who request the report

Follow-up on those leads

If you take this advice to heart, everything about how you market your business will change. Finding new business will become a much more rewarding and valuable experience.

A couple bonus ideas:

Once you create your free report you will find other uses for it.

Referrals - Give the report or the web page where the report is found to your referral sources and tell them to introduce you by way of your free report or newsletter. This makes it easy for them to refer you and assures that your story is told.

Cold-calling - I know, I know, you shouldn’t ever need to cold call but, if you do, do it this way. Call up those prospects on your list and instead of trying to convince them to give you 5 minutes of their time a week from Tuesday, offer them the address of your power packed free info and then shut-up. Your prospecting time will be much more productive if you can use it to turn cold calling into 2-step prospecting.

Copyright 2005 John Jantsch

John Jantsch is a marketing consultant based in Kansas City, Mo. He writes frequently on real world small business marketing tactics and is the creator of “Duct Tape Marketing” a turn-key small business marketing system. Check out his blogs at http://www.DuctTapeMarketing.com/weblog.php and http://www.bloggingbusiness.com

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