Business and Careers Article: How Mums in Business are saving thousands of dollars on their marketing...

By: Alison Basson of Mums in Business

Most businesses, whether or not they are a small business, are guilty of this. They are so busy trying to get sales that they lose sight of how much it is costing them to get those sales. Sound familiar?

Here is a common example; without having a marketing plan in place most businesses, and especially mums in business, spend money on advertising and promoting in order to get sales. They place an ad in a local newspaper and find that they get a few sales in. Great they think, I will do some more, so they place a larger ad which costs double the price. Again they get some sales so they think great this is working. And so it continues…

However they have placed the ads without knowinghow many sales they need to break-even or make a profit. After working it out they find that they have spent more money on advertising and promoting the business than they recoup on ongoing sales.

Guess what, at this point for most business mums with small businesses this is too late as they have no money left to do any more marketing.

What you need to do is test, measure and monitor all your marketing activities to see if it works to ensure you aren't wasting your money. This includes free advertising as you will still have an expense of your time or the time of a marketing expert if you have paid one to obtain these for you.

So what do you need to do?
For every piece of marketing, whether paid or free you must test, measure and monitor it and improve if necessary. Use these simple tips to help you:

• Use test ads to gauge customer response - place smaller ads or do smaller campaigns. This will cost substantially less if you get it wrong
• Test your offers and headlines. You may have to test a number of different headlines and offers before you get it right. Once you find out what works then the answer is easy, do more of it. As you find new successful strategies add them into your overall marketing strategy for the year.
• Ask your customers where they have come from "Can I ask how you heard about us?"
  You need to build it into your sales patter so you remember to do it all the time. You can use it when answering the phone, in emails and even on your website. If you have order forms add the question to it so either a customer can fill it in or you can.
• Record the results - use a test and measuring worksheets to help (these are available in the Business Essentials members section of the website). Once you have recorded all the information, this will tell you which promotions work and which don't. If it doesn't work, don't do it or improve what you are currently doing so that it does work.

You need to look at all the various publications, test and monitor the response.

I cannot emphasise enough how critical this is, I see countless businesses not do this time and time again, and small business and even women and mums in business, often because they have had bad advice.

I suppose the question you need to ask yourself is, am I going to learn from other peoples mistakes or am I going to do it my way and potentially waste thousand of dollars or even worse go broke just because they have not taken the extra time to put this process in place.

Remember: test and measure every piece of marketing whether paid or free (time costs as well) and improve if necessary.

A great way to get more marketing tips for your business would be to chat to other business mums just like you on the mums in business - business discussion forum. Get your free access by going to http://www.mumsinbusiness.net where you can also discover proven, easy-to-apply strategy that mum's just like YOU are using every day to start and grow profitable businesses!

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