Marketing Is a System, Not an Event
Create and build your very own fully functioning, consistently performing, marketing system.

By John Jantsch

Small business marketers love the chase. They love the new fangled way to make the phone ring. They love to think of a marketing promotion as a single event. But it’s precisely this view of marketing that holds most small businesses back. They fall prey to the “marketing idea of the week” and never fully explore what it takes to create and build a completely functioning, consistently performing, marketing system.

What Is a System?
This article outlines the basic steps any business can follow on the way to creating their very own marketing system. But first, let’s explore this word “system” in the context of marketing. Small business owners have no problem thinking “systems” when it comes to other business functions like accounting or hiring. When it comes to marketing though, all bets are off.

When I use the word “system,” I mean several things:
•    The system is documented. You can’t have a system or a step in a system unless you write it down.
•    The system is built on sound marketing principals.
•    You constantly measure, innovate and refine the system.

Building Your System
Here are the system building steps.

1. Narrow and define a target market. Small business owners love to say “yes.” The next thing you know, the target market is roughly anyone they think will pay them. You must commit to a narrowly defined target market and you must focus all of your attention upon serving that market like no one ever dreamed of. An example of a narrow marketing focus might be estate attorneys.
2. Discover and communicate a core message to your market. Until you can show how your firm is different and offers something unique, you will always compete on price. You must find a way to tell your newly defined narrow target market why you have something to offer that they value. Your core message might be, “We show estate attorneys how to gain all the business they can handle.”
3. Develop multiple forms of permission-based lead generation. No one likes to be sold to. Your lead generation system must be built on several fronts, such as public relations, referral marketing, strategic partnerships and targeted advertising. Your lead generation message must offer the target market a reason to want to know more. Forget about the sale—look for ways to build trust.
4. Construct a lead conversion and customer reselling process. No amount of leads in the world will help your business if you don’t efficiently turn them into clients. You must have a plan that maps out what you will do when the phone rings, when you make the sales call and when it’s time to do more business with the clients you already have. This is where the real success in marketing lies.
5. Create education-based marketing and presentation materials. Forget about the glossy sales brochure. Use your marketing materials to teach how your firm is different, how you solve real problems, how you work, why you work and what you believe. When you do, your marketing will be much more successful. The content of your Web site must follow this approach as well.
6. Define the most important marketing success indicators. Setting marketing goals for such things as leads, appointments, sales, phone calls, referrals, impressions, mentions and anything else you can think of to measure is how you turn marketing into a game and how you keep score of the game. The only way to improve something is to measure how well you are doing in the first place.
7. Build an annual marketing calendar and budget—and stick to it. Once you have spent the time and energy to think through the first six steps, commit your plan to a marketing calendar and then allocate (or at least think about) the money it will take to implement your plan. Once you create a calendar, it is much more likely that you will look at the tasks assigned to each month like a “to-do” list. You simply scratch each item off your list and plan for the next. It’s an amazingly simple but effective device.

Find a Champion
Okay…now the last bit of advice.

Every system needs a champion. Either find someone in your organization who does little else but operate the system or hire a marketing professional and charge that person with helping you develop, implement and run the system.

Properly fed and maintained, this little marketing system can become the engine that drives your firm’s climb to the top.

John Jantsch is a marketing coach and creator of the Duct Tape Marketing System. You can get more information about the Duct Tape System and download your free copy of “How To Create the Ultimate Small Business Marketing System in 7 Simple Steps” by visiting http://www.DuctTapeMarketing.com.