What's Your Toughest Marketing Challenge?

[Dale King]

Many of my clients have difficulties marketing their businesses, which is why they hire me to help them.

What about you? What's your toughest marketing challenge? And more importantly, what are you doing to overcome it?

Dale King

[Crimson Fox]

Getting more sales without reducing your profit margins. But I suppose this is the ultimate goal, so I'll break the problem up a little more.

The reason more people come to me is that their target audience doesn't know they exist and the second reason being that they want this audience to see them as 'THE' place to purchase their product, or style their product to be 'THE' product to buy.

Again, this is a very broad area. So to break it down further. I'd say my clients want to build a trusting relationship with their customer base so they they know what they are purchasing up front and will keep coming back for it.

I think the real trick to building this trust is in never lying to your customers. Never say your product does something that is doesn't do. Instead promote the functions that your product does really well. You'll get a more targeted customer base that will be happy with their purchase and will refer your product to others.

Word-of-mouth is still the ideal form of marketing (people referring products to friends, family and colleagues). If you can build a campaign that will spin positively into word-of-mouth by building a trusting relationship with your customers your campaign should do very well.

[Onatudget]

Mr. King:
Being a relatively new small-business owner, I would say my greatest marketing challenge isn't actually working to market my business (which happens to be my book) but knowing where to begin. I turned my novel into my business earlier this year, when successfully "coming up short" on many attempts at getting publishing through more traditional literary means. I had to take a step backwards, examine what I wanted from an outsiders perspective and thought: What is it BIG publishing houses do that small independent (self published) writers do not?

I did the research (and this is a daily process btw) and told myself I would take the SAME approach as a big business publishing house, but naturally, from a small perspective. Marketing a book is as tough as marketing any type of product. People will buy something if they (#1) know it exists and (#2) its worth their time or money. So, first I had to focus on producing the best possible product I could and secondly (this is the part that will last forever I suppose) I had to work to show people it was worth their money and time.

Not knowing where to begin has been the greatest challenge, but thank God for the Internet. It is the ultimate marketing tool, full of forums (like this one) and people willing to share and offer insights into best practice methodologies.

I take the marketing hurdles with a grain of salt, believing that in time, if I am willing to work humbly and utilize what marketing means I can afford and gain access to, then in time, like any business, those means will grow, as will my ability to market with the "big boys."

[Dale King]

Bravo, Bobby, Bravo!

Dale King

[mktgbiz]

Toughest marketing challenge is continuing to market, market, market. Then when I''m tired of marketing.............market some more......



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[zoobie]

For the company, the challenge is to market, too....meet a profit.

[RA Jenkins]

I also do counseling with "brick & mortar" small businesses, and I see the toughest marketing challenge being the research and knowledge necessary to understand their market prior to formulating a marketing plan. Most need to understand their product's place and their prospects' buying habits (where, how, & when purchases are done). I often use an analogy of planning a trip -where do you want to go (Target Audience), what do you want to do when you get there (message you want to communnicate), Route to take (general communication method), and specific transportation method (media used). This gives a better overall framework to better understand what needs to be done.