Every business needs a great marketer on payroll.

A marketer is somewhat like a gas station. For mobility in a car, you need gasoline, and for mobility and visibility in business, you need a great marketer. The real reason most businesses fail in the first 5 years, is because they do not consider correctly the real needs of their business where marketing is concerned.

[Interesting Fact]: Corporations are by law bound to spend 20% of their gross profits on marketing.

A traditional business owner is not a Marketer, unless the business is Advertising.

Entrepreneurs face a mounting tide of marketing tasks if they should choose to go it alone. The services of a good marketer allow a small business to develop their exposure while remaining focused on the running of the core business. Dividing the responsibilities of marketing and daily business maintenance is the first true step toward success for an entrepreneur.

Marketing is a daunting task and truly should be handled by professionals only. This is not a game in these times where false expectations result in the loss of and entire business, let alone the human potential of the dream behind it.

Marketing is a step by step process, not a one and done purchase that solves problems instantly.

The first step in great marketing is understanding who your primary clients are. You must understand who you are trying to serve. Many entrepreneurs incorrectly target too many clients in a broad sweep instead of serving the needs of a targeted minority. It may seem strange, but we live in an age now where people are looking for specificity, and not a general store. Focus to dominate a single category of business. Then Duplicate.

The second step in great marketing is to assess the competition. Who are they? What are they doing wrong and what are they doing right? How can you improve what they are doing, and become the obvious choice for your clients? Studying your competition, even to the point of printing out several competitors on paper and marking up what you like in order to make improvements to your business is a highly recommended practice.

The third step in great marketing is branding alignment. Is your brand currently communicating to your specific customers the simple fact that your value trumps your competition? Does your Brand communicate a value so intensely that the mind of the customer is pulled to your business with no second thought to the competition? Ask yourself this, given the freedom to choose, do you go to Wal Mart or Petsmart for your animal care needs?

Once you understand that it’s your brand that that does the heavy lifting where first impressions are concerned, you realize the wisdom in the old adage ”you never get a second chance to make a first impression” and you must come to terms with your business branding. Present an irresistible offer with your brand, and customers will stomp down your door.

The fourth step in great marketing is a social newcomer, and yet as old as civilization itself. Your brand must build a relationship with your customer. With the advent of the internet into the arena of marketing, the danger of misunderstanding this step is tantamount to ignorance itself. It is summed up simply with the expression “he who has the biggest and happiest list wins.”

This means businesses are not selling goods and hoping customers are going to come back anymore. Now the game is to draw them into the business, and develop a loyalty based relationship, allowing market control like never before.  How do you think it will be for a new business owner in 10 years when they try to open a store and the competition has figured out the game of loyalty and runs sales the days the new store is scheduled to open? Just by sending out an email or texting to loyal customers smart phones…

The fifth step to great marketing is proper syndication. Once your brand is set correctly, and your relationship generating position is solidified, and assuming your business is able to scale into the larger marketplace, it’s time to syndicate. A great formula used by millionaire marketers is to develop a piece of content such as an article,  and then have it re-purposed into an audio. Then it is again re-purposed into a video, and again re-purposed into a blog post.

This allows the content to be simultaneously deployed into the top article directories, into the iTunes podcasting library (and others) and uploaded to the top 20-200 video sharing websites. ALL with the invaluable links pointing back to your offer. These syndicated deployments of content are like a foundation of a house in that the search engines use them to “raise the value” of your offer above others based on link volume and quality.

The sixth step to great marketing is understanding the correct use of Social Networking and developing your presence correctly in the largest online social circles on earth. Social Networking may as well be the elephant in the room where marketing is concerned. Everyone knows about it, and no one seems to understand what it’s really good for.

Let me simplify. Social Network Marketing is an advanced aspect of the fourth step of relationship building. If your competition is doing a better job of relaying the value of their offers and business in social circles than you are, then they will gain and retain a larger portion of the market than you have. Social Network Marketing is having value to offer, using a social venue to address and solve problems for customers, generating social proof of value based on performance in social circles and leveraging the trust generated into product or services sales.

The practice of marketing is an extremely complicated and delicate value offering, because in the end you are buying the talent of a professional to convince otherwise over burdened and marketing saturated customers to pay attention to you, and furthermore buy your offers. Akin to mind control really…

I hope this has helped you. I believe that if you take the right steps to engage your customers with professional marketing services, you will not suffer the fate of those who just believe they can go it alone and survive.