Marketing tools for the small
business
Start by developing some good
quality marketing tools.
If not now, there will come a time when you will need to
make presentations to clients about your services.
If you don’t have the time then, chances are your choices
will be something of dubious quality or nothing at all.
If you have the skills, doing it
yourself only costs you some time.
If you don’t, consider farming this out to someone that
does. Ugly
presentations rarely close the sale.
Sit down and make your list of
every possible thing that you could need during a sales
presentation. This
could include introductory materials, things that tell about your
industry, your business, benefits and costs comparisons, lists of
services that you provide, affiliations and associations,
contracts, forms, brochure materials, and legal forms.
If
the idea of hiring out professional services leaves you cold,
consider other alternatives such as graphic arts college services
or hiring a professional who is doing some moonlighting.
There are many very qualified people whose rates are lower
than the top end pros.
Desktop
publishing
Most
business people already do a certain amount of desktop publishing,
even if it's only to print out your own letterhead.
Take
this a step further and start to develop your own marketing
tools. Putting them out on your own printer isn't always the
best option and you won't match the quality of a 4-color print
process down at your local Alpha Graphics. But if you take
your time, work it, massage it, and pass it around for some ideas,
you will probably come up with something that is very
passable. The best part of it is that you won't have spent a
fortune on it if you look at it later and decide that something
needs to be changed. Of course if it's a choice between
desktop publishing your own stuff or nothing, something is
generally better than nothing at all.
The
other advantage to developing your own marketing tools is that you
can customize them. Instead of sending your representatives
out with the exact same thing that everyone else in your company
has, put their picture and contact information on it. It's
just something that adds a bit of pizzazz to the 'just another
brochure", and it does help to differentiate you and your
staff.
You
will of course need some software in order to create your
marketing tools and that would mean both graphics development and
publishing tools. This does NOT mean that you can get by
with MS Word and WordArt. Those are slightly above using
crayon, but not much.
You
will have to come up with some money for it, but consider the
long-term payoff. You will constantly need to develop this
little bit of graphics or produce a new brochure in order to sell
your services.
Software
Recommendations >>
