Direct marketing for small businesses
Direct marketing can connect the bright ideas of small businesses to grow a customer base.
Although most small businesses don't work, there's still something beautiful about them. It's the unique combination of effort and hope in the face of adversity. Michael Gerber in his best selling work, The E-Myth, points out that the reason for failure is that the owner ends up wearing too many hats and growth becomes sidelined. In this article, we're not going to look so much at the structure of businesses (read Gerber's work for that) but rather how to actually grow your small business with direct marketing. Because once you achieve that most nebulous and difficult force - growth; there are people who can help you structure it.
Half the marketing growth is in the idea
The best small businesses become larger businesses because their built on something beautiful. A friend of mine is an engineer. He sees beauty and potential in machines, in improving the way the world works and making it a more economic and productive place by designing better machines. So, when he quit being a missionary in Nepal, he returned to his home country to engineer a better water heater. It was that core idea that has made his business what it is, a company focused on making water heating in homes more efficient and cheaper.
Passionately he built a production line in an industrial suburb which I went to visit. A few years later, demand outstripped his plant and he had to move production to China. However, in terms of the design and development of his machines, the quality and passion shines through to customers and distributors. As a result he has built, from nothing, a good sized water heating business that is genuinely innovative.
The truth is, if the idea is built on integrity and excellence, coupled with a genuine need in the market, half the marketing is already done - for marketing will only make a good product succeed faster and a bad one fail faster.
Direct marketing is a communications game
Businesses grow by communicating to, and engaging with potential customers in the right way. Usually specialist help is needed. Most business owners exist too much inside the problems of their businesses to see what people really need and how people might feel about the business's product offer.
Direct marketing breaks the problem of business growth down into finding and engaging with a customer base. First, it considers the size and location of the market. Then it considers how best to reach them. Finally it implements strategy, collateral and campaigns to reach the market and convert customers in the most cost effective way.
It is in the implementation of marketing, particularly direct marketing, that many businesses fail. Marketing, well communicating to large numbers of people, is inherently expensive. Most small businesses can't afford to get it wrong, not more than once or twice anyway. That's what kills businesses. It's why they fail. They simply can't find a way to economically market and convert new customers.
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