Covers every aspect of marketing, including selecting the best markets, avoiding common mistakes, and selling tactics that get results Powerhouse Marketing Tactics for Marketing Big Profits from your Small Business Written for both new and established small-business owners, this nuts-and-bolts guide gives you the marketing firepower you need to satisfy customers, attract prospects, boost your profits and blast the competition. Packed with proven techniques, tips and advice, this easy-to-read guide covers every aspect of marketing including: How to think like a marketing guru How to select the best markets for your product and services 4 common maketing mistakes and how to avoid them Tips for writing your marketing plan Sure-fire selling tactis that get results And much, much more Jack Ferreri has over 20 years experience on the front lines of marekting for small to medium sized businesses. His practical, no-nonsense approach to marketing has produced results in virtually all areas of business. Chapter 1 Think Like A Marketing Guru If you can develop true marketing vision, you'll transform your business. You'll establish a tight bond with your customers that will be impossible for your competitors to break. Look around us in turn-of-the-millennium America. The marketing concept is the dynamo of our consumer culture: It's the realization that pleasing the customer is central to business success. The success of marketing is a large part of why we and the rest of the developed world enjoy the abundance that we do. We tend not to realize the enormous impact marketing has made on us, and it's easy to forget that marketing, the careful union of the consumer's needs and the products and services that satisfy those needs, has not always existed as it does today. We are very fortunate. We enjoy high-quality and affordable foods and exotic taste treats from around the world. For a modest expenditure, we can buy electronics unimaginable a generation ago. Through books, magazines, television and the Internet, we browse in an evening more information than Horatio ever dreamt of in his philosophy. Marketing is one of the key catalysts of this abundance. A BRIEF HISTORY OF MARKETING It's helpful to take a quick look back to see how this has all come about. In the earliest times, people only made what they would use. The countryside was largely self-sufficient, with families and small communities generally making everything they needed. The customer had not yet been invented. As time passed, people began to barter and trade among themselves. It was a simple exchange: You give me some of what you make or grow, and I will give you some of what I have. Eventually, community marketplaces sprouted up where this bartering could take place, and as bartering became complicated and unwieldy, money was used as a substitute for the direct exchange of goods. Middlepersons emerged (as they always do): They would buy from lots of different growers and makers and then distribute a range of those products to everyone. People now became customers as well as producers, and as societies grew and the process continued, people began to specialize: They would produce one thing to sell, or they would sell their services to a company, and with the money they made they would purchase everything they might need or want. Fast-forward to the Industrial Revolution in the mid-19th century. Technological advances made production easier; trade increased among a growing number of nations. Machinery spit out goods quickly--much more quickly than people could do manually. Despite the well-chronicled problems of this time, people welcomed the wide range of new and improved products and inventions that came on the market. You couldn't make enough. In this rapidly changing era, the truism that "a good product sells itself" was born. It was industrialists' heaven! Direct marketing was born at this time, as manufacturers mailed lists of their products to customers at home and had them order through the mail. Toward the end of this period, mail order catalogs invaded the living rooms (and other rooms) of rural American homes. Over the next century or so, as more and more factories kept cranking out goods, the market became flooded with many different types of similar items. Businesses found they had to "push" goods harder to get them bought. This process ushered in the era of the salesperson, along with advertising and advertising baubles (most advertising memorabilia come from this era). It wasn't enough anymore just to make something; you had to differentiate it from all the other products around. Roles became more defined: It was manufacturing's job to make stuff, and it was the sales force's job to sell it. No one bothered much about the customer at this point. Demand was still great enough that real customer satisfaction wasn't a vital issue. Selling proved to be very successful, but at first it was one-sided: It was all about the product. And event