There is no way an entrepreneur can make money or be successful unless they learn how to
properly market their product or service. Without marketing, you won't get any orders to
process and you won't make any money. Plain and simple!
Advertising is one small way to market. But placing a few ads, doing a few co-op print and
mails and completing a 1,000-piece direct mail to a mailing list is only the beginning. At
this point, you have only opened your eyes. Now you have to get out of bed and walk!!
Unfortunately, there is no clear-cut, step-by-step methods for marketing. What works for
one company may not work for another. What ad works for one may not work for the other.
The variances every step of the way are wide. And you can go from one extreme of the scale
to another.
Marketing is like opening a safe, to which you have lost the combination to. How many
tries and different variances will it take to unlock the safe? For some, it might take 10
tries. But for you, it make take 2 million tries.
Don't Be Discouraged
But don't be discouraged. Marketing is much safer than playing the lottery. And the great
thing about marketing is that you get BETTER every time you make a mistake. That's why it
is extremely important for you not to brow-beat yourself and think you are a failure when
a marketing mistake is made. All you have to do is analyze why you made the mistake and
try something different. (Personally, I talk to others about the mistakes I make. It helps
me to not secretly hold it inside and brow-beat myself over it. Plus it helps the other
person not to make the same mistake I did and we learn from each other.)
The best way to start out learning how to market is to analyze YOURSELF and your buying
habits. Why did you buy Wonder bread this week at the store instead of Nature's Own? Why
did you shop at Winn Dixie instead of Kroger? What really made you buy that new CD at Wal
Mart yesterday? Why do you really go to Sears for your tires?
When the junk mail comes in your mail this week, analyze why some are immediately thrown
in the trash and others opened. While thumbing through a card deck, analyze why the ad you
stopped to read caught your eye. Was it because you needed the item or was the headline
too interesting to pass up? On those rare occasions when you are drawn to an advertisement
to the point that you read the whole thing and are excited about ordering the item, keep
it in a reference file so you can use it for ideas when writing your own ads.
Summary
This is only lesson one in developing a mindset to getting started in marketing. There are
a zillion more ways, techniques and methods we cannot cover in this report. But remember:
it will take some time to be successful as an entrepreneur. So if you don't have the
patience to wait that's okay. There are lots of jobs working for somebody else. Not all of
us can be sellers. We have to have people like you to buy from us.
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