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10 Marketing Must Have's

Marketing is what makes or breaks any business, and all too often it is simply overlooked or made as an after thought. Though it is important that you get together with a designer experienced in marketing and design, there are some things that you can do right now to improve your marketing efforts by yourself.

1-Have a clear message: What are you trying to say? Do not attempt to put your life story in a brochure and pass it out! People will simply throw it out.

2-Be consistent: Your letterhead, flyers, banners, web site etc. should carry the same theme throughout. This builds up trust among other things.

3-Proof Read: Or don't-but when you get your order for 5,000 flyers back and realize that there are errors in it, you will wish you had.

4-Target Your Audience: We all have a target audience, that is who we most often sell to and therefore cater our marketing to. Your marketing materials should appeal to these people.

5-Don't Skip It: You and I both have seen wonderful products go belly up, and worthless crap clutter store shelves successfully. Why? Marketing. Do not overlook the importance of this in your business.

6-Be Memorable: Set yourself apart from everyone else. If you sell goat milk soap, there are about 1,000,000 other goat milk soap creators out there, right? So when I, the consumer, come into contact with your company, why would I choose you? Give them a reason!

7-Get a Logo: If you can not afford to hire someone to handle all of your marketing materials, at the very least find a really good designer to design you a killer logo. You can expect to pay anywhere from $50-$5,000 for original logo designs, but when all is said and done, you have an authentic and memorable brand to build upon and last you many years.

8-Never miss an Opportunity: There are so many times through out the day when you have the ability to 'market' and don't. For example, for paintedplatesandbowls.com, the company ships many packages and has to mark them all 'fragile'. Well, when we had the fragile stamp designed, we added the web address just below the "Fragile" so now that web address is all over the package and being seen by people we will never meet!

9-Understand Humans: Just as in the example above, you have to understand human reactions. Humans are naturally curious, but avoid being manipulated. This is why when you post to a message board or network you will get far more clicks by simply putting your URL (like http://GetWrappedUp.com ) than a big needy sales pitch.

10-Invest wisely: Do not simply buy ads with companies or directories because they are cheap. If no one read the publication then no matter how cheap it was, you over paid. It is better to be creative in your marketing (sending samples to radio djs, sponsoring contests, etc) and save your money up until you can afford to buy an ad on a site with more visitors. And, only market to your market, anything else is spinning your wheels.

Next time you are shopping, look at their clearance section and you are bound to find some great products with poor marketing. Go through the rest of the store, and you will at some point find some products that are little more that junk selling quite nicely, because they have a great marketing campaign. Follow these tips, and stay out of the clearance section.