The Millionaire Mind Support Network

Another way to describe marketing activities is to consider the big picture of how they fit in with the other business functions.

Through marketing efforts, decisions are made and strategies are implemented concerning:

• What products, goods, services or ideas, are to be offered
• To whom —the target market
• How to inform potential customers of the offering, how to make the transaction, etc

Products are created through production efforts. Capital and operating funds are managed and tracked in the accounting-finance area; the human resource focus is employees and the policies concerning them.

A marketing approach relies upon the coordination of several business functions to be successful.

For example:

• The product might need some tweaking by producer of the product to respond to customer complaints.
• The person who handles human resource issues might be asked to develop compensation plans that reward sales people who build significant relationships that have tremendous potential, but are slow to close.
• Special payment plans might need to be implemented by the accounting staff to accommodate a variety of customer needs.

As a result, marketing usually crosses more departmental boundaries out of necessity than other business functions do. Marketing requires the orchestration of everyone who plays a part in the common goal of pleasing the customer.

A Holistic Marketing Mindset

For a small business owner who has no employees, this means that he/she needs to mentally tear down the walls between varied business functions and think holistically when it comes to marketing strategies.

These are the marketing fundamentals:

• Producing what the customer wants should be the focus of business operations and planning.
• Creating profitable sales volume, not just sales volume, is a necessary goal.
• Coordinating between marketing activities and all other functions within a business that affect marketing efforts is a must.

Even a small business owner who wears ALL the hats, needs to know what order to put them on and when to take them off.

I’m a very capable marketing technician. I’ve been trained to know what to do, and why, to what probable result. Over the years I’ve had lots of practice and plenty of lessons learned. Joe Vitale, however is a “Guru status, marketing maven. He knows all of the above and executes with panache. Any marketing book by Joe is a good business investment.

As a retired SBDC counselor, I know where to find business-related information — both online and IRL. In this case my marketing source is a SBA publication (Ohio Women’s Business Network, Columbus, OH, 6/97). For individual business support with any aspect of your business contact the nearest SBA-sponsored Small Business Development Center.

Millionaire Minds Love to Market!

Copyright © Millionaire Minds, LLC 2007
All writings here are copyrighted. You may not use them without written permission but you may link to the posts or give out a link to the posts. And remember, You Have a Millionaire Mind!

Marketing…

In plain and simple terms, marketing activities and strategies result in making products available that satisfy customers while making profits for the companies that offer those products.

Good marketing produces a win-win situation because:

• Customers have a product that meets their needs and healthy profits are achieved for the company. • • These profits allow the company to continue to do business in order to meet the needs of future customers. This bares repeating — NO Profits — NO Business. Even ‘Non-Profits’ bring in enough funds to cover overhead and special project expenses.

Stated another way, focus on what the customer wants is essential to successful marketing efforts. This customer-orientation must also be balanced with the company’s objective of maintaining a profitable volume of sales in order for the company to continue to do business. Marketing is a creative, ever-changing orchestration of all the activities needed to accomplish both these objectives.

How Are The Customer And Business Objectives Met?

The American Marketing Association’s definition of marketing is: the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods, and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational objectives.

You see in the above definition that the process of marketing begins with discovering what products customers want to buy. Providing the features and quality customers want is a critical first step in marketing. You’ll be facing an uphill battle if you provide something you want to produce and then try to convince someone to buy it.

The marketing process continues with setting a price, letting potential customers know about your product, and making it available to them.

What Activities Are Included In Marketing?

Marketing activities are numerous and varied because they basically include everything needed to get a product off the drawing board and into the hands of the customer. The marketing process includes activities such as designing the product so it will be desirable to customers, using tools such as marketing research and pricing, and promoting the product so people will know about it, using tools such as public relations, advertising, marketing communications, and exchange with the customer, through sales and distribution.

It is important to note that the field of marketing includes sales, as well many other functions. Some people incorrectly assume that marketing and sales are the same – they are not.

In the August 8th blog we’ll review “How Marketing Fits into the Company Structure”

I’m a very capable marketing technician. I’ve been trained to know what to do, and why, to what probable result. Over the years I’ve had lots of practice and plenty of lessons learned. Joe Vitale, however is a “Guru status, marketing maven. He knows all of the above and executes with panache. Any marketing book by Joe is a good business investment.

As a retired SBDC counselor, I know where to find business-related information — both online and IRL. In this case my marketing source is a SBA publication (Ohio Women’s Business Network, Columbus, OH, 6/97). For individual business support with any aspect of your business contact the nearest SBA-sponsored Small Business Development Center.

Millionaire Minds Love to Market!

Copyright © Millionaire Minds, LLC 2007
All writings here are copyrighted. You may not use them without written permission but you may link to the posts or give out a link to the posts. And remember, You Have a Millionaire Mind!

In search of the perfect words…

I have been implementing Napoleon Hill’s ‘Think and Grow Rich’ call to definite action.

If one is called to teach what one needs to know more fully — taking quick, definitive action is the topic of my soul.

Analysis-Paralysis has been the abiding sin of my adult life, right along the need for perfection.

To me, acting quickly and definitively feels like, Ready, FIRE, Aim!

Am I stretching my comfort zone?

Taking action before everything is just PERFECT really makes me really uncomfortable… ahh personal growth…

If you have ever read the Confessions of St. Augustine, you know that as a youth Augustine lived a hedonistic lifestyle. It was during this period, before he earned his “Saint Spurs”, that he uttered his famous prayer, “Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet” [da mihi castitatem et continentiam, sed noli modo] (Conf., VIII. vii (17)).

The mature St Augustine was a great teacher because he had been such a great sinner in his youth. Given my own long history of Analysis-Paralysis, and the many lessons learned from my both my SBDC clients and my design firms customers, we have a great deal to discuss, or like St. Augustine, a great deal to confess…

Waiting for the perfect word or phase — Not a Good Thing

As a professional writer, as well as a business owner, I have often sought just the “right” words, the perfect phases to set the tone for a piece of marketing literature. I’d spend hours, days perfecting my marketing materials. I might not feel confident about my grasp of the subject matter, so I’ll read books and take classes. I’d check out competitors web sites to determine the best market positioning. Then I’d structure the whole marketing campaign, in rough draft…writing sales letters, producing brochure layouts, and composing website copy. I’d choose a color scheme that matched the look and feel of the corporate branding. I’d burn through hours, days or weeks of precious, market-launch time, and during the whole experience feel wildly productive. I was DOING!

Well bless my heart, like too many other self-employed professionals, I had mistaken all this ‘wordsmithing’, this busy-ness for productive action.

Remember, in business, nothing has happened, until something has been sold, and paid for.

Obviously, the words we use to market our businesses are important and deserve our attention. Crafting the perfect marketing message and delivering a marketing message in a timely manner isn’t the same thing.

As an SBDC counselor, I worked with clients, who like me before them, had been hypnotized into inaction by the shiny sheen of perfection. You are not alone. We’ve all shared those marketing moments when we have just not been fully conscious.

Over the next several blogs we will discuss some case studies of common marketing faux pas and some tips that will make your marketing literature an effect part of your complete marketing plan.

Millionaire Minds Take ACTION!

Copyright © Millionaire Minds, LLC 2007
All writings here are copyrighted. You may not use them without written permission but you may link to the posts or give out a link to the posts. And remember, You Have a Millionaire Mind!

Take Action—
Nothing happens until someone does something!

The ‘Secret Key’ to the Law of Attraction is someone needs to TAKE ACTION!

T Harv Eker often says that he has been meditating for years, and has never opened his eyes to find a bag of gold nestled in his lap, even if he has been sitting in a perfect lotus position. Once you know what you want and have focused your thoughts and emotions intently on your vision, do something. Do anything to move yourself toward your vision. Take some small action; it does not have to be perfect action. Don’t focus on your perceived lack financial resources. If you choose not to subscribe to ‘Business Week’ or the ‘Wall Street Journal’ at this time, you can spend a leisurely evening in the business section of your well-appointed (Public) library and look for that moment of inspired business strategy or the Million-dollar idea. Keep focused on your vision, your desired outcome and take the next step and then the next.

Manifestation takes action. It doesn’t have to be “hard or difficult” but you need to be an active participant in the acquisition of your dream.

Napoleon Hill says:

“Do not wait for a definite plan, through which you intend to exchange services or merchandise in return for the money you are visualizing, but begin at once to see yourself in possession of the money, demanding and expecting meanwhile, that your subconscious mind will hand over the plan, or plans you need.”

Napoleon Hill is clearly stating that when you’re seeking to manifest abundance or anything else you wish, DO NOT WORRY if you’re unsure of what action you need to take. Once you fully focus your creative energy and thoughts towards what you’re trying to attract and the answers you require, the right action steps will come to you. They may come as an inspired thought or an AAHHAA- moment or simply a moment of clarity while meditating or something that jumps out of a book or article you are reading, or something mentioned by a friend in passing. We live in a universe of infinite possibilities. How inspiration comes to us is not important. Simply TRUST that the answers we need are here for us when we are ready to hear them.

America’s great capitalist inventor, Thomas A. Edison, allowed Napoleon Hill research access and gave Hill’s book, “Think and Grow Rich” his endorsement. Edison claimed that most of his ideas came to him through intuition. He was once quoted as saying, “Ideas come from space. They float around our heads, just waiting for us to catch them in our thoughts.”

To quickly create a flow of innovative ideas, maintain your millionaire mindset and stay in alignment with your goals— you need to apply definite action.

Do something – ANYTHING – to move you towards your goal.

Definite Action, when applied towards your definite goal, creates the miracle of manifestation through the Law of Attraction.

Analysis—paralysis is the sworn enemy of action.

Do not fuss about the RIGHT thing or the PERFECT way. Worry wipes out energy. Save and use your energy to live your life and act on your creative vision.

Don’t expect your vision to be dropped off, before 10 am tomorrow morning, by FEDEX.
Napoleon Hill suggests, “…take a few steps, ‘baby-steps’, towards your goal. As you take action, events and coincidences will guide you towards the end result.”
Live the ‘active’ Law of Attraction and be amazed at the joy and happiness that enters your life!

Hill, after studying almost 500 of the most successful people of his era wrote,

“Once you apply the process… When riches begin to come, they come so quickly, in such great abundance, that one wonders where they have been hiding during all those lean years.”

—Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich

Millionaire Minds Take ACTION!

Copyright © Millionaire Minds, LLC 2007
All writings here are copyrighted. You may not use them without written permission but you may link to the posts or give out a link to the posts. And remember, You Have a Millionaire Mind!