The Inventor’s Initial 10-Step Marketing Plan
By Jeffrey Dobkin
One of my readers asked “How do I market a product?” Yea. It’s just that simple. And here’s your simple answer: Invest time, money or energy. Or just pick two. Or, maybe it is just that simple.
First, some questions: are you marketing a product or a service? Is it local (geographic marketing) or national; industrial, business to business; to a wide or narrow niche, or a retail product?.
Also – how much does your product cost; what is the sales buying cycle, and is it need-driven? Impulse? Seasonal? Is price important? Most importantly: What are your sales goals? How much do you want to sell? And what’s in the marketing budget? You do have a budget, don’t you? Sigh… Anyhow… All these different possibilities have different marketing campaign strategies – but they all start here. Here’s how every plan starts.
The 10-Step Marketing Plan —
1. Identify your most likely prospects. The first step in any marketing plan. Go for the ones with waving money in their hands and are ready to buy, right now.
2. Create a coherent PR (press release) campaign for newspapers and magazines. This is a series of press releases: a campaign sustained over time that’s well thought out up front. Write each release headline for now. Find magazines in Bacon’s Magazine directory or Oxbridge Communications Periodical Directory found in major libraries.
3. Create “informational booklets” to give away for free and offer them in your press release. The booklet title is responsible for the quantity and quality of the response, so write a great title using the Jeff Dobkin 100 to 1 rule: write 100 titles, go back and pick out your best one.
By offering a FREE Booklet you give consumers a non-threatening reason to call and something to ask for in return for showing they’re interested.
4. Keep tight track of the response: where did it come from? Then plan on ads in the most successful PR media placements.
5. Start creating a mailing list of your top 250 prospects. That’s right – start digging for names and addresses. Yea, it’s hard work. Thankless, too. But your success depends on your mailing list.
6. Track every call, every inquiry. Have a sheet of paper by every phone and ask, “And how did you hear of our company?” Write it down and put that slip of paper in a drawer. At the end of a few months count the slips for each, you’ll know exactly what’s working.
7. Create quality literature and cover letters. Send cover letters with everything.
8. Mail to your Top 250. Mail to your best prospects frequently, every 4 to 6 weeks if you can. If you can’t identify your market tight enough and make this mailing work, you’re in trouble.
9. Test and retest small ads in various media. Don’t forget to look at low cost unusual advertising opportunities such as association newsletters and so forth.
10. Keep marketing to wherever the best prospects and most sales are coming from. Clone your best customers: Figure out where they came from, what they like, why they purchase – and look for more of the same.
Click to Buy!
Hope this is helpful. Don’t forget to buy my book, “Successful Low Cost Direct Marketing Methods.” Best $30 bucks you’ll ever spend on marketing. Besides, I need the money.
Jeff Dobkin · Jeffrey has written 5 books on marketing and two on humor. Jeffrey was on the Board of Directors of the American Society of Inventors for over 14 years. He is now the President of The Philadelphia Inventors Alliance. To speak with him call 610-642-1000. Email Jeff at jeff@dobkin.com. Better yet, order his books or his inventor self-help video. Both are available for an instant download from this site. Thanks. Hope you are enjoying our website. We welcome your comments, both good and bad. OK, the good ones… the bad ones not as much.