Printing Australia

Small business marketing environments influence your small business marketing in numerous ways besides just marketing strategies and tactics.

If you, as a small business owner, only think of marketing as what you do to promote and advertise your product or service, you are missing many opportunities to improve your marketing.

You need to consider the following ten small business marketing environments as you plan your small business marketing.

Small Business Marketing Environment 1: Your Employees and Business

Everyone working in your business enhances or diminishes your marketing. If your employees make positive comments about your business to others, that's good marketing. If they make negative comments, it hurts your ability to market.

Small Business Marketing Environment 2: The Businesses That Serve You

Some people from whom you purchase will help your marketing through cooperative advertising and promotions. In addition, they determine how effectively you can make your product.

Small Business Marketing Environment 3: Distributors

Businesses that distribute your products usually serve many other businesses. In their contact with others their comments can influence the perception of your business and product. They also affect how well you can get your product to your customers.

Small Business Marketing Environment 4: Businesses That Carry Your Product

What people who sell your product think about it and say to their customers influences your marketing. It addition, they have the power to feature your product or put it on a back shelf. Their decisions have a direct influence on your sales.

Small Business Marketing Environment 5: People Who Compete With You

Businesses that sell competitive products, unwillingly influence your marketing. They may not want to help you, but knowing their strengths and weaknesses can be a great asset to your marketing. When competitors are weak but you are strong, you have a distinguishing characteristic that you can market.

Small Business Marketing Environment 6: Publics

Publics influence your business in other ways besides buying your product. Their support can be a great marketing boost. Their lack of support often requires public relations marketing to diminish their influence on potential buyers and other publics.

Small Business Marketing Environment 7: Target Market

By now, you should know that there's more to marketing than just efforts to reach and sell to your target market . Still your target market have the greatest influence on your sales so you should learn all you can about target market members in order to base your marketing on what best appeals to them.

Small Business Marketing Environment 8: Factual Characteristics

Whether your customers are people or businesses, knowing facts about them can reveal many characteristics that helps your marketing. For businesses, these facts are called firmographics. For people, they're called demographics. Whatever, you call them they help you discover the best appeals to use in your marketing.

Small Business Marketing Environment 9: The Economy

The present state of the economy influences how you must market your product because the economy affects people's income, their spending habits, their information needs, what appeals most influence them and what they can afford to buy.

Small Business Marketing Environment 10: Nature

When resources are in short supply, prices go up on that resource and every product or service that uses that resource. Because price is such an important element in the marketing mix, it affects sales. Attitudes about the use of resources also influence marketing. Just consider the many businesses that are promoting their "green" resource use..

Small Business Marketing Environment: Conclusion

Each of the ten small business marketing environments influence your marketing by what is said and done within that environment. In addition, each has a direct or indirect influence on some aspect of the marketing mix which affects your business' success.

< Prev		Next >