The following material comes from the forthcoming eBook, Marketing Essentials for Growing Businesses. To get this eBook for free when it comes out, register by clicking here. How do you get started on your marketing strategy so you can get your brand out there? The same way you get started with a 5K run—you just go! There’s a method, sure, but marketing isn’t something that has a cookie-cutter formula that you can follow in every industry and in every circumstance. You have to take the principles and mold them to you circumstances. This book will give you the principles you need.

Marketing Essentials

We’ve outline our forthcoming book in four parts to conceptualize for you how the process works. The first step is to figure out who you are as a company, as a person (if you’re a sole proprietor). You have to figure out who you are first—otherwise, you can’t tell other people! This looks like starting with the basic questions of what service or product you want to provide, who do you want to provide it to, and how you want to provide it. (Keep in mind how do you want the community or customers to perceive your product and practices.) First priority: product.

Determine Your Company’s Product

Why start with your product? You have to define what you want to provide as a sole proprietor or as a business before you sell. It’s very important to decide both what you do sell what you don’t want to sell. Even though this may change over time, decide on your product. If you’re selling a products, say burgers for example, decide exactly which type of burgers you’re selling—beef burgers, bean burgers, lean burgers, veggie burgers, or even buffalo burgers! This example shows that even something as simple as burgers can have many products. Knowing which products you sell and don’t sell is a vital first step in creating your brand and your marketing strategy. At Palladium, we decided to provide signs for businesses and consumers. Simple, right? Well, the sign industry is massive with an outstanding range of products and an almost infinite scope. So in addition to deciding what we do offer, we also decided what we don’t offer. We limited ourselves with regard to the scope of services. For example, we will make large signs but not install large, outdoor signs that require permits. We can even manage these installations, but we hire experts to handle the final installation so we can focus on our core competencies. Our core competencies are graphic design and digital printing. (We even hire based on these core competencies, so you can see the lasting importance of this decision.) You may decide to offer many products, though. In that case you’d be more like The Cheesecake Factory than Chipotle. The Cheesecake Factory offers more than 250 items on their menu! They decided to make food, and they went broad. They made that decision and their brand is known for their many menu items. Chipotle, on the other hand, has basic menu options: meat, rice, beans, and toppings. You can get these in a few different forms (burrito, bowl, taco, or salad), but it’s all about the same. Customers make a few choices, but their menu offers relatively few options compared to The Cheesecake Factory. At some point, Chipotle decided on a simple menu. Like them, you have to decide on your products and stick with it—at least for a while. Every business must decide on their product. Okay, got that, but how do you determine what you want to sell? Figure out what is your core competency and determine your product from that. You cannot do all things well, because you are limited by either time or capacity. So start by looking at your existing skills, and either build those or cultivate new skills. If you offer products based on your skills, you’re on the right track. Once you consider your core competency, look at your product in terms of:

• Number
• Variety
• Scope
• Quality
• Price

Decide on how many, what kind, how far, what quality, and how much you want to charge. All these factors will help you decide on what you want your products to be. After you’ve decided on your product, focus on your values, which is coming next! Keep your eyes open for the next blog.