3 Reasons Your Marketing Strategy May Be Broken and How To Make Your Marketing More Effective

There are plenty of reasons your business might not be attracting customers or not meeting projected sales levels. For most businesses, large or small, making the connection between product and customer is a mystery that can prove very challenging.

How do you entice people to enter your store, whether it's the corner deli, a high-end clothing shop, or a virtual store on the Internet? And once they're in your store, what will make them buy your products rather than browse and leave?

Connecting with your customers is where effective marketing steps in and provides answers. It's the way you tell people what your business does, how it's unique, valuable, and relates to a problem that they want to solve. It's that simple, yet it appears so complex that most business owners don't even know where to start.

• One reason many marketing strategies miss the mark is that the Internet has mushroomed into a complex web that threatens to choke us with so many new marketing venues -- each different from the next - that it's difficult to choose the right ones and then and implement them. Many people get overwhelmed.
• Second, there's no avoiding the fact that any marketing plan is incomplete if it doesn't connect with potential customers surfing the web. The pressure is on for every business to have a website, yet a website is useless without an effective marketing strategy. So another problem is that many business owners have no idea how to use their website to sell, so websites can seem like a waste.
• The third, and biggest problem is that so many businesses are stuck in what I call "Look at Me Marketing" and consumers are unable to choose between all of the voices competing for their attention. If your voice isn't heard, then customers usually buy what they already know or what a friend suggests.

Want to make your marketing strategy effective? You can start by answering these three questions:

1. How does your business connect with new prospects?
2. How does your website tell visitors that your products are unique and valuable?
3. How does your marketing assure customers that you can solve their problem(s)?

Do you know what your customers want and need? Have you put a message out there where they can find it and respond to it? Can you convey the value of your product?

In it's simplest form, marketing is a matter of defining what you do best and who needs it most, and then communicating (in a convincing way) the value of what you do so that the people who really need it will buy it.

Think about that for a few minutes. Once you get these three pieces in place, you'll see how much easier it is to communicate and connect with the right customers. Whether your business is in the neighborhood, worldwide, these 3 principles are the pillars of an effective marketing strategy for any business.

Increasing your sales really doesn't need to be difficult and a few basic principles can put you in the driver's seat, no matter what venue you use to advertise or "get found" on or off the Web. Here are a few tips to make conveying your message-to-market even more attractive to your potential customers.

• Always start with the needs of your prospects: What's important to them? What problems do they have and how can you solve them? What specific things are they looking for that your products can supply or fix.
• Communicate with your customers as if you were talking "one-on-one." Make your ads, blogs or articles personal and address specific concerns that they may have. That's how you really connect. By showing them that you care.
• Provide proof that you can give them the solution that they need most. Real life examples, testimonials, or other forms of proof help support your message.

Effective marketing starts when you connect with customers and help them to solve their specific problems. After all, isn't that what any good product is meant to do?

Betsy Shulman loves to help business owners grow their businesses and increase their sales with simple marketing and selling solutions. That's why she uses a common sense approach that positions your business products so they attract targeted customers who are ready to buy. It doesn't need to be complicated! Her free Sales Action Guide: "How to Make Selling Easy" is filled with ready-to-apply selling tips. So be sure to visit http://www.rightmindmarketing.com and pick up your Free copy!