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.
This article covers the top ten small business marketing environments that you need to consider as you plan and market you business.
Small Business Marketing Environment 1: Your Employees and Business
Your employees affect your business by more than the tasks that you pay them for. They also influence your marketing by what they say about your product and business. Treat them well and use ethical business practices, and they will make good comments to others that enhance your marketing.
Small Business Marketing Environment 2: Vendors
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: The Businesses That Deliver Your Products
Some distributors enhance your marketing by telling others they serve about your business. Because distribution is an important part of the marketing mix, how well they deliver your products also influences your marketing, your ability to get products to customers, and even your price.
Small Business Marketing Environment 4: Retailers
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: Competitors
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: Firmographics and Demographics
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: Natural Resources
Natural resources influence your product's price because the less a resource is available, the more you have to pay for it. To continue to make a profit, you have to pass that price on to your customers. This, in turn, influences if and how much of your product will sell.
Small Business Marketing Environment: Conclusion
Marketing includes every element in the marketing mix, not just what you do and say to get customers. Thus, you should consider the influence of the ten small business marketing environments covered in this article because they affect elements like pricing, promotion and distribution.
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