There are five perspectives to every business. Two are internal and three are external. The two internal are from the viewpoint of the company's ownership and employees. The three external are from the viewpoint of customers, competitors, and vendors. Even though it's the same company - these five perspectives are never the same.

Every perspective has its merits and, when developed properly, can be used to increase business profits. This newsletter will focus on the effectiveness of proper marketing. To do this, you must start from your customers' viewpoint. It doesn't matter whether their opinion is right, wrong, real, or imagined. They are the ones who have to exchange their hard earned dollars for the value your business provides in return. Therefore, their perspective is the one that counts the most.

STEP #1. Focus your attention on what your customers think about your business and your industry - not what you think about it.

The first mistake most businesses make in marketing occurs before even one prospect is contacted. The message conveyed, and the materials providing the message, are created by individuals who have a primary internal perspective - for a target market that has a primary external perspective. You must find out what your customers want before you even think about a marketing campaign.

STEP #2. Enhance what you offer your customers. Define at least five key points, which are clearly valuable from the customers' external perspective, that make your company different from all your competitors.

Once you find out what your customers want, you must either find areas of your business that match those wants, or enhance your business to accommodate them. An external third party will often be more likely to discover differences that can benefit customers and leverage the company over its competitors.

STEP #3. Prove to your customers that you really are different. Use your key points as the basis of your marketing. Convey your "better value message" in a straight-forward manner.

If you'd like to see how few businesses actually advertise a better value than their competitors, you have to go no further than your local yellow pages. Pick any business category. Look at the ads. Notice that most of them are virtually identical in the message they convey. If your company has brochures, compare them to those of your competition. Every time you are saying the same thing, you are losing marketing effectiveness.

STEP #4. Ask the customer to do something, ideally more than once.

If your business is not a Fortune 1000 company, forget about a "branding" marketing campaign. It is almost always a complete waste of money. Unless you have the budget and time frame to pound your "brand" into their heads several thousand times, you will get little or no real results. It is far more effective to explain the benefits your business provides and then ask the customer to take some action. The action does not necessarily have to be "buy this now". It could be a low risk proposition such as "call today for a free pamphlet".

STEP #5. Recognized the benefits of getting off the half-way, fits and starts, marketing treadmill. Institute a consistent budget, marketing calendar, marketing execution plan, and numerous ads that convey your most powerful messages. Never stop.

Nothing degrades marketing effectiveness more than lack of consistency. Even if you are saying the same thing as your competitors, from the wrong perspective, (which is not optimum) you will still see results if you do it consistently.

STEP #6. Believe that the value you provide is significant enough to warrant a premium. If you don't believe it, your customers never will.

Raise your prices. That's right - raise them. Some businesses will have the opportunity to support a larger increase than others. When you offer your customers a value proposition that is clearly better than all your competitors, competing on price alone is never necessary.

STEP# 7. Fine tune all aspects of your business. Spend at least 15 dedicated minutes every day thinking - "How would our customers react to this specific area of our business?"

Make sure that all aspects of your company are prepared to handle the increase in business traffic. Evaluate every department - not just the marketing, advertising, and sales related areas. Bringing in new customers is an important beginning, but keeping them is the real key to increased profits.