Marketing stands at the epicenter of every business. It’s so important that virtually no business ever exists without marketing running through the very spine of your business. Whether you like it or not, marketing is central to your business. As such, here are some golden principles that will guide you to sell, pitch, or send out proposals effectively:

Start with value, not the price

Most businesses get hung up over price. Jaynie Smith, the author of Relevant Selling, advocates the need to put value before the price. She argues that most businesses are the cause for their own failure due to the fact that they engage in meaningless price wars. It’s crucial that even before you sell, you should think of what kind of “value” your solutions provide to your customers. What have you got that others don’t?

Spread your channels; have options

Where do 80% percent of your sales come from? Is it your website? Your retail stores spread across the country? Without even knowing about you, I can bet that you do have one primary source from where you get majority of your sales. That’s good by itself. The trouble starts when you begin to depend on it. What if this source fails for some reason?

I know some of my clients used to depend on Ad Sense income from a couple of websites with random content slapped on to those websites. The Google Panda update almost killed all of these businesses in an instant. Never depend on any one source for marketing or sales. Spread your channels; develop channels through which you could sell. Have as many options open as you can. It’s common sense, isn’t it?

Follow-up incessantly, but learn to let go

One of the mistakes most small business entrepreneurs do – no matter what kind of business they run – is that they don’t follow up. Imagine this: a business owner who owns a retail store sees about 100 footfalls a day into his store. People come and then leave. Some of them buy. The business owner does not have any sort of record about the customer details (which is a major blooper, already), and he has no clue about all those prospective customers who came walking in, and left. If he had a way to collect their details such as names, phone numbers, or email addresses, he could have launched targeted campaigns to get them to buy later (because that’s how customers buy).

Yet, sometimes, you must learn to let go. Especially in situations where you call and/or meet prospects in person, you should ideally follow-up five times and then let go. Instead, you could focus your energy on getting more clients.

Marketing is more about setting up expectations and delivering more than that. It’s about creating a promise and keeping up to it. It’s also, a game of numbers. It’s this incredible mix of so many elements that makes marketing an exciting field to be in (or to practice).

What other principles can you think of that I missed out on?

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Setting up a business is easy; running a hugely profitable business is the hard part – the kind of thing that gives you sleepless nights, makes you harder than you ever did, forces you to think creatively, urges you to find creative solutions to everyday problems your customers have, and literally forces you to question everything you do – in life and in business. I presume that you are reading this because you want to set-up a profitable business for yourself. If so, you should be able to answer these questions – directly or indirectly, your customers will ask you these questions:

Why should I buy from you? Why you?

The most important question, and hence it comes up first. Question yourself this: why should a customer buy from you? Apart from the fact that you have a business and you thought that customers should buy – which is wishful thinking – you need to have crystal-clear, rock-solid reasons why customers should buy from you. Good products and services is usually a good starting point; but it isn’t enough.

What is it that you offer that your competitors don’t?
How compelling is your offer?
What are a few reasons why what you offer can never be matched by your competition?

Do you trigger my emotions?

We are all emotional and we buy because our emotional triggers go into an overdrive. They kick in with full force, don’t they? If all you needed was a decent laptop, why buy Apple laptops? If you want a MP3 (4) player, there are plenty of cheap options (including the Chinese knockoffs), so why buy from Sony or an Apple iPod? You need to get from Point A to Point B, why buy an expensive car when you could ride all the way on a bike? We are emotional, that’s why. It’s important that we feel good when we buy some brands. Buying an Apple product makes me feel proud. Not quite the way I feel when I buy a cheap netbook.

Can I trust you?

No way I would buy from you if you reek of “scam” or if I feel that there’s something shady about you. We always buy from brands, people, and companies we trust unless you wanted to buy fuel or food in an emergency. Fear is a very strong emotion and trust is the opposite off fear, so it’s equally powerful. When your customers begin to trust you (which is a way of saying that your brand gains popularity), business gets into an auto mode. Customers begin to demand more.

How good are you to me?

Since I mentioned that we are emotional beings, ‘likeability’ plays a vital role in my decisions as a customer. If your customer support, a random sales person in a retail outlet, or anyone from within your business is rude to your customers, all deals are off. These customers will even spend time and effort in letting the world know what you did. You might be the biggest brand ever, but do one mistake and your downfall begins. Be nice, and friendly to your customers. It plays a heavy role in brand building, good will, and profitability in the long run.

How are you really running your business? Try and answer these questions and the answers could scare you.

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Content is what drives your Internet marketing since literally almost everything you do online would trickle down to that. However, most business owners don’t know how to write or they don’t have the time or inclination to do so. It is because of this that we have a thriving market for freelance writers all over the world. But then, there are some myths concerning content development that seem to be eating away precious time and thwarting online marketing efforts of many small business owners. Here are 4 myths that you must do away with:

Outsourcing is easy:

It isn’t, not by any standard whatsoever. I have been in hosting business for as far as I can remember and I’ve had plenty of clients requesting me to work on the content side. One of the reasons I don’t do this much and had to say no is because I don’t find reliable and good writers. I do know some writers but they are usually busy and are unable to pick up more work. Outsourcing is great and it really works; but it isn’t easy.

Cheap is what I will look for:

You shall get what you pay for. If you look at the whole act of outsourcing in terms of Time Vs money, you will realize that the time it takes for you to find cheap writers, wait for them to deliver articles for you and finally (most importantly), the time and effort you need to expend to edit that trash is going to cost you a lot more than what you’d have spent on a slightly expensive but experienced writer who gives attention to detail and sends in flawless articles.

Native speakers (writers) are the best and worth the cost:

If you frequent the freelance bidding sites, you will notice that many projects have a statement standing out. “Native speakers need only apply”. Frankly, I don’t buy that. There are plenty of writers all over the world – even in non-native English speaking countries like India, phillipines, Singapore and Malaysia – who can write incredibly well and sometimes even better than the native speakers. Like I keep saying, you got to keep hunting for these people.

My team is complete:

It can never be. I am not saying that your writers aren’t good or that they are not reliable for long periods of time. What I mean to say is that your writers will soon have enough on their plates and will be unable to work on further projects. If you have more volume to be catered to, your writers might not be able to handle it. Your projects can’t wait though. For this reason, you need to develop a strategy to find writers (freelancers) whenever you need them to work for you. In a nutshell, your search for writers is a never-ending one

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Social media is a rage now and unmistakably is one of the best ways to market your business. However, there’s a lot of information out there online and information overload could bog you down. It helps when you know for sure as to whom to listen to and whom not to. I think the following four social media blogs are enough to give you accurate, timely and engaging posts on everything related to social media:

Mashable: Founded by Pete Cashmore in the year 2005, Mashable [http://mashable.com/2010/10/05/is-digg-about-to-unbury-the-bury-button/] is one of the largest and most popular blogs for everything to do with social media. Think of Mashable as the New York Times for Social Media. Their take on Social Media news, platforms, cloud-based services and everything related to social media is focused, informative and there’s a lot you could take away from each post that you read.

Boingboing: One of the oldest and very authoritative blog on all things related to the Internet, Boing Boing[http://www.boingboing.net/2010/10/05/wordpresss-excellent.html] has come a long way today. It is one of the other blogs you must visit as regularly as possible to get the latest updates on Internet as a whole, Social Media, Blogging, Web ware and web technologies.

Social Media Today: With an almost newspaper or magazine like feel and look to it, Social Media Today [http://www.socialmediatoday.com/] should be a part of your daily read. Better still, if you can subscribe to the RSS feed and peruse through the highly informative and engaging articles, posts and mentions on the site. To give you a sample of quality information on Social Media today, check out this latest post on “10 Ways Offline Businesses Can Use Social Media”[ http://www.socialmediatoday.com/suzannevara/194034/10-ways-offline-businesses-can-use-social-media]

Community Guy: Founded by Jake McKee, also the co-founder of Ant’s Eye View [http://www.antseyeview.com/blog/call-for-creative-ideas-how-would-you-like-to-see-us-promote-our-sxsw-panel-tired-of-ing-social-media-experts/], it is one of those rare but well-respected blogs on topics like Internet, Crowdsourcing, New age media and Social Media. Book mark it or subscribe to it. Ant’s Eye View blog also talks about the right business strategies, building brands and communities, etc.

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Four out of five companies – especially small businesses – don’t spend any time or efforts in training their employees. People are hired and they are left to work for themselves. It appears that everything else is fine until either employees burn themselves out or when they are fired. No matter which way you look at, the only entity that bleeds in the process is the organization itself. Here are five reasons why Training your staff is more important than anything else:

Well- trained employees are an asset: Assets earn money for you in the long-run. When you invest in training, you are basically making your employees better equipped with skills that not only empower your employees to perform better but also help you to make them work towards common business goals aiming to profit from it. Untrained employees are a liability because they could prove to be expensive thanks to the unending stream of mistakes they are likely to make.

They stay longer: Trained employees feel a sense of obligation towards companies that take great pains to train them to do better at their jobs. Trained employees begin to see things in new ways, tend to understand themselves and their teams better, get a fresh perspective of the industry they operate in, share a company’s vision and tend to last longer as a token of thanks to the company that invested so much in making them better at what they do.

They perform better: Skill-based training arms your employees with new ideas, new approaches to work, better understanding about their work and the role their job has in the over development of the organization. They feel more confident and equipped while waiting to show how they can now contribute better for their own growth as well for that of the company they work for.

The better your employees are, the more money you make. Your thoughts?

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To have a successful business, there ought to be a degree of thirst. In satiable appetite to get more, do more and aim for more. Sadly, most business owners are fraught with daily operations so much that none of the above mentioned traits come to the fore. Plenty of case studies exist to prove that just by showing up in earnest and getting things done enthusiastically go a long way to help you run your business better. Why, you may ask? Here’s why:

Pushing yourself is fun: Usually, pushing yourself and to spend more time at work can be a painful exercise. However, when you are earnest and when you really like to do what you do, it can never be difficult. When you enjoy the process of a sales call all the way up to closing the sale while managing your customers and your team, it’s going to be a process you will begin to enjoy. It’s thrilling when a project comes through or when a customer sends in a “thank you” note.

More gets done: Whether you know it or now, when you approach work enthusiastically, a lot more gets done than when you approach it otherwise. Your productivity soars, your efficiency increases, and you will eventually cram in more work in those 8- 10 hours than most people can ever do in 3 days. That kind of productivity and efficiency never goes unrewarded.

The energy is contagious: When you show earnest, enthusiasm and a great love for your work, there’s this unmistakable energy about you. Energy has to spread to ensure equilibrium. Your team, your vendors and everyone else working for you (or with you) will experience an energy rub-off through you. You tend to be torch bearer for this huge spurt in energy levels within your team. Even your customers won’t be spared from this positivity around you.

Say, are you showing earnest in your work? How happy are you to get to work and run down that to-do list each day?

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