WHAT ARE YOUR BIGGEST MARKETING FRUSTRATIONS?

This isn't a frustration - yet - but I am looking for some guidance/advice on creating a marketing plan for my company. We are a small, locally owned and operated company with three locations within a metropolitan area. If anyone has  a marketing plan that they would feel comfortable sharing, I would love to pick your brain! 

kromoleom: get on Google!!!! Period!!!!!

MDAVIS:

1)  Choose your customer.  It will feel counter-intuitive.  Do it anyway.  If I ask you "Who is your customer?"  you better not say "Anyone"  cause first, it is a lie.  I'll prove it.  If I said I knew of someone who has bed bugs, no money, is constantly late paying all of their obligations and they and all of their stuff smells like open sewage....do you want them?  Of course not.  So if you are going to be selective, be selective. This will allow you to save money by only trying to appeal to a limited scope of people.  Now, sure, others may come in. I sometimes catch a catfish while bass fishing but that doesn't change the fact that bass are what I want.   Now that you have segmented your general population, target them.  It will be the difference between hunting with a shotgun or a deer rifle.  Sure a shot gun will hit more things, but a deer rifle will allow you to tag it, bag it, and drag it home.

2) Make your facility appeal to your chosen group.  The colors of your buildings, your landscaping, amenities, decisions to have white glove service or not, lighting, camera placement and usage, hours, etc.  Give the group you want every reason to say yes before they ever hit your office. 

3) Make your pricing work for your target not for your accountant.  if you do the former, it will do the latter.

4) Now that is all done, you can start your advertising plan.  (PS...marketing plan and advertising plan are not the same.  if you promise me you will never use the words advertising and marketing interchangeably ever again, i will continue to help :-).    Look for things (locations, events, causes, etc) that are already attracting YOUR crowd.  For example, if you want millennials don't waste your ad budget trying to reach them on FB...they left years ago once their parents started trolling them.  You will have to spend money just trying to get them to FB, then to pay attention to your ad.  But if your group is at a soccer field on Saturday mornings then take a tent, set up in the parking lot, take applications or a computer with you and start signing people up. Maybe even offer a soccer clinic if that is what your group is into.  The point is, be where your people are. Hunting penguins in the desert is stupid.  Get your calendar and a calculator.  Figure out what your profit margin is on a rental...then figure out how many units of size "X" you have to rent to cover the cost of your advertising.  Once you know about how much you can spend each month, try to schedule one event based and one advertising based ad/marketing campaign each month.  (but it is better to do fewer and do them well then lots of crappy ones.)  For example, I am planning on my store being at the dorms when college dorms start filling up.  I will have furniture dollies, hand trucks and movers there for them to use.  All for free.  The only catch is, they have to leave their DL as a deposit while they have my stuff. While they are moving, I am copying all of their data into a CRM so I can follow up.

5) Now that you know who you are, who you want to reach, what will set you apart, and when you will try to reach your peeps, you have permission to try to design ads to reach them.  To many people want to advertise before they have their marketing in place, and yes I am talking about all 5 of the 5 P's.  (i added one...when i was getting my masters in this stuff, I felt like the old 4 p's left something out:  Product, Place, Price, Promotion and PEOPLE.)

Get everything else nailed down before you start the promotion and advertising thing and you will be fine.

GOOD LUCK!