If you are like most small business owners, you started with a passion.  Maybe you are the landscaper grooming beautiful lawns for the neighbors, or the chef serving up a perfect steak that puts a smile on the customer’s face, or the woman entrepreneur helping young mothers by providing nurturing childcare, or the outdoorsman with a retail store offering a unique selection of hunting paraphernalia, or the interior designer creating gorgeous homes.  A plan was hatched to build the restaurant, open the storefront, or launch the service.  Financing was arranged.  Inventory was purchased and displayed.  Staff was hired.  Equipment was leased.  Perhaps a business plan was prepared showing the amount of sales needed to generate the profits that would support your family, improve your standard of living and ensure your future security.

Now comes the moment of truth – getting a customer to agree to use your service or buy your product.  There is no “business” until a customer is trading their dollars for your service or product.

Marketing is the process of making potential customers aware of the service or product you offer and how that will provide something they need or want in such a way that they are persuaded to take action toward obtaining your product or service; that is, they will ask for an appointment, request a quote, or come into the business to shop or eat.

But what is a small business owner to do?  The nature of small business usually requires that the owner is personally supervising the crew, or cooking in the kitchen, or manning the cash register.  It requires hands-on management of the hour to hour operations and very often personal delivery of the actual service itself.   You know marketing is needed and maybe even have some ideas about what to do, but where is the time?

If you are in a professional service business, you may find yourself swinging between servicing your clients, and then frantically marketing for awhile to find the next client, and then back to servicing with the accompanying ups and downs of income that could be avoided with a steady flow of new business.  Some professional service providers even find the process of self-promotion somewhat distasteful.

Very few small businesses have the luxury of a full time marketing manager.  What are the other options?  You can keep putting it off, in which case you might get by, but will be left wondering what potential the business could have reached if you had managed to do a little more.  You can take up a second career studying the wealth of books and websites available offering advice and information on how to market your small business.  Then dedicate several hours a week pulled off your production to work at implementing the marketing.  Or, you can delegate the marketing work to an outside source.  Marketing that will bring customers to your business requires specific skills and talents that are quite different from general management skills and usually different from the operating skills of most small businesses.  Perhaps more importantly, marketing a small business in today’s environment demands a knowledge of internet marketing that is constantly and rapidly evolving.  An almost impossible task for any business owner not directly working in that very industry.

The solution to the small business marketing dilemma: keep your focus on managing your business and delivering the very best possible product or service; bring in a marketing expert who will work within your budget and time resources to bring new business, new income and new profits to you – an expert like Two Old Pro’s.