{"id":9779,"date":"2018-05-06T18:00:29","date_gmt":"2018-05-07T00:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/financenewmexico.org\/?p=9779"},"modified":"2018-05-01T11:28:54","modified_gmt":"2018-05-01T17:28:54","slug":"wesst-workshop-teaches-essentials-of-marketing-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/financenewmexico.org\/sandbox\/articles\/starting-or-growing-a-business\/wesst-workshop-teaches-essentials-of-marketing-success\/","title":{"rendered":"WESST Workshop Teaches Essentials of Marketing Success"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Your<\/a>By Taura Costidis, Finance New Mexico<\/p>\n

Employing tactics without a strategy is like hiking into the wilderness without a map, provisions or a plan. Yet many novice and veteran business owners take this cart-before-the-horse approach when marketing their product or services, often with underwhelming results.<\/p>\n

As a marketing consultant for the nonprofit economic development organization WESST, Mark Gilboard helps entrepreneurs reach and attract customers by first identifying why their business exists in the first place.<\/p>\n

In May, the veteran marketing and advertising research professional leads a three-part workshop to help small-business owners develop a strategic foundation for their marketing message. \u201cAll three of the classes are about having a strategy before you employ tactics,\u201d Gilboard told Finance New Mexico. \u201cIt\u2019s about honing your mission statement and letting your brand and mission statement drive your marketing decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first session, \u201cIntro to Marketing,\u201d reviews marketing concepts, strategies and activities for small businesses. \u201cThe first activity that we do is something I call \u2018just write,\u2019\u201d Gilboard said. \u201cI ask participants to write anywhere from three sentences to three pages, and they can write a poem or a song, and we turn that into marketing; it\u2019s making marketing from what you already know and do.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the next session, \u201cBuilding a Brand,\u201d participants consider different marketing plans and promotional mixes to lay the groundwork for creating a distinctive brand and effective mission statement. \u201cWhy do you do what you do? Why is this your business enterprise? Why do you make what you make?\u201d Gilboard said. \u201cIt\u2019s much more compelling for a small business to have a story that has a why. When you establish those brand pillars, they become the guiding force of your marketing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The final session, \u201cMarketing in Action,\u201d focuses on developing a succinct pitch for the business\u2019s product or service and deciding where to broadcast that message to reach the target customer. If a business prides itself on inclusivity, for example, advertising on a divisive cable news network might not be the best marketing choice, he said. \u201cYou will learn how to make marketing decisions based on what your brand stands for.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those decisions include what logos and images complement the brand, Gilboard said. Many startups jump straight to the graphic assets: \u201cThey\u2019ve already got their font and their colors picked out, but they don\u2019t even really know enough about their business and their marketplace and their competition and their customers to make those decisions.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour font or your logo represents your brand. If your business is built around baby clothes and fuzzy warm things and your logo has lots of harsh lines and jagged edges, that doesn\u2019t make sense. Or say your product is \u2018Hop quick\u2019; writing a \u2018p\u2019 next to a \u2018q\u2019 just looks funny.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Marketing Essentials course isn\u2019t just for startups, Gilboard explained. It can also help existing businesses sharpen their marketing theory into a cohesive strategy.<\/p>\n

Sessions run from noon to 2 p.m. Thursdays beginning May 17 and ending May 31 at the WESST Enterprise Center, 609 Broadway Blvd NE, Albuquerque. The cost is $75.<\/p>\n

To register online, visit www.wesst.org<\/a>, or call Lorena Schott at 505-246-6939.<\/p>\n

Download 553_WESST Workshop Teaches Essentials of Marketing Success<\/a> PDF<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Taura Costidis, Finance New Mexico Employing tactics without a strategy is like hiking into the wilderness without a map, provisions or a plan. Yet many novice and veteran business owners take this cart-before-the-horse approach when marketing their product or … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9,3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/financenewmexico.org\/sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9779"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/financenewmexico.org\/sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/financenewmexico.org\/sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financenewmexico.org\/sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financenewmexico.org\/sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9779"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/financenewmexico.org\/sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9787,"href":"https:\/\/financenewmexico.org\/sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9779\/revisions\/9787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/financenewmexico.org\/sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financenewmexico.org\/sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financenewmexico.org\/sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}