• it doesn't matter how you see your company; what matters is how your customers see your company
• massage spa owner recalled how she originally spent so much money on print advertisements, yellow page ads, etc. yet her customers were coming in from the neighborhood, where she wasn't spending money
• try out marketing tactics that you see executed by other businesses, even if those businesses aren't similar to yours
• mistakes should be celebrated because they are the DNA of your business
• before creating marketing communication tools (such as brochures, business cards, etc.), have a marketing plan, budget, and target customer (who do you want, how do you find them, what do they care about)
  
• one easy way to do that is to use a "guerrilla marketing" plan, made popular in the book Guerrilla Marketing, by Jay Levinson
  
• Here is a recap of such a plan, taken from Inc.com:
  

1. Sentence 1: What is the purpose of your marketing?
2. Sentence 2: Who is your target market?
3. Sentence 3: What is your niche?
4. Sentence 4: What are the benefits and competitive advantage?
5. Sentence 5: What is your identity?
6. Sentence 6: What tactics, strategies and weapons will you use to carry out your marketing?
7. Sentence 7: How much money will you spend on your marketing; what's your marketing budget?

• it is worth the time/money for professional identity development
• when you're really hung up on the "right shade of red", keep in mind that customers really don't care and that you're getting caught up in your own priorities; it doesn't matter that the brochure is perfect, but that it's communicating the right message about the right thing to the right party
• have a focus and hypothesis in your marketing plan that underlies your strategies and tactics; over time, you'll change the strategies and tactics because your assumptions will either be validated or invalidated
• no marketing plan is perfect

• get books on viral marketing (The Art of Buzz; Purple Cow; Word of Mouth: How to Get People Talking; The Tipping Point)
• other recommended books: The Ultimate Marketing Plan, Getting Real (e-book by 37 Signals), Getting Things Done
• read ads everywhere you can
• for marketing, engage in the cycle of planning, measuring, assessing; doing iterations of that over and over again
• at some point, need to stop planning and do, do, do
• anticipate that you, your clients, and everything around you will change
• don’t look at the ground all the time… keep your eyes looking up
• there is value in our personal and business’ uniqueness, and we need to articulate that

Key points and lessons learned during the panel discussion on Marketing Mishaps on 2/14/08:

• problems with positioning: know what you want to be known for, but also what you don't want to be known for
• people can get to know you for something just because they purchased one product or service; that product/service just might be ancillary, low profit, or undesirable (for you)
  
• to know the message you want to send, know the demographics of your actual customers
• entrepreneurs can fall in love with their product, which can put blinders on when it comes to marketing (being narrow-minded about target markets, promotional opportunities, etc.)
• if hiring a marketing expert, let them do what they do best; rely on their expertise
• advertising may not work if yours is a relationship-based business; it's hard to build a relationship through advertising
• take stock of what your customers are telling you; what you learn may be very different from what your own plans, ideas, and views are
• does your target customer want to deal with a larger company or a smaller company? based on your response to that, position your firm accordingly
• it's hard to focus on a very defined market niche because, as a business owner, you often don't want to "shut out" or "ignore" other market segments (example was a boutique that positions itself for "grown-up women", those over the age of 40; the owner was afraid to articulate that because of her fear of alienating the many women in their 20s and 30s in the area)
• your differentiation must be communicated in your marketing efforts; otherwise, no one will truly know if, why, or how your company is different!