Marketing Your Own Way
Chinedu Junior Ihekwoaba
Chinedu Ihekwoaba J. was born to
Nigerian parents. For six years now, he
has been writing unpublished articles
and books. The statistics graduate
started as a storyteller at the age of 5
and won the Master of Riddles Award
in 1997/98. During his graduate trainee
program, he wrote some unpublished
books titled Haunted World of
Business, Family Tides, and A Rolling
Stone.
Twitter: @chinexolorgy
Business Expert Press 978-1-94744-168-2 (2018)
www.businessexpertpress.com
Abstract: In the early days of a business, the rigors of
most sales and marketing fall on every producer or mar-
keters shoulders. From learning how to market their
businesses online, to customer relationship manage-
ment, to understanding the difference between public
relations and branding, startups and small business has
a lot to learn. The bottom line is always the same: to
grow a business, a producer must always get to the right
customers, with the right marketing tools.
Keywords: affiliate program, customer relationship,
online business, partnership, social media, strategy.
Introduction
A good marketing plan will always find its way no
matter what. One thing every startup, small business,
home-based business and mega corporation all have in
common is marketing.
Marketing is a crucial activity for the survival, exis-
tence and success of a business. Businesses today have
more marketing opportunities than ever (Bresciani &
Eppler, 2010). In small business, marketing often relies
heavily on the word of mouth-recommendations, door-
to-door advertisement for customer acquisition (Stokes&
Lomax, 2002). Todays economy, distinguished by rela-
tionships, technology, and networks, favors some of the
characteristics of businesses (Walsh & Lipinski, 2009).
Marketing enables business/companies to network
with customers in order to build customer relationships
and achieve a better understanding of customer needs.
Businesses definitely want their products to get to the
audience out there. It all boils down to trust: building
up trust and establishing a good and positive relation-
ship or emotions. Thoughts, ideas, and a connection that
will keep the potential customers informed. A business
can only start dreaming of success if it has customers
presence and a platform where they interact regularly.
Increasingly, they are hanging out on social networking
sites (Halligan, Shah, & Scott, 2009).
One of the most prevalent areas in which business
has problems is marketing (Huang & Brown, 1999). This
is due to the inability to employ a marketer to carry out
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 Marketing Your Own Way
marketing activities for the business (Ber-
thon, Ewing, & Napoli, 2008; Moss, Ash-
ford, & Shani, 2003; Gilmore et al., 2001).
Marketing practices have traditionally cen-
tered on the marketing mix model (product,
price, promotion, and place) known as the
4Ps of marketing. Sales professionals are
increasingly and constantly seeking value
in building up their own leads and pipe-
lines through various social selling. There
is no sense in producing when the market-
ing strategy is poor; it is more or less like
a car with no fuel. Hence, marketing can
be called the wheel of business. Sales can
only be boosted by the use of sound mar-
keting systems and proven marketing strat-
egies. However, in spite of readily available
means of marketing, some businesses still
struggle to reach out to customers and build
reputable and profitable relationships.
All businesses need a solid marketing
plan to succeed no matter how good is the
product. Promoting products to users, buy-
ers, potential clients and partners is the
key to just every business success, regard-
less of industry, business model, and size
of the target market.
On the average, social selling leaders en-
joy these benefits:
45 percent opportunities created in the
real world.
51 percent more likely to achieve quota
of the set objectives/goal.
80 percent more productive than the ini-
tial stage.
3 times more likely to empty stock and
beat set targets in a short space of time.
Most leading social sellers are successful
at social selling by leveraging through over
374 millions of professional profiles. Major
features include:
Designed sales user interface
Team-link
Lead recommendations by satisfied
consumers
2 Business Expert Press 978-1-94744-168-2 (2018)
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Advanced search with lead builder
Real-time sales update.
Top performers step away from their
work to focus on activities that boost their
knowledge, creativity or energy (Michael
Simmons, 2017). Research done by Google
revealed that over half of the world is on
the Internet almost every day. The vast
growth of communication technology has
given every inventor hope. That means,
every producer can market with small or
no budget and make passive income. Social
media undeniably has become a part of our
everyday lives (Matthew Lynch, 2017).
It is easy to build products these days.
Everyone can create stuffs. Products are
abundant. Information and opportunities
are abundant. Everything is abundant in
life but the willingness to put into action
and to put in the work is the only thing
scarce (Girard, 2017).
The real challenge is to be able to find
the best medium to put the product out for
sale, raising brand awareness. Discovering
the best practices to marketing your busi-
ness will always get your products ready
for the holiday shopping season. Preparing
business, marketing strategies that help to
close the sale and how to leverage social
media to drive sales would be extensively
discussed in this study.
Here are general tips for marketing:
Promotion is the marketing process that
informs people that a particular product
is available and why it is necessary to
purchase it.
The best product ever produced will never
sell if people do not know it exists.
It is in the promotion phase that the rea-
son to purchase it is communicated to the
buying public.
Continuous promotion motivates and com-
pels consumers to take action to buy it.
There are a thousand ways in which prod-
ucts can be promoted, limited only by the
producers budget and imagination.
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 Marketing Your Own Way
A bold imagination could bring enormous
returns, but perhaps at a high cost. Yet by
marketing creativity, sales can be maxi-
mized at a minimized cost.
Every producer is competing with virtu-
ally over 500 new producers on an aver-
age every year.
Match up the promotional mix to overall
marketing objectives.
Promotional events should support and
feed off each other.
The best way to increase velocity of sales
through distribution channels is to com-
municate an informative and motivating
message to a select group of customers.
All these tips are basically marketing
tips that any business must inculcate, at
least one tip, into its marketing system.
Building an Audience Using the
Social Media
In todays social media driven environ-
ment, it is essential that producers under-
stand Facebook, Twitter, and the strategies
behind using social media for growing their
businesses. Unfortunately, many busi-
nesses, especially the small businesses, do
not have a strategy when they begin using
the social media. When a producer has no
audience, when no one knows about the
product, when no one trusts the producer,
of which the outcome is that the product
suffers. When no one knows the product as
a brand; no one is going to buy from such
a producer.
There is a misconception that people au-
tomatically discover a product; this is the
biggest lie in the world of business. That is
why every producer must try to get into the
world out there through various means, for
instance, the social media. It is only when
a product is made known to the world that
people might end up buying it. Companies,
universities, and colleges, people irrespec-
tive of the gender and age are all accessing
the social media these days and that has
given a platform to every producer in the
Business Expert Press 978-1-94744-168-2 (2018)
www.businessexpertpress.com
market. Any product advertised through so-
cial media has a strong likelihood of being
discovered and patronized. Every producer
must take maximum advantage of the ben-
efits that social media has to offer in our
technology-heavy 21st century.
Social media plays an important role in
marketing and creating relationships with
customers. Due to the limited barrier to en-
try, businesses are beginning to use social
media as a means of marketing. Some busi-
nesses do not understand the use of the
social media and hence, struggle with it.
Without basic understanding of the social
media and how to engage on it, limitless
opportunities are forfeited every day.
Social media marketing (SMM) often ex-
ists to increase brand awareness, increase
sales, improve customer service, and im-
plement marketing campaigns (Mangold &
Faulds, 2009).
The most critical thing these days is
to understand how to create and build
demand in the real world, how to create
audience and a community. But it is proba-
bly the toughest thing out there. Building a
community must always come first before
thinking of creating solution. The commu-
nity provides the basis of what to solve in
the society. That is the major thing most
businesses out there have been struggling
with. The best way to market a business is
by building a community first.
In Social Media Examiners 2011 Social
Marketing Industry Report, over 3,300 mar-
keters were surveyed about their use of so-
cial media. One major finding of the study
is that social media marketing takes a lot
of time. Approximately, 58 percent of mar-
keters are using social media for 6 hours
or more each week while 34 percent in-
vest 11 or more hours weekly (Stelzner,
2011). Marketers reported the number one
advantage of social media marketing as
generating more business exposure, indi-
cated by 85 percent of marketers. Other
major advantages of social media market-
ing were increase of traffic by 72 percent
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