April

There were 17 TACA members and 6 non-members in attendance at the meeting.  The meeting took place at a new location - The lobby area inside the King Centre behind Russo's Restaurant.  Please give me feedback on this new location.  I have already had a couple of suggestions and comments, but I would like to see what more of you thought. 

President Reneau spoke to the group about the following upcoming events:

TACA Spring Craft Show May 1-3  The State of Franklin chapter has 7 members that were in the group booth, as well as 11 members who had their own booths.  (please refer to my earlier email about the TACA Spring Show)

Blue Plum Festival June 5-6, the State of Franklin Chapter group has 6 members participating.

Member Bob Wiggins talked to the group about the ETSU exhibition featuring NorthEast Tennessee Artists of TANASI.  It runs from April 7-June 25.  It is at the Reece Museum on the ETSU campus.  Call the Reece Museum for more information 423-439-4392.

The next TACA meeting will be June 30th (the last Tuesday in June).  It will be our annual Picnic Meeting.  This picnic will be at Judith Clarkson's new Studio- Maple Tree Studio, in Limestone, TN.  (I will send directions at a later date).  This is a great time to get together with other artists and have fun.  Plus there will be food!!!  We ask that everyone bring a covered dish. Just bring whatever you want.  In the past, it has always worked out that we have had a great variety of food.   SO MARK YOUR CALENDARS!!

The program portion of the meeting was presented by Chip Bailey.  Mr. Bailey is the Incubator Director of the Holston Business Development Center in Kingsport, TN.  He is also a certified business counselor with the Tennessee Small Business Development Center.  Chip is also a college educator with a life-long interest in effective marketing and small business success.  His main area of scholarly research has been centered around "Entrepreneurship in Appalachia: Making a Living While Making a Difference".

The program for the meeting was "Working like an Artisan while Thinking like a Marketer".  Here is a copy of the outline of the meeting:

The Four P's of Marketing
1. Product - A good, service, and/or idea received in an exchange.  It is a complexity of tangible (such as artwork) and intangible attributes (such as life insurance), including functional, social, and psychological utilities or benefits.

2. Price - The value that is exchanged for products in a marketing transaction.  (Where you position yourself in the market)

3. Promotion - The communication with individuals, groups, or organizations to directly or indirectly facilitate exchanges by influencing audience members to accept an organization's products. 

4. Place - Location, location, location.  Distribution is a term often used to replace Place since "brick and mortar" storefronts are not necessarily required in today's business environments due to increased usage of the Internet for marketing purposes.  The web page can be your new "storefront" requiring no "brick and mortar" construction.

Market Segmentation

Market Segmentation - Division of the total market into smaller, relatively homogeneous groups.
Geographic Segmentation -Dividing an overall market into homogeneous groups based on locations.
Demographic Segmentation - Dividing an overall market into homogeneous groups based on variables such as gender, age, and income.
Psychographic Segmentation - Division of a population into groups that have similar psychological characteristics, values, and lifestyles.
Product-related Segmentation - Division of a population into homogeneous groups based on characteristics of their relationships to the product.

Family Influences on Buying Decisions

Most people of members of at least two families during their lifetimes- the ones they are born into and those they eventually form later in life.  The family group is perhaps the most important determinant  of consumer behavior because of the close, continuing interactions among family members.  Like other groups, each family typically has norms of expected behavior and different rules and status relationships for its members.
1.  Autonomic rule - is when the partners independently make equal numbers of decisions.  Personal-care items would fall into the kinds of purchase decisions each would make for themselves. 

2.  Husband-dominant rule - is when the husband makes most of the decisions.  Life insurance is a typical example.

3.  Wife-dominant rule - is when the wife makes most of the decisions.  Children's clothing is a typical wife-dominant purchase.

4.  Syncratic rule - is when both partners jointly make most decisions.  The purchase of a house or car usually follows a syncratic pattern.

Opinion Leaders - trendsetters who are likely to purchase new products before others in a group and then share their experiences and opinions via word of mouth.

Seven Principles of Brilliant Sales and Marketing:

1. Never miss an opportunity to present yourself well.  Everything from your clothing and business card to the envelope in which you send your bill must work toward your marketing goals.

2.  Spend at least ten minutes a day marketing your company.  So many people dont do marketing routinely- and then complain that they dont have enough customers or revenue.

3.  Know what you want to get out of your marketing before you write the first check.  You can lose your focus all too easily and invest in useless activities.  In a field as complex and multifaceted as marketing, have a simple, clear objective in sight at all times.

4.  Know what makes you special to customers and prospects, so that you can remind them of your strengths in every marketing communication.  They buy from you for this reason alone.

5.  Experiment.  Great businesses are built on great marketing formulas, and you have to arrive at those fomulas through trial and error.

6.  Sort out the people who dont want what you sell and eliminate them from your marketing right away.  Wasting time and effort on the wrong prospects is the single biggest cause of inefficiency in marketing and sales.

7.  If your plan looks complicated, you aren't done with it yet.  The best marketing is blindingly simple.  You want to aim for a one-page marketing plan, because you may actually be able to implement it.

Ten Ways to Spend Less on Marketing

1.  Make your communications more visually striking by including images of people and using creative, dynamic layouts.  This visual style gets more reader-attention than any letter, brochure, or ad you generate, making it more effective and efficient for you. 

2.  Improve the appearance of your logo.  Most logos are boring, but great companies always have great logos. 

3.  Buy visibility on the Google and Yahoo! seach engines.  This is inexpensive enough to work for local as well as global markets. 

4.  Release a survey or host an interesting event to generate publicity.

5.  Send out a press release to your local media once every quarter or whenever you have valuable news to release, updating them on events in your business.  Getting local news coverage isn't that hard and it often attracts new business. 

6.  Find something simple and inexpensive to offer along with your most popular product or servicein order to pick up add-on sales. 

7.  Give out coupons to encourage prospects to try your product or service, so that its qualities become obvious to them.  Don't, however, give away price-cutting coupons or discounts for no good reason- think of other ways to increase sales appeal. 

8.  Offer (or improve) a guarantee, one with no small print.  If you have a good prouct or service, stand behind it!

9.  Vow to never lose a customer.  Whenever you have a customer who's upset or at risk, find out why and win them back.

10.  Figure out wheren you lose the most prospects or potential customers and then concentrate your marketing at this point to convert more of them into customers.

It was a very informative presentation on marketing.  If you would like more information or want to set up a free counseling meeting with the Tennessee Small Business Center, please contact Chip Bailey at 423-578-6235.