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Creating a Successful Marketing Strategy for Your Small New Business
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Creating a Successful Marketing Strategy for Your Small New Business

Stanley F. Stasch
Praeger, 2010
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Editorial Rating

6

Qualities

  • Concrete Examples
  • Inspiring

Recommendation

Most new business owners don’t give much thought to establishing a complete, thorough marketing plan, and it shows: “Some 80-90% of new business start-ups fail within the first two to three years.” So says Stanley F. Stasch, who long has studied this phenomenon and offers sage advice to entrepreneurs hoping to beat the odds. Stasch does a solid job of presenting research and case studies that drive home his main points, but less-patient readers may find his guide for small business practitioners repetitively wordy, with too many lists, guidelines, warnings and rules for a small business to implement. Because his book contains good examples of marketing successes and failures, getAbstract considers it more effective as an inspirational guide than as a fully do-able how-to manual, and recommends it to first-time business owners looking to stoke their marketing mojo.

Summary

Against the Odds

In 2004, The Wall Street Journal reported that, while 572,900 new businesses began operating in the United States in 2003, another 554,000 businesses folded that same year. Other research indicates that “some 80-90% of new business start-ups fail within the first two to three years.” Why? Two pivotal marketing errors account for this extraordinary failure rate: 1) “inadequate” or “incomplete” marketing strategies and 2) insufficient analysis of both their consumers’ motivations and their competitors’ business profile. Other contributing blunders include unrealistic marketing budgets and marketing strategies that delay the time when a firm begins earning the revenues that are essential to its survival. As with most things, time and money are of the essence in building a business: It takes time to set up a company, and entrepreneurs often don’t have enough money to pay for that process. Would-be business owners should focus on efficient market planning and strategy efforts in the “prelaunch period” before they open their doors for business, so that they can shorten the time span between ideas and income.

The small businesses that do survive...

About the Author

Stanley F. Stasch is professor of marketing at Loyola University in Chicago. He is the author and co-author of numerous books and articles on marketing.

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