More marketing dollars are wasted on local sponsorships than just about anything else. Unless you know how to leverage a sponsorship, you’ll probably see no return on your investment. So unless your kid is on the team, don’t waste your money.

Not a smart investment

So as a small business owner, are you constantly being hit up to contribute to sponsorships? This is usually NOT marketing money well spent. Read on to find out why and what to do instead.

A lot of money is spent on local sponsorships. It could be for sporting events or fundraisers. Some business owners do this year after year with absolutely no idea if it is a good investment.

One perceived benefit that pulls many small business owners in is there’s usually some media exposure and logos are displayed – plus my favorite, the T-shirt with 27 tiny logos all over it.

There are many problems here: 1) You message gets lost in the morass of sponsors, and 2) How exactly are you going to track the response to this add and ROI on marketing dollars spent? As I talk about in another No B.S. Grassroots Marketing Inconvenient Truth, if you can not track it, it does not hack it for measurable results.

Because of this and many other reasons, most sponsorship money is a total waste. Often, because it supports a local worthy cause, the ROI is not held to the same standards as traditional advertising. Perhaps this is because the money comes out of a different budget.

If you have a budget for this out of a desire to give back to the community and/or it’s for your spouses’ nephew’s soccer team, then will, alright if you must. Just don’t think of it as a potential huge return on investment.

As a No-B.S. Marketer, you need to examine each potential sponsorship opportunity and structure the arrangement so that you can maximize the return. If you’re not getting buying customers from your involvement with a sponsorship, your money should be put elsewhere.

So where?

First of all, do what most small business owners do not do: discover which marketing efforts are giving you the biggest return on your investment. Focus efforts and funds there.

Second, go completely outside of your industry to see what other small businesses are doing. Look for businesses that are pulling in new customers and retaining them. Figure out what they are doing and how you can apply it to your marketing.

Bottom Line - You can get Free Instant Access to all 10 of the No BS Grassroots Marketing Inconvenient Truths when you visit http://GrassrootsMarketingBonus.com

And if you like the tips in these Inconvenient Truths, your are going to love Dan Kennedy and his co-author Dan Slutsky’s new book “No B.S. Grassroots Marketing: Ultimate No Holds Barred Take No Prisoners Guide To Growing Sales and Profits of Small Businesses.”

Get your copy here

From Dan Kennedy, the provocative, truth-telling author of seven popular No B.S. books, thirteen business books total; a serial, successful, multi-millionaire entrepreneur; trusted marketing advisor, consultant and coach to hundreds of private entrepreneurial clients running businesses from $1-million to $1-billion in size; and he influences well over 1-million independent business owners annually through his newsletters, tele-coaching programs, local Chapters and Kennedy Study Groups meeting in over 100 cities, and a network of top niched consultants in nearly 150 different business and industry categories and professions.

It doesn’t make sense to promote your Yellow Pages ad in your other advertising. Why would you direct a potential customer to the only medium that puts you directly next to all of your competitors?

Think about with me. You are actually sending your prospects and potential customers to a page that has listed out, for their convenience, every single one of your major competitors. When put that way, it makes no sense whatsoever, now, does it?

Did you know it is common marketing “wisdom” to promote your Yellow Page as in your other advertising and marketing venues? This is dumb. Read on for what to do instead.

As I’ve said many times before, don’t do what most people do because most people are both wrong and broke.

In fact, one of the mantras I repeat to myself each morning is:

Do the opposite of whatever the majority does. Run toward the fire.

Now before you stop reading this article and run into an actual burning building, realize this is a metaphor for doing the opposite of what most people do.

You job is to run toward the obstacles in your business and create solutions with what you learn in this and other of my resources that I will tell you about in just a minute.

Leave the burning building to your local fire department.

Half your advertising budget… really?

It’s not uncommon for a small business to devote half of its advertising budget to Yellow Pages advertising. This used to be a must-buy for any type of local, community, or neighborhood service company.

When there was a problem, your furnace was broken, your toilet was backed up, or you had to get your grease trap cleaned at your restaurant, you usually let your fingers do the walking. But this approach has changed with the proliferation of directories and web-based or cell-based alternatives including services like Angie’s List, Yelp, Craigslist, Foursquare, and specialized mobile apps.

Yet the antique Yellow Pages book gets delivered to my driveway and probably yours each year. I have one student who keeps his only to use as a prop in speaking engagements. He tells the audience that he discovered a useless antique in his hotel room, then holds up the phone book.

Always expensive

Yellow Pages advertising was always expensive, but often a necessary evil. Plus, their sales forces often approached your business like storm troopers, using scare tactics to get you to buy, and buy big.

If last year’s ad was not successful, then these salespeople tell you that you just need a bigger ad, or more than one ad, or both.

And once you did make a decision, you were then stuck with it for an entire year.

Bottom Line - You can get Free Instant Access to all 10 of the No BS Grassroots Marketing Inconvenient Truths when you visit http://GrassrootsMarketingBonus.com

And if you like the tips in these Inconvenient Truths, your are going to love Dan Kennedy and his co-author Dan Slutsky’s new book “No B.S. Grassroots Marketing: Ultimate No Holds Barred Take No Prisoners Guide To Growing Sales and Profits of Small Businesses.”

Get your copy here

From Dan Kennedy, the provocative, truth-telling author of seven popular No B.S. books, thirteen business books total; a serial, successful, multi-millionaire entrepreneur; trusted marketing advisor, consultant and coach to hundreds of private entrepreneurial clients running businesses from $1-million to $1-billion in size; and he influences well over 1-million independent business owners annually through his newsletters, tele-coaching programs, local Chapters and Kennedy Study Groups meeting in over 100 cities, and a network of top niched consultants in nearly 150 different business and industry categories and professions.

“Most local marketing programs fail, not because of lack of good ideas, but because of poor follow-through and support” - Jeff Slutsky

“Commitment is more important than creativity” - Dan Kennedy

A local- level marketing program is a local business outreach initiative where owners, managers, and employees who work at an individual location entice the local area consumers to be regular customers. The focus in is on the neighborhood or community. That geographic primary trading area where the majority of the business’s customers come from.

It could be a three to five mile radius but that could be bigger or smaller depending on the type of business and marketplace.

At this level, the mass media is cost prohibitive on an individual unit basis. Even when combining a number of units in a marketplace, the individual, local store marketing approach, when done properly, always shows the highest return for you marketing investment.

The Tactics Are Many

The tactics are many but not all of them work for every situation. Your goal is to collect a war chest of ideas that will allow you to take advantage of the hundreds of opportunities to infiltrate your local area with low-cost and even free advertising designed to generate initial trial and repeat sales.

But more important than the war chest of tactics, you need a system in place in your organization to ensure proper execution and follow up. The tactics are developed for and executed by the individual unit.

However, if your company has 100 franchisees, or 500 dealers, or 75 agencies, you also need to create a local marketing infrastructure to support that effort. Most local marketing programs fail, not because of a lack of ideas, but because of a lack of follow through and support.

So in addition to many of the specific promotions, it’s important to develop and execute an implementation infrastructure that allows you to consistently conduct local marketing programs over time.

You must follow to make sure each system is being executed properly by each franchisee, dealer or agency.

How is the Grassroots Marketing Solution Different?

The main emphasis is not on marketing. The marketing part is the easiest part of the program.

The focus is on training and development. When most local marketing programs get started, the unit manager or owner is handed a manual and told to go out to the community and bump up sales. Even with a full-day seminar, it’s not enough to get unit owners or managers to implement the programs.

Think of it like the military. You wouldn’t hand someone a gun and a helmet, point to the battlefield and tell them to engage the enemy. Soldiers are well-trained.

It’s unfair to expect an operations-focused person to develop marketing and sales skills on their own. They go through boot camp, specialty training, on-the-job training, certification, and so on. A similar approach is what is needed to make this type of program work.

Advertising is not the only answer to a need for customers or sales. Advertising may not even be the best answer. Advertising relied on out of context of marketing fails more often than not. And the least effective advertising, shunned by consumers, is advertising lacking personal relevance to those customers.

Much disappointment, frustration and failure can be traced to the fool’s mission of finding a single, simple solution to a complex problem or opportunity. ~ Dan Kennedy

As a small business owner, you may have noticed that there are some major problems with marketing, and they’re going to get worse.

In the near future, the traditional advertising media will become less cost effective for most average businesses. The non-traditional marketing approaches will become increasingly difficult to adapt and manage. You’ll be besieged by throngs of salespeople touting stats that prove their station, publication, or cyber stuff will bring you business.

Making your marketing and advertising money work smarter

To make your marketing and advertising money work smarter, you’ll need to re-evaluate ALL of your marketing. Though it’s impossible to start with a clean slate, you can start with a fresh focus called “zero- based marketing.”

Look for alternatives and supplements in places you never thought of before. You’ll need to examine different and unique approaches to marketing that all work synergistically together while seamlessly functioning within your operation.

Now that you see most of the problems, you can start working on your “No- B.S. Marketer” strategies, plans, tactics, and solutions.

Zero-Based based Marketing marketing might also be called “clean-slate” or “start anew marketing.”

This means setting aside all pre-conceived notions, all personal likes and preferences, all existent methods, all habits, every “but this is the way we’ve always done…”‘s, and taking an entirely fresh look at what works best and can deliver the best customers at the best cost, in your particular situation.

This is not always easy to do.

This may very well mean going back to the future, to focus on very un-sexy grassroots opportunities and methods, and giving them greater priority than the newest, most talked about, most hyped media.

Some suggestions:

• Direct Mail - while some think of this as either out-dated or the opposite, a brand new discovery, it’s been here all along as a great source of attracting new customers and keeping them coming back.
• Customer Appreciation Events - Many businesses and practices hold a “thank you party” for customers. This is up close, personal and profitable.

It may very well mean going back to basics of direct customer contact, effective salesmanship, and quality relationships. It means approaching the entirety of your marketing with no biases for your present methods, no biases against any method. Everything on the table.

Bottom Line - You can get Free Instant Access to all 10 of the No BS Grassroots Marketing Inconvenient Truths when you visit http://GrassrootsMarketingBonus.com

And if you like the tips in these Inconvenient Truths, your are going to love Dan Kennedy and his co-author Dan Slutsky’s new book “No B.S. Grassroots Marketing: Ultimate No Holds Barred Take No Prisoners Guide To Growing Sales and Profits of Small Businesses.”

Get your copy here

From Dan Kennedy, the provocative, truth-telling author of seven popular No B.S. books, thirteen business books total; a serial, successful, multi-millionaire entrepreneur; trusted marketing advisor, consultant and coach to hundreds of private entrepreneurial clients running businesses from $1-million to $1-billion in size; and he influences well over 1-million independent business owners annually through his newsletters, tele-coaching programs, local Chapters and Kennedy Study Groups meeting in over 100 cities, and a network of top niched consultants in nearly 150 different business and industry categories and professions.

Marketing at the local small business level has many challenges. One of the biggest can doing what you do for the right reasons. For example: There are lots and lots and lots of things you can do with advertising, marketing and promotion. Most small business owners, to their painful loss, fail to ask the “Jurassic Park” question:

Just because we can, does that mean we should?

Applied to you, the small business owner, the question becomes “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.” Do what you do for the right reason Be wary of investing in things because of ANY of the following reasons:

• They are popular,
• Are normal and customary,
• Are what “everybody” does,
• “Cool kids” do it,
• Giants do it,
• It’s the latest “must-have-gonna-make-everything-easier-magic-button-whiz-bang-flavor-of-the-week.”

Be resistant to pressure by media salespeople, marketing “gurus” biased to or selling particular tools, and employees, peers, friends and family.

I know this will comes as a huge surprise and a harsh reality. perhaps even a genuine shock: Not everyone has your best interests in mind. Not everyone with options has qualified options.

It is YOUR responsibility to hold each investment and activity up to harsh assessment and measurement, to minimize risks, avoid waste, and obtain positive returns.

Why are we doing this?

The story is told of the newlywed couple who were cooking their first Thanksgiving ham. The new wife cut off an end of the ham before putting it in the brand new oven. When asked why she cut of the end, she said: It’s the way my mom always did it.”

The unconvinced and frugal husband then called his mother-in-law to inquire about this practice. Her response: “I have no idea, but I’ll call my mom and find out. That’s the way she always did it.

From 2 generations back, his wife’s grandmother said: “Oh dearie, that’s the way we had to do it. We only had one pan and most hams would just not fit.”

As a small business owner with a limited marketing budget you can’t afford to guess at what works and what doesn’t. Only choose those marketing approaches that have the ability to prove their ROI value to you.

If it’s not provable, it’s not valuable

To stay within the bounds of the real world, I will admit there may be marketing that is not provable that works great. The problem is you’ll never know it. For local businesses, you have to be picky about where you put your limited resources for marketing.