Marketing investment; acting like you can afford it often means you soon will be able to.

The header for this e-mail is a quote from Seth’s Godin’s business blog, blog@sethgodin.com.

With the start of a new year many business people are seeking ways they can improve their business’ performance. Sadly most solutions require expenditures that they can’t afford to spend. The sad truth is that if one doesn’t invest in their business, things aren’t going to improve, and…. nothing is free.

If you’re one of these business people who are wanting to make your lot better in 2012, and don’t have any ready answers or a large budget, then you need to invest some time planning how exactly can you change today’s sales reality into a promising profitable future.

“Why,” you ask, “do I need to invest my time, (and money)?” The answer is simple. Things have changed, and things are still changing, and things will continue to change with change coming to us in ever larger and faster increments.

Take your company’s customer demographics for example. Are you selling to Baby Boomers and Matures? If you are that’s great. Matures hold 75% of this country’s wealth and Baby Boomers make up the largest demographic segment. But…….. Matures are really getting old and they are either shifting their purchase priorities to things like health care and nursing care, or they are dying. Baby Boomers are getting old too. Their purchase priorities are changing as they realize need to be prepared for retirement and old age. Another amazing thing that is happening to these two market segments is that they are beginning to rely on their tech-savvy children or grandchildren to help them with their purchase decisions. What this means to you is that the marketing that has worked for you in these market segments in the past is not going to work for you much longer. Now, and in the future you’re going to need to be able to market to Gen Y’rs and Millennium’s in order to be able to reach the Matures and Baby Boomers you’re accustomed to selling to. And, if you think marketing to these generations is much the same as what you’re used to doing, I submit you’re going to be in for a big surprise.

There are six generations in our market place with the Alpha Generation starting in 2006. In a recent class I pointed out that the Alphas aren’t going to be affecting buying decisions for the near future. “Yeah,” replied the instructor, “When was the last time your grandkid decided where you were going to eat dinner?” It was the night before.

Express Autobody’s Business Solutions Series will look at all six generations and will give you guidelines and tools so you can best market your product to the people you want to sell to. We will be launching the Business Solutions Series next week on the 19th with two overview classes. One class will be in the morning, one in the afternoon. While there is no cost to attend, you will need to invest some precious time. (And, if you are unwilling to invest time, then many of the solutions offered in this series will be of no value to you.) Attending the overview is essential if you plan on getting everything out subsequent marketing classes, positioning classes and strategy classes. You can wait if you can’t afford to make the investment in time, but remember that the folks who are making this investment now are getting the jump on you. Register now. If you wait too long you may discover that you’ve just waited too long. Change is happening now!