Let me ask you a question...did you become a small business owner to become a marketing expert? I know - dumb question. But I ask it for a very good reason. You know I didn't get into business for myself to become an expert marketer either. But I quickly realized that this was what it was going to take in order for me to have any chance of falling into the small percentage of businesses that survive that often-quoted five-year mark.

I mean the statistics are staggering! Depending on who you talk to less than 10 % of small businesses can survive staying in business for 5 years. What accounts for this? I believe one of the biggest things is lack of marketing success.

So I started my journey to becoming a master marketer by reading lots of books, talking to people and attending numerous seminars. Pretty soon I had a good overview of marketing techniques for service professionals. But while the marketing theory was good, it left me wondering how I could make the theory work well for me and my unique personality.

And then one day it dawned on me - I needed to discover what I soon started calling my Natural Marketing Style™. I had been dabbling in lot of different marketing activities and I enjoyed some more than others. I started to look for patterns and I soon figured out what my Natural Marketing Style™ looked like.

What is your Natural Marketing Style™? You have one. We all do. Some of us are lucky enough to have more than one. To determine yours, sit down for a moment and look back on all of the different marketing activities you've tried in the past. Write down as many as you can.

Next, create a spreadsheet with 5 columns across the top. You'll want to look at your comprehensive list and break them down into one of these five categories... "loved it," "liked it," "neutral," "sort of disliked it" and "really never want to do again."

After you have your list organized into columns, take a look and see if any patterns start to emerge. What do the marketing activities in the "love" and "like" columns have in common?

Notice that you loved being a guest writer for someone else's newsletter? Maybe your Natural Marketing Style™ is that of a writer! If so, create a marketing plan with writing as your primary strategy.

You'll have a lot more fun and a lot more success if you create your marketing strategy based on your own Natural Marketing Style™. So get started right away - you'll be glad you did!