Marketing consists of more than making some phone calls or buying an ad in the local paper. Your marketing effort is the sum total of the sales, pricing, promotional and advertising efforts designed to promote the flow of goods or services from your business to the consumer.

Marketing also includes your activities to identify the right merchandise or service, select the right store location, enact effective sales programs and promote your company to the buying public.

It is easy for small business owners to find excuses to neglect marketing. Operating on a no-frills budget, many owners begrudge spending the money. Without marketing, however, it’s practically impossible to get the attention of buying customers. If you do not effectively market your company, brand, image and products or services, you will compromise your sales potential every day.

A wise investment in marketing involves mastery of the four P’s: Product, Promotion, Price and Place. These elements need to work in synch to generate customer interest and trigger the buying response from your audience.

Early in 2001, Kimberly Brown and Charlton Douglas visited our Service Corps of Retired Executives, or SCORE, office in North Charleston seeking help starting up and operating a wholesale food distribution business named Food Fetish Inc.

Brown had spent eight years as a chef in North Carolina and elsewhere, and her partner Douglas spent several years in marketing food products throughout North Carolina, South Carolina and coastal Georgia.

At SCORE, they met on several different occasions with counselors who assisted them in writing a business plan and completing a loan application to help start their new company. The partners negotiated a long-term lease on an office and warehouse building at 2895 A Pringle St. in North Charleston. A startup loan was obtained from Charleston Local Development Corp. and a supplemental loan from Regions Bank.

Food Fetish Inc. began business in October 2001. The company’s customer list includes upscale restaurants, gourmet grocery stores, bakeries, country clubs and hotels located mostly in North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. Drawing on their many years of supplying specialty customers their customer base grew rapidly and, after six years, it continues to grow.

SCORE counselors make it standard practice to follow up periodically with clients to ask if they need advice as time goes by.

Brown and Douglas said their SCORE counselors gave them direction and encouraged them in negotiating their startup loans. They also stated that without SCORE’s help they would not have enjoyed the growth which they have achieved.

If you are starting your own business in the greater Charleston area, call on SCORE. Our services are free and confidential.

Counseling hours are from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. five days a week at our office in the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce Building at 2750 Speissegger Drive in North Charleston.

Ted Albenesius is a retired Charleston businessman and past chairman of the local SCORE chapter. The Charleston SCORE chapter can be contacted at (843) 727-4778 or www.score285.org.

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