The term marketing refers to any product or service that's to be sold in a market situation, that is with buyers and sellers operating with the forces of supply and demand. Whether you're bidding on an event, cold-calling prospective customers, or speaking to a group of corporate event planners, you're marketing.

Everything in this world is marketed in some way. We market ourselves every day when we try to influence someone to do something for us. When we apply for a job or try to get a date, we're marketing ourselves. When we're trying to convince the boss to send us to London for the global sales meeting or asking our staff to please stay late, we're marketing ourselves.

When you start selling yourself and your cooking, you're marketing yourself. Your job is to:

• Determine potential customers

• Develop a targeted marketing message

• Make a sales pitch

• Close the sale

• Deliver the products and service

• Follow up with the customer

In Chapter 12, you learned how to evaluate your strengths and opportunities and use them in your sales pitch. In this chapter you'll learn why you need to develop a targeted marketing message and study innovative tools you can use to deliver your message and close a catering sale. In Chapter 14, you'll learn about the importance of client followup and how to monitor customer relationships.

From the time you get up in the morning to the time you go to bed, you see thousands and thousands of branded products. The radio ad for coffee that wakes you up in the morning, the colorfully packaged food products you eat for breakfast, the print ads you see wrapped around buildings as you walk to the ad-filled bus stop and board the ad-saturated bus itself — even in the first few hours of the day, you are surrounded by advertising. Coffee cups, pizza boxes, and even eggshells have printed messages on them trying to get you to buy a product. With all these marketing messages, how is a small business supposed to stand out and get noticed? The answer is with targeted guerrilla marketing.