Looking for Marketing Tips for Your Business?

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My career in marketing has exposed me to marketing for big companies, regional companies, local businesses, and solopreneurs…from start-ups to well-established brands.

What I’ve learned is that ALL marketing should be done with the idea that you want to build brand awareness, add value, and establish relationships with prospective customers for future sales and referrals.

When you start out by adding value to your audience, they begin to know, like, and trust you.  So when you advertise or promote an offer to your audience, they pay attention.

Marketing Tip #1:  Create a Marketing Plan

Your first step toward marketing a new business is to create a marketing plan. A marketing plan will include the following:

  • A short description of your company
  • Your mission and goals
  • Your core money-making focus
  • Where you are today within the market
  • Who your competitors are
  • Who your target market is
  • The marketing mix
  • The strategy and tactics you plan to use to reach your audience
  • A schedule to implement
  • Your overall budget

It’s important to do this because without a plan, you far less likely to wind up at the destination you hoped you would.

BONUS MARKETING TIP:  I personally use and highly recommend this book for helping you develop your marketing plan.  It is a wonderful resource you will turn to again and again when creating and revising your marketing plan.  I should know…my copy is highlighted, dog-eared, and has hand-written notes in the margins.  🙂

Marketing Tip #2:  Create a Marketing Strategy and Tactics for Each Channel

If you plan to have a marketing mix that includes some combination of a online marketing like a website, blog, email and social media along with offline marketing such as TV, radio, direct mail and newspaper, you need to write it all down and create a special strategy and tactics for each.

Your marketing mix offers different ways to reach your audience as it should, but they can’t all live together in the same individual strategy, and your tactics will be different for each market, channel and sub channel.  Each one has its own audience and “personality.”

For example: Your Facebook marketing strategy, while it falls under social media marketing, will not look the same as your Twitter strategy or your LinkedIn strategy, because they’re as different as a nightclub and a barn.  You have to respect the platform and give the audience what they want and expect.

Marketing Tip #3:  Be Realistic about Your Budget

If you, like most local businesses, have a small marketing budget, it’s important to focus on what works. In this case, social media and online marketing are going to be more cost-effective for your business because it costs a lot of money to get involved with TV and radio advertising.

Social media and online marketing are cost-effective because they offer the ability to highly target who you’re advertising to.  Looking for women, 18-35, in Houston, who like Blue Bell ice cream and Jimmy Fallon?  DONE!  (Seriously, in all my years in marketing, I’ve never seen the ability to customize an audience so easily!)

When it comes to pay-per-click advertising on search engines like Google and Bing, proceed with caution.  If your budget is small, it may not work for you…especially if you are in a highly competitive industry.  Why?  Because unethical competitors find ways to have your ad clicked on, costing you potentially hundreds or even thousands of dollars with ZERO return!  (Yes, this really happens.  A competitor did this when I worked for DefensiveDriving.com.)  Small budgets should stick to marketing that is going to give you the best bang-for-the-buck.

Marketing Tip #4:  Create an Awesome Responsive Website

If you only follow one marketing tip, it should be this one:  Don’t skimp on your website!

Today, you can make an excellent website without much knowledge using self-hosted WordPress.  WordPress is easy to use, highly customizable, and — drum roll please — Google loves it!

And, since most people access websites for local businesses on their mobile devices, your website needs to be responsive.  (A responsive website “adapts” to the device it’s being viewed on, so the experience is always a good one.)

While it’s easy to create a responsive WordPress site by yourself,  you can hire someone for about $500-$1000 dollars to build a good basic website for you.  (However, the costs go up when you add lots of bells and whistles like forums, membership options, and shopping carts.)

If you need those things, spend the money that needs to be spent to ensure the website works. Many businesses fail before the get started due to a bad website.

Marketing Tip #5:  Create and Open Social Media Accounts

Ideally, ALL of your social media accounts will have the same user name or “handle.”  This helps with your branding and helps your audience find you easily on additional platforms.

Fill out the profiles all the way – include pictures, include information about who you are, what you do, etc.  If you’re a brick-and-mortar business, be sure to include your hours of operation and a Google Map to your business.

Remember, this is sort of like a resume for your customers. If you hide who you are, and aren’t “real,” they’re going to ignore you as if you aren’t even there. You want people to learn about your business so be yourself, be likable, and be trustworthy and accurate in your representation of your business.

BONUS MARKETING TIP:  When searching for a user name or handle on social media, Namechk is a great time-saving resource!