Marketing is a given when it comes to business, but marketing requires ingenuity, research and a commitment to your brand. Most small business either don’t have the budget nor the right strategy in place to make their marketing efforts payoff. You need to develop a strategy as soon as possible to improve your chances of success and to keep your business afloat. Here are some marketing strategies you need to put into action right now.
Have a strategy
This should be self-evident, unfortunately it isn’t. Many businesses first start out designing a basic website and maybe a Facebook page, but many don’t even have a business plan in place. If you don’t have a strategy lined up then it is time to get one. If you don’t know where to begin then you might need a marketing agency to help you.
Identify the buyer persona
First and foremost you need to identify who your ideal customer is. Before you ever create a piece of content you need to know exactly who you’re creating that content for. The buyer persona is your ideal customer, who needs your product or service right now. Hint…the answer isn’t “everyone” you are not Walmart or Amazon. Now you need to create stuff that solves their problems or that they find interesting. Here is some help identifying your ideal customer.
Create and Promote
It is not enough to just create content for marketing purposes you have to actively promote it too. Content without promotion is not enough to drive sales by itself. Now you need to concentrate on the promotion of that content. Do you make a great Facebook post, why not boost it? You can boost a post for just a few dollars and help drive traffic.
Use Multiple Platforms
Never rely on just one method of promoting your business. Word of mouth is not enough and neither is relying solely on Facebook. A good marketing strategy uses all kinds of different platforms to get your message across. Some marketing methods like search engine optimization take offer a great ROI but they take months to see results. In the meantime you can take advantage of PPC campaigns, Facebook ads as well as offline strategies.
Measure and Tweak
No matter the combination of online marketing strategies you put into place you need to know the results they are driving. For an online campaign you can use tools like Google Analytics to determine where your web traffic is coming from and how well it is converting. Be prepared to make adjustments along the way.
