Updated: August 20, 2019 – Small businesses have many marketing challenges, but one of the hardest things small business owners need to do is determine what makes their business stand out from the competition and present it in a way that attracts their ideal client. Being able to differentiate your business by communicating your unique capabilities that your competition does not have is paramount to attracting your ideal client.
Everyone likes to talk about creating a marketing plan. It’s the fun part of marketing, the creative aspect of your planning process. But strategy without execution won’t help your business succeed. In fact, marketing execution is how you achieve results.
A simple marketing plan is your road map for achieving your goals and guiding your decisions throughout the year. The strategic part of the plan is where you define your vision, goals and target audience for your business. But once you have that piece in place, you need your action plan that will guide you forward and help you adjust when necessary.
The best way to improve your marketing results is to set marketing goals. Without goals that can be tracked and measured, how will you know if you are successful?
We spend a lot of time discussing how to select your target audience as part of creating an inbound marketing plan. Hopefully you know who your target audience is for your small business. But have you taken the time to further divide that target audience into smaller market segments?
Choosing the right marketing communications channel strategy to distribute your messages to your target audience and create a stronger relationship with them is now more complicated. With all of these choices, what’s important is to focus on selecting the right media channels for your business, both online and traditional.
Updated: November 23, 2018 -Business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing is different. Understand the differences and develop marketing programs that are appropriate for your audience.
Every 90 days you should conduct a marketing review in order to measure and track your marketing effectiveness. By reviewing your results every quarter, you can determine what is working and what is not.
Updated: August 28, 2018 – Keyword research is one of the most important and valuable activities in marketing, not just search engine marketing, but marketing in general and should be the starting point of your marketing plan. Consider keyword research as a component of market research that helps us better understand what our target markets are interested in and what terms they use to find what they need.
If you want your marketing to be effective, you need to treat marketing as a process – a series of actions to achieve your particular marketing goal. But unless you create a marketing system, your marketing process could be inefficient and inconsistent, producing results that are less than you had hoped.
Many small businesses feel that having a brand is not something necessary to successfully market their products or services. Some think it is something only large companies need. And although some might invest in a logo, they miss the fact that a brand identity is so much more than just the visual impression of your business.
A simple marketing plan that outlines all the important pieces needed to successfully and consistently market your business is something every small business should create. Whether you want to focus solely on inbound marketing or you want to integrate online with off-line marketing activities, there are 10 important reasons why your small business needs a simple, realistic marketing plan.
Sign up to get marketing tips direct to your inbox and get a