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.
Marketing success is never guaranteed. But one thing is guaranteed – if you don’t market your business, your competition will step in and take business away from you. Marketing must become a regular daily activity if you want your business to grow and thrive. I realize that there are plenty of marketing challenges facing your small business on a daily basis, so I understand your reluctance to start for fear of marketing consuming your entire day.
Marketers like to talk about the benefits of creating a marketing plan for your business. While doing so is important, there is more to implementing a successful marketing campaign than just creating a marketing plan. To implement your marketing plan, you need a process for each marketing campaign or initiative – lead generation, content marketing, email marketing, search marketing or social media marketing to name a few – so that it achieves a significant ROI.
You know you need to market your business to become or remain visible to your target audience. But like most small businesses, there are more pressing priorities of operating a business that demand your attention. Your time will be spent on operational issues and you will struggle to find the time to do any marketing at all, until you realize that sales are dependent on creating visibility and generating demand for your product or services.
Your value proposition is an important part of your marketing strategy that is often misunderstood. Although a key concept in marketing for decades, it is now just as important in the online world where you are trying to get people to click on your ads or convert on your landing pages into qualified leads.
As the hub of your online marketing, your website is the most important component of your web presence. The primary goal of your inbound marketing activities should be online lead generation – driving more traffic to your website and then converting the traffic into leads.
Marketing a small business has become overwhelming with all the online platforms, tools and strategies. There is so much complexity with all of your choices, how do you simplify marketing so it eliminates confusion and enables you to focus on what is important? What’s the secret to choosing the right platforms, tools and strategies to maximize your web presence and drive qualified inbound leads?
Are you starting a business and are stressing over what to name it? Or do you have a business but the name just isn’t working and you are wondering if you should change it? Choosing the right business name is important because it can have a tremendous impact on whether your customers take your business seriously, view it as a successful entity or shy away from your brand entirely.
As the world of marketing evolves and becomes more complex, one has to wonder how small business owners can stay abreast of what marketing trends are emerging, never mind figure out which are worth investing in for their particular situation.
In this complex world of too many choices, a small business can stand out from the competition through simple marketing. Simple marketing also helps to eliminate the marketing overwhelm facing business owners due to the rapidly changing digital landscape. Marketing overwhelm creates paralysis, guaranteeing that nothing gets done, and those activities that do are often random and ineffective.
Marketing is an investment in your business. Creating an inbound marketing plan and implementing the plan consistently can increase your visibility and strengthen your expert reputation. The following marketing mistakes can cause potential customers to question your expertise and move on to evaluating your competitor, hurting your small business and having a negative impact on your success.
Developing your positioning statement and key marketing messages is essential to establishing your market perception. It is important that your marketing efforts establish value in the minds of your customers. To do an effective job of developing your messages and positioning, you need to understand the difference between these two types of messages. A positioning …
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