When you first get into business, you certainly have a lot to think about. Aside from planning out your products or services and forecasting the financials, a huge part of what you’ll need to do is pull together your marketing strategy. In the beginning, this can seem like a thing to do – but it doesn’t need to be. You can get started on creating the perfect marketing plan and get incredible results when you look to action it. Here are seven steps to follow to get started.
1. Get to Know Your Audience
The first thing you need to do here is think about who you’re looking to target. Figuring out your target audience can often feel like an overwhelming task to take on, but it gets to be a lot easier when you break it down. So begin by doing some research. When you start to research your market segment, competitors, and what your customers want, you can begin to form a better idea of who your target audience might actually be.
2. Solve a Problem or Meet a Desire
Then, as you’re starting to fine-tune things, you’re going to want to make sure that you know how you are different from what’s already on the market. It’s important to think about what you’re trying to achieve with your product and service and who it might best be suited for. You can then create a profile of the exact kind of customer you’re looking for.
3. Choose the Right Platforms
The next step here is to start thinking about where you want to market. Ideally, you’re going to take an integrated approach here, meaning that you’ll look to include a range of different marketing styles in your strategy so that you can cast a wide net and target as much of your audience as possible. So at this stage, you need to decide what. For many people, choosing the right social media platforms to be on is the first step. But you’ll also need to consider other areas such as SEO, paid media, email marketing, advertising, affiliate marketing, and more.
4. Mix Your Approach
Depending on your budget, you may be looking to do a mix of organic and paid marketing activity from the beginning. Or, you may start off with free methods and build up from there. Either way, it’s always a good idea to mix your approach where you can. This means you’re scooping up as many customers as possible. Here, looking to bring in paid media activity with Google Ads and social media placements can help. Mixed with SEO and organic social media posts, you will create a strong integrated marketing approach.
5. Get Creative With Your Advertising
When it comes to the advertising elements, you’re going to want to make sure that you’re nailing the visual side of things. The creative elements should also look to be, well, creative. Don’t be afraid to have fun with this. Think about ways you can capture your audience's attention, because this is essential in a crowded online space!
6. Use Clever Messaging
Alongside your advertising strategy, you’re then going to want to take a look at your copy. When you’re crafting the words for any parts of your marketing, it’s important to make sure that you’re using them to your advantage. Your messaging strategy needs to feed into your overall marketing goals, meaning that you need to be able to use persuasive copy that gets a response and encourages an action from your audience or customer.
7. Optimize as You Go
Then, you’re going to want to make sure that you’re checking in with everything as you go. You’re going to find that things are going to change as you start to track the results. You may find that certain campaigns perform better than others – but you can then apply those learnings and findings going forward to get better results all around.
Final Thoughts: Making Marketing Work For You!
Ultimately, what you’re trying to achieve here is to reach your goals! And you’re going to want to do that as quickly as possible. So this is why pulling together the right marketing strategy that works for you is essential. It’s not just about following everything that you read online or see others doing, you need to make it personal. It has to work for your style of selling, your products or services, and what you actually enjoy doing. Then, joining everything up with an integrated marketing plan and utilizing experts can help you take it all to the next level!
