4 Essential Strategies for Marketing Success
The foundation of your company’s success depends heavily on marketing. Afterall, your business may provide the most effective product or service in your industry, but without marketing how would your potential customers find you?
1. Create A Marketing Strategy
When companies fail to create a marketing strategy, regardless of how great their product or service, without customers there are no sales.
What is a Marketing Strategy? A marketing strategy is an organization’s strategy that combines all of its marketing goals into one comprehensive plan. A good marketing strategy should be drawn from market research and focus on the right product mix in order to achieve the maximum profit potential and sustain the business. The marketing strategy is the foundation of the marketing plan.(businessdictionary.com)
Any conversation about your business is an opportunity to promote your business and increase sales. Whether at a networking luncheon or during a strategy meeting with potential clients, a marketing strategy will help you identify different ways to talk to your customers so that you can concentrate on creating the most value for them while increasing sales for your business.
“Consumers do not buy what you sell. They buy what has value to them.” – Peter Drucker
2. Be Seen
To do well, the product or service your business provides has to be seen by potential buyers. It is no longer an option for businesses to have a digital presence, it is imperative. By setting up your online presence, i.e. website, blog and social media you increase exposure to your business enormously; thereby, increasing your opportunity to be seen by your target customers, and ultimately increasing sales.
Worldwide, there are over 1.59 billion monthly active Facebook users which is a 14 percent increase year over year. (Source: Facebook as of 1/27/16) What this means for you: In case you have any lingering doubts, statistically, Facebook is too big to ignore.
3. Be Engaged
Once you have a website and are on social media, engage with your customers and clients DON’T JUST USE SOCIAL MEDIA TO TRY TO SELL YOUR PRODUCT OR SERVICE. Through creative use of social media, blogging, and content marketing you increase the opportunity to display the face of your business in the digital world, and when customers and potential customers like what they see sometimes they do the work for you by sharing your information with family and friends thru liking a page or post, sharing a product, tagging a friend, and forwarding information via email.
“Find a way to be personal with your customers and connect with them on a human level.” – Andrew Reid, Founder, President and Chief Product Officer, Vision Critical
Five Ways a Business Grew 800-Fold With Social Media
4. Be The Expert
The success of a company often rests on a solid reputation. Marketing develops brand acknowledgment or product recall with a business. However, it is up to you to provide the information your clients are seeking and develop your reputation as the expert in your field. Use social media and your website to post information that is important to your clients. As your business becomes more familiar with the public your track record expands, business expands, and sales boosts. The credibility of your business is constructed through energetic engagement within the community, efficient interaction, as well as high-quality service or products. When all elements are in place and are developed or supported by marketing initiatives the only place to go is up!
What Else You Need to Know
We’ve already established that marketing is highly important for a business to be successful; it can however, be expensive. In its initial year, a business may invest as much as half of its sales in marketing. After the first year, a marketing spending plan could reach as high as 30 percent– occasionally more– of the annual sales. A marketing plan that offers your business the best chance of success is a healthy and balanced mix of different marketing techniques, such as a website, social media, public relations, print, and word-of-mouth.
About the author
Wendy Navarro, CEO
Wendy is the results-driven CEO of Nashville Area Digital Marketing Agency NAVARRO CREATIVE GROUP. Since 2015, she has been helping clients transform business expertise into brand authority by leveraging innovative marketing strategies.
