A marketing strategy is what actions your business will take to get more customers, improve customer retention, increase sales, etc. Having a clear, concise marketing strategy is very important since you will be telling everyone what your company does so they can compare you to others who don’t have this info!
Your marketing strategy should tell people two things: 1) What you are doing to achieve your long-term goals and 2) How you are spending your money to make it happen. If anyone else has that same goal, then they would know how to handle yourself professionally during meetings, presentations, and online conversations with you.
Business owners often feel like no one understands their product or service, and thus these situations continue to fuel negative perceptions of their company. This is not only bad for your business, but also frustrating. More than anything, it costs you revenue in terms of lost deals due to poor relationships.
Here are some tips to help you develop your professional presence and image.
Develop a marketing strategy
A national marketing strategy is creating an integral part of your business that helps you identify what products or services your company offers that are unique and valuable to others.
This includes developing messaging, positioning, advertising, promotional materials, and more for these offerings- all designed to connect with potential customers in clever ways.
Your marketing strategies should be focused on producing results – whether it’s through increasing sales, building brand recognition, or both.
But remember, even if one aspect of your business doesn’t seem to be working, there may be something else you can try next time!
Because at the end of the day, no matter how hard you work, nothing will change unless you put in the effort.
Establish a marketing plan
A well-established marketer has an overarching, national marketing strategy that is updated and reevaluated as needed. They may also have regional or departmental strategies to help them achieve their overall goal.
As seen with our national marketing strategy example, your business probably doesn’t need a massive, all-encompassing marketing approach. It will likely be more effective if you choose one area of the field to focus on and then develop extensions to that area.
For instance, instead of establishing an online presence, you could target certain areas such as social media marketing, content writing, influencer engagement, etc. By doing this, you’re developing specializations within the field of internet marketing.
Once you find your specialization, use that knowledge to grow in it. Then, add onto that by developing other skills in related fields. For instance, if you are very good at writing, learn how to edit others’ work. If you are excellent at social media, take some lessons or teach yourself how to create and run a successful Facebook group or fan page.
Create promotional materials
After you have identified your target audience, determined how to reach them, and built a marketing platform, it is time to create promotional material or advertisements that will get people aware of who you are and what you offer.
This could be an advertisement, a brochure, a flyer, or even an article written about you on Facebook, Google, or other sites with lots of readers.
It’s important to know who your advertising targets are and whether they already know you. If they do, great! But if not then it’s up to you to prove that you are worth their time.
Either way, you need to make sure that whatever you produce promotes you as well as the benefits that coming under your brand offers. Make sure that it clearly states what you promise and why people should expect to benefit from doing business with you.
Planning out your next promotional item can now become much easier than before. You may want to review some of our tips here at BizSugar for ways to improve your marketing game.
Distribute promotional materials
As mentioned before, your marketing strategy depends heavily on what types of media you use to promote your business. But one of the most important things is distributing appropriate promotional material for your business.
This includes business cards, flyers, advertisements, and even logos and brands that represent your company. Distributing these items is an easy way to increase brand recognition while promoting your services or products!
After all, people who see your ads will likely remember your business if you’re well-known, so why not make sure they know who you are?
Creating strong logos, using catchy slogans, and investing in good advertising photos and videos can help you project the right message about your business and inspire potential clients to interact with you.
Using social media to advertise your business and spread word about it is another simple way to grow your audience. However, making sure your settings do not oversell your image or misrepresent yourself is crucial to protecting your personal reputation.
And finally, keeping up-to-date lists of professionals in your area and supporting their groups to gain influence is another way to get more attention for your business.
Google Alerts and other tools can help you keep track of these changes by informing you when there has been an update, news story, or discussion regarding them.
Establish a social media presence
Now that you have chosen to invest in marketing, establishing your social media presence is one of the next logical steps. This includes picking out which platforms you will use to promote your business and what kind of content you will put up for people to see.
Making yourself available through social channels is an excellent way to spread your brand name throughout the community. By having a profile on all of the major social networking sites, you are making yourself accessible to anyone looking to connect with others or find new things related to your field.
Some examples of good social media sites include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.
Create a blog and post content
Starting your marketing career with the right foot is important. What kind of footwear you wear says a lot about who you are as an individual, what brands you represent and how well you do your job. As a professional marketer, you will be representing companies and products in various ways to keep yourself engaged and successful.
The same goes for your personal branding. How you present yourself online reflects upon your professionalism and self-image. Yours can influence whether or not people trust you, look up to you or believe you are someone that does good work.
Your style and appearance say a lot about you. You should consider investing in some quality shoes or finding new styles to match your clothes so that your messages consistently tell a story.
Making sure your personal brand is consistent across all platforms gives you more opportunities to spread your message and connect with others.
Develop a website presence
After you have done your research, gathered all of your supplies and having made sure that you are organized, it is time to start developing your marketing strategy!
The first step in national branding is creating an online presence or a website. This can be done by either hiring professionals or through using free web hosting sites.
By having a website, you give yourself a way to advertise easily and quickly anywhere there’s internet. You also get the opportunity to create an interactive space for people to connect with you and what you offer.
There are many ways to develop your brand online including creating blogs, doing product reviews, offering giveaways and running advertising campaigns on social media websites.
Blogs are a great way to increase traffic to your site as well as provide information and products and services that interest your audience. Doing this consistently will help promote your business.
Create promotional videos
Creating a video is not very difficult, nor is it expensive unless you are in heavy production mode. Depending on your budget, you can create beautiful, engaging videos at no cost or very little money.
Running a minute long is free! Most media companies have tools that allow you to create your own video with just enough equipment to produce a short movie.
Most online platforms now offer easy-to-use software and services for this. For example, YouTube offers the Google Suite which includes productivity apps such as Gmail, Docs, and Spreadsheets. These apps are fully functional and you get them for free when you upload an account through their site.
This is perfect for creating marketing videos like how to tutorials or product reviews. If you’re looking to launch a new business or promote an existing one, start gathering footage and formatting these samples.
Your potential audience will be able to find all of the needed content easily and quickly, making it simple to access for them.
