As a small business owner, you need to consistently make an effort to get the word out about your products and services. Without a defined marketing strategy, you won’t be able to build an effective sales funnel or sustainably grow your customer base. By joining an organization like The Kaufman Chamber of Commerce, you can network with other local entrepreneurs and learn about their best marketing techniques! Furthermore, here’s how you can develop the foundation of your company’s marketing department.
Work With a Specialist
As you start building up your marketing strategy, remember that you don’t have to navigate the whole process by yourself. Instead, you can look to experts for guidance. If you have a general vision of your strategy in mind, a marketing specialist can turn it into a concrete reality. By hiring a specialist, you can gain strategy insights that will allow you to connect with more customers, polish your brand, and allocate your budget to initiatives that will provide a great return on investment.
Chances are, you’ll be working with a specialist remotely on a contract basis. Therefore, it’s important to be very clear in all of your communications. If you want to send them examples of images, graphics, or documents that you like, you’ll need a tool that can convert JPG to PDF. This allows you to shrink the file size, which preserves the image quality and makes for easier sharing.
Understanding Marketing Channels
How do you get your marketing information to customers? You’ll use one or more “channels.” Channels are basically online or offline platforms or modes of communication that you can utilize to connect with your customers. For instance, social media, email, and direct mail all represent different marketing channels. You can tweak your content based on who you’re trying to reach through a particular channel.
But which channels should you prioritize? It never hurts to engage with offline channels like coffee shop bulletin boards, telephone poles, and billboards to reach local customers. Rivalmind also recommends investing in digital channels like pay-per-click advertising and video marketing.
Refine Your Messaging
In marketing, messaging refers to the values you express and the language you use in your physical and digital materials. You can hone your messaging depending on the channel you’re using and the people you are aiming to reach. For instance, if you’re planning for an email marketing campaign that you’re going to launch before a particular holiday, you’ll need the messaging to reflect that. And if you’re directing certain materials towards an older customer base, you’ll want to use more mature language. It’s a good idea to consider how your message will come across every time you start developing a new initiative.
Evaluate Your KPIs
As you move forward with different marketing initiatives, you will want to evaluate which methods are providing the best returns. But how can you accurately assess the effectiveness of your overall marketing strategy? You will need to continuously track and compare several key performance indicators, also known as KPIs.
You can use customer relationship management software, as well as social media and email marketing analytics, to collect and analyze metrics. Impact recommends paying close attention to your landing page conversion rates, organic traffic, marketing revenue attribution, and customer acquisition cost. These metrics can provide a blueprint of marketing areas that are best suited for your business.
It can take time to develop a marketing strategy that serves your business well. Your marketing strategy will naturally shift with your business over time as you learn and grow as an entrepreneur. With these recommendations, you’ll be ready to make headway with your small-scale marketing department!
Want to connect with other entrepreneurs? Get involved with The Kaufman Chamber of Commerce! Become a member through our website today.
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