I’m going to take your right back to the basics of marketing for business because marketing can quite often feel overwhelming and sometimes you just don’t know where to start, or what to do.
If you’re an established business doing marketing, you can quite often come to that point where you’re doing so much, feel a bit overwhelmed and I don’t know if you’re doing the right things. It’s quite good sometimes just to take a step back, go right back to basics, just so you can make sure that you’re doing the right things at the right time and that you’re not feeling that overwhelm.
Tip 1: Target Customer
Target customer is one of the most important things that you need to think about when you’re doing your marketing.
Quite often people say that everyone is their target customer. But in reality it’s not every one. Even though you might think it…you really have to hone down and be specific.
You might have lots of different people you want to target, but we need to put them in categories, for example gender, age group, location or industry.
So, once you’ve really thought about those different groups of people that you’re targeting, it makes it so much easier because then you know, who you need to “speak” to with your marketing.
So, if my target customer is over sixty, for example, then I know that social media potentially isn’t going to be the right way to target them, e-newsletters, potentially isn’t going to be the way to target them. Then you have to think outside the box and how am I going to reach that target audience? Could it be through, press articles in the local newspaper? They’re more likely to buy the local newspaper. Could it be through a flyer through their door? So once you really think about who you’re targeting, you can then work out, if the marketing that you’re doing is appropriate to that target audience.
Your target customer is different groups of people and the marketing that you do, relates specifically to each of those different groups, so you might have different messages and different things you say to those different groups.
Really define who your target customer is.
Tip 2: Key Messages
The next thing you need to think about is your key messages.
Again, the things that you say to these different groups is really important, and what a lot of people don’t do is think about the key things that they want to be telling their clients.
I want you to think about what makes you special? What are your ‘unique selling points’ (USP)? What makes you different from everybody else? What makes me different from your competitors?
Then think about what your customer’s problem or issues? And what problems you can help solve? How can you help your client or customer?
Think about the five things that make you really stand out.
The other thing to consider is your core values, your passions. It’s not always just about your work or the business, but about you too?
These are the main things you should be shouting about in your marketing all the time.
Tip 3: Marketing Aims
The third thing to think about is your marketing aims.
We all have a bit of an idea where our business is heading and what we want to achieve in business, but have you ever thought specifically about your marketing aims? Often people think that they want to make more money or increase sales, but let’s be more specific than that. I want you to think about what you specifically want to achieve in marketing?
It might be you want to improve your social media, or you want to grow your following, or perhaps increase engagement and comments on social media.
You might want to raise brand awareness, so more people have heard about you. You may want to drive more traffic to your website, maybe increase web sales. Perhaps you want to try and get more PR in the newspaper?
When you’re a business owner, you haven’t got time to think of everything you could be doing in terms of marketing, so I want to you to pick the top three things you want to achieve with your marketing this year, or over the next six months.
By picking just three aims and not trying to do everything, can really help people who are feeling a bit overwhelmed by their marketing, because let’s face it, there is so much you could do and if you try and do it all, and you try and think about doing everything you are going to feel completely overwhelmed by it.
So, just pick three things that you really, really want to do and focus on those, and that will help you really focus down, and think about what you want to achieve.
So, back to basics, have a think
1 – Who is your target audience?
2 – What are the key messages you are going to tell them?
3 – And what are the three aims to help you do that?
Don’t try and do everything; we’re not superhuman, just pick three and focus on those and do them really, really well.
If you want some more of my top tips you can download my ‘Top Tips to Pack a Punch with your Social Media’ here https://bit.ly/38s5E7x
Lisa
Lisa Jackson
Acorn Marketing – 07751 212662
