When it comes to knowing your customer, are there any seasonal trends that will allow you to focus on with targeted marketing or times the year where that service is required more than others like accountancy at the financial year end? Similarly, is there an existing media that is seen by your potential customers like a trade magazine or website?
A great deal of success is down to the use of the little grey cells; the thought process, the rationale….the strategy. No one wins any prizes for launching a website.in 1 hour for £50. Take time to research your customer, their buying behaviour, their market, what they read, where they go etc. Take time to develop your ‘offer’ to them and take time to make sure your offer is going to resonate with them and take time to design it.
Nowadays we only have to turn on the TV to see corporate companies offering to make a website in a few hours or to design a logo in 15 minutes. Surely something as important to marketing shouldn’t be signed, sealed and delivered in less time that it takes to do a gym workout? Not only that but we all know that Twitter, Instagram and Facebook are awash with pointless accounts published because they are free and easy to set up only to stand still after the initial posting stampede!
Time is a valuable commodity whatever sector you are in so use it wisely. I remember an old road safety campaign that said. Stop. Look. Listen. Do the same with your marketing.
Also, have a serious think about who is best placed in your organisation to do marketing. If it is you, do you have the time or the expertise or even the inclination? If it is someone else in the business whose job title is marketing, can they do everything an external specialist could do? Do they need support in specialist areas like SEO?
On the subject of SEO, please, please, please, invest in this area of marketing. Invest in a professionally designed and built website that can be optimised for Google.
Remember, Google has a huge market share (over 92%) and it also has more than just the search network to display the results. There is a common misconception that Google finds websites. It sort of does, but it mainly finds pages. This means you MUST use other digital platforms to spread your message and attract your customer. Content marketing is vital when it comes to being visible online for example. These SERPS (search engine page results) can include organic search results, paid Google Ads results, blog posts, whitepapers and YouTube videos so do your research, construct a strategy and get marketing!
