When it comes to marketing, the landscape is vast. Experience is key, but not the only ingredient when it comes to delivering true success. Howto.marketing will cover the strategic blend of Tools, Tactics and Techniques that will set you up for continued success.
Marketing 101 - Start at the Beginning...
Marketing Considerations…
When it comes to your businesses marketing activity there are a range of things you first need to outline, firstly your time dedicated to marketing. This is a pivotal distinction on how to interact with content on this website.
Here at Howto.marketing – we’ll go in to depth on a range of subjects and content. It’s vital you always keep in mind – is this something I should be allocating time to, or is it extra activity once I can afford the time. Usually this is driven by your personal career and typically job role…
If you’re a founder of an SME you’ll have a pile of other demands on your time versus a marketing executive or manager at a large company – who can dedicate a much larger proportion of their time to marketing. So keep this in mind and remember, don’t become distracted by anything that detracts from your goal.
Which brings us nicely into section 1…what the hell is it you want?
GOAL SETTING
It’s imperative that you understand fully what it is that you’d like to achieve before you try figure out how to achieve it. Now that might sound like a stupid thing to say – but after years of working with clients, you’d be astonished how many times a brief changes once the penny drops.
So if you’re looking to increase your social footprint, drive more sales, improve your lead gen or monetise your website – there’s always a single true goal that we want to measure against – that’s how we define what success looks like. Then we work back from there to plot the path to success. Easy right?
Nope…
There’s a difference between knowing your shit,
and knowing you’re shit.
What success looks like…
Our blog is a great source of live examples of how specific companies, cases and solutions have been bolted together to deliver results based on a goal. This type of activity really works best when told in stories you can digest and apply to your individual situations.
However…below we’ve outlined some examples of how you can identify a goal, and using your scenario follow some main steps to map a path towards success…
I spend too much on advertising and marketing I need to cut costs
This one is common, and usually it means there's either poorly performing campaigns / activities OR wasted spend on high cost low ROI channels.
The solution? Throw your efforts into creating activities solely focused around data capture. Design this into your sales funnel. Step 1 is capturing a users data maybe using gated content or similar. Then Step 2 can be lower cost targeted marketing which has the sales focus as a priority. Spending budget on only finding sales puts huge pressure to convert in place.
I really need to grow my social audience I don't have many followers
Our first question back on this one is...why? If it's because you think you should have more followers (because everyone else does) then don't sweat it, put a nice clean easy to manage social strategy in place and forget about it. Unless all your other marketing activities are working perfectly and you're making lots of revenue - you probably have more profitable ways to spend your time. Followers are HARD to monetise, and they're fickle and hard to keep engaged. Don't fall down a well of effort for something that doesn't add value.
IF there's another reason and you do actually NEED to grow it, throw some budget at it. Sponsored posts, boosted posts and ads - all circling around GREAT content, engaging, video use is key too. Remember, nobody really cares about your business but you can make them love your content.
My staff and I spend so much time running the business we can't get to do marketing
DANGER DANGER, this one is worryingly common unfortunately...speaking to experts like those here at howto.marketing, you'll get help not simply to do your marketing for you. But to help complete a quick and easy process audit of your business and someone immersed in the Digital Landscape, should know tools and software that can be pretty quickly and easily implemented to optimise your processes or day to day activities. IF you're doing something more than once, lets automate and optimise it. We believe it's key for businesses to be involved in their marketing and not solely outsource - it's the beating heart that feeds your businesses veins so it's important you have a solid grasp on it - even if you're paying others to do the work. Optimising your processes using digital technology gives you the space and time to do this.
I've got a sales team and it's their job to sell not market
Yip, we agree...
BUT, marketing is heating up the oven before you stick the turkey in. Without marketing, you're relying on pressure selling, spray and pray sales, grunt work or huge demand from customers with no prompting (which is as rare as hens teeth). Marketing is the top of your sales funnel, with the correct marketing your sales team can work more efficiently, converting more, spending more time on relationships and delivering true value to the business. Without a strong marketing feed to the sales team it's a very different customer experience - and typically not as positive.
