Much like a business plan you present to investors, you need to perform some market analysis regarding your business to have a starting point for a marketing strategy. Assess how your company fits into a particular sector of the economy and determine the uniqueness of your products. Do your products stand out from others in your locale or industry? If similar businesses exist, how do you plan on competing with them? How can you do things better than other companies that may offer similar products or services?
Determine any threats to your business model. Ask yourself what happens if the economy changes, when raw materials cost more or if you need to hire more workers. Can your business survive any competition? List as many opportunities and threats as you can, basing your lists on the market research you performed as part of your business plan and how the business climate has changed over the years. When you determine the opportunities and threats your company faces, ascertain your company’s own strengths and weaknesses.
Know Your Customers
Examine the demographic that benefits from your products or services the most and focus your marketing strategy there. If you sell or manufacture mobility devices, various entities in the health care industry may benefit from your products. Elderly patients with arthritis could also purchase your items. When your company sells software as a service, what companies and systems would use your computer program?
Once you know your customers and their demographics, research what ideas work best for those people. Millennials may like social media posts, smartphone apps and the latest consumer marketing trends. Baby boomers may prefer billboards, phone book advertisements or television commercials. If your customers include everyone, then try to have as good of a mixture as possible.
Create Your Budget
Set aside money for your sales and marketing budget based on what you decide to employ as your main marketing strategy. Website updates, blogs and social media accounts generally require staff time to monitor and upkeep these online facets of marketing, but little else. Mailings to houses, businesses and trade publications require paper, graphic design layouts, photographs and postage. Displays for conventions need giveaways, foamboard stands, prints of your company logo and the staff for the booth. Billboards, television commercials and radio spots all have varying degrees of expenses associated with them.
Have a comprehensive budget that gets as many people in the door as possible, but do not spread your budget too thin. You may not have much left over to turn a profit if you spend too much. Perform a cost analysis of your overhead, raw materials, staffing and expenses as you draw up a marketing budget. If you find you may exceed your budget after the marketing strategy starts, adjust accordingly and scale back if possible.
Write a Plan
Write a plan to include every detail point of your strategy. Write out the budget, threats, opportunities, communications and target audience of your products. Everyone on your team should know who to contact with questions; put the head of marketing's name in the plan. List your marketing goals for the coming quarter. Do you want to increase sales by 20 percent or would you rather earn 500 more customers? Goals remain just as important as your beginning points of the marketing strategy.
Conclusion
Every new business needs a marketing strategy to try to increase sales from the very beginning. The main key revolves around creating a strategy that fits your business and your style to generate revenue. Learn several concepts to keep in mind as you develop your sales model moving forward from day one or day 1,000.
Online Marketing
Companies considering to promote their business through direct marketing techniques should opt for online marketing. It is one of the best marketing options available today. Many companies are already going online with their products and services as online marketing is proving to be much more effective than traditional methods.
Email Marketing
Email marketing seems to be the most popular online marketing tool. Companies have realized the potential benefits of email marketing and are switching over from their traditional methods of marketing to the online setting of email marketing. You can reach prospective customers spread across varied regions and markets with the click of a mouse. Email marketing is quick and affordable. The timing of your emails will determine the overall effectiveness of your efforts. Always try to reach out to your target audience on holidays and in consumer seasons. Tools such as intelligent mailing lists can be used to pinpoint to your special interest group.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is another Internet-based marketing technique. There will be an agreement between two or more companies called affiliates. When one company sends a customer to another company by taking marketing efforts, the company that directed the customer will be given compensation for it. There are many other complex methods of affiliate marketing.
Search Engine Marketing
There are many people who have started building an industry around SEM because they consider it to be one of the most useful methods of marketing, especially for online stores. Companies with a tight-budget can optimize their site and increase their chances of being listed high among search results in search engines. SEM can increase their visibility among potential customers online.
Search Engine Optimization
Most modern businesses have an online platform to easily access their potential customers. The Internet can do wonders for your business, provided you put it to good use. Search Engine Optimization is the process of making your website more user-friendly. The main purpose of SEO is to drive in quality traffic to a website. This will help in generating more revenue for your business. Every time users (who could be your prospective customers) open up a search engine, they would type in words related to their query. If the word is included in the article, blog, or any other kind of content in your site, chances are high that they would visit your sites. The more visits you get, the more popular your website becomes on the search engine. Such words should be infused in the content of your site. You can optimize your site on your own or avail the services of SEO experts.
Display Advertising
Display advertising involves uniting static and animated content to create an interactive media. It is usually in the form of a web banner. When a company uses display advertising, it combines text, images, brand name, and more for marketing its products. Display advertising gives you the opportunity to design eye-catching advertisements so that you can display your competency and capability to your client. Display advertising is a highly creative advertising strategy. There are very little chances of people overlooking your ad if it is well-designed. Online marketing can be a powerful yet cost-effective medium of advertising.
Define Your Brand
Your brand must be defined in some way that makes it truly your own. Think about what kind of company you want to be known as and what kind of market you're selling to. Does it help you or hurt you to be seen as environmentally conscious? Do people come to your business for steep discounts, or do they want premium quality? The way you define your brand depends on your answers to these questions.
When you're defining your brand, it helps to think of the company as if it is a person. Is this person fun-loving, friendly or conservative? Does the kind of person your company resembles make friends easily and keep up with all the latest trends, or does it plot a steady course and build relationships with customers?
Sometimes, you do your brand a disservice by laying bare your whole corporate persona. A very sophisticated approach to defining your brand is to hold something back at first, such as your mascot's back story or the fact that the business is family-owned. Only give such tidbits away in small doses. This helps create an air of intrigue that gets people interested in learning more about you.
Make It Unique
It is vitally important that your brand stands out in a sea of competition. Do everything in your power to look, feel and sound different from your larger competitors. Designing promotional materials with unusual colors and textures, staging offbeat events to raise awareness, and finding new ways to get your company name in front of the public all help make your brand unlike the others in your field.
Another way to set your brand apart from the others is to approach the public in unexpected ways. The modern world offers countless ways to get your name in front of a potential customer, from knocking on doors to sponsoring charity golf tournaments.
Striking a unique posture can be difficult when every decision has to be ratified by a committee. Consider flattening the chain of command in your marketing department to bring the creative talent into regular contact with final decision makers. This speeds up the decision cycle and helps your brand get in front of developing trends before they pass you by.
Present a Consistent Image
Members of the general public know your company by the image it presents. If that image changes from day to day, or from year to year, it can be difficult to keep up with you. Once you've established an image, always deal with the public in that guise. Try not to be the hip investment bank to one market segment, and then strike a staid, risk-averse posture with another.
Another part of remaining consistent is establishing a uniform approach to the public. A brand that becomes known for soft selling its products, for example, should not suddenly launch an aggressive telemarketing campaign.
This rule is a general guideline, and constancy can be a problem in some cases. Never be afraid of ditching a brand identity that has been tainted by scandal, dissatisfied customer reports or harsh regulatory actions. If your brand is irretrievably lost, feel free to cast it away and start over.
Conclusion
Building a successful brand is one of the most important eforts you can undertake for your business. From this exercise, you build a loyal customer following, and enhance the value of your business.
5 Ways Social Media Can Promote Your New Business
Plan Your Strategy First
Because social media provide such an immediate response, it's crucial that you map out your entire social media strategy before you do so much as open a Facebook page. Don't put any messages out into the online world until you know exactly what your message is and have figured out the best way to deliver it. Any mistakes could be broadcast to all your customers, and your social media errors never go away.
Plan ahead to incorporate holidays or special seasons into your marketing, public relations and social media strategies. As part of your social media plan, be prepared to review and change the plan frequently, adding or changing your online platforms as your customers move from one to the next.
Use Social Media Analytics
If you like using data to figure out who your customers are, what they want and how they're responding to your offerings in the marketplace, you're likely to love what social media offers. Find ways to incorporate the data you're receiving in your outreach to customers; for instance, you can use social media data to determine who your repeat customers are or who's saying nice things about your company online, and send targeted rewards. Make sure you know where your customers go online so you can show up on the right platforms.
Use Targeted Content
While it's tempting to revel in the fact that social media gives you a worldwide reach, you should actually use it to target customers close to home. Location-based marketing actually works very well via social media, so work on building a loyal customer base over time.
Start a Conversation
The difference between social media and more traditional forms of media is that social media is a two-way street. Rather than sending out an advertisement via television, newspaper or mail, you're opening a conversation when you utilize social media. That means you need to do as much listening as you do talking. Monitor your social media outlets and respond immediately to customer comments and complaints. Your entire customer base is watching to see what you're going to say when something negative occurs, and social media is the way to get your message out and to show that you're responsive to your customers' needs.
Protect Your Brand and Platforms
Protect your passwords and change them frequently to make sure your social media presence doesn't get hacked. Monitor and control posts to your accounts, and keep track of who has the right to post on your accounts. Watch your accounts constantly to be aware of any strange activity, and be prepared to shut down everything, then reboot as quickly as possible.
Conclusion
Social media must be a part of any business's promotion strategy, but if your company is a startup, figuring out how to leverage online platforms can be tough. To use social media effectively, you need to develop a multifaceted plan that can market your business and extend your outreach while avoiding the pitfalls that lurk around the edges of these digital networking channels. Part of your plan should involve protecting your social media assets, which amounts to protecting the image of your brand.
