Whether you are a new business or a well-established mom & pop operation, figuring out how to best market your business can be a challenge. Unless you have training, education or a background in marketing, it can be overwhelming to consider the many choices available to you today. Indeed, with the advent of social media, blogs, E-mail, websites and E-newsletters - to name a few - marketing today is vastly different than it was just 10 years ago.
If you are going to go it alone and do your own marketing, I have a few suggestions you can use to get organized and create a strategy that works for you.
1. Figure out what you are trying to accomplish. One of my favorite sayings is "if you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there." Most businesses want to increase sales, but determine exactly how much sales increase you want. In other words, set a goal or two. Try to stay away from vague objectives like "increase awareness of my business."
2. Figure out who you are talking to. In past blog posts, I've talked about figuring out who your target audience is and gave some tips on how to make that determination. Choose your most profitable segments to target at first. Narrow it to just two or three if you can.
3. Figure out how to reach those people. Where do they live, what do they read, what social media do they use? It's easy to go online and search for media habits of a particular demographic. For example, a Google search for "media habits of teen males" yields more than 1.8 million results.
4. Figure out what they need to hear about your business. Depending on the segment you are targeting, your message could be about an upcoming sale, free delivery or your convenient locations and hours. Think through what your target audience cares about and, based on your experience with your customers, what motivates them to take action.
5. Figure out how much you can spend. This means both time and money. Small businesses have a limited amount of both, so whittle down your messaging to the best two or three and focus on one or two ways to get the message out. That may be E-mail and social media, or an ad in the paper and a radio commercial. It all depends on everything you have already learned above, remembering that some things (like social media) can require a larger investment of time while others (TV commercials) cost more. Knowing what your budget is up front can help you decide how best to invest based on what you believe will yield the most payback.
Finally, I suggest that as you go through this exercise, you put it on paper. I created a brief outline you can use as a guide and you can download it for free here. If you want help developing a marketing plan, please E-mail me.
Kim Deppe is President of Deppe Communications, an outsource marketing firm located in the Jacksonville, FL area. Deppe Communications provides marketing consulting, search engine optimization, search engine marketing, public relations and advertising services to small and medium size businesses across the U.S. For more information, visit www.DeppeCommunications.com, call 904.524.0170 or E-mail Kim@DeppeCommunications.com.
