It’s entirely possible that we don’t do enough marketing in our business, perhaps because we are worried that we lack expertise, or we feel that our business doesn’t really need it. The truth is that all businesses need to get their message out into the marketplace and we don’t need an MSc in marketing to be effective. Here are five of my favourite marketing tips, and my invitation this week is for us all to choose at least one and have fun putting it into practice.
Tip 1) Tell
Tell people what makes us special, different, unique. People need to know these differences in order to make a positive choice and choose us.
Tip 2) Brand
Be brand consistent. Does our business card and office, clothes and attitude all match up? Or do we tell people we are efficient and yet always arrive late for meetings?
Tip 3) Focus
Focus our marketing effort on one outlet. Instead of spreading our marketing budget across a range of adverts, magazine inserts and bits of social media we can back one horse! Choose one avenue into our market and focus, our efforts on that. Maybe we prefer Twitter over Facebook? We can pick one and focus our time on making it work for us.
Tip 4) Time
Do one thing consistently well over time. Once we have chosen our route to market, such as LinkedIn, we need to be consistent with it over the longer term. This means having at least a six month plan, to give people time to find us, talk to us and get to know us. Chopping and changing our strategy is going to result in a piecemeal approach that is likely to limit our marketing effectiveness.
Tip 5) Ask
Always always always ask: How did you hear of us? When we get an order, or a new enquiry, it is too tempting to celebrate and forget to find out basic marketing information. If we know which pond the fish are in, we can return there and fish again another day!
…Marketing is for all of us, whatever our business looks like. We can choose a tip that makes sense to us and put in time and energy to make it work. Then we know we are professional business people, working hard to secure our future.
Next week: Beware the big order!
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