There's a lot of marketing advice out there, some of it helpful, a lot of it not. Below I have collected ten of the best tips for marketing your company, in no particular order. Many of these things are just common sense, but with all the advice out there it can be easy to lose track of the basics.
1. Consistency of brand. It's important to have a consistent brand. Every aspect of your company must agree with and cohere with every other. Someone who's heard of your company and stumbles on a site related to your company must immediately be able to recognize it as yours. Consistent logos, layouts, and color schemes can help quickly and easily identify a component of your larger marketing system as yours.
2. Consistency of social media. It is also just as important to have a consistent social media update schedule. Anyone who runs a blog, or uses Facebook knows there's nothing more off putting than going to a company's social media site and seeing three updates spaced months or years apart. Set a day, or a number of days, each week where you will, without fail, update your social media sites and stick to it. This is the best way to show that your company is active, is reliable, and knows enough about/is good enough in its field to provide information about it.
3. Use all your resources. Don't rely only on one form of marketing. Social media marketing alone isn't enough. Traditional marketing isn't enough, even word of mouth marketing isn't enough. By putting all your eggs into one marketing basket you're ignoring significant opportunities to grow your company and will inevitably fall behind companies who do embrace multiple marketing technologies.
4. It's better to direct your focus than to spread yourself too thin. Use all the resources available to you, but use them wisely. If you're an eye doctor, focus on making connections with other eye doctors, with general practitioners who can provide you with references, with school nurses who can refer you patients. Eye doctors should advertise in glasses stores, foot doctors in shoe stores and gyms. Identify your customer base, and target them specifically.
5. Existing customers can be your best marketing resource. Involve your customers by holding raffles, sweepstakes and offering coupons. Encourage customers to bring you referrals, create loyalty reward systems. A happy customer wants to help you, so give them the opportunity to.
6. Research. Keep up to date with the latest developments in your field, and share them with your customers. Start gathering statistics and information on your clients, so you know who your existing clients are, and provide feedback questionnaires so you can better provide them with what they want and need.
7. Don't get discouraged by mistakes; learn from them. There's no universal formula for a successful marketing campaign. If there were, marketing firms would all go out of business. Some techniques and strategies that work for one company,won't work for another. You can make an educated guess as to what we'll get you the most ROI, or the happiest customers, but you can't be certain until you try. And sometimes, you don't succeed. But if you give up, or try to sweep your failure under the rug, you definitely won't succeed. Study what didn't work, figure out why, and use that information to figure out what will.
9. Ask for help, if you need it. You don't need to do this on your own. Marketing your company is tricky. It's a lot of work, and you don't always have time to devote as much time to it as you should. That's why marketing firms exist, why there are so many marketing books and marketing consultants. Asking for help doesn't have to be your first step, but it shouldn't be your last. There's a strong supply of marketing advice out there, so don't feel bad about demanding it.
10. Patience. The effects of a marketing campaign are rarely visible overnight. It takes time to see ROI and it can be easy to get discouraged and write the whole thing off as a waste of time. But while the internet means that when you update your website, or revamp your social media, or offer new discounts and deals, that information is put out there faster then it ever has been before, it still takes time for customers to see your new sale, or visit your new website. Any marketing firm, though this applies to all facets of life as well, that promises you overnight or instant success is scamming you, full stop. So be patient. You've researched, you've prepared, you've made the most educated guess you can. All you can do now is wait for your plans to bear fruit.
We're not afraid to ask for help either. If
you have any additional tips or suggestions, things that worked or
didn't work for you, let us know in the comments, or by contacting us on
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