By Elijah Dawson

Elijah is the creator of Look For Jobs Here http://www.lookforjobshere.com

With many still looking for work, his site can assist and motivate job seekers as they look for their next big opportunity.

If you’re running a business on your own, you’re filling several roles. Every day brings something new, and you might feel like you’re managing a complicated balancing act. But if you aren’t ready to hire a marketing manager, you need to expand your skillset so that you can become your own marketing department!

In order to create an effective marketing strategy from the ground up, you’ll need to deepen your understanding of both print and digital marketing methods. And with these suggestions presented by ImageMakers & Influencers, you’ll be able to expand your strategy across different channels so that you can reach new customers and increase your sales.

Strategy Cornerstones

As you begin laying out your strategy, you might feel overwhelmed. After all, the term “marketing” encompasses so many different concepts that you may not know how to hone in on what’s most important. It helps to keep the cornerstones of any good marketing strategy in mind. 

First, you’ll need to define your target market. Who are you selling to? The way you market to college students will differ from the way you market to working mothers. You should also hone in on your customer’s pain points. What problems do they have, and how can your specific products or services solve these issues? In addition, you need to understand how your offerings stand out from similar companies on the market. And finally, what are your goals for your marketing plan? Establish which sales goals you want your marketing plan to help you achieve. You’ll also need to consider how you can incorporate print and digital marketing initiatives into your overall strategy.

Understanding Marketing Channels

Why are marketing channels so important to your strategy? It’s important to learn a little bit about what marketing channels are and how they enable you to connect with customers in a variety of ways. Deskera states that the term “marketing channel” refers to a direct connection from the company to the customer. This term could apply to anything from social media to telemarketing to direct mail marketing. 

Which channels should you focus on? That all depends on your target customers. For example, if you’re advertising to local customers, you could focus on offline channels and place marketing materials on telephone poles, billboards, and bulletin boards in coffee shops. But if you want to reach a wider audience in different locations, digital marketing channels are key. You may want to focus your efforts on social media marketing, email marketing, or content marketing through your company blog.

Establish Your Messaging

In the world of marketing, “messaging” refers to the way you communicate your company’s values to your audience. When it comes to developing your core message for a particular campaign, you’ll want to start by choosing a positioning statement and then incorporating a few supporting points. A positioning statement illustrates to your audience how your specific offering can help them solve a problem they have, and your supporting points should be persuasive and motivational so that they will feel confident about making a purchase. 

You can vary your core message based on the channel you’re developing materials for and the specific customers you’re trying to reach. Each time you begin working on a new campaign or start designing new materials, take some time to think about which messages will be most effective for the customers you want to connect with.

Last but not least, make sure that your logo represents both your brand and your messaging. If your logo confuses potential customers, then it’s time to head back to the drawing board. To experiment with different logos without footing the bill for a graphic designer, use a free online business logo creator. This way, you can play with different ideas using pre-made templates — all without having to pay anything.

Form Partnerships

Relationships are essential to entrepreneurial success. And forming marketing partnerships with other businesses can be mutually beneficial! You’ll both be able to tap into each others’ customer bases. 

So, how can you identify the right marketing partners? Referral Rock states that you should aim to team up with a non-competing brand with a customer base that shares mutual interests and similar values with your customers. You may want to host events together, promote each other’s products on social media, or even collaborate to develop a product or service together. 

But there are other forms of marketing partnerships, too. If you run an e-commerce business, and you’ve found that social media marketing tends to boost your sales, you could consider starting an affiliate marketing program. You would partner up with bloggers, influencers, or other notable figures in your niche as affiliates, and they would advertise your products or services for a commission.

Build Trust

How can you motivate more customers to patronize your business over and over again? It’s all about building trust. This means responding to customer inquiries, providing top-notch service with every purchase, and remedying any problems with orders as quickly as possible. It could also mean establishing your company as a source of expertise. For instance, you could share helpful product guides on your blog or informative articles about related issues that your typical customer cares about. Establishing your company as an authority within your niche definitely helps to build trust with your audience. 

Word-of-Mouth Marketing

Gaining customers through word-of-mouth marketing should be one of your primary goals. After all, word-of-mouth marketing is free, and it also carries a high level of trust. If someone’s friend tells them about a new product they love, they are more likely to give their recommendation a lot of weight.

Word-of-mouth marketing isn’t necessarily something you can plan for - to an extent, this form of marketing has to occur organically. However, there are plenty of things you can do to improve your customer service, enhance the public perception of your business, and ultimately draw in more customers through word-of-mouth marketing. 

So, what can you do to get people talking about your business in a positive way? You can start by asking for reviews! When customers read reviews before buying something, they are looking to other consumers to help them make a decision - in other words, it’s a digital form of word-of-mouth marketing. 

Measure Outcomes

You’ll need to continuously tweak your marketing strategy and test out new tactics for boosting sales. How can you determine where you need to make changes and improvements? You’ll need to measure your key performance indicators, or KPIs. Keeping an eye on your KPIs will reveal which channels you should focus on and which forms of marketing your customers respond to.

There are technically countless KPIs that you could measure, but you’re probably wondering which ones are most important. You can start by collecting and analyzing data on your website traffic, organic search metrics, mobile traffic, social media reach, and form conversion rates. These metrics will help you determine the return on investment from your online marketing initiatives. You also want to compare your sales revenue to your marketing budget - your sales revenue should always exceed the costs of your marketing campaigns. Finally, don’t forget to gather data on how many customers patronize your business because of print marketing outreach. 

Managing your company’s marketing strategy means learning as you go. As you test out different techniques, you’ll be able to figure out what works and what doesn’t. Soon, acting as your own marketing department will become second nature, and you’ll be able to implement strategies that bring in lots of new business. With these tips, you’ll be able to start outlining your company’s new marketing strategy with confidence!