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What is the most important thing you need to get right when you run a business? Not just when you’re starting out (although it’s vital to get it right at that stage), but also when you’re well-established (perhaps even when you think it’s not all that important anymore)?
The answer you need here is marketing.
Marketing is something that is going to be absolutely necessary for your business no matter what stage you’re at, and assuming that just because you’ve found your customer base and you’re getting repeat business means you no longer have to really think about it is a big mistake. It’s also a big mistake to just throw a load of money at one idea and hope that it all works out. Marketing is much harder than a lot of people might initially think, and whether your budget (which you really do need to have) is large or small, you’ll need to make sure it goes as far as you need it to and you can make the most of it. With that in mind, here are some of the things you’ll want to do if you want to make your marketing budget go as far as possible. Read on to find out more.
Identify Your Target Audience
What happens when you put a marketing campaign together? You’ll come up with an idea, you’ll make a video, blog, advertisements, social media posts, and so on all about that idea, and then you’ll send it out into the world so that… well, so that who exactly can find it? Unless you know precisely who you’re targeting with that ad and what message you want them to hear from you, sending your campaign out into the world might net you precisely nothing in return.
That’s why you need to do market research before you even start thinking about the marketing campaign, let alone where it needs to go when you’re ready for it to be seen. If you don’t know who your target market is, there’s no way you can create a campaign they’re going to be interested in and that’s going to appeal to them – especially in a way that’s going to help them choose to spend their money with you.
You might assume that just creating a generalized campaign and launching it will get to the right people eventually, but that’s not necessarily the case, and it won’t feel as though you really know them even if it does (because you don’t), so they won’t feel special or acknowledge. In other words, without good market research that you then act on and allow to determine the type of marketing you do, you’re going to be wasting a lot of money showing your ad to people who aren’t interested or who don’t like how you get in touch with them.
Find Good Help
Marketing is something you can do alone if you want to, but that’s only a wise idea if your budget truly can’t cover any outside help or if you really know what you’re doing. If you do have the money to spare and you want experts to ensure you’re marketing in the right way, then getting good help really can make a big difference – in the most positive way possible (and it will make your budget go further in the end as well).
You might need a few different experts to help you with your marketing, and it really depends on what you’re confident in doing by yourself and what you know you need a professional to do on your behalf. Something that will also need a third party is printing high-quality marketing materials, such as leaflets, and using an excellent online printer is the best way to go about this. Printing these things on your office or home printer just isn’t going to have the same professional finish, plus it will probably cost you a lot in terms of paper and ink – it’s far better to spend that money on getting something you’ll be proud to hand out to potential customers.
Other help could come in the form of a marketing agency. They’ll be able to determine your target market and come up with a campaign that targets them directly, saving you a lot of time and money. Although you’ll need to pay these experts, the fact that you’re targeting those who are most likely to buy from you means a much higher chance of making sales off the back of your campaign, so you’ll make the money back and, ideally, a profit at the same time.
Could It Be Free?
We’ve talked about spending your marketing budget carefully, and that is important, but what if you didn’t have to spend anything at all? What if you could do some (or even all) of your marketing for free?
It sounds like it would be impossible, but there are actually ways you can successfully (which is the crucial point) market your business for free when you start to look into your options. One good idea is to use social media. Every business really should have a social media account on at least one platform (and possibly more than one; you’ll need to carry out research and find out where your target market spends their time when they’re online – those are the platforms you need to spend time on as well, creating a profile and posting regularly), and once you have that set up, you can use it to your advantage when it comes to marketing. Posting interesting and entertaining images, videos, and information about your business on a regular basis, with plenty of links back to your site, and interacting with people who engage with you, will help to promote your business without you having to spend any money (although it will take time, so do bear that in mind).
Another good way to market your business for free is to use your blog. Every business needs a social media account, but it also needs a blog because this is where you can prove you know what you’re talking about, where you can come across as a real human being, and how you can boost your position in the search engine results pages when people search for the various things you do and provide. That last idea might not be so obvious, but it all comes down to SEO, or search engine optimization. SEO is all about using your content to rank better in search engine results – the closer to the top of the first page you are, the more likely it is that someone will trust your link and click through to your site (and buy something). By blogging regularly and using the right keywords, internal and external links, and images (as well as other techniques that boost your SEO), you can market yourself well for free.
Customer Retention
A lot of the focus of marketing is on finding new customers, and although they are definitely important, taking care of your existing customers is also crucial – and it’s a lot cheaper, so it’s a great way to help make your marketing budget stretch a little bit more.
Your existing or former customers already know what your business does and how it works, so you don’t need to waste time or money telling them about that. You can go straight to other types of marketing, including creating loyalty schemes that give them rewards after they spend a certain amount of money in your business, for example. The rewards could be free goods and services, discounts, special access to new products, and so on. The choice is yours, but the better you treat your existing customers, the more help they’ll be in recruiting new ones through word-of-mouth, so it’s worth offering a decent reward.
