The foundation blocks for effective marketing are a bit like the foundations of your house, they become the foundation for your whole business, which will be considerably stronger if it’s built on sound foundations.
These foundations begin with asking yourself some fundamental questions…
- Is your marketing strategy clear?
- What is it you’re trying to achieve?
- Who do you want to pull towards you with interest?
- How are you going to attract them?
- What channels will you use?
These questions all refer to your unique value proposition and messaging. All rhetorical for now, they aren’t homework, but do have the answers in mind as we move on.
Effective marketing
Moving on to your foundation blocks, these 11 points of consideration may highlight areas that need more work to strengthen your marketing ‘house’. These are actions you could be spending time on during your ‘ON the business time’.
- Marketing asset review: This is an assessment of your business’s existing marketing materials. I recommend a ‘channel grid’ so you can clearly see which channel is giving you what results for each of your products or services.
- Re-marketing & pixel tracking: Using technology to track website visitors and re-engage them with targeted ads. Can you learn more about this tactic, put it to use now, or tweak what you’ve already got running?
- Google Business Profile: Optimising your business’s presence on Google’s local business platform. Making use of this platform has a positive impact on your ‘near me’ searches, and is a great tool for collecting social proof of your expertise and skills.
- Follow up process: Establishing a system for consistent communication with potential and existing customers. Are you utilising your customer journey to hit all the touch points for maximising marketing opportunities?
- Price review: Analysing and adjusting pricing strategies to maximise profitability. When was the last time you put your prices up? Have you worked out your worth recently and compared the two figures, so you’re confident you’re getting paid what you deserve?
- Systemised collection of reviews: Implementing a structured method to gather positive customer feedback. This could be sending regular emails to a segmented customer list, asking them fill in a short survey. If you introduce the survey explaining it’s for improvement and will only take 90 seconds, you should get a good number of responses.
- Marketing calendar: Creating a schedule for marketing activities and campaigns. Straight-forward, but you might be surprised how many business owners market by the seat of their pants! Plan ahead and gather your resources to take the pressure off and make the most of the opportunities coming your way.
- Knowledge centre: Developing resources and content that position you or your business as an expert in the field. Giving away free advice and other added value is well-known method to improve customer experience.
- Neighbourhood Cards: A direct mail strategy where cards or leaflets are distributed to nearby homes or business premises when a service is provided. This works particularly well for the construction and display marketing sectors.
- LinkedIn: Leveraging the professional networking platform to generate leads and build connections. It’s worth finding some training on this platform to explore whether you’re using it effectively, and what more you could be doing with it. As with most marketing platforms, things change frequently!
- Answer the phone: In some places of work, telephonists are timed on how quickly they answer the phone… Ensuring prompt and professional responses to incoming calls provides a good customer experience and avoids missed business opportunities.
These foundations blocks are part of the EMS – The Entrepreneurs Circle’s Marketing and Sales System. You can download the checklist and other EMS resources here: The EMS System Downloads & Resources, or order the full book for all the insights and guidance. Or, as ever, if you’d like to talk over any of these marketing points with a seasoned professional who has put them to use himself and supported other entrepreneurs in their implementation, please contact me.