You don’t have to be a business or marketing graduate from Harvard to market your business. Marketing is just another routine task incorporated in corporate curriculums. If you a product or service that wants to grow business, then you need to market it to sell. Before we begin, understand that marketing isn’t a one-time thing, it goes on lifelong or as long as you operate your business.
Marketing and promotions are not the same. The latter is a one-way process that begins after the production is done and is usually perceived at the end of the business operations before the sale; whereas marketing starts with the product conception and follows all the way through strategizing and conducting sales. Promotions are a part of marketing.
Now, that we have cleared that, we can move ahead. Here’s a guide for you to begin your marketing strategies for your business:
The Conventional Marketing:
To start with, you need a clear plan or a blueprint of your business. It should be brief and crisp. Short enough to fit within a napkin and fresh sufficient to answer any/all questions/doubts that may come your way.
- There is no easy way to do it. You need to spend hours or even days in some cases just planning your way through. Think, process, rethink, and check as much as you can unless you get it right. Take your time, because once you set a plan, only then can you maneuver your way through what is coming up ahead.
- Once you have a plan, it’s time to implement it to get your customers. Getting customers is not as easy as it sounds. Getting someone to pay is as difficult as to getting a vegan to have a hamburger. You need to be convincing enough to make them share your vision and live it. The straightforward approach is if you can filter out your target audience or the potential customer from the crowd. This would make it a lot easier for you to approach and convince them.
- Getting clients or customers involves pricing. By now you must have planned your pricing. The placement of pricing in the market against your competitors should be wisely carried out. Pricing too low may leave you losing your money and placing it too high may get you out of the race as well.
- Placing your business in the market is not to be ignored. Is your business established where the demand is or is it too far off? Setting your business near the customers would facilitate a regular flow of customers and strengthen your marketing plans.
There are limited channels that you can use while marketing conventionally but are very active. These methods have been tried and tested for long enough to establish them as benchmarks for new start-ups. Here’s a list of some channels that you can employ:
Broadcasting- you can run your ads on tv or radio programs. These are pretty outdated concepts but still has enough potential to get your business off the ground. Majority of the masses are still engaged to the conventional broadcasting channels, and if your customers are out there, they’ll watch or hear your ad running on a broadcast partner or radio show.
Hoarding- using billboards and other hoarding options is probably the cheapest of all marketing channels. The people passing by your flex hoarded over a billboard at the corner of a street would run through your ad day and night. This will create a memory in customer’s mind which will eventually reduce your branding efforts. Memories are the best guide for decision making.
Newspaper- running your ad through a journal can help you reach out your audience personally. You can even try running an article about your recent projects or events that will create an active image of your portfolio amongst your potential customers. You can also try pamphlets and posters rolled within the newspapers. Although pamphlets are losing touch amongst the customers but still, this is an option you can explore.
Door to Door Marketing- the most exploited and till date the most efficient mode of marketing a product is visiting door to door. A representative may visit each house in an area and brief them about your product and how it benefits them. It is very likely to be entertained by people at their doorstep.
Press Conference- holding press conferences to announce upcoming projects or events or to entertain is another option you can explore. Although such tasks are much expensive to conduct the results are astonishingly high.
Press conferencing can help with the publications and, in general, ads circulated in the newspaper.
The Modern Way:
Digital media has empowered the businesses and their customers to interact without meeting in person. There are plenty of channels and opportunities associated with digital marketing. Digital marketing has many advantages over conventional marketing techniques. Some of them being:
- Digital marketing is cost efficient
- More outreach
- No physical office or shop needed
- A better understanding of customer behavior.
- Easy follow-ups
- Ease of maintaining a database
Now that you are aware of the benefits offered by digital marketing channels over the conventional ones, I’m sure you’d like to know what these channels are. The listing below is the most effective and efficient ones for you to explore:
Website- having a site has become all the way more important than before. It is a mark of authenticity. Before someone comes to you personally, it is very likely that they must have gone through your online catalogs and reviews. Customers are becoming aware of the power vested within them.
Social Media- the younger generation being active on the social media and more users joining every minute has led to social media marketing being the new AK-47 in the marketing arsenal. Marking your presence on media socially has done wonders in the past decade, and these guys are masters at it.
Google Ads- you can run your business ads on Google at pay per click or bulk plans. To know more about PPC management you can visit; https://falcondigitalmarketing.com/ppc-management-services/attorneys/. These are way cheaper than broadcasting. As the number of mobile users is increasing day by day, the potential for running an ad on Google has grown exponentially.
Email marketing- you can reach your existing customers as well as engage with new ones over emails. There are some ways to do it. Some of them being- offering discounts, newsletter subscriptions, loyalty programmes, and many more. Collecting the information, tracking behavior and maintaining a database is a lot easier through email marketing.
Videography channel- running a videography infomercial over youtube is another mode of connecting with new customers. Placing your ad, length of your ad and the content within are all equally important when you are exploiting this method of marketing.
Content Marketing- the more versatile your content is, the more likely it is to be followed. Writing blogs about your work, posting media contents related to it, and holding webinars are all part of content marketing. You are marketing your content through this channel.
Marketing as a whole is very vast and complicated. As such there are no set rules to be followed. Marketing is mostly hit and trial kind of arena. You have a new strategy, take it further, implement it and see the results for yourself.
Following these basic channels for implementation, though it will help to get the desired result without hustling. You can opt for combinations of conventional and modern circuits. Marketing strategies have evolved. Innovative methods and approaches have given scope for businesses to grow at their full pace.
