The Best Guide for the CM9 Area

Marketing success – strategy, before tactics

When you're marketing your business it's really important to be clear about what you want to achieve. Marketing isn't sales, it's about educating as many people as possible about what you do. However, that doesn't mean educating anyone - the people you want to reach are potential clients and people who will become advocates and referrers.

Too many people follow the ‘me too' approach and, when someone says ‘My Facebook Page has brought me lots of business,' rush off and create a Facebook Page. When they don't get the same kind of results they get discouraged.

If you don't know who you are trying to reach you'll find yourself doing lots of things that don't work. That's a recipe for wasting time and effort. What you are aiming at is the sniper approach where you have a specific target in the crosshairs of your marketing, rather than a machine gun spraying marketing bullets in all directions.

The first steps to successful marketing are:

• Know your audience - who are they?
• Where do they hang out? Where can you find a group of them in one place?
• What do they read - online and offline?
• What do they want? What are their biggest problems, irritations, frustrations?

If you haven't got clear goals there will be no way to measure your results. So, if your goal is to make contact with 10 potential clients a week, you'll need to be clear about who they are and where you'll find them.  Once you've got that sorted the next step is a plan of action (tactics). This will include online and offline activities.

If you're in the business of selling directly to consumers (B2C) Facebook may work very well for you, or perhaps Pinterest. Offline you'll need to find the groups where your audience can be found and offer to talk to them.

If you have a business audience (B2B) then you'll be more likely to find them on LinkedIn or in business forums. You'll need to do your research.

For example: if you're trying to reach local accountants you probably won't find advertising in your local newspaper a cost-effective way of reaching them. But you might find a group on LinkedIn for Accountants in Essex or be able to get an interesting article published in Accountancy Age or another industry journal.

You need to be clearly focused on your desired outcome and then get creative about the best way to get in front of your target audience and make them sit up and take notice!

Lesley Morrissey is a reputation marketer, helping organisations to present their business to their target audience successfully, you can contact her on 01245 473296. She also offers online marketing training on at www.stepbystep-onlinemarketing.com.

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