Congratulations! You’ve got your product or service ready, your business plan is complete, but now you have to make sure people know about you. Otherwise, why did you start the business, right?
Great. So then what’s next? Creating your Marketing Strategy.
Allow this next step to be your most exciting! This is where you get to determine who, where and when your best customers will be. Remember, you are privileged enough to serve them, regardless of how.
Educating yourself on what their loves, hates, and hobbies will help you know where to start. So here is your Marketing Checklist to get you ready to launch:
First Things First for Your Marketing Checklist
1. Define your target audience.
Who exactly is perfect for your product? What are their interests? Learn all about who needs what you can provide so you know where best to get their attention.
One of the best ways to do this is to actually ask them! Survey people in your target audience and find out what their biggest pain points are within your industry. Knowing exactly what they’re looking for can even guide you in your products and services for the future in addition to providing insight into where they spend their online life.
2. Define your geographical target.
Where does your audience live? Are you a store that is strictly brick & mortar or an online service that can help people globally? Know where your best client lives so you can geographically target your content, ads, and posts.
This will allow you to maintain focus. If you are providing value to your perfect customers, they will see information that they personally can benefit from.
If you are the expert in soaps down the street from their house, they’re more likely to visit your store if they see a blog post about your city than if they see cat videos (regardless of how much we all love them). These won’t boost your expertise level with your prospects.
Google and Facebook Ads provide excellent detailed information you can focus your Marketing toward. Learn how to target using this product to be hyper-targeted.
3. Evaluate your goals against your mission, vision, and values.
Is your strategy achievable? Does it align with what you ultimately want for your business, employees and customers?
The adage “Begin with the end in mind” plays a critical role in this step. What is the outcome you want from your efforts? Seeing the big picture gives you the map you never knew you had already.
4. Determine a separate budget amount.
This should remain separate from other business expenses because it costs money to earn new business more often than not, and having a budget set aside is extremely helpful.
This budget will provide access to Google Ad bids that you may not have been able to invest in otherwise. It may even allow you to hire a couple of people to maintain your social presence, update your website, and/or handle events, ads, or press releases.
5. Don’t wait!
Don’t hesitate to launch the first part of your strategy. Once you have a plan with priorities, just start! It doesn’t need to be perfect as you will improve upon it over time through experience and mistakes. Allow them to happen with the confidence that the right people will soon follow if you stay true to yourself and the purpose.
Ready, Set, GO
Now that you have a goal, a plan, and a market you’re ready to get started. Remember that it’s never too late to do so either. Whether you’ve been in business 1 year or 20, it’s always a good time to make more people happy. As always, if I can be of service in this area, I’d love to help.