7 Ways to Get Back in the Marketing Saddle
December is when many entrepreneurs finally turn their attention to marketing. If you slashed your advertising budget in 2009, you’re probably planning (cautiously) to get back in the marketing saddle in 2010. Here are 7 ways to reinvigorate your marketing in 2010:
Create a Marketing Calendar
Remember “Failure to plan is planning to fail?” Yep, still true. Bust out a calendar. Map out a marketing schedule. Paste it over your spouse’s photo. Hold yourself accountable.
Think thoroughly: Who will create the marketing pieces? What deadlines will I face? How much lead time is needed? What information/materials do I need to gather? Keep these question in mind as you flesh out your calendar.
Segment Your Audience
Marketing to an audience that’s too broad is suicide. Be targeted! Subdivide into smaller niches and craft a specific message for each. Consider age, gender, geography, business size (for B2B), industry, position/rank, etc. Or use a survey or sign-up form to create lists built around commonalities.
Start Blogging
Not sure how to start? Follow these three simple steps: 1) Identify a problem that’s kicking your customer in the nuts. 2) Write 300 words illuminating a solution to the problem. 3) Repeat. Still stuck on the technology part? Contact me.
Whip Your Website Into Shape
You’ve had the same site since 2001…right? It’s time to update it. Get a more user-friendly design. Dump the jargon and self praise. Replace it with customer-centered words. Add content that solves customer problems.
Make Employees Social
Ask employees to share their expertise — be it knowledge, skill, or personality — via a blog, Twitter, a podcast, participating in a community, or teaching a class. Drag them kicking and screaming if you have to. Look at what Aaron Strout did to get Powered, Inc. employees to participate in conversations relevant to their industry (see, even social media employees struggle to emerge from hiding). “I’m shy” and “I don’t write well” are no longer valid excuses. Fear kills companies. Give employees the freedom, safety and tools to overcome fear. That’s leadership.
Organize an Event
Skip the Chamber of Commerce meeting…fishing is inefficient. Instead, create a killer draw — an “I don’t wanna miss this” event. Let the fish come to you. Don’t make it a selling-fest…make it about connecting people to each other, creating a community. Check out these 13 event planning tools.
Hire a Sniper
Maybe you laid off your Marketing Director. Maybe you are your Marketing Director. Maybe you don’t need 40 hours per week of marketing help. Consider an independent PR or marketing consultant. From “big picture” strategy and execution to laser-focused tactical specialists, you have options. In Charlotte, folks like Harry Hoover, Corey Creed, Nathan Richie, Donna Maria Coles Johnson, and Brandon Uttley do good work within their niches. I’m impressed with up-and-comers like Becca Bernstein and Dani Burns, too.
Content Marketing Gives Social Media Substance
Most of the chatter about social media focuses on conversation and relationship-building. These are important pieces of social media, but they’re not the entirety of social media.
To borrow from physics, if conversations are the motion (kinetics) of social media, content is surely the “stuff” in motion — the substance that propels conversation.
As a business owner, you can create this substance. It’s called content marketing, and it’s a smart, effective strategy, especially when paired with social media.
What Is Content Marketing, Exactly?
Content marketing is simply the creation and sharing of content for the purpose of engaging current and potential customers in conversation. Content can take any form — text, photo, video, audio, etc. — and can be distributed via any channel you choose. You can create content yourself of distribute someone else’s content (with appropriate attribution, of course).
The trick is knowing how to create content that is relevant and valuable to your audience while also achieving a marketing goal. You won’t be able to increase sales or brand awareness by pumping out drivel your audience doesn’t care about.
So what is relevant? What is valuable? Content should cater to your audience’s primal needs. Here are examples:
- Simplify something complicated
- Demonstrate how to do something
- Answer a perplexing question
- Entertain
- Provide VIP information
- Fix a problem
There’s Always a Catch…
Here’s the catch: Don’t make it about you. Resist the urge. Squish. Think like your customer…heck, pretend your own company doesn’t exist. Then, create.
Sound illogical? It is. Until you realize this isn’t direct selling. This is building trust, inch by inch. This is becoming invaluable. Do that and you won’t have to advertise as much — your customer will come to you.
And she’ll use social media to share your killer content with her friends.
P.S. It doesn’t hurt to have a good list to distribute your content to. Sure, your Twitter and Facebook followers are a start…what other lists can you use?
Scott Hepburn is a veteran PR and marketing professional. He blogs here about marketing, PR, advertising, journalism and social media.