I’m sorry to report that I’ve been searching for several years now, and I’ve found that there is no magic bullet for marketing success. Sure you can get a great SEO firm to deliver results. You can execute a direct mail or email marketing campaign and get a reasonable ROI. The problem is… if you want to build a great business that keeps growing, it’s going to take more than that. I propose a 3-part strategy where all three parts work together. It looks like this…
Brand Building
Brand building is is where all your marketing begins. It’s where you tell the world who you are and what problems you solve and why people would want to buy from you. You can (and should) do this in lots of ways.
On a basic ‘branding’ level you need to establish the visual iconography of your brand. What are your colors, what are your fonts, what images do you want people to associate with you? What is your logo. While these things are very VERY important, this is not what I mean by ‘Brand Building’.
Brand Building is where you consciously make a name for your company in the business landscape. Traditionally this involves…
- Advertising your company and products on TV, radio, in print periodicals, on billboards, having an attractive storefront, etc.
- Going to trade shows and networking events to promote your company.
- Hiring salespeople to call on customers.
- Getting shirts, business cards, cups, hats, pens, etc. with your logo on them.
- Having an awesome website that properly reflects your brand and effectively sells your products.
- Customizing your social media profiles so they match your brand.
- Getting people to spread your message online… (that sort of gets into my ‘power on the internet’ section)
- Serving your customers like no one else can serve them… Providing outstanding value.
- Having incredible customer service.
- Going above and beyond, so people really have to try to ignore your brand.
Power on the Internet
Power on the Internet is 100% about content and connections. Your company must have a strategy for creating content on an ongoing basis, and a strategy for connecting with individual fans, users, visitors, etc.
You must create lots and lots of content to sell your products. Creating a lot of great content serves several purposes.
- It helps you with search engines… and these days if you’re not winning a lot of searches then you’re pretty much invisible to a large segment of the population.
- It provides you with a lot of content to share on social networks. Shared content is a great way to connect with people who like your brand and for them to share it with their friends.
- Lots of content that is regularly updates gives people a reason to keep coming back to your website or blog, creates demand for new products, and increases the amount of trust people have in your brand.
- Your online content can also be used to increase the effectiveness of certain brand building activities (i.e. a print add that says ‘go to our website to watch a video about this product’ or even a QR code that takes the viewer right there).
- You should engage in some activities that help you gather email addresses. You might want to provides some sort of free whitepaper or ebook or other content that can only be accessed by filling out their name and email address.
- You could build a huge following on Facebook, Twitter, or other social networks. This is something that will take time every day, but that will also pay dividends if you stick with it.
- You could also try to get people to link to your website which will increase your website traffic through those links and also through search engines.
- Also you can try to connect with bloggers and get them to write articles about your company. This will accomplish the same thing as link building, with the added benefit that you will get fans from the blog’s readers.
Direct Marketing
So far you’ve built a brand that people love and want to share, and you’ve started building some assets online. Now it’s time to get organized. It’s time to organize all the data you have about your customers, fans, potential customers, website visitors, etc. so that you can sell them more!
There are a ton of inexpensive relationship management tools that vary in their level of complexity and functionality. I would recommend starting with a simple email marketing program and moving on from there. Here’s how it works…
- Gather all your contacts into two spreadsheets. One will be for customers and past customers, and the other will be for everyone else. Import both lists into whatever email marketing software you like (I like Mailchimp, but there are dozens of other options as well).
- Use what you know about your customers and past customers to develop direct response campaigns to convince them to buy more products from you. You want to get them in the same frame of mind that they were in when they bought from you the first time.
- Use the other list to promote all your other online content, offer specific specials or incentives, or announce new products.
