What is Marketing?
Marketing is a core component of any business. If you don’t have channels in place to continually move your products, services, and advertisements before the masses, you don’t have a business. For first time entrepreneurs and business owners, marketing can be a very daunting topic of discussion. After all, if you’re the brains behind a new product or new way of delivering a service, how can you be expected to know everything about how to market and sell it to? It is okay to have those doubts and questions. There’s no such thing as an expert in every field. However, you do not have to be an expert to begin successfully marketing your products, services, and business. In this article we’ll break down steps that you can take to successfully manage your own marketing as well as offering guidance on when to call in support. So, whether you’re retooling or starting from scratch, there is something here for you.
Being Your Own Marketer in Chief
Marketing seems like a big subject, almost too big of a task for any one person to tackle. While this is true to a certain degree, a reliable marketing strategy is not out of reach for any business, even one that counts you as its only employee. Whether you are striking out on your own, you manage a small team, or you’re a part of a global force, successful marketing strategies are within your reach. Solo entrepreneurs and one-man teams have the tools at their disposal to run quality campaigns, perform SEO, and manage their front end and back-end expectations without bogging themselves down in a massive workload. And if you are unable to take anything else on or need someone who can consistently dedicate time to your business’ marketing and marketing strategies, there are options available there too.
Being your own Marketer in Chief is not impossible. While it may not be an ideal long-term strategy, new businesses can grow tremendously if you decide to take on that position to get started. The following paragraphs will break down some key internet marketing basics to help give you an idea of what it takes to market your business and create content that draws in and keeps an audience. These ideas won’t help you create success in 3 easy steps, but they will get you thinking about how you manage your online presence and what you can be doing to help grow your reach, complete your sales funnel, and take your business to the next level.
Social Media
In the 2020’s, social media is the name of the game when it comes to internet marketing and marketing strategies. Social Media is where your customers are, and you must first make sure that you are meeting them where they are at. It’s important to have a website where they can find you, but for the novice it is crucial that you are creating content in places where they can see it without having to search for your business or your website.
Step one is creating a business page for your website, particularly one on Facebook. It is fine to use other social media platforms, but Facebook is a must. With more registered users than any other platform, Facebook is the quickest way to be connected to the most people. More so, Facebook is tooled to allow your business to answer questions, advertise, and sell products directly from your Facebook account. Managing campaigns, viewing statistics, and creating content that draws people in has never been easier.
Your Website
Social Media is a crucial tool in your marketing tool belt. However, it is not 100% effective. The best sales funnels are those that incorporate leads taken from social media and move them into a position where you can continue the sales process and make the hard sell. This is best done through your website. Here you can present your own content, products, and sales tactics without distraction. You can show the user everything that you have to offer while obtaining contact information and suggesting such things as mailing lists, follow-up orders, and the like.
Most importantly, however, is that your website belongs to you. With social media you will always have to fight through the crowd of other advertisers, businesses, and posts that may pull customers away from yours. However, once you have directed the user to your website in order to learn more, you have temporarily silenced those other voices. In that silence, you must make the most of your time and your customer’s time by showing them why your voice matters most to their need. Utilize your website to display products and services yes, but also use it as a way to promote what your business is and what it is about. Post your mission statement, articles describing what your company does or has going on, and other relevant information that helps create an emotional response or recognition between the customer and you. You won’t always be able to speak the loudest, so make sure that what you say and what your customer hears makes an impact and is unique to what you have to offer.
Online Support
Many first-time marketers wonder, what can I do to get people to my social media profile? How can I get users to my website without having to go through social media?
The good news is that both of these questions have answers that can be achieved even without advanced marketing knowledge or experience. There are hundreds of applicable tools, plugins, and services that can help take the edge off of your marketing workload and guide you through processes that get your content and products before people’s eyes. By optimizing your content through a process known as Search Engine Optimization, you can ensure that what you are putting out there meets the standards and expectations of both search engine users and algorithms alike. These services are often cheap (or free) and easy to use. They can evaluate the content that you’ve worked hard to create and provide practical steps to improving it. It doesn’t cost an arm and a leg or much time to put your best foot forward.
Featured Image:
Internet marketing by <a href=”http://www.nyphotographic.com/”>Nick Youngson</a> <a rel=”license” href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/”>CC BY-SA 3.0</a> <a href=”http://pix4free.org/”>Pix4free</a>
