There’s a lot to consider when beginning to market your business. You need to ask yourself questions like these: Do I have avenues for consumers to reach me set up? What is my budget? Do I know my target audience? Do I know where to best reach this group? Can I handle all my marketing needs in-house? This should give you a pretty good starting point.
Let’s start with the things you can do for free, first. Make sure you have all of your social channels set up. Not just the popular ones, but ALL of them. We are talking about beyond just Facebook and Instagram. It is beneficial to set up a Pinterest, Google My Business, and even Google+. I know it sounds like a lot, but it will help potential consumers follow your business and engage with your brand. Google My Business and Google+ also help with your search rankings and SEO from Google.
It’s 2018, a website is a must. Even if you aren’t an e-commerce business, you still need a place for your customer’s to reach you and find where they can make a purchase. Not every website needs to be 30 pages, with lots of videos or animations, don’t get me wrong, those things help engage the consumer, but a good starting point is always a well designed landing page.
If you build it they will come… isn’t always the case. If you want people to find your product or service then you will need to get your brand in front of the potential consumer. This can be done through traditional media, social media, or digital media. The most effective way to reach your consumers is through a mix of all of these mediums.
At (spark), before we put money behind reaching customers, we always do extensive research. Our research department are pros at persona development, which tells us where consumers are spending their time and how we can make your brand “Matter More” to them. We make the most of the marketing dollars for our clients by putting their business in the right place at the right time for consumers to interact with them.
Research, persona development, website development, and advertising can be a lot for one person to take on. That’s where (spark) comes in. We partner with small to medium size businesses to help support them in in their marketing needs and to grow their business.
However, if you are able to successfully address all your marketing needs internally then I advise starting with social channel development, website/landing page development, and even taking a crack at some target audience research. Once you’ve checked these off your list, you can move on to the fun stuff like social advertising and creating Google Display ads. Doing these things will get your business out in front of the consumer quickly!