I’ve been writing and posting blogs for our business for over 8 years. I thought, for something different, I would ask a couple of marketing friends to share their top 3 marketing tips. Here’s what they had to say.
Tamara MacDuff is the founder and president of NOW Digital Marketing in Rochester, NY. (https://nowdigitalmarketing.us). Here are her tips:
1) Know Your Audience. It’s important to know who you are talking to and what they want you to talk about. Listen to them with social media listening tools, engage with them wherever they are, on your business pages, your personal profile, your blog, etc.
2) Market from your core values and beliefs. This is what separates us all, what makes us different and unique while unifying us. This is how you attract your ideal client and your marketing comes across as you intended: authentic and engaging. It’s all about being human and bringing the human factor back to marketing.
3) Make your clients the stars. It’s not about you, your product or your service. It’s about clearly identifying and knowing what problem you solve and how you’ve improved people’s lives with it. Your clients had a problem, they found you, bought your product or service and now they do not have the problem – what is it that you did for them? How can you help others? How do you make the community a better place? These are the things you need to be clear about to truly have clear messaging and an active, engaged community. Listen. Learn. Connect.
Bre Morris of bmor! Marketing & Consulting (Bmormarketing.com ) shared these great tips:
#1) Always be authentic—I believe this is true for any business. Being your most authentic self should be a natural part of your marketing strategy. Chances are, you started your business based off of the passions that make you unique. Allow those passions to shine through and share with them with your customer through your company vision. For instance, I began my marketing company because I love helping business owners integrate their business plan into their overall marketing strategy. Business owners are close to my heart because my father built a construction company from the ground up and I grew up learning the ropes and also hearing from him specially about marketing and how it has impacted his business. By being authentic, you’re simply telling your story and people love to feel related to and connected to a business that they are working with!
#2) Continuously communicate—Communication, whether it be internal (with your team) or external (with your customer), is an essential part of successful marketing. When executing a marketing strategy or campaign, there are a lot of moving parts and that’s why it’s crucial to make sure all of the dots are connected! I have found that one of the key components to helping your customer feel comfortable is continuous communication. This can come in the form of a scheduled weekly check-in call, daily e-mail updates or monthly in-person meetings. It’s yours to create however you’d like but integrating it into the relationship is what will set you apart from the rest. Find out what form of communication (phone call, text, e-mail, in person, Zoom, etc.) is preferred by each customer and be sure to use that channel as your main means of communicating with them. It’s important to keep them in the know while also reassuring them that you’re handling the logistics so that they don’t have to! Too many details can cause the customer to feel overwhelmed, but a few bullet points recapping progress allows them to feel informed and overtime, that builds trust!
#3) Measure the results— “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." —Albert Einstein. This quote is important to remember when planning your marketing strategy. Start each quarter by stating your marketing strategy and then listing your marketing initiatives that are supporting that strategy. Go through each initiative on the list and ask yourself, how is this performing for me? Is it working? Should I continue it? Evaluating what items are successful for your brand specifically, as well as which items are not—will help you shape next steps. Digital marketing allows us a pretty clear snapshot into what is effective and what isn’t. More traditional marketing may be more challenging to measure, but, even if you don’t have hard numbers to measure the results by, you as the business owner know what your clients need and want. There’s just as much importance in building a brand as there is in producing strong or immediate ROI. For instance, if your brand is known for your community involvement but the events you participate in don’t always garner immediate sales—realize that you’re leaving a lasting impression, just by showing up and that goes a long way when building relationships for the future!
Their advice is advice I’ve been sharing with our audience for years. As you can see, we marketers are all on the same page. Know your audience, communicate, share your values, and measure your results.
If your company needs help marketing your products or services, Blue Lilac Marketing, as well as NOW Digital Marketing and bmor! Marketing & Consulting are available to help your business grow!