🏢 Unless you’re a big-name business, your resources are limited and you have to cut costs where you can. Many business owners choose to save by managing some key business functions – such as marketing – by themselves, instead of paying someone to do it for them. You may be thinking of doing the same.
Becoming your own marketing department isn’t a bad idea. You could do it very successfully, in fact – provided you know what you’re doing, have clear goals, and come up with a solid strategy. To help you out, Find the Best shares a mini-guide on becoming a one-person marketing team (focusing on some key marketing essentials you need to know about):
🔊 Get the word out
Marketing, according to a definition from Shopify, is the promotional strategies a company uses to attract customers to its product or services. The standard process is researching the market, analyzing trends, understanding customers, figuring out pain points, and crafting a message to draw people in.
🤚 Market to the right people
Simply spreading the word isn’t enough – you need to ensure it reaches the right people. The right people – aka your ideal audience – are the ones most in need of whatever it is you’re offering and most willing to pay for it. Your marketing endeavors should revolve around them, seeing as they’re the ones who’d generate the most value for your business. You’ll need to conduct market research to find who comprises your ideal audience.
📤 Reach them through marketing channels like email
Marketing channels are the avenues via which you can reach your ideal audience. For instance, some of your ideal customers may spend hours every day checking their emails. Your channel, in this case, would be email. You must use the right channel for your marketing endeavors – some are more effective than others. Some examples of high-impact channels are video, social media, websites, and (offline) billboards.
💰 Invest in email marketing
Email is one of the most effective marketing channels there is at this moment in time, returning $36 for every $1 invested in it (a whopping 3,600 percent return). For effective email marketing, you will need to learn how to craft engaging emails (or newsletters or similar) with attention-grabbing subject lines that speak to your audience’s needs and interests.
📣 Communicate an evocative message
Your “marketing message” is the communication you send to your audience to draw them in. Needless to say, this needs to be on point. The modern-day consumer is bombarded by marketing and won’t pay attention unless it’s truly attention-grabbing or valuable – or both. Learning how will take time and effort.. You can use branding (colors, themes, values) and craft a brand identity to complement your message.
🚪Consider door-to-door marketing
If you live in a walk-friendly area, then door-to-door marketing can be an extremely effective way to reach potential customers quickly and efficiently. By meeting people face-to-face and speaking directly with them about your products or services, you have the opportunity to demonstrate to them why they should choose your business over the competition. You can highlight the unique qualities that set you apart, answer any questions that they might have, and influence their decision right away as they examine your products or watch you demonstrate your services.
📊 Measure the impact of your strategy
Once you’ve executed your marketing strategy, you need to measure the impact. Did you manage to draw in enough people? Was your money well spent? What could you have done better? Marketers measure some KPIs to help them assess the impact of their strategy. They then use this data to make their strategy better or, sometimes, scuttle it outright.
🌟 Use a mix of strategies
You don’t shoot a single bullet at your target and just pray for the best – you shoot several until your target is taken down. Every successful business uses a mix of marketing strategies at any given time to generate a steady supply of leads (and keep existing customers engaged). Some effective examples for 2022 are inbound marketing, content marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), and conversational marketing.
👥 Don’t do everything alone
As you can probably tell, marketing is a lot of work. Fortunately, help is at hand. You can use marketing-related apps to automate some tasks and make life easier for you. For instance, customer relationship management (CRM) apps allow you to automate email marketing to a significant extent. Furthermore, you can outsource some marketing from time to time.
🎯 Conclusion
Marketing is an ever-evolving practice that requires time and dedication to master. As your own marketing department, be prepared to put in the work and make improvements over time to your email marketing or other strategies to be successful. Once you have a solid marketing process going, you will attract more customers, become more profitable, and, eventually, be able to hire your own marketing department.
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