5 Essential Steps to Make Your Marketing Work
Any business needs advertising. Many people believe that a good product sells itself, but Amazon spent $11 billion on advertising in 2019. Do you still think that you can grow your business quickly without advertising?
This article is quite general because I tried to put together my whole digital experience in a small article. I could talk about some individual examples and practices, but I decided to discuss only the essentials. Moreover, simple things often only seem so from the outside, but to realize, and most importantly to use them, you need to work very hard.
1. Know your product.
Unfortunately, I often come across the opinion, especially among the founders of small businesses, that their only desire is to earn money and as soon as possible to get out of the operational processes, relax and do nothing. Great businesses are not created in this way. You need to feel and want to do something better in your sector. With this approach, you will understand and know in detail what you are doing, for whom you are doing it, what the current goals and the problem are.
First, love your product. Because if you don’t, then your employees are unlikely to love it. Plus, customers will also feel that people working in the company do not like what they do. So why should they use your product?
2. Know your customers.
Communication with clients is underestimated among many startups. Your customers are drivers for your business;they finance your business. Accordingly, you need to understand well what they need, what problems they solve with your product, and how they do it. It’s worthwhile to work on the place of customer success and listen to the problems of users, to understand what they want and their complaints. Regularly communicating with customers, you might not have such a favorable picture of your business. At the same time, you might have mistaken ideas about what your company is doing and how it helps people will go away unless you listen to your customers’ feedback. Understanding that, it will be easier to build and execute excellent marketing strategies in the company.
3. Hire motivated people, preferably from your users.
Motivation in the company is crucial for your business. I worked on many teams and companies and came across totally different people. Sometimes they were absolutely unmotivated. Moreover, sometimes such people even stopped others from doing something useful in the company. It is hard to imagine that they would be able to help develop your company or replace you in their professional field and work with the same enthusiasm as you do.
One of the best options is to find employees among the clients of your business. They most likely know a lot about your business, they want to improve it, and they will be highly motivated.
4. Be honest and open.
Communication first comes from the founder. I’m talking about both internal and external communication, but it’s difficult to be revealed to clients if there is lying and hiding information within the company. At the same time, this is one of the remarkable features that few people use.
Be honest with your employees. Talk openly about goals and values, about the problems that arise, talk about what you would improve, listen to criticism.
After that, you can start building the external communications of the company. You can choose your degree of openness yourself. For instance, there is Dodo Pizza, where you can see statistics for each of the pizzerias with all their financial stats. You may not be so open, but the more open you are, the stronger you are.
It seems that it can make the company vulnerable, but such openness creates trust and loyalty among customers, investors, and those who have heard about you.
Additionally, communicate in simple language. I have often come across completely incomprehensible enterprise answers that look like a template. You should not do this, especially if you are a small company and can change and test everything pretty quickly.
Do not argue with customers. Listen to them, speak their language. The most helpful advice here is to try to imagine yourself in their place. Imagine what they know about your company, what their problem is, and how you would act. Solve their problems, help, and support customers. They will be grateful to you in return.
5. Remind others about yourself.
This is also important. You can use social networks, email newsletters, media buying, PR, retargeting, or the company’s blog. Different communication channels are convenient for different people, but one thing is clear: You need to speak about the company regularly.
Try to communicate interestingly. Remember which companies’ blogs you enjoy reading and typical blogs of large companies that you don’t want to read at all. Think about how to do this in an exciting was. Openness can help. It’s always interesting to read about how things are going in the company, what you are working on, what problems do you have and how do you solve them. Where do you go to the corporate party, and how do you celebrate it? It can be user-friendly content about your product, and how it will help customers’ business. There are many options here. Just do not forget that you do this not only because you have to, but because you want to tell the user something interesting.
In addition to these five basic principles, I can share a few more ideas and recommendations.
Start with a product and communicate with people, work on what you are doing and improve it. Without knowledge of these, it’s difficult not only to build marketing but to do business.
As for the media buying, I have a lot of experience in paid acquisition, and I understand how it all works from the inside.
For a small business with a founder without a marketing background, it can be hard to check and learn all the traffic sources, and how they work. Moreover, test budgets will probably not be enough for testing. I can advise finding acquaintances who are skilled at marketing. They will help you to set up basic analytics, launch ads, and test their effectiveness. Take basic marketing courses or read a few articles from experts. If you want to do everything yourself, then the easiest way is to start on Facebook Ads.
In general, modern automation in marketing tools and their ability to select your target audience allows you to earn some money even without an in-depth understanding of the various marketing channels. The best way to learn is to practice. Run ads and learn from real data rather than take courses for several months to understand the theory perfectly, and then realize that everything acts differently.
