Your Business Marketing Checklist
No matter how large or small your business is, there are myriad ways of marketing it to bring in more customers and sell more of your products and/or services. Check out the following list to make sure you’re taking advantages of all of these tips.
And remember — Strottner Designs can help you with all of these!
Are you implementing all of these marketing techniques?
Identify your target audience. Who are your customers? Have you thought about how best to reach them? How do you see your business growing? Here’s a brief outline of the steps you can take for a fully-rounded marketing program.
Create a marketing plan. A solid plan should consist of a mission statement, customer persona development, unique selling proposition and benefits of your products and services. Make sure to add a calendar of milestones to keep your plan on target and moving forward. A plan that’s adhered to for a couple of months — and then abandoned — is useless.
Conduct customer research. If you’ve already got a good base of existing customers and an email list, create a survey that you can send to them. You can increase responses by incentivizing the survey (offering a discount or putting them in a drawing for a free prize). This valuable information will give you a clearer picture of how the outside world sees your business and help you to position your marketing.
Make sure your website is up-to-date and easily navigable. As we’ve mentioned several times before on this blog, make sure your website is clean, well-designed, responsive and fast. A sluggish website with outdated information is the quickest way to get prospects heading somewhere else.
Social media marketing. Find out where your customers are online and open social accounts. A business Facebook page is always good, and you can determine which other sites will resonate most with clients and prospects. Professional services, such as law firms, may want to use LinkedIn. Twitter is a quick way to do promotions and conduct impromptu surveys. If you have a visually-driven business — such as a clothing store or bakery — you may want to use Instagram or Twitter.
Remember, social media is just that — social. Use your pages to converse with your customers and not just continually hit them over the head with sales pitches.
Create digital versions of your print materials for online use. Whether you’ve got a two-sided promotional sell sheet, a gatefold brochure or even a multi-page product catalog for your company, it’s essential to have a digital version available. That way, you can link it to your website and your social media accounts. You can even use it as an information-capturing download when advertising with pay-per-click (PPC).
Don’t ignore the traditional methods
Advertise. Social media hasn’t completely supplanted old-style advertising techniques, especially in a town like San Antonio where not everyone is internet-savvy. Advertise in neighborhood publications and newspapers. Local cable television spots can often be acquired at a reasonable cost, and the same goes with radio. Rent a billboard and plan a direct-mail campaign. Make graphics to apply to company vehicles.
And in-store advertising is important, too! Do you have attractive, persuasive point-of-purchase materials that highlight your products and special sales? When people drive by your storefront, do you have large, bold window signage that catches the eye?
Online, you can do pay-per-click and Facebook advertising. You can even create online commercials to promote on your social media sites and YouTube.
Don’t forget about in-person networking. As convenient as the online world is, there’s still no substitute for getting out there and doing some face-to-face promoting. You can:
- Attend industry conferences
- Exhibit at trade shows
- Introduce yourself to other business owners at mixers and meetups
- Join local business organizations, i.e., your Chamber of Commerce
These are just some of the many marketing opportunities available to you. Ready to get started? Contact Strottner Designs!
