DURBAN - It’s a daunting task – marketing your own business – especially when you’ve never done it before and have no idea where to start!
Jacqueline Raw, Owner of marketing agency, Ycagel gives five tips to get your business on the map quickly!
1. Be clear on what your potential customer looks like:
Loads of small businesses miss this critical step in marketing. They never clearly define what their ideal customer looks like and so they adopt a spray and pray approach to marketing. This is an expensive waste of time. To avoid this pitfall, take the time to clearly define who it is that will benefit from your product or service. Ask yourself questions like who will use your product or service?
What are their biggest wants and needs? What do they like to do in their spare time? Do they work for a company full time or are they business owners like yourself? The clearer you are around who exactly your potential customer is, the clearer you’ll be around how to attract them to your business.
2. Know how to reach your customers:
Not everyone is on social media and not everyone responds to an email or reads a pamphlet. You’ll need to be clear around which mediums your customers will respond to. The worst thing you can do is invest your marketing budget in creating campaigns using channels that your customers just don’t respond to.
3. Generate leads:
The key to effective lead generation is offer massive value before ever asking for a single customer detail. Some of the easiest ways to give value are to share your knowledge.
Create a free eBook or a PDF offering great tips and insights around your industry or market. Set up a webinar so potential customers can learn more about your product or service before having to decide to buy from you. The more value you offer, the greater your return will be once you start working your leads.
4. Create the WOW:
Make every single conversation or engagement with your customer a ‘WOW’ moment. Your reputation and your customer base are the two most important things in your business. From the very first time a customer sees your brand you want them to be delighted and intrigued.
You want that same feeling carried throughout the marketing, sales and after sales process. Give them more than they expect and then take care of them well after you must. Delivering the WOW from beginning to end is the difference maker in your business’s long-term success.
5. Comfortable translates into complacent:
The best marketers have their fingers firmly on their customers’ pulse and an ear to the ground listening for any relevant changes in the market or possible innovations in their field. Stay researching. Remember that people and preferences change all the time so even if you’ve done everything just right.