Marketing! Getting it right is the holy grail for any business – and yet so many people dabble a bit and then wonder why it doesn’t work. That goes double for online.
The trouble with online marketing is that there are so many opportunities, how can you decide where you should be visible and what will work best?
- Should you leap on every new social media platform that comes along or stick to the tried and tested?
- To blog or not to blog? And where to blog, if you decide to go for it.
- What about article marketing? You may have heard about this, but don’t know how it works.
- What about email marketing? What do you say and who to?
- Do press releases work?
- Should you be sending newsletters every week, month – or at all?
The worst thing is that there are no right answers. All these things work – for some people; it depends on their business and the content they create. If the content is no good, marketing doesn’t work at all and that can apply to something as basic as a Twitter post, let alone a blog, a webpage or an article.
What is marketing anyway?
It’s not what most people think. True marketing is about identifying a need, creating a product or service that satisfies that need and then ensuring that your target market are aware that the product or service is available. You need to know lots of things to get marketing on target, but most important you need to know your potential client inside out.
- Who are they?
- What are they interested in?
- What are their problems (particularly the ones your product or service solves)?
- What is their income, status, lifestyle?
When you know all this your written material will be much better focused. Not necessarily a sales pitch, but addressing things that are of interest to the people you want to attract.
Then there’s the time issue – how much time have you got available to invest in your marketing? Monthly, weekly and daily? If you’re feeling tired even thinking about it, you need a system to get things moving. The more organised you are, the more consistent your activities will be and the results will follow. You’re in that ‘fail to plan; plan to fail’ situation – and it doesn’t stop at planning, it must include focus and scheduling to ensure your marketing doesn’t become random.
Start small, work up – test and measure regularly and you’ll soon start to see things happen.
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If you need help join the FREE webinar 3 and a half simple steps to a successful online marketing system. It’s an hour well spent to give you a structure and process to get started.
