4 Smart Marketing Essentials for Success

When people ask me what my secret to success is, I always tell them, “There is no secret to success. Everyone makes their own success.” And while that’s true, there’s a little more to achieving your goals than just hard work and perseverance.

Marketing is key to creating a small business that not only works, but grows to become better every year. It’s certainly worked for me. Though I’m only 20 years old, I’ve already established a profitable digital marketing firm focused on SEO practices. I work every day with clients to make sure their marketing campaigns are tailored to their needs.

It’s important to know that marketing isn’t a universal formula, though. No campaigns are ever the same, and it needs to be personalized for you, your business and your customers. However, there are some marketing essentials that all great campaigns are based on.

Get the professional advantage by using these four fundamental marketing principles as the building blocks of your next smart marketing campaign for your small business.

Figure Out Your End Goal

When you were in high school, you had to lay out your thesis before you start writing your essay, and you had to create a game plan in sports before scoring a goal. This principle is true for planning out your marketing campaign, too.

You need to have a purpose, or end goal, before your start drafting your marketing campaign. Without one, your marketing efforts (social media, content marketing, etc.) will always be disjointed and unfocused, no matter how strong your business is.

An end goal keeps you on track and unifies your work, which makes sure that you achieve it while using your time and resources effectively. Having one is absolutely essential to efficiently operate your campaign.

Make sure you know what you want to achieve with your campaign before you start. Ask yourself these questions:

  • Who’s your target audience?
  • What outcome do you want to achieve? Are they specific enough?
  • How will I work to achieve these outcomes?

Take Time to Strategize

It can be easy to lose your way when you’re busy running a business, but creating and maintaining a clear plan for your campaign is a crucial part of marketing smart. Save yourself from potential missteps and confusion by drafting a clearly laid out strategy for how you’re going to achieve your end goal.

And don’t forget to include every part of your strategy in detail. Sure, these steps may seem simple or obvious. But you’d be surprised at how much simply breaking down each task can boost your productivity. No matter how far along your business is, you’ll always know what you have to do next, without wasting anything by going the wrong way.

People tend to work better when they know what’s next on their schedule, so embrace this planning stage!

Keep, Engage and Expand Your Customer Base

Customers can come and go, but loyal customers are rare to come across, and should be cherished. These repeat customers are a powerful marketing tool. When you find a customer that continuously shops with your small business, stick with them!

Loyal customers are one of the most dependable ways you can spread your business’ fantastic reputation with your target customer base. Word of mouth marketing is a huge part of making any campaign better.

Keep your customers happy by engaging, communicating and staying top of mind. Try interacting with your followers on social media, offering loyalty discounts, providing gifts with purchase and by encouraging them to share their purchases and reviews online.

Craft Quality Content

Little has to be said about this. Amazing content is a marketing principle that’s repeated time and time again, and for good reason. Having comprehensive, relevant and updated content online increases your SEO ranking, keeps your customers interested and informed and shows off your expertise, among many other benefits.

People can sense quality, and they tend to appreciate it by doing business with you. So ensure that every bit of content on your website is something that you’re proud to put your name behind.

At the end of the day, your businesses will only be as successful as you make it. If you commit to following a strategy to achieve your end goals, communicating with your customers and creating quality content, you’ll see success drawing closer and closer.

And once people start coming to you and asking for tips, that’s when you’ll know you’ve made it!

Learn More

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And if you want specific questions answered for your business, make an appointment to meet with a Small Business BC Business Advisor or Small Business BC Business Plan Advisor now.