Writing your business plan - Marketing
Marketing, Marketing, Marketing, where to start?!
Wouldn't it be great if you could run a successful business without the annoyance of customers?! 'Stares out the window wistfully' đ
Sadly, or not as the case may be, we all need customers! And we all have to go find them, hang where they hang, or make enough noise that the right people hear us.
So, back to my question, where to start? I would recommend you look at the work you did on market opportunity. This would have identified who needs your product or service. If you know who needs your gear, then you can find out where they are.
For example, if you just made the world's first at-home dog grooming machine (I'm thinking an ACME, Road Runner type contraption), then you know your customers live in dog forums, Facebook / Instagram pages or the local park and dog shows IRL (in real life). Or market opportunity can help to inform which partners may be able to help connect you to customers (like veterinary businesses, or dog food manufacturers).
Your marketing strategy will need to help you build a group of early adopters, your testers, who will turn into evangelists. So you need to reach them fast. A lot of people forget about IRL. If you meet people face to face you'll learn so much about things like what they need, what they like and what they'll pay. IRL can be so valuable for many businesses, so don't ignore it.
Social media can really make finding your audience so much easier than it used to be. There are many social media growth hacking techniques out there that I'm not going to cover them here, but take a look at https://growthhackers.com as a good starting point.
Email! Email is your friend. Email conversion rates are head and shoulders above most other forms of marketing, so make sure you're bringing people to your sign up form! You then have the ability to be creative with your content and regular communications.
Content. Original and appropriate content is vital to keep your audience engaged and thinking of you. Sign up to your competitors email communications and social feeds. Look at what is engaging people and think of ways you can take that for inspiration and make it your own. Content can be blogs, video, inspirational quotes (ugh!) etc.
Test some marketing ideas out and measure the results. If you hit a good thing then you can expand on them until you need to change.
Read the 4 E's of marketing, this is a mind shift, which older folks like me will benefit from learning, if not already thinking this way.
Marketing is a HUGE subject (obviously), but I hope I've given you a few ideas to get you started.
Please get in touch if you have any specific questions and I will do my best to help, or point you in the right direction!
Happy business growing!!
Cheers,
Duncan.
