Marketing matters: 15 ways to push your business to the next level
In the world of business, you have to make sure that you have marketing on your mind. Whether you’re a budding entrepreneur starting out in the world on your own, or you’re really looking to push your small business into aggressive growth, marketing is the key.
Fortunately, you don’t have to become a marketing expert to get results. But you do need to make sure that you are marketing your business effectively. If you have experience at this, then great. But that doesn’t overly matter if you’re not putting the right marketing matters into practice. Because the truth is, anyone can master marketing if they put their mind to it. As long as you know the tactics you need and you’re willing to really test your ideas and see what works, you’ll get there.
But the thing is, you actually need to know what marketing matters and to try them out. Now, you could spend hours, and days, and weeks, and months researching all of this online. You could read blog after blog, watch countless YouTube videos, and even take a course or two. Then, you may have the confidence to just get going with your marketing. Or, you could just read this blog post, take in each of the fifteen points from looking at your goals to display advertising, and then get started for yourself. Because once you have a few ideas on what you could do, it’s all about testing what’s going to actually work for your business. So here are fifteen marketing matters that have the power to take your business to the next level.
1. Set a goal
So first of all, you need to have an overall goal and objectives to go along with it. There are lots of different marketing goals that you could look to achieve. You may have one or a couple. But if you do have more than one, you’ll want to ensure that you have objectives and strategies in place for each. So just be sure that you’re coming up with a clearly defined goal that you can work towards with your company.
2. Set your branding
Now that you know what you want to achieve, you need to start putting your plan into action. But before you start to market, you need to make sure that your business is ready. And this is where branding comes in. Your brand allows you to connect with your audience and show them that you are a company that they need to know about. So pick your brand message, your colours, your collateral and pull together a vision that represents who you are.
3. Create your website
From here, you need to then create a website. And it needs to be on brand. Whether your business is the website or you provide a product or service, it needs to effectively get your company message across, engage with your audience, and encourage your audience to act. If you already have a website, then you will want to ensure that you refine it in these ways.
4. Start a blog
Next up, you’ll want to think about getting a blog started for your website too. Now, if your business is a blog, then you can skip this point. But if you’re selling products or a service, having a blog on site will still be incredibly useful. It can allow you to engage with your audience, provide you with social content, and boost the next point too.
5. Apply SEO
A killer online marketing idea is always going to be SEO. If you want to make sure that you’re able to rank well in Google search results and generate organic traffic this way, you’ll want to apply SEO to your website. If you’re not sure, then look into companies like Screaming Frog, to do it for you. Read reviews and find a company that you believe will get you results.
6. Try paid search
At the same time, you might want to team that activity with paid search. Just relying on organic traffic alone can limit you. But you should definitely ensure that you’re working on that first to then see how paid search with Adwords can help you. The combination of the two should allow you to boost traffic and any other marketing goals you may have.
7. Create social accounts
Next, you’ll want to create a social presence. Now, the platforms you choose to be on should relate to your marketing strategy and to your marketing matters overall. You’ll want to know what platforms your audience is active on, and then look to the market to them on those set channels. But you’ll want to do this slowly and steadily in order to be engaging.
8. Engage organically
While paid social is important, and we’ll get to that in a moment, it is also important for you to make sure that you’re growing organically on your social channels first. You need to know that there is an audience there and what they want from you. That way, when you do start to do your paid work, you will be able to invest in it and target correctly.
9. Try paid social
When it does come to your paid social activity, you’ll want to make sure that you’re doing what you can to get results. So not only do your research on what kind of approach may work as, like SmartBug Media talks over, but you need to test. Testing and trying out ideas for yourself is the best way to make sure that you’re getting the result you want from your social activity.
10. Work with influencers
It’s also a good idea to collaborate with influencers too. As long as you have a similar audience, you should be able to harness their influence to meet your marketing objectives too.
11. Create a video
Then it’s onto video. Because marketing with words and imagery isn’t always enough. Even if you have no idea how to create a video, hire someone that does. Video is engaging and it’s also another dimension to add to your toolkit. So think about YouTube, Instagram, or Facebook videos and what they can add to your line up too. Even if you have no idea how to create a video, hire someone that does or try to create a video using some online design tools like Visme.
12. Start a podcast
But video isn’t all that’s important in business and marketing right now. You’re going to want to make sure that you’re able to bring voice into the mix in some way. You’ll find that podcasting is going to be big, so it’s a great idea to find your feet with this medium too. Even if you’re not sure how to start a podcast, just get set up and start producing content, then you can find a more professional way of doing things as you go along.
13. Work with affiliates
We often hear a lot about affiliate marketing in terms of making money as a blogger or a media site. But your business could also set up its own affiliate marketing campaign so that you’re paying sites a percentage of every sale that they generate for you. Now, if your business idea is a blog, then you can definitely make money with affiliate marketing in both ways. Because not only can you be paid as an affiliate for generating sales for another company, but you could also pay other publishers a percentage of any sales that they generate for you.
14. Give display a go
Another really great marketing idea is to go with display advertising. Yes, it’s an original form of internet marketing, but it’s effective. It really does work. You just need to come up with your creativity, set your campaign metrics, and then optimize as you go along. Whether you want traffic or sales, you can make this work for you – especially if you’re retargeting people that have already been to your site.
15. Get offline
And finally, as much as online marketing will matter to you, it’s not the only thing that you can do. While you will want to make sure that you’re really pushing on with your marketing online, don’t limit yourself to the internet. Make sure that you’re networking at events, that you’re hosting your own events (they give you great online content too), and that you’re meeting your clients, customers, and audience in real life too. When you do, it will give you more traction online.
So, now that you’ve seen each of the marketing matters, are you ready to get started? You’re definitely free to click on the links and research each area more in depth, but you could also learn for yourself. Because really, every business is different. While the principles of marketing matters and each tactic are largely universal, not everything will work for you. Because your business is unique. And there’s no one-size fits all strategy for success. Instead, you need to take some of the points, master them, apply them to your business, and find out what works for you. Then, you will be able to get your business to where you want it to be.
