The marketing function of every business is to raise brand awareness and bring in more customers. As essential as marketing is, whether you’re a do-it-all entrepreneur or a large company with an established marketing department, results don’t come easy nor cheap.
Nevertheless, the rewards of good marketing practice may benefit a startup as much as an industry leader whose marketing team may have years of experience. As your brand sets sail for the marketing seas, here are five helpful tips you’ll appreciate knowing.
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1. Start small and keep things simple.
Today’s buyer has become harder to reach than ever. Whether you’re starting a new business or kick-starting a campaign for a new product, it might be helpful to start small? Let’s say you’re starting a health business and you want to sell vegan gummies, a simple Facebook page might help. Even if you don’t have a solid marketing strategy or advertising budget, at least you have some exposure.
However, if you’re unsure how to start, you can hire a fractional CMO to draft a marketing strategy. A professional marketing expert, preferably with certification, brings a ton of experience and insight to the table, which may likely give your product a headstart over the competitors. What’s more, hiring a fractional chief marketing officer or a fractional CMO service provider might free you from the excess workload.
Arguably, a significant part of going all out with your marketing efforts is dependent on the financial muscle available to you. However, a startup’s efficacy in marketing may have a lot to do with calculated thinking as much as heavy marketing spend. The bottom line here is that; companies are likely to gain more from a well-planned and detailed marketing strategy than a vague one. In effect, don’t start anyhow with the excuse of starting small.
2. Leave no metric unreported.
In marketing, the actions you take are equally important as the results. For instance, if you want to be the best vitamin manufacturers in the United States, you’ll first have to know what it takes for your product to be a favorite brand. That is where metrics and reporting come in.
Without metrics, your chief marketing officer or any marketing executive on your management team may find it challenging to paint a picture of where your company and its overall strategy lead to. Some marketing metrics worth noting include brand awareness, visibility, profitability, and marketing spend per customer.
3. Go digital but don’t neglect traditional.
The online world has seemingly left companies without any option other than going digital. Luckily, we don’t live in a simulated bubble just yet. As much as mobile penetration and digital platforms keep rising, offline marketing is just as vital. It’s better to adopt an integrated marketing approach that strikes a balance between traditional and digital. This has more to offer than a lopsided approach.
Unfortunately, a practical integrated strategy built on carefully harnessed data might appear challenging, especially for smaller firms with a low budget spend. However, as mentioned earlier, you can hire a consultant to help you with this. They’ll have all the expertise to help you attract customers using other outdoor channels like billboards etc.
4. Be consistent with your branding.
Producing high-quality content for your marketing campaigns achieves less impact if they’re inconsistent. For instance, being consistent with brand essentials like a specific color wheel, typeface, etc., significantly improves your social media accounts’ impression on its users.
5. Be bold and stand for something.
Companies that go beyond traditional advertising methods are always the ones to beat in any industry. Marketing is a relationship between a company and its customers. What affects the customers may affect the company in equal measure.
Furthermore, having ethics creates an impact much more substantial than a celebrity ad. Over the years, this has become a bold marketing approach for top giants like Nike and Gillette, which stand for social causes ranging from rape to racial injustice.