A down economy and slow summer season make it one of the best times to re-evaluate your company’s marketing strategy. I’ll be presenting a list of proven tips which have worked for our tech clientele. Here are the first three:
1) Create a Marketing Rulebook. When starting your company or launching a new product line, make sure you are consistent in everything you do. From the president of the company to the receptionist, all should have the same idea of what your company is, and how you present it to the outside world. Your marketing rulebook should have both internal and external positioning. It should have defined target audience(s). Although you would think that the more groups of people you target the better, it will be might be a smarter choice to narrow your focus. Pin point the best fit for your company –this may not be the group with the highest short-term revenue potential, but the one with the best long-term prospects.
Another important aspect that fits into your marketing rulebook is to be consistent in your form and style. This might seem like the simplest of all the rules, but it is one of the most important. Your target audience should your logo, blog, and URL on just about every piece of outbound marketing including emails. Brand elements should be in press releases, articles, blog syndication websites increasing familiarity with your company.
2 Research your marketplace before spending. It’s amazing how many companies spend marketing dollars unnecessarily. This is why it is important to research your marketplace before you spend money on a service or campaign. There are many internet tools that help you determine the wants and needs of your target audience. For example, SurveyMonkey.com and Zoomerang.com are both online survey tools, which can help you get a feel for what your target audience needs. These services can range from a limit of 10 questions for a free account or an unlimited amount of questions for only twenty dollars. However, the more intricate your survey becomes the more expensive it will be. Nevertheless, this can be a worthwhile investment, because the more you spend on the survey the less you will unknowingly spend on useless campaigns.
It is also important to check out your competitors online. This can be as simple as entering what a prospective client would type to find your service in a search engine. When generating a list of competitors, you should see what they have done to become successful and see how you can learn from this.
Finally, you should determine your ideal prospect profile. You can use a more pricey service such as Hoovers, which generates a complete list of all the companies you might want to target. However, there are also other free options, such as ReferenceUSA. You can usually access this account through your local library. Jigsaw and LinkedIn are great data sources if you know the names of the companies you want to target but need an employee’s name and contact information, .
3) Establish a marketing budget. Once you have researched your market, establish a 12-month marketing budget. I advise companies to create a gold, silver and bronze budget in terms of the dollar amount and then you will be ready if you have to slash or increase budgets throughout the year. For more on the ways to establish the correct amount for your marketing budget, see https://www.clarityqst.com/pdf/marketing_budget.pdf.
Stay tuned for the next post in which we’ll cover branding and customer testimonials….