Are you developing effective marketing strategies?

Guest post by: Sara Mackey

Developing solid effective marketing strategies for your new business is essential for your sustainability and long-term success. Marketing is the process of selling services or goods through focused efforts such as advertising. An effective marketing strategy employs a method that communicates to a customer why they should choose your business rather than your competitors.

The first step to creating a strategy is to create a new business marketing plan. There are marketing experts that can offer valuable expertise and insight, but if you are unable to afford bringing in the experts, there tips can help you develop an effective strategy for marketing your new small business.

Effective Marketing Tip 1: Target Market

Your business cannot be all things to all people, and you should not try to be. A successful business will understand they need to fit into a certain niche. Knowing who you are selling to can help you create a marketing strategy that communicates effectively to your customers.

Effective Marketing Tip 2: Market Research

If you want to know and understand your niche market, you must do some market research. By conducting research focused on your market you gain an inside look on who your customers are, what they want and what their demands are. Everybody knows that the basics of economics are supply and demand. You need to know what the demand is, so that you can supply it sufficiently.

Effective Marketing Tip 3: Know Your Competition

Not only is knowing your customers helpful, but so is knowing your competition. Figure out ways you can capitalize on their weaknesses and emphasize your strengths and how you can set yourself apart from them. A good marketing strategy will help promote your business; a great one will give you the edge over your competition.

Effective Marketing Tip 4: Brand Strategy

Your brand is everything you promise to deliver to your customer through your business. At the heart of branding is the logo. The logo is like a first impression of your business to your customers. Do not underestimate the importance of a good logo. When you brand your business, you can start to build brand equity which raises the intrinsic value of your goods and services.

Effective Marketing Tip 5: Be Consistent

Do not start advertising your business until you have a consistent marketing campaign. The time for testing out different logos, slogans and methods is during the market research phase, not when you are actually ready to begin marketing your new business.

Effective Marketing Tip 6: Have adequate financing

Many new businesses fail to realize the importance of marketing and do not allocate enough business financing to fund an effective campaign. They fail because they do not have enough working capital or fail to market effectively. A new business does not usually have vast amounts of money at their disposal, but in order to start generating a positive cash flow, you have to get customers to want to buy from you. That is why good, consistent and persistent marketing is so valuable for a new business.

Creating an effective marketing strategy is time-consuming and challenging, but it is well worth the time and effort as you begin to bring in those targeted valuable customers.

HAVE YOUR SAY

So, what do you think? Are there any other things you believe are important to consider when developing a marketing plan? Go ahead and add your comments below. It’s always nice to hear from our readers.

To your success and brilliance!