By Gage Drake
With so many marketing options available, you can really struggle with what you have to do, when is the best time to do it, where your marketing placement must be, why more than other marketing activities, why one market’s niche above is others, and how to maximize everything.
Of course, there are several variables (such as goals, industries, and capacities) that will influence your decision, but let me share with you the foundation to simplify some of these.
1. Identify and separate your vertical market. Unless each of your customers match the same profile, you must really focus on creating a profile for your client based on the industry and the type of client. For example, I work with consultants, businesses with 100 or less employees, and marketing departments with offices worldwide. A consultant without employees has a different profile than private schools with less than 100 employees or marketing departments that need me to arrange recruitment events for a marketing professional.
2. [In your campaign] Focus on your expertise, not a client profile. This one is contrary to identifying and separating your vertical market. However, there are places and time for you to market with a general campaign that focuses strongly on your expertise and results. Although it’s fun when you can develop a campaign that focuses on the pain and pleasure of a particular industry, if you haven’t chosen it to work with one industry or another, you need to market in general.
3. Decide whether you run a marketing project or marketing program. A marketing project is a temporary effort, has a definite and definite ending, and is finished when all project objectives are fulfilled. Marketing projects create unique products, services, or results. For example, developing your website is considered a project (although web marketing and maintenance will continue). While the ongoing marketing for the website can be part of a sustainable marketing program to encourage targeted traffic and prospective clients to your website.
4. Lower your marketing destination as much as you can. Often I see business owners clot every marketing goal into one bunch, or the bank all of their marketing dollars on this one “campaign” to bring millions. Instead, you must focus on several methods of marketing, various ways of communicating, various ways of connecting to reach one or several of your goals. Makes sense?
5. Get in front of yourself with your campaign. Don’t wait until the last minute before you start – you have to plan your marketing activities well before. The season in advance is a good place to start (however, if now you have to go with the next month – start where you are). For planning your friends – it will give you the opportunity to adjust and collect the right data to see if this will be part of your ongoing marketing program.
