Marketing Strategy

The most important thing in your marketing is the strategy – the system.

A tried, tested and proven marketing strategy is the most valuable asset your business will ever possess – it’s worth more than stock, capital plant, intellectual property and all your other business assets combined.

In fact, many marketing systems can be abstracted and then applied to completely new businesses in unrelated areas, because form follows function and we’re always selling to human beings. Differences tend to be of style rather than substance.

So to help you formulate an effective marketing strategy here are seven simple tips:

Don’t Copy Your Competitors

The worst marketing to copy is that done by your peers. If you copy the marketing approaches of someone doing “OK” then that’s broadly the result YOU will get, too.

Instead, look for the shining lights, the high fliers and learn from them instead. Sometimes the best strategies you’ll pick up will come from way outside your own industry (which is one reason they’ll be so powerful – you will be unique in your area).

Follow buyers not topics

If you are selling weight loss pills to older men and women, the “obvious” choice is to advertise in health and fitness magazines, because that’s in the same topic area your pills address. But the problem is, you’re going to run up against a lot of competition.

A better idea is to look for places where the kind of people you want to sell to might be – so, in the case of the pills above, you might find advertising in vintage-car magazines is more profitable, since the readers tend to be of a certain age, affluent, and wanting to live an active lifestyle.

Sell to interested people

Going out there trying to convince people they have a problem and then selling them the solution is hard work and very rarely successful. But this is the approach most business owners take.

Instead, construct your marketing pieces so they will be seen and responded to by people who already know they have the problem you can solve and are actively looking for or at least open to hearing about your solution.

In other words, your marketing should speak very plainly to the group of people you want to sell to and contain a message meant for them and for them only.

In the online world this translates to painstaking keyword research matched with topic-specific landing-pages and free giveaways; in the offline world, it translates to careful media- and list-selection, along with compelling headlines and great offers.

Sell What People Are Buying

Forging a new industry from scratch might be heroic and noble… but it’s fraught with peril. The easiest way to make money and to make it ethically is simply to sell what people are already buying or are willing to buy.

In other words, study the markets and see what’s already selling well; and if you have list of buyers of your own already, simply ask them what they need that they’re not getting. It’s that easy.

Have more than one channel

Imagine the Parthenon, with its many columns holding up the roof. Your marketing strategy should resemble this, in that you should have many channels bringing in business.

Not only does this mean you get business from sources you would otherwise not have tapped into, but it also means you’re no longer vulnerable to one or more of your marketing channels being stopped at source (which is exactly what happened in the US when fax-marketing was effectively made illegal – some businesses were overnight left high and dry with no functioning marketing channels at all).

Use relentless follow up

Follow up on your customers and clients relentlessly.

This can be uncomfortable for some people, but it this is not the same as the “hard sell”. The fact is, if you’ve done a good job of serving their needs in the past, they’ll be pleased to have you serve them again – and often, all they’ll need is a little push in the right direction.

With new business the result is the same although for different reasons. People will buy when they’re ready to buy, not when you’re ready to sell. So the best way to ensure that you are the one they buy from when they decide to buy, is to make sure you are popping up in front of them constantly.

Use multi-media

Different people respond better to different ways of receiving a message. Some prefer to read, some prefer to listen, and yet others prefer to see it on a video.

For this reason you should make your relentless follow-up span as many different media as you can: CDs, DVDs, letters, postcards, online video, telesales calls, and so on.

The more media you use, the more you will sell.

Written by Chris Cardell of Cardell Media