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7 Marketing Tips for Beginners

How To Get Started With Marketing

Good businesses meet the needs of their market in a way that’s better than or different from that of the competition. But great businesses help those markets understand why they’re better or different, and know how to spread information about their value to boost their customer base.

It’s no secret that in order to become a successful business, you’ll need to use some form of marketing to get your customers interested in your product or service. Marketing encompasses all aspects of business, from product development and distribution up to sales and advertising. It’s about making sure your business is doing all it can to reach its customers and maintain them in the most effective way possible.

This article will focus on the most expected part of marketing (and probably the one you thought of when you started reading): promotion.

Are you a new marketer who’s not sure where to start? Try some of these tips for beginners and you’ll be marketing like a pro in no time.

1. Know your industry and audiences

Your goal is to set your business apart from others so that customers come to you first for their product or service needs. To achieve this, it’s important to know your industry and the audiences you hope to reach.

Ask yourself:

    • Why do people need your business?
    • What markets could be best served by your business and how will you reach them
    • What resources do you have to market?
    • Who is your competition?
    • How are they similar to or different from your business?
    • How are they marketing and how effective is it?

Researching your business, your target markets, and your competition is a good place to start when formulating your marketing plans. This way you’ll know just who to target and how.

2. Establish an online presence

In today’s digital age, chances are that if you don’t have an online presence, your business won’t perform as well as a business that does. People want information that is visible, fast and convenient – a website offers all three.

A website often helps form a solid foundation for a business. Websites support around-the-clock accessibility to content with the click of a button and can be seen by anyone with access to the internet. Credibility and professionalism are heightened by businesses who are able to show customers who they are and what they do through an online presence, versus those businesses without websites that might seem unestablished or dishonest.

A website also creates a direct link between business and customer interaction, offering the opportunity for customers to access the business and make direct purchases, service requests, comments or reviews without needing to be in the physical store.

3. Create content

Content is what drives people to your business. It should be valuable and relevant to your audiences and educate and engage them with your business. Consistently sharing content across your platforms can also help your business build trust with audiences, influencing them to view you as more knowledgeable and a leader in your industry.

Creating content for your business’s website is a crucial step to effectively marketing your business, but it doesn’t end there. Share news about your business and your industry in blog posts, newsletters, email blasts, how-to videos, infographics and more. Creating your own content is a great way to market in your own voice. So make sure all of the content you create has a purpose and matches the personality of your business.

4. Optimize your content

So you’ve created your content, but what’s the point in having it unless people actually see it? By optimizing your content for views you’ll be able to better reach the audiences you want. Search engine optimization, or SEO, makes your site rank higher in search engine results pages and increases the quantity and quality of traffic to your site through organic search results.

Use keywords to attract audiences by placing them within the text on your website. That way if your audience is searching for certain words that can be found within your site, your site may show up in their results. Conduct reputation management to make sure your business and contact information across the web is accurate and consistent. Ensure your site is structured in a way that search engines can read. By optimizing your content, you’ll drive more people to your site and encourage them to stay on it longer.

5. Be consistent

Consistency is key in marketing any business and its products or services. Using the same branding, messaging and imagery across all platforms make your business more recognizable to audiences. Audiences trust brands they recognize. You don’t want to confuse your audiences by having multiple personalities. They want predictability–to know the outcome is going to be the same every time. No surprises.

Using consistency across all platforms allows audiences to identify you and your purpose. When audiences feel like they know you enough to trust you, they will be more inclined to keep a relationship. By remaining consistent in your marketing, your business may get to the point of being recognizable even without the logo showing.

6. Create a call-to-action

Your audiences may have seen a newsletter, a blog post, or visited a page on your website and left because they didn’t know what to do next. A good way to combat this issue: tell them what to do.

A call-to-action, or CTA, encourages your audience to interact with your business through clicks, calls, downloads, buys, etc. CTAs guide your audiences through the buying journey, transforming visitors into qualified leads. Strategically inserting buttons into web pages, landing pages, emails, and blog posts, saying things like “sign up” or “subscribe,” clearly communicates the action you want your audience to do.

7. Track your results

After implementing your marketing strategies, you’ll want to see how it affects your business. Track your efforts as you use these strategies to see any changes. Monitor metrics within your website such as bounce rate, page views, conversion rate, and audience acquisition, as well as, paid search and social media performance. Programs like Google AdWords and Google Analytics are great for monitoring these results. Report regularly on your progress and measure them against any goals you set for your business.

Effective marketing can be tricky, especially for newcomers. Use these tips to increase your business’s value and boost your customer base. Download your Marketing checklist and let’s get marketing!

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