Imagine this for a moment.
You have worked hard to launch your first business where you provide assignment makers to students who need online assistance. After a tiresome session of meetings with investors and sheer hard work, you finally made it possible.
What if you don’t get enough customers as you had expected?
Wouldn’t that be a severe blow to all your hard work?
This is where the role of marketing comes into play. Marketing brings your business in front of people who are looking for the services you provide. It increases your brand awareness and helps you achieve an enhanced return on revenue. Sounds great, doesn’t it? So, here are the top five steps that will help you market your business successfully.
- Understand your target customers
Let’s say you want to provide online assignment help to students. But, you end up spreading brand awareness among office-goers or entrepreneurs. Would you be able to generate the revenue you had dreamt of? No. You must understand who your target audience is, what they want and where they spend their time online.
How to find your target audience?
- Analyse your customer base– Take a look at those who are already buying your products or opting for your services. From their age to their location, learn everything as much as you can about your existing customers.
- Conduct market research- A thorough competitor’s analysis will help you figure out the loopholes in your products that might be preventing your target audience from trusting your business.
- Create personas- You can also drill down into particular segments that constitute your target audience. Personas help you determine the general personalities, demographics and needs of your target audience.
Remember, your partners, prospects and customers form the basis of the lifeblood of your business. So, your marketing strategies should revolve around these three things. Consider your target audience based on different segments such as intent, reference, location and interests.
- Develop your marketing framework
A strong growth framework is essential to develop successful marketing strategies. Almost 60% of new businesses fail in the first three years due to the lack of a proper marketing framework. The framework will help you come up with a basic structure for your marketing plan, creative brief and campaign. After all, the basic purpose of a marketing framework is to get prospects, the public and interested customers to buy from you.
How to create a marketing framework?
- Define your goals- It is imperative to align your marketing goals with overall business objectives. Your marketing ‘goals should be as precise and accurate as possible.
- Present the offer- There are thousands of companies out there providing similar businesses as yours. So, you need to create an offer about your products that your target audience can’t ignore. Highlight the factors that make your services different from your competitors.
- Choose your channel- The content related to your brand should be easily understandable to your target audience. Choose the channel where your target audience spends most of their time online to share your content.
Let’s say your marketing goal is to spread the word about your ‘word counter’ tool among students. So, your preferred channel would be Facebook since students spend most of their time on it. Focus on the factors that make your tool better than the others in the market.
- Focus on your competitors
Let’s assume you want to increase the popularity of your online APA referencing generator. But, the marketing efforts of your competitors are better than yours. Result? Your target audience will be diverted to your competitors’ websites. You don’t want that. Do you? So, keep a check on what your competitors are doing, what they are posting and how they are sharing their content.
How to do a competitive analysis?
- Determine who your competitors are- You should focus on direct competitors while comparing your brand. Direct competitors are the ones that offer similar products as yours and even operate in your same geographical location.
- Figure out what products they offer- The product or service forms the heart of any business. So, analyse the complete product line and their products’ quality along with the prices and discounts.
- Study your competitors’ sales tactics and results- Understand the structure of their sales process and the channel they usually target to share their content.
These steps will provide an idea of how competitive the market is. You don’t have to copy the exact strategies followed by your competitors. Instead, come up with something more unique and creative to stay out from the crowd.
- Develop your brand’s story
People not only think with their rational brain but also their emotional brain while spending money. Keeping these considerations in mind, your marketing strategies should also appeal to both these perspectives. Storytelling is a powerful weapon when it comes to creating brand awareness. The right story will help you build essential customer connections and cultivate your brand story creatively.
How to develop a strong brand story?
- Determine your ‘Why’- Start with the why behind everything you do for the marketing of your business. Think of a story that explains why your brand exists in the first place.
- Understand your product- You need to understand where and how your product fits in. This will help you create a brand story that is relatable to the usefulness of your product.
- Maintain consistency– Inconsistent message or story dilutes the brand story and makes it less impactful. Communicate consistently with your content to engage with your target audience.
Imagine you provide CDR report writers for hire. So, you need to create a story that highlights the requirement and contributions of these writers among students. You can create the brand story on different formats such as audio, visual, etc.
- Establish audience connections with content marketing
There are multiple pieces of content you can use to resonate with your target audience. The valuable types of content include webinars, articles, videos, guides, email signatures, etc. Content is the most effective growth driver for your business. Content marketing works wonders when it comes to building trust and delivering top-notch quality. Create content that can generate high levels of ROI.
- Identify the best content channels– After a thorough competitor’s analysis, you will understand where your target audience hangs out often. So, pick the content channels based on your audience’s preferences.
- Settle on content types– Blog posts are a crucial part of the content marketing mix. Make sure your blog posts are shareable, valuable and actionable. You can use other types of content, too, such as articles, guest posts, press releases, etc.
- Allocate resources- Now that you know which type of content you need, it is important to allocate the resources for content creation. Whether you need in-house content creators or content producers, keep all the resources handy.
As per the latest research from the CMI, almost 63% of businesses lack a documented content marketing strategy. This is, in fact, one of the most effective strategies to attract and retain the attention of your target audience.
Wrapping Up,
Marketing may seem like a puzzle that’s impossible to solve if you aren’t aware of the right strategies. The process is complex. But, once you get them right, there’s nothing stopping you from achieving marketing success. Start by identifying your target audience and create customer personas accordingly. Develop your brand story using creative formats and engage with your target audience. Good Luck. Author Bio: Karen Hamada is a content creator at a reputed firm in the United Kingdom. She also provides Word counter to students at MyAssignmenthelp.com. Paige loves to spend time with her daughters in her free time.
