Finding your business's way through the marketing maze

The vast majority of business owners understand that marketing is a crucial part of their business’s strategy, an essential component for growing the customer base that you need to grow, especially in the retail world.

However, it’s not always easy to tell what, exactly, you should be doing with your marketing.

If you’re looking at a blank marketing plan, there are some ways you can get a better idea of what you should be doing with your budget. Here are a few ideas to help.

Know your audience

Always the most important element to keep in mind with any marketing plan is: who are you targeting? Who is your audience, who is most likely to convert, and what are their wants and pain points?

By creating an ideal customer profile, you can make sure that your marketing messages, as well as how you deliver them, best suit them. It’s not just about what you say, you want to make sure you’re in the channels that your customer is most likely to encounter, be it social media, advertising, or otherwise. 

Keep up with the trends

If you have been inspired by a social media or ad campaign that you saw a few years ago, it might sound like a great idea to replicate or adapt it, but in doing so, you can end up with marketing that is shockingly out of date and not likely to work with the modern trends.

Keep up with the marketing trends of the platform that you’re trying to work in, and make sure that you’re looking at what other brands are doing right now, not what has worked for them in the past. 

Work with someone who has experience

Even when you’re armed with research and good insight into your audience, putting a plan into action can be daunting. You never quite know if it’s right or not until you try. The experience and confidence that business coaching can bring can help you pull the trigger.

You can also benefit from first-hand witnessing which marketing strategies work and which don’t, depending on the specifics of the business. What’s more, business coaches are great at ensuring that your marketing methods and goals work to the aims of the business, not just for their own sake.

Prepare to be flexible

You should always think about the potential for the situation to change during your marketing campaign. You should be using marketing analytics tools to check whether or not things are going well, as well as being ready for changing market conditions, the introduction of new competitors and more.

It’s always a good idea to have a few different plans on what kind of content you deliver and what part of your brand you focus on so that you can pivot in response to market conditions.

The marketing that is specific to your business might be something that you have to come up with on your own. With the tips above, however, you can focus on the different elements likely to make your marketing campaign a success.