It’s a fact that without marketing, a business is almost guaranteed to be short lived. Marketing is the one sure way to drive potential business to your door or website. Even the most miserly, old-school entrepreneur who thinks his service alone brings business in the doors, is likely succeeding because of marketing.
If his business is located in a high traffic corridor that’s location marketing. If he talks about his business to his neighbors or to the people he meets on the way to the store or office or at lunch that’s person-to-person marketing.
Whether or not those activities are enough is another question, but those activities contribute to raising awareness about a business and driving sales.
If you’re not having conversations with your market either in person or through the marketing material you prepare, position or distribute, your market will have a hard time finding you and the impact on your sales won’t be pretty.
Yet I know the problem. There is just so much to do and we are bombarded with so many marketing ideas how does a busy entrepreneur choose which marketing strategy to start in order to get the biggest profitable bang for the buck?
To answer that question I suggest you think first about your target market. Who are they? Where are they? And what do they need?
For example, let’s say you manage an event planning business and you target insurance companies (near and far) since they plan a lot of incentive events for their agents. The person you want to reach is the marketing manager so you might choose 3 activities that will get your business in front of as many insurance marketing managers as you can without breaking your marketing budget.
Closest to the Target
By “closest to the target” I mean the one activity that gives you confirmation that your company is being viewed by your target market. These kinds of activities might include:
- Becoming a sponsor at an insurance industry trade shows
- Face to face meetings with the marketing manager (hard to secure, but possible)
Becoming of sponsor of key events put on by the industry representing your target market is a time honored way of getting in front of potential clients and customers. This may involve a significant investment but it could pay for itself many times over in the years to come.
Tip: Sponsorship packages come in many levels to accommodate large and small budgets. Additionally, many insurance associations who put on trade shows for their members will be willing to work with sponsors to create a tailor made package to better fit varying budgets. Remember to ask and explore your sponsorship options.
You could also launch a direct marketing campaign where you send personalized letters to marketing managers at all the possible insurance firms on your “ideal client” list. To avoid the recycling bin, you’ll have to send a pretty impressive, well-written marketing letter that truly speaks to the particular needs of each company and you’ll have to follow-up with a phone call. But this kind of campaign is very doable and considered an effective and professional way to market.
Stand out in the Crowd
If you don’t have the resources to become a sponsor or to confirm in-person meetings with potential clients, you could use the power of the Internet, and in particular search engine optimization to reach your target (explanation coming).
Remember, our hypothetical client – the insurance industry marketing manager – is looking for cost effective ways to produce her company’s quarterly incentive meetings for agents. Like any sharp marketer, she’ll likely use the search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing) to get ideas on the kinds of services she can use to make her job easier.
So if our hypothetical entrepreneur lives in Cincinnati and is hoping to connect with an insurance company looking for her event planning skills it would be in her best interest to ensure that her website includes key words that would attract Cincinnati area marketing managers in the insurance industry.
Using search engine optimized (SEO) web copy is one of the most cost-effective ways to market online today. SEO copy includes the search phrases most used by your target market. This of course implies that you’ve done the research using a tool like Google Adwords or WordTracker to actually find the most popular (but only moderately competitive) phrases for your market.
Tip: When choosing phrases to include in your web copy, don’t choose the most popular as it will be more difficult for you to achieve the top rank for a popular search term. Choose less competitive search terms then work hard to ensure your website is optimized for those terms. You’ll get top ranking faster with this approach.
Embarking on a SEO marketing strategy is not only effective it’s “cost-effective.” Remember traditional marketing methods often require expensive market research and costly advertising to place your message before your market. You could spend several thousand dollars with that approach.
By comparison, conducting an online a search of phrases and optimizing copy on your website is a tiny fraction of the cost of traditional marketing methods.
Plus you’ll be achieving two objectives with one tactic – you’ll be providing interesting copy for your target audience (copy that’s filled with the words, ideas and concepts they are interested in) AND you’ll be pulling in prospects through the search engines.
If you haven’t the time or inclination to properly prepare your content in this manner, consider outsourcing your web copy content creation to ensure this is a strategy that get’s done. This will be an investment that will drive sales and profits for you into the future.
Review
So there you have it – three effective ways to position your company in front of your prospective customer:
- Sponsorship
- Direct mail campaign
- Search Engine Optimized web copy
Choose one or all three tactics and remember to bring in help if you think your lack of time or marketing experience will prevent implementation.
To your success!
