There are countless books and courses on getbusinesstoday marketing and how to do it properly. You’ve probably read or attended some yourself. But, do you feel like you have a good grasp of marketing?
Do you fully understand all the processes involved and how to best apply them to your company? When all the cards are on the table, most small-to-medium businesses don’t. Or at the very least, they understand these concepts.
What Is Business Marketing?
Everything a business does, everything you do to sell products and services – is marketing. Every decision you make, if it’s about how to put your products or services in the hands of consumers, is business marketing.
The foundations of marketing are relatively easy to explain and understand. But mastering these essential concepts can mean the difference between success and failure.
You don’t have to micromanage all marketing that your business does. In fact, it’s probably a good idea to hire a professional. However, that doesn’t replace the need to have a solid knowledge of marketing strategy. Business owners should always have a proactive role in their company’s marketing tactics.
Essential Components of a Good Marketing Strategy
Not all marketing concepts will apply to every business. Some will be more relevant than others, but as an entrepreneur you should be familiar with all of them.
Inbound Marketing
Think of inbound marketing as your workhorse.
It’s a set of marketing tactics designed to maintain a steady influx of customers into your sales process. This isn’t about pushing your brand to generate leads or direct conversion.
Inbound marketing uses various channels in creative ways to reach as many people as possible. Tools such as SEO optimization and social media channels are ideal for this type of marketing. The goal is to drive high volumes of quality traffic that can convert through brand engagement in the long run.
Direct Marketing
If inbound marketing is your workhorse, think of direct marketing as your racehorse.
Direct marketing includes sales tactics designed to produce an instant response. Things like calls to action in online or broadcast media fall into this category.
Regardless of what else you do, direct marketing is an important part of any marketing strategy. It allows you to instantly measure success or failure based on response rates.
Knowing how people are responding to one offering versus another is crucial.
Outbound Marketing
This is where the rubber really meets the road.
In outbound marketing, you’re reaching out to prospects and basically saying “buy from me.” This is typically what people think of when they hear the word marketing.
Outbound marketing includes sales calls, print ads, broadcast ads, door-to-door sales and much more. Any activity in which you’re reaching out to potential customers with an offering figures into this definition.
Though a staple in countless marketing strategies, it’s not very effective. It’s hard to figure out if it’s really working and people are getting savvier and blocking the majority of this type of marketing.
Content Marketing
This is the new-old way to market.
Most smart businesses realize that people are OK with marketing, as long as they get something in return. For example, if you create great content, consumers will be happy to hear from you.
Therefore, every channel you have should start by giving value in return for your customers’ attention.
Social Media Marketing
It is inescapable, omnipresent, and pervasive.
Marketing is about getting attention. If you can’t get people’s attention, you have no one to market to.
The biggest attention vacuums nowadays are social media platforms. It goes without saying that any marketing strategy that doesn’t include social media, is off to a bad start.
Start with Solid Foundations
Each of these components has its own place in the puzzle. Some may be more important to your business than others. But only by understanding them all can you find your way out of the marketing madness.
Don’t be a passive business owner. Take charge of your marketing strategies and stop wasting resources on marketing that doesn’t deliver.
Pamela Wigglesworth, CSP is an international marketing consultant, speaker and the CEO of Experiential Hands-on Learning based in Asia. She is the author of The 50-60 Something ™ Start-up Entrepreneur and works with organizations across multiple industries to help them increase brand awareness, increase leads and ultimately increase sales.
Business marketing is one of the most important parts that your business needs to be addressed with careful attention and proactive thoughts. In last decade or so, the importance of business marketing has increased volcanically, as the advent of Internet and online business has ushered a whole new era in business. It should be noted that the competition and urgency among businessmen has increased due to the fact that Internet has rendered a whole world as a virtual world, and you never know when and from where a potential competitor has entered your territory unnoticed by you. And this is where proper business marketing strategies and sound business marketing plans play their part to make you the choicest businessman for your customers and dealers.
For successful business marketing, you need to develop a proper business marketing plan, and then gauge its performance for your business growth. There are many things that your business marketing plan needs to address and these points may include some of the following:
o What are your business marketing goals
This actually delineates what are you looking for. What goals you have set for your business and what are you looking to achieve through your marketing plans?
o What is your target audience
This is an important point that you need to know beforehand, for, it describes the scope and range of your business marketing plan. There is no advantage of advertising your fashion prone apparels to the old people, for, they are less likely to buy it. You must be very clear about who you are addressing and will your audience generate the leads that you are looking for.
Sometimes, you keep on targeting wrong audience that do not have the need of your products and expertise, and the result is as you can think: you are wasting your money and not getting the results that you have set for your business. So, it becomes utterly necessary to chalk out the group of people that you are going to address and market your business. Business marketing plans often have detailed study of the audience: their liking, their predominant choice, and their habitual circumstances, for, actually audience is the thing for which business marketing is done!
o Deciding business marketing system
As it is already said that Internet has made business marketing a whole new concept, every growing business should address the need of Internet or online marketing. Apart from the conventional advertisement systems in newspapers, magazines, online marketing tools should be incorporated in the business marketing plan, which may include: search engine optimization, e-mail marketing, banner ads, etc.
At the end, we can say that business marketing has grown wide and wild with the added horizons of Internet and online business, and a business owner should be proactive enough to handle the situation steadily and should incorporate all possible techniques for better business marketing plans and strategies.
