Marketing Basics
Marketing is the process of promoting and selling products or services to customers. It involves understanding customer needs and preferences, creating value for customers through products or services, and communicating that value effectively to generate sales and build customer relationships. See below for more info.
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Establishing Your Brand (Name, Logo, Design)
Establishing a strong brand identity is crucial for businesses to differentiate themselves in the market. This includes choosing a memorable name, designing a distinctive logo, and crafting a cohesive visual identity through design elements such as colors, fonts, and imagery. Consistency across all branding elements helps reinforce brand recognition and build trust with customers.
Are you a DIY type of person? If yes, check out PlaceIt for loads of easy to use templates that are sure to get the creative juices flowing!
And if not, don't worry, we've got you covered - visit Fiverr and engage a designer to do the work for you. Fiverr has loads of designers from around the world who are very competitively priced.
Key elements of a good advertisements
A good advertisement effectively grabs attention, communicates a clear message, creates desire for the product or service, and prompts action from the audience.
We recommend the good old AIDA method - it involves preparing four parts to any advert including:
1 - Attention grabbing headline or design
2 - Information that's of interest (e.g. benefits)
3- Desire/decision (what will the product do for the buyer, e.g. 'save you time and money). This is your value proposition.
4 - Action or 'call to action'. Don't just putting your phone number, website name or email address - add a button (make it easy) and think click-bait with your wording by having something like 'first 100 people to call this month get a 70% discount on our joining fee'.
Remember to establish your brand (see above) before advertising so that all of your ads include your logo and are easily identifying as belonging to you.
You can also have some fun with advertising, especially to gain 'attention', share 'information' and create 'desire' but it could all be for nothing if you fail to get the 'action' right by forgetting to include your company name/contact details/link for further info.
Target Audience:
Identifying and understanding your target audience is essential for successful marketing. This involves researching your potential customers and their behaviours to help tailor marketing strategies and messages that resonate with their preferences and needs. For instance, you wouldn't use the same exact approach and targeting to sell both men's shavers and knitting neddles.
Niche:
Finding a niche involves focusing on a specific segment of the market with unique needs or preferences. Niche marketing allows businesses to differentiate themselves and attract a dedicated customer base by offering specialized products or services that cater to niche audiences.
Checkout our Youtube video about Channel Strategies today.
Dangers of Advertising Only on Social Media
Relying solely on social media for advertising can pose risks such as limited reach, dependence on algorithm changes, and lack of control over the platform. Diversifying advertising channels helps mitigate these risks and ensures reaching a wider audience across various platforms.
For instance, if you build your entire marketing strategy around social media marketing using Meta/Facebook and your account gets hacked, restricted or shut-down... you lose everything! The FB Community Standards are notoriously tricky and are constantly changing. So best practice is not to rely on only one 'channel' (e.g. Meta/Facebook).
Online Presence (Website, Social Media Channels, and LinkedIn):
Building a strong online presence is essential for modern businesses. This includes having a professional website that serves as a central hub for information and transactions, maintaining active social media channels to engage with customers and build relationships, and leveraging professional networking platforms like LinkedIn to showcase expertise and connect with industry professionals.
If you know how to build a website, skip to the next section. If not, there are three key stages with web development: register a website name, organise website hosting, build your site and publish it online (make sure you have an SSL certificate).
Register your domain (company) name using Namesilo of Namecheap - we also suggest you use Namecheckr (before finalising your purchase) to see if the same name is available across other channels like social media too.
Website hosting - we recommend Hostlinger and GreenGeeks. Both provide website builders but Wordpress is also a great option for beginners, especially as its supported by lots of hosting providers so if you ever decide to change providers, you can easily take your site with you.
Budget:
Allocating a marketing budget involves determining how much to spend on various marketing activities based on business goals, target audience and available resources. It's essential to prioritize investments that deliver the highest return on investment (ROI) and continuously evaluate and adjust budget allocations based on performance and market conditions.
If you only have a limited budget, you want to keep costs down until you start experiencing success. So testing is very important. For instance, if you start by running both Facebook/Meta ads at $50 per week plus you spend a further $50 on Google advertising but you discover that all your leads are coming via Meta/Facebook, it would probably be a good idea to increase the amount you spend with Meta and decrease or discontinue using Google. However, we always suggest you use more than one channel (especially if it's a social media channel) in case there's ever a problem. So remember to think like an investor and diversity!
Also as a rough rule of thumb, creating a logo will cost $20, buying a domain in the first year might be $3-5, buying a year's worth of website hosting will cost you around $60 if you use our links to get great introductory deals and running some ad testing on Meta/FB and Google could cost $20-50 per week plus you might even want business cards, etc. So realistically for the options listed above, you're looking at around $600-1200 for your first 6 months, although you don't have to pay it all at once. Then the next 6 months and beyond is harder to estimate - you've already covered the basic 'start up' type costs but that is only the beginning. If you've achieved some success, you look at what's working and do more of the same. Plus you look for new or other ways to market your business. Of course, you learn from your mistakes as a way to avoid methods and expenditure that are not getting results.
Evaluation:
Evaluating marketing efforts involves measuring key performance indicators (KPIs) such as sales, website traffic, conversion rates, and brand awareness to assess the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. Analyzing data and feedback allows businesses to identify strengths and weaknesses, optimize strategies, and make informed decisions to improve future marketing initiatives.
If the info above sounds overwhelming, don't worry. Money is a really simple measure you could use instead - did you make more money that you spent? And was the ROI worth it? Often in the beginning, your ROI is not good but keeping track of your actions and expenditure, helps inform your next actions and can help you focus on the channels and activities that are getting the best results. Over time, by applying what you learn through testing, you should see drastic improvements.
Google Analytics can help you gather information about website visitors. There are many paid services, which can be a lot easier to use but they are often expensive. You can also get data from Meta/Facebook, instagram, Tiktok, etc. Plus you should be comparing your expenditure against your income.
Do lots of research/testing and fail fast where possible - this means don't spend millions developing a business only to find that you get no sales. It's better to make a start and test your approach, product and/or offers before spending an excessive amoun to of time, effort OR money. This might feel like you're starting 'slow' but it's important. Once you achieve some success, you can scale your operation and aim for the moon!
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Experienced marketers might also benefit from using Clickfunnels or a platform like Funnel Freedom