Now that the holidays are behind us, it is time to get back into the swing of all things marketing and business building. You have heard me talk a lot about goal setting lately because it is important to go into a new year with clear intentions and objectives that you want to achieve. I recently created a little cheat sheet about how you can set effective goals. (You can take a look right here.)
Once you are all set with that, it’s time to take decisive action that will move yourself closer to your goal. You might have heard the saying
Success in business is 80 % mindset and 20% marketing.
Well, that is true and today we are going to focus on the marketing portion. I want to share with you some strategies that you can implement immediately.
As you go about marketing your product or service you want to be mindful of ALL the opportunities you have to connect with your audience through owned, earned and paid channels. What do I mean by that?
OWNED – for example your website or if you are a brick and mortar business your store front.
EARNED – your social media followers. You have earned them through cultivating and nurturing them over time. These are also the people on your list.
PAID – as in paid advertising. Google key words, Facebook Ads, boosted posts,etc.
These are your main consumer touch points, your opportunity to get your message in front of your potential clients.
Take a moment and think about what these are for you. Then develop your plan of how you can connect the dots between all of them so your audience gets to see your message multiple times through different channels.
Studies have shown that in this day and age people need to see a message more than once for them to take the desired action. Just think about it for a moment, that is why large corporations keep running the same TV spots over and over, right? After a while the message sinks in and when you are in need of that particular product, that brand is coming to mind and you are more likely to purchase it.
This is basic human psychology and it is no different for your business. So what does this look like?
Well, here is a real life case study. The other day I was working with a client who is gearing up for a launch. We are running Facebook Ads to a highly targeted audience while at the same time leveraging her Facebook business page to announce the launch on the cover photo(=prime OWNED real estate) complimented with a strong call to actionthat clicks through to the webpage we are a promoting with ads.
At the same time other marketing activities are happening:
Targeted social media posts are going up daily on two key platforms (EARNED).
Newsletters (EARNED) are going out in a specific sequence aligned with the Facebook Ads.
The website is being boosted through Google Ad Words (PAID) and the business is also promoted on a major travel portal (PAID).
This is what connecting your marketing dots is all about.
You get your message out everywhere you can where you know your target audience hangs out.
One of the things to keep in mind is that while you might slightly tweak your advertising message for these different channels you want to stay with the same look and feel across all of them so your potential clients immediately recognize your brand.
I will share more about how you can ensure brand integrity in next week’s blog. Stay tuned!
Can you tell I am so excited about this year. It’s already off to a really good start.
Here is to your success in 2016!
Much love,
Simona