As businesses reshape their operations throughout the year, it is crucial to continue promotional actions and stay in touch with potential clients. Some companies have cut down on such activities as they temporarily shut their doors or pivoted to at-home work.
However, if your business is operating, then it needs to be promoting and marketing.
Ten Marketing Tips for Your Business
At Business Success Consulting Group, we focus on creating effective policies, processes, and procedures for every kind of business. Therefore, our goals here are to encourage you to promote through every means possible, and to help you decide which actions you will take to create appropriate processes for successful marketing campaigns. Here are ideas to consider:
1. Review past successful campaigns
Even as things change, a review of past campaigns can be an excellent springboard to inspire new campaigns. Additionally, you and your marketing team can learn from previous mistakes and create appropriate policies and procedures to avoid similar mistakes in your upcoming marketing efforts.
2. Collaborate with complementary businesses
With much of our networking occurring online, it is more important than ever for the business community to support one another. There are many, many ways that complementary or associated businesses can work together. Here are three ideas:
- If your business is traditionally a brick-and-mortar store, talk with shopfronts on your street about coordinating how people visit. Can you all create signs or even a “___ Street” website that allows customers to book visits from store to store? Can you all offer the same hand sanitizing stations, free masks, etc., to ensure customers feel comfortable when entering your street?
- Talk with your networking group about the best way to refer clients to one another. Additionally, ensure you are educated about what businesses are part of your networking group, and share your online business information with the group.
- Create webinars with those in related fields. Invite your mailing list and ask your fellow presenters to invite theirs.
3. Create a marketing survey
Survey your clients and potential clients to understand what they need, where they are consuming content, and how they consume content. Most business owners have done formal or informal marketing surveys to find out what clients need, but many don’t know much more than that. Right now is a great time to dig in and discover where clients "live" online, what type of content they like, and where they go to get that type of content. This information will tell you to which channels you should expand your marketing campaign.
4. Reach customers where they are at
Once you have discovered where customers are going for their information, you can set up a campaign to reach them on those channels. The questions to ask here are - how do you reach them? Do you create an ad, potentially viral content, or build an online group?
Additionally, what policies and procedures need to be put in place for customer interaction on this new platform so that every potential client is added to your sales funnel?
5. Provide genuinely helpful free resources
Businesses across the US have developed webinars, ebooks, and social media groups that provide free information and community for clients. If your company is opening its doors, there are also things like hand sanitizing stations, free masks, and cart/basket sterilization services that can be provided. Additionally, now may be a great time to kickstart your business by offering some free in-person services by appointment.
Some examples of free resources we have seen on offer both online and in-stores are:
- Educational pamphlets both on and offline
- Ebooks and webinars
- Masks and/or gloves
- Hand sanitizer
- Sanitizing wipes
- DIY-type videos for businesses
- Checklists
- Industry magazines
- Branded single-use items
6. Keep daily track of metrics so your marketing team can stay agile as things change
It can be difficult to take daily stock of any plan, but it’s important to see how things are progressing on the day-to-day right now. So, ensure that metrics are tracked daily, weekly, and monthly to ensure that you and your team have a full picture and can make immediate changes if something isn’t working or a new external circumstance occurs.
7. Do good works and make sure these are known
While marketing and PR are different actions, it is vital to use PR to bolster your marketing activities. Whether your business becomes involved in charitable work or you are running a campaign of giving out free masks at the door, these good works should be shared far and wide.
Ensure that any new and interesting activity done in your business is shared with the press and with your community at large.
8. Review your digital presence
With so many businesses reshaping to go completely digital, now is a great time to review your presence online. The focus in the last several months has been to get your team and company into a productive routine online. In this review, be sure that you take a step back and look at the whole picture. Ask yourself, do customers have to jump through hoops to reach your business - or is everything seamless?
9. Make sure your presence remains consistent
Not only should your branding be consistent through all of your online and offline platforms, but the way your customers interact with the company should also be consistent. Create processes and procedures to ensure customer experience remains homogeneous throughout every department in your company.
10. Review your value proposition
Every marketing message your company sends should be forwarding your company’s value proposition. So, make sure it is sharp, clear, and well-defined.
As you move forward with outreach and marketing through the second half of 2020, it is vital that you document processes and procedures to ensure consistency. This is an unprecedented time, but, with a stable foundation, your business is up to the challenge and able to thrive.
Are you ready to grow your business and prosper through the second half of 2020? Contact Business Success Consulting Group today for a free consultation.
