Marketing a small business is quite the challenge. You’re faced with the task of introducing your brand, making it stick, and converting traffic into sales. The limited resources you have, both in time and money, don’t leave you a lot of room for errors. This is why you must make every effort count by foolproofing your marketing strategy.
That said, you’ll inevitably make a few blunders along the way. If you’ve been feeling discouraged lately because of a few slip-ups you made, however, then it’s time to set your perspective straight. Are you really doing as poorly as you think, or are you actually on the right track? Knowing where you currently stand in terms of marketing will not only boost your confidence but enable your company to grow more speedily and efficiently in the long run.
You Consistently Track and Interpret Results
Tracking is a lot of work, especially if you’re new to it and fail to utilize the correct tools. This is why a lot of small companies don’t even start, and big companies stop midway. Refusing to track everything, from your store’s foot traffic to your pay-per-click ad conversions, keeps your company from winning in many ways.
First of all, you won’t have any idea if your effort is actually paying off. No numbers and charts are indicating whether you did better than the previous month or the previous year. Furthermore, you are likely to invest blindly in marketing efforts.
The avenues you’re focusing on might not be your brand’s strength, which robs you of opportunities in sales and growth. This is why, if you’ve been consistent in tracking your results and using them to shape your marketing strategies, then you’re definitely doing better than you think.
You Work with Marketing Professionals
This could range from hiring a seasoned marketing specialist to partnering with digital marketing companies. Different companies have different needs in terms of outsourcing and developing in-house specialists. Regardless, you gain a competitive edge by allowing professionals to drive your marketing efforts instead of DIY-ing it.
While it’s true that you can learn to market on your own, you have to understand that the best in the field studied it in actual universities and gained experience from seasoned organizations. You will fall behind unless you have someone on your side who truly understands the competition, the market, the trends, and how your brand can carve a place in all these.
In case you’re working with marketing professionals in any capacity, then you’re on the right track.
You Keep Tabs on Your Competitors
There’s no doubt that you’ll get ahead in the game when you track your competitors and use the information you glean wisely. Knowing exactly what they did what, they’re doing, and what they plan to do can save you a lot of time and effort. First of all, you can avoid strategies that they’ve already proven are futile. Secondly, you can build on their successes and make them your own.
When doing your research, don’t limit your scope to local businesses that are similar to yours. Consider those in other regions and foreign countries, too. If you’ve been doing this for a while, you know just how big of a difference this can make to your marketing efforts. Keep on studying your competitors!
You’ve Identified and Studied Your Audience
It’s only normal that you start a business targeting a specific demographic only to find out that you should be targeting a completely different audience altogether. What’s important is that you know who you’re marketing to now, and you are an expert in their consumer behavior.
Channeling all your focus into knowing your customers and the patterns they operate in can be liberating to your business marketing-wise. If you’ve exerted effort into zeroing in on the right demographic and studying them, then you’re business is doing something right for sure.
Your Social Media Efforts Redirect to Your Website
Social media, while undoubtedly beneficial, should only be considered as a tool, not a foundation for your business. After all, what happens when your platforms become outdated and lose followers? This is the reason you should always redirect people to your website. It’s where you can maximize your traffic and truly get the most out of your sales.
If your social media efforts do this, then it’s safe to say you’ve done well in conquering this aspect of marketing.
What’s Your Status?
Did you tick off every item on the list, or have you fallen a bit short in this assessment? Now that you have a better perspective of your current standing in the marketing arena, you can begin to work on your weaknesses and build on your strengths. You’re an entrepreneur, after all. Learning from your mistakes should be your forte.
