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5 Ways to Create a Proper Marketing Strategy for Your Small Business

A proper marketing strategy is the vital cornerstone of any and every single business out there. Without that, all your efforts to entice and attract customers are likely to be in vain. If the foundations of your strategy itself are weak them, then your entire business could just as well come crashing down like a badly erected tent.

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The foundation and ultimate focus should be to ensure that your products/services or both match up to customer needs and meet them in every way possible, not to mention developing a profitable and long-term relationship with them. Apart from the usual traditional methods of direct advertising and print marketing, you also have the Internet as your ally with Web advertising, email marketing plus the unholy trio of Twitter, Facebook and YouTube as well. Here are some of the ways to create a watertight marketing strategy:-

1- Identifying and understanding your target audience: Probably one of the most important aspects. You have to constantly keep asking “What are the motivations of your customers?”, “Which sites do they use regularly?” and so on. These questions can only be answered once you identify them plus once this is done, you will have a much better idea of how to reach out to them. Also, if you are considering distributing promotional products among the masses, it is important to understand your audience first. If you want to succeed faster and be better than you currently are, this is a no brainer.

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2- Pick and choose your channels of communication: This is the next logical step in relation to understanding your target audience. Just because the vast majority of people use Facebook or read magazines doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s exactly where most of your customers will be. After all, it does vary across the board. Identify and measure the strength and weakness of every channel by determining how each one will help you reach your business objectives.

3- Spot a particular niche where only you can deliver: This itself should be enough to set you apart from the rest of the competition and your peers. Once you spot that particular niche, it can very well end up being the proverbial ace up your sleeve. Basically, you need to look at options and ideas that are yet to be tapped. Like say for example if you happen to own a food delivery service, the promise of a free bottle of water or a beverage along with the meal could be a very satisfying prospect for your customers and will help you gain more fans.

4- The 3 C’s for marketing: In this regard, the truth of the matter is that it can take more than just a couple of impressions for a person to recognize and appreciate your brand/service, following the 3 C’s in a step-by-step procedure would be a pretty good bet. So first and foremost, communications in the form of ads and offers, need to be clear as crystal (without any fluff), followed by compelling content (that is right on topic and interesting to the reader) and lastly, consistent. Adding to that, every bit of content that you generate needs to be present in as many modes of communications as possible. That’s when your overall reach will widen.

5- Aim for consistency: Whether this is concerning the design, graphics/photography to even the font and colour that you use, make sure that the overall feel is unifying and unchanging so that it looks like everything is from the same company and that by opening your website, people would feel an immediate visual connection between the print and digital aspects of your brand.

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Ultimately once you have outlined your marketing strategy and then successfully implemented it, you should primarily focus to keeping tabs on its effectiveness plus making the necessary adjustments in order to maintain the level of success. By doing that you will also be able to avoid both the short and long-term pitfalls that may or may not arise.

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