Every small business needs to have an effective marketing strategy. Here are some ideas for developing a simple 3-step process. Use these steps for each goal you set for your business and keep it simple. The more complicated we make it, chances are, it won’t get done.
1 – Setting a Goal
First decide what you want to achieve for your business. Here are some common goals for online businesses.
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- Increase traffic to your website.
- Grow an email list to 500 interested prospects.
- Sell more products every month.
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Tip
Your goals should be SMART GOALS:
Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound.
Specific – set one goal at a time.
Measurable – use a visual tool to check your progress.
Achievable – is what you want actually possible to achieve?
Relevant – make your goals relevant to your audience.
Time-bound – if we don’t set a clock for when we want the outcome, we will act as if we have all the time in the world and the goal will not be as important to you.
Self-Defeating Goals
Don’t set goals that are not achievable within the time frame you want or that are too extravagant. This can be self-defeating and cause you to give up on your strategy.
For example, growing an email list of 500 may not be reasonable to accomplish in one month but very doable in 6 months.
2 – Marketing Strategy
Now that you know what business goals you want to achieve, it’s time to get started building your strategy.
A Marketing strategy should outline your overall game plan for achieving your goals. It should focus on the details of how you’ll achieve those goals.
Using our example of growing your list to 500 here are some example strategies that will help you achieve this goal.
- Optimize your website content & blog posts to get more visitors from Google (free traffic)
- If you are a local business get listed on Google.
- Create a valuable FREE OFFER that will entice subscriptions.
- Consistently publish content that solves problems for your potential client or customer.
How to accomplish your marketing strategy to grow your list to 500 within 6 months, takes careful consideration, planning and putting your tactics into action.
3 – Marketing Tactics
Tactics are the actions you will take to support each strategy. To simplify, strategy refers to the plan to achieve a goal while the tactic is how you execute the plan.
Our example goal is to grow your list to 500 in 6 months.
Tactics we will use for this strategy:
- Subject Matter and Keyword Research.
- Optimize all pages of my website.
- Get help to claim my listing on Google & make regular posts.
- Write, edit & publish a compelling FREE OFFER.
- Create an Email Account.
- Connect my call to action for the free offer to my email list.
- Write follow up emails to stay in touch with my list.
- Consistently publish blog content and share it out on the web.
In Summary
All of this may sound overwhelming but remember that it’s not all done in one day. Creating this marketing strategy & all the parts needed to accomplish your goals should be something that is carefully set up & tested.
This simple marketing strategy is something you will have working for your business for a long time to come and will over time help you reach many of your online marketing goals.
Remember…keep it simple and work on one goal at a time.