How to create a marketing plan for your small business - build a brand, target customers and set prices that will maximise sales.
The internet has transformed business marketing. No matter what you do, the internet is likely to be at the heart of your marketing strategy.
Good advertising puts the right marketing message in front of the right people at the right time, raising awareness of your business.
Customer care is at the heart of all successful companies. It can help you develop customer loyalty and improve relationships with your customers.
Sales bring in the money that enables your business to survive and grow. Your sales strategy will be driven by your sales objectives.
Market research exists to guide your business decisions by giving you insight into your market, competitors, products, marketing and your customers.
Exhibitions and events are valuable for businesses because they allow face-to-face communication and offer opportunities for networking.
Every social media site has its own specific challenges, but it's important to have a cohesive strategic approach to all of your social media activity to ensure you are maximising results.
A social media strategy can help you:
You should start by identifying the audience you want to reach and the social media apps that can help you. Then you need to think about what you want to post, where and how often.
The amount of time you spend on each site will differ; the most important thing is to establish regular habits and make sure you are not letting time spent on social media drift. Social media activity needs to be planned, targeted and analysed just like any other marketing activity.
You can maximise results by creating a strong identity on social media that reflects your brand values and supports your business vision. This starts with the social media profiles that represent you and your business.
Make sure all of your team are speaking with one voice on social media to avoid rogue messages damaging your reputation. Create a social media policy for your business to ensure everyone knows what's expected of them.
It's well worth using social media tools, such as Hootsuite, to schedule posts in advance and coordinate them across multiple social media sites. This will support your efforts to create powerful and consistent messages and it will also ensure you are being efficient with your time.
Protecting your reputation and managing customer service online is a vital part of your social media strategy. It's not just about sending the right messages yourself; you'll also need to monitor posts and mentions that could bring your business into disrepute.
Make sure any online complaints are dealt with in a timely and effective way - it's best to respond publicly at first and then, if you can, take the communication offline in order to provide a satisfactory resolution.
You won't get tangible results from social media straight away but over time, your efforts will be rewarded with new contacts, higher brand exposure, leads and even sales.
In order to get there, it's good practice to set small achievable goals - such as attracting a certain number of followers - to help you stay on track.
Every social media site has its own analytics tools that can help you monitor progress. By responding to trends, taking advantage of opportunities and tweaking your strategy accordingly, you can improve your results.
Social media content produced in partnership with Luan Wise.
