The world is filled with fabulous ideas and broke business owners with great products or services but no sales.
The unfortunate truth is, ideas are not what drives most business success. Marketing does. So before you quit your day job to branch out on your own, it pays to have a solid marketing plan in place. A marketing plan will help you chart a course for making meaningful connections with your ideal client audience.
Remember that marketing isn’t the same as sales. While both very important to your business, the two each have very distinct roles. Sales is simply having a conversation or a series of conversations that includes asking for purchase of your product or service. Marketing includes all of the activity necessary to position yourself to have a sales conversation.
In this week’s blog, I’m sharing examples of some of those activities. You don’t have to struggle to come up with marketing ideas to help boost your sales, especially in today’s digital world. Start with these 4 ideas to get your creative juices flowing.
Free Webinars
For information product sellers, coaches, and service providers, one of the best sources of new clients is in free training webinars. No matter what your niche, the promise of in-depth training at no cost is enough to entice potential clients to part with an email address (which you’ll be able to market to later) and an hour of their time.
Not only that, but webinars are a fantastic way for those potential customers to get to know you better. And the better they know you, the more likely they are to buy.
Content Marketing
Not comfortable hosting a webinar? Hit the keyboard and start sharing your thoughts and ideas via your blog, ebooks, guest articles and other written content. For internet marketers, this gives readers a taste of what they can expect from your product. If you sell physical products, it provides the perfect opportunity to share usage tips and other important information with your buyers.
Of course, there’s another important benefit to content marketing, too: search engine optimization. Google and other search engines index the words on your website and use the information to present search results to their users. Content marketing is a tool you can use to make the most of these results, and to bring more potential buyers to your website.
Live-Streaming
Another alternative to hosting webinars, and a simple way to flex your content marketing muscle is to engage in live-streaming. There are many different live-streaming options available. Periscope, Facebook and Snap-Chat have been around for sometime now, but a newcomer to the live-streaming game is Instagram and its insta-stories feature.
A word of caution however, although these marketing options help you to stay fresh, current, and accessible to your audience, it’s important to plan the content that you’re sharing using these platforms. The free-flowing nature of these platforms are no excuse for being lackadaisical or overly casual with the content you share. Remember, you are always representing your brand, and being prepared is a positive reflection of the that brand.
To help with your marketing planning, I invite you to download my FREE InstaPlanning Tool Here – Instagram Marketing Planner.
Paid Advertising
Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google and plenty of other sites all offer paid placement, and with today’s powerful analytics tools, it’s easy to create ads and drive traffic inexpensively. Consider starting with Facebook, since the cost is low and it’s easy to target your ads to your ideal client. Once you’ve perfected your funnel, you can branch out into more costly ads with a larger reach, such as Google AdWords or another ad network.
Don’t limit yourself to these three marketing methods though. There are dozens of others you can try, including affiliate programs, JV partnerships, automated funnels, direct mail campaigns, and even television advertising. The key is to keep testing and tweaking to make the most of every marketing effort, so that your business continues to grow.
In my private Facebook community created specifically for entrepreneurial women, The M.A.D. Money Society, we focus on what matters in your business and what will really help you achieve your financial dreams. We keep it simple. No fancy talk. No flowery prose. We’re just a bunch of authentic dream-girls destined for success. If you’ve been looking for a community where you can just be yourself and hang out on the way to your dream life, come chill with us!
xoxo,
