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If you offer a service that you sell online, you might be thinking about offering a course or a portfolio of courses. These courses can help you sell your other products and services, as well as offer a somewhat passive source of incremental income. There is a lot of upfront work that goes into creating your course. However, once you do that work, your course should only need to be updated when some piece of information changes or if your want to introduce a new concept or module.
Do you ever feel like you are screaming into a wind tunnel? No matter what market your brand and business are in, consumers are inundated with so many messages every day that it can be difficult to stand out. Even if your market isn't highly competitive, your customers are still seeing tons of messages from the many brands who sell them other products and services. You want your brand to be remembered. You want your audience to hear or see your messages and think, "Yeah, that's me! That product could really help me."
Consistency is more than doing or saying the same thing again and again. It's also showing up where and when your potential customers expect to find you. If you create consistency in your messages, presence (both online and off), and schedule, you can form long-term relationships with your clients and customers that will generate incremental business over time.
Consistency should start with your branding. Your message should be present throughout and solidified within your website and any physical presence that you have. Your topics and individual articles can branch a bit further with the messages that you create and share through your email communication and your other customer outreach, but the underlying message should be the same across all channels and customer touchpoints.
At Silver Shade Group, we help our clients with all different kinds of marketing solutions. Sometimes we edit or create print collateral, sometimes we write digital content, and sometimes we create brand or product launch strategies. In every case, the work comes down to the same basic concepts and questions. Who is my customer? What do they want to buy? How can I get my products in front of them at the right time? How do I price my products and services so that those customers will make a purchase? If you can answer these questions, you're on the path to a successful product launch, brand refresh, website update, or strategy session.
Nowadays, everyone is online. Whether you do business online or not, your customers are looking (searching) for you there. They want to know as much about you and their potential experience as possible before they walk in your door or pick up the phone. They want to interact with you via social media or email or another platform. Your customers are also looking for information, sometimes even from the front door or parking lot of your shop. If you don't provide that information, it will come from either generic search results or your competitor.
If you create a strong website that provides information about your business and your industry at large, you'll gain greater access to your audience and the ability to communicate with them directly. Your website should educate your clients about the experience they will have with you and the products and services that you offer. Whether you sell online or not, a website is always an opportunity for education.
A digital marketing strategy is a plan to increase brand awareness or grow sales using digital channels. Digital channels include everything from your own website and email campaigns to social media and blogs. A good digital marketing strategy helps you reach your customers wherever they want to interact with you by providing several opportunities to learn about, interact with, and possibly even purchase from your business. You can hire a marketing pro to create your digital marketing strategy as part of a larger marketing plan or on its own. Either way, your professional will most likely provide you with a comprehensive plan that leverages your website, email list, social media, and outreach.
Social Media planning is important for any entrepreneur or small business trying to build a following for their products and services. If you know how and where to spend your time and create a social media strategy around your business, you can leverage your social media presence to increase your brand awareness and grow your audience. If you operate without a strategy, you can waste valuable time and resources on a platform that does nothing for your business.
Tracking your marketing campaigns while they run is always a good idea. Tracking campaigns allows you to make changes midstream, especially for social media and other digital campaigns. It is also a good idea to compare all of your campaigns at the end of the year to measure the results against one another and determine what you want to run again v. what was not beneficial. December is a great time to review what worked and didn’t work in your marketing for the current year and to create a plan for the year ahead. If you do the comparison review first, you can use the things you learned this year to make next year even better for your business.
