Here are the links to the rest of the blogs in the series if you missed them and would like to check them out - Biggest Marketing Mistakes Every Business Owner Makes - Part 1, Biggest Marketing Mistakes Every Business Owner Makes - Part 2, Biggest Marketing Mistakes Every Business Owner Makes - Part 3, Biggest Marketing Mistakes Every Business Owner Makes - Part 4 and Biggest Marketing Mistakes Every Business Owner Makes - Part 5. Today’s mistake is about treating marketing as an event.
Mistake - You think marketing is an event.
Marketing is not an event - it is a daily and consistent process. It is very common for business owners to simply focus their marketing around their events. While it is very important to market your events (I market my events like a madwoman), it is also very important to keep a steady stream of general marketing flowing to continually attract new customers and stay “top of mind’ for current customers.
Too many businesses blast out lots of information for their grand opening and then there is not a peep for months. There will be another blast of information when they have a special sale and then, once again, crickets.
We examined creating a broad-level marketing strategy in the previous post and now it is time to start implementing it. Your plan needs to include a general marketing strategy as well as a special-promotions strategy. It is very simple to create and you can outsource some of the tasks once you have a process set up.
Here is an example from my general marketing strategy. I have several products for sale so I rotate offers for each of those products through my social media accounts. This way my followers get a reminder of each of my products at least every couple of weeks. I also rotate links to each of my how-to marketing videos and I am getting ready to do the same with my blog posts. (At the moment I am posting my blog links only the week the blog is new.)
Here is an example from my special-promotions strategy. When I offer a local workshop I create Facebook and Twitter photos and posts. I have a schedule for how often and when I start using these posts. I also post my classes on community calendars and promote them at networking events.
You can use Hootsuite or another third-party service to schedule your social media posts ahead of time. You can pick one day a month to schedule all your general marketing posts and then plug in all your posts for each special promotion as you finalize the details.
I have been creating a fill-in-the-blanks template to use with my local workshops to make it easier (quicker) to use a third-party social media scheduler. With this template all I need to do is change the event title and date for each post and schedule my posts according to the template.
Take the time to review your marketing to see if you are consistently putting your business top of mind with your customers and potential customers.
Until next time...
Have a great day,
Susanne
If you feel you are spinning your marketing wheels, join me for a Marketing strategy session.