Master Your Marketing in 6 Simple Steps

Master Your Marketing In 6 Simple StepsWhile sales processes are intuitive and straightforward, marketing is complex and layered. While sales activities can be effortlessly measured, marketing activities can’t be easily measured, despite marketing being an integral part of all the sales process.

Notwithstanding the limitations associated with marketing, the fact remains, there’s no substitute to marketing. If you don’t invest your time and resources in marketing, it would almost be impossible to grow your business. Marketing is the biggest support system for any business…big or small.

Here I walk you through 6 simple ways to master your marketing in less time:

#1. Flesh Out your Strategies Beforehand

It goes without saying. Charting out strategies beforehand takes the guesswork out of marketing.

While running your startup you may have been told, time and again, that blogging is an indispensable part of marketing. So, you religiously blogged every single day of the year, but then, the results weren’t encouraging.

This is where strategy helps.

Sure, blogging pays off but only when you blog relevant and engaging content that resonate with the readers. Content that engages the readers automatically increases your subscriber count and sales. On the other hand, blogging irrelevant stuff and then publishing it any time of the day won’t give you the desired results.

For the starters, there are fixed days and time to publish your blog posts.

The point is, you need to chart out strategies, beforehand, for every single marketing activity you undertake if you are looking for results. It could in the form of an editorial calendar, or a scheduling app to schedule your social media posts, free/paid tools to develop visuals and more.

Sure enough, all this planning will call for time and effort. Even so, look it at as an investment. Fleshing things out early will ensure that your marketing efforts are directed toward achieving your business goals.

#2. Leverage Hubspot’s 30 Minute Content Marketing Rule

Can’t believe your eyes? But then, yes, one can do content marketing by spending a meager 30 minutes on it every single day, thanks to Hubspot.

HubSpot has designed a cost-effective and, more important, effective content marketing strategy that any business owner can think of implementing by spending just half an hour on it every day.

Here’s the breakdown of 30 Minute Content Marketing:

  • 10 minutes of writing a blogpost
  • 5 minutes of research for the same
  • 5 minutes of social media update
  • 10 minutes of social outreach

Okay! I heard you! “In just 10 minutes I can hardly put down the intro of my blog post, much less the entire blog post.” Fair enough! However, committing 10 minutes every single day of the week is sure to help you come up with, at least, one complete, quality post at the end of the weekend. Isn’t it?

Needless to say, you are not supposed to use your smartphones or social media accounts while you are at it. It should be 10 minutes of pure blogging.

Research for your content should be done within 5 minutes every day. This will help you craft a high-quality, data-driven blog faster and easier.

What about social media update in 5 minutes? Okay, use these 5 minutes to respond to followers and might as well come up with a couple of engaging lines for the day.

With regards to 10 minutes of social media outreach, the idea is to increase Twitter followers and engage with bloggers who create quality posts.

#3. Nail down the Best Channels and Platforms

Generally speaking, businesses tend to spread themselves thin when it comes to their social media campaigns. They feel that they need to be anywhere and everywhere. However, the fact is, you need to form a tunnel vision around the best platforms that matter to your audience the most.

For instance, if Gen Z is your target audience, then you need to have Snapchat and Instagram on your radar over Facebook or Linkedin. Consult top social media marketing companies to narrow down the best platforms for your business.

By zeroing down the best channels and platforms, you are likely to spend less time on marketing, without affecting the conversions. It’s because you are marketing to your ideal target audience and not everyone else, who may or may not matter to you.

#4. Generate Counterintuitive Content

It’s easier than you think to make your marketing, or your content marketing efforts, to stand out. All you have to do is to the take the road less travelled. Put another way; adopt a counterintuitive approach when it comes to your blog posts, social media posts and images among other things. Going against set mindset of people is sure to win more eyeballs for your posts and more.

In fact, there are companies that believe in sending out print newsletters to their customers despite digital media’s dominant presence, these days. And, surprisingly, these companies are doing great with their offline newsletter campaigns.

The point is you never know what kind of marketing will resonate with the users. So, might as well focus on integrated campaigns and other out-of-the box marketing gimmicks with key focus on engaging your audience.

#5. Glance Up 2019 Marketing Trends

It goes without saying. You need to leverage all the cutting-edge technologies that your market is using, including the ones your competitors are using, if you intend survive, much less thrive in this eternally competitive IT space.

Some of the key trends you need to focus on include:

# Video Content

# Voice Search

# Visual Search

# User-generated content

# Chatbots

# VR and AR

Yes, you’ve got a series of things to take care of before 2019 begins. So, buckle up and make sure to integrate the above strategies in your website content, one after the other.

#6. Generate Authentic Content

People place more trust in human stories than brand ads these days. So, if you are planning to build your brand around ads, think again.

According to a businessinsider report, 30% of the internet users will be using ad blockers by the year end. Meaning traditional ads won’t be reaching 30% of the target audience.

So, it’s better, if your business focuses on generating authentic content (user generated content) over ads. And, trust me; it’s easier than you think. Just ask your customers to share their experiences with your brands and your UGC content is ready.

You can even engage in content marketing, influencer marketing, referral partnerships, and more to deliver real experiences to users. And, be rest assured, authentic content generated by customers easily grabs the eyeballs of the visitors.

Key takeaways

  • Don’t indulge in random marketing. Flesh out your strategies initially.
  • Follow 30-Minute Content Marketing Rule.
  • Turn the content over its head. Go counterintuitive.
  • Nail down the ideal social media platforms.
  • Tap into 2019 trends.
  • Focus on creating user generated content.

Your turn now! Can you think of a particular marketing initiative that helped you yield significant returns for your business? Go ahead and share your experiences!

Leave a Reply