On a regular basis, we listen as new and seasoned business owners share how they ran a couple print or radio ads to help generate foot traffic and tell the world they’re open for business. And the story usually ends with the fact that they weren’t able to determine whether these marketing strategies worked or not, but they do know that they’ve now spent too much of their marketing budget. In today’s article, we want to provide you the steps to ensure that you’re properly approaching your marketing strategy before your extra time and budget is gone.
 
In our write ups, we like to give you the bottom line on best practices and when it comes to “getting your name out there,” there are ten essential steps to follow first. Keep in mind that we’re making the assumption that you’ve already conducted a decent amount of market research as well as brand development. With that said, here we go:

1. What are your business goals and milestones you want to reach?
2. In many cases, sales and foot traffic are top choices, so you’ll need to determine your core product(s) and/or services(s)
3. Who is your target audience for these products and services?
4. Write down all the places, activities, hobbies, likes & dislikes and the overall day to day lifestyle that would be part of a typical week for your target audience
5. Create a realistic marketing budget (don’t worry, a lot can be done with close to nothing)
6. Figure out which marketing vehicles will help you reach your target audience during a given week, i.e. events, strategic partnerships, advertising, PR, etc.
7. Form a marketing plan that outlines the specific marketing vehicles you’ll be using, which months you’ll use them and how much they’ll cost
8. Investigate each of these strategies to price them out to ensure your estimated costs are realistic
9. For each marketing vehicle, create an action plan where you drill down into the details of what needs to happen to make them work efficiently and effectively
10. Always build a tracking component into your marketing to determine what’s working and what isn’t

 
We realize this involves some work, but your efforts will certainly pay off. You may very well determine that your marketing can reach your target audience with very little money, which could be contradictory to the cold calls you receive on a regular basis. And one of our top tips is to make sure you’re always tracking your marketing, just be sure your employees are doing this for each and every customer. If you need assistance developing your own marketing program, we would enjoy the opportunity to simplify this process for you, provide an objective perspective and help make great things happen for your business.  

We have a variety of resources we've developed too, so be sure to check out our line up as this component of our Small Biz Marketing Rx program gives you a completely free way to get real results in true DIY style.