Marketing is the process of creating and maintaining a relationship with your buyer. It is the act of persuading a potential consumer that your brand can provide something of value to them. Going in without a plan—winging it—is a good way to end up lost, confused, and inconsistent, which is hardly the image you want to project to your audience. So don’t market “by the seat of your pants.” Develop and implement a game plan, and save yourself (and your team) the headache.
Don’t Lose Sight of Your Goal
If you’ve existed in any business space for any amount of time, you’ve probably heard about SMART goals. This notorious acronym posits that the best goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound, and it’s right—to an extent.
But too many people using the SMART goals template will confuse a step along the way to success for the goal itself. If you’re an aspiring full-time author, your primary goal isn’t to reach a certain number of views on TikTok, it’s to sell enough copies of your book that you can make a living off your writing. Social media is a useful tool, but don’t get lost in the details and forget the bigger picture.
Know Your Buyer
In marketing, there’s something known as a “buyer persona” or “customer profile.” What it entails is a description of your ideal customer: their likes, dislikes, traits, values, wants, and needs, as well as their background, details about their lifestyle, and any problems they might encounter on a regular basis and how they choose to solve them. You can create different buyer personas for different markets, but remember not to get too ahead of yourself. Your customer profile is not a list of requirements for who consumes your product, nor is it a catalogue of every human being alive who might find value in your business. Think of it, instead, as a bell curve: a collection of the most common or ideal traits you’d like to have associated with your brand. There will always be a few outliers, but that’s to be expected.
A makeup brand might sell colorful foundations for Halloween costumes and character cosplays, so their character profile will likely encompass a younger demographic of people interested in cartoons or video games—the kind of media that might have characters with wacky skin tones such as blue or green—but, since its offerings include white foundation, it may appeal to those within alternative communities whose everyday makeup looks involve that product. In that case, the makeup brand already has a niche market, but a selection of those within an even nicher subset of that market will also find the products useful. This doesn’t mean the company needs to create a whole new buyer persona to encapsulate the couple dozen people buying their foundation for alternative makeup looks per year; it just means that their product is useful to different people for different reasons.
Stay Grounded
Ask yourself as many questions as possible about your buyer. Who are they? Why should they be interested in your business? What are they searching to find products like yours—which keywords, phrases, etc.? What value can you provide to someone reading your content or purchasing your product? What call to action are you issuing? Do you want them to sign up for your newsletter? Buy your product? Follow you on social media? And, lastly, who are you? What is your brand? And why should people invest in it?
In writing, a common question you’ll happen across for idea development is, “So what?” The main character has magic powers. So what? Why should the audience care? Well, because those magic powers are highly dangerous, and the main character doesn’t understand them yet, and things could get out of hand very quickly. So what? So, there’s an important event coming up, and if the main character can’t get their powers under control before then, people might end up getting hurt. And so on, and so forth. The same rule applies to marketing.
You offer a product, or maybe a service, or maybe an idea. So what? Why should your buyer care? What value are you providing?
Measure Your Progress and Adjust Accordingly
As you implement your marketing plan, track and measure your progress. How many followers have you gained in a month on a given social media platform? How many people signed up for your newsletter? How many downloads of media on your website did you get? How many people are responding in some way—be it in a comment, a review, a form response, or something else? And how much have you sold of your actual product?
See if you can pinpoint any positive change in your sales to a given post or strategy, and then see if you can replicate it. Otherwise, cut the fat. Prioritize quality over quantity, because, although you can flood search results with a constant output of content, the best way to gain and retain an audience is by providing some form of value.
References
Scott, D. M. (2022). The new rules of marketing and PR: How to Use Content Marketing, Podcasting, Social Media, AI, Live Video, and Newsjacking to Reach Buyers Directly. John Wiley & Sons.
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