
If you’re reading this, you might have a startup business or a business you want to grow.
You’re motivated, and have the skills, experience, and grit too see it through, but you need some good, old fashioned marketing advice.
First I want to let you know that I think you can succeed and make the world a better place because if it. You have something great to add to the world – your business! You just need a little help getting the word out.
So, when it comes to marketing where should you start? To me, it’s all about visualization.
What is step one to marketing your business? (Paint a beautiful picture of your future.)
I’ve met with many small business owners over the years who’ve approached me to help with their marketing, but when I start asking certain questions, they don’t always have the answers.
Here are a few of the questions I always ask…
Who is your ideal customer?
How, exactly, are you going to help that individual fix their problem?
Is your marketing communicating this? How you will help them in your own unique way?
Have you mapped out a marketing system that gets them from point A to point B?
And how does this all relate to your company? Your values? Where you want to be in 2-3 years?
Before you start marketing your business—as effectively as you can—it’s important to stop and first craft a clear image of your business. What do you want your business to be? Who will it serve? And how will you do so in your own unique way?
Where do you want to be in a few years? Why does this matter to you? And, how do you plan to get there?
If you’re just starting out you can’t skip this part, because, if you want to grow your business through marketing, you must…
Have a clear-cut idea of where you want to be.
Clarify your brand message. Articulate exactly what you do in crystal clear form.
Attract the right customers. Focus on the right people and clearly tell them how you will make their life better.
And systematize. If you’ve created clear branding focused on the right people, is it obvious to anyone viewing your site what they need to do next (call, fill out a form, join your email list)?
Once you’ve articulated your vision, discovered your unique brand DNA, and focused on the right customers, it’s a bazillion times easier to develop a focused marketing system that will bring in more business.
How to paint a clear picture of your future business. (Clarify where you want to be.)
1. Start asking questions. Where do you want to go? What will guide you? How, exactly, are you going to get there? Put these questions to paper and your answers will guide you.
If you have customers, start talking with them! Interview them and ask them the following: Why do they work with you? Why do they stay? What is unique about your business? Etc.
2. Get laser-focused on your ideal customer. What are your products and/or services going to offer your best customers? And who are those people?
Create a profile of your ideal customer. To do so, you must understand as much about them as you can. If you have customers, look closely at the attributes of your most lucrative customers, ideally people that help send business your way. Research and list the common traits they share, then create a profile, with bullet points and a photo, and refer to it daily.
3. Set goals. A big bold goal combined with SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely. You must have goals for marketing to work. Short- and long-term goals, with priorities to go with them.
Note: Dream with your big and adventurous goal. That’s your vision. Every other goal should show substantial, but accessible improvement, meaning your goals need to be SMART goals you can achieve.
4. Here’s the fun part – visualize the future of your business. Combine 1-3 above to sketch out an ideal image of your business. Where do you want to be 1-2 years from today?
Think about your dreams, values, motivations. What lights you up? How do you combine that feeling with your expertise to make your business stand out, grow, and morph into something truly special? This is the fun part and this is where you picture your baby all grown up. Come back to this vision often.
When you start putting these pieces together, think super-duper hard about how you can clarify your message, attract the right customers, and grow your business.
To do so, I like to think about three rules that are good to follow for any business:
Don’t be dull. When you start asking questions (of yourself and your customers). When you’re thinking about your big and adventurous goal. When you’re visualizing. Think about what makes your business uncommon and how you can create something that stands out and gets people talking.
Be steady in your mission. Marketing is a beautiful system if set up properly. For it to be successful, you need to look at it as a daily routine, or series of incremental baby steps that will lead to transformation.
I like to think of this in terms of a transformational marketing strategy because that is what you are doing, really—transforming your business.
Create a daily marketing habit, be consistent with everything you do, (lather, rinse, repeat), and you’ll soon start to build trust, generate word-of-mouth reputation marketing and things will start to change.
Be systematic.
Just like any other important business function, marketing is a system.
For the system to work, you need your strategies clearly laid out.
For the strategies to work, you need to create a set of processes within your marketing–a system of success for your biz-nas!
To help you, I’ve included a worksheet in this post with some starting questions that will help guide you. Time to get busy visualizing!
Step 2 – Ideal Customer [icon name=”arrow-circle-o-right” class=”” unprefixed_class=””]
Do you want to bring your brand to life? Taking a few minutes to complete our brand audit will help you think about your current marketing efforts and what might need to change. It will also help me suggest several ways to improve your branding and marketing now: Brand audit.
After you complete the form, we’ll contact you to schedule a time to go over the results and see how we can help.
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