Marketing your business: where to start

Marketing. You know you need to do it, in fact you even understand that it’s crucial for the success of your business so why oh why does it continuously slip down the priority list? Marketing isn’t a quick post on Twitter or firing off an email once a year, it’s something that needs to be thought about every day and that should be present in everything you do. So where do you start?

1.    Know your objectives

Many businesses start ploughing time and money into marketing activities without stopping to think about what they are trying to achieve. This is a big no no. You want to be 100% sure that the marketing you do is going to pay off and as a result you need to know what your objectives are. For example if you run training courses your objective might be to get 50 bookings a month and get a reputation of being the best trainers in the South East for project management.
You’ll want to make sure your objectives are quantifiable, that way you’ll be able to easily analyse whether you are meeting your targets.

Every marketing activity you do from this point forward should allow you to meet these goals. If it doesn’t help do this, then there’s no point in doing it.

2.    Understand where there are opportunities

Next you want to figure out what marketing activities you should be engaging in. A great place to start is completing a SWOT analysis which will allow you to identify your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats and then create action points around them.

For example if you run a web design company and are always getting great customer feedback then this could be an opportunity. You could use this information to help promote your business such as including your customer testimonials in your monthly newsletter or setting up a referral scheme offering discounts.

By identifying both the good and bad parts of your business you’ll start to generate a very comprehensive list of action points. This will form your marketing plan and allow you to determine what marketing activities will help your business be successful. Download a SWOT analysis template here.

3.    Find out what your competitors are up to

This doesn’t mean ripping off their ideas, but it’s a quick way of seeing what has been successful and what hasn’t. If you can visibly see that all your competitors are struggling to get any engagement or success out of their Facebook page for example then this might be an area you want to avoid and focus your efforts elsewhere.

Perhaps your competitors are sending out a great e-newsletter or run a fantastic blog. By looking at what makes these so great you can apply these to your own marketing. Conversely, if you see them doing something terrible you can avoid this at all costs!
If you want to know more about analysing your competitors you can download my free competitor analysis document here. I like to call it being nosy but strategically!

4.    Identify the right tools

Finally once you’ve done all of the legwork, you can then think about what marketing tools will help you achieve your goals. You might have found out from your competitor analysis that your customers are predominantly on Twitter. Or perhaps from your SWOT analysis you discovered that you don’t tell your customers what new products you have available so perhaps a monthly newsletter is the way to go.

Above all else, marketing should be fun and if it’s planned carefully it really can be. After all it’s your opportunity for you to showcase all of the great work your business does and to tell people about what you do!

About Fran Swaine

Fran is a freelance marketing consultant based in Brighton. To find out more visit her website or give her a shout on Twitter @franswaine

If you want to contribute to the Chamber blog, contact us on hannah@brightonchamber.co.uk