By Lcid Crescent Fernandez
So you’ve had your idea and developed it into a product or service. Then you built your business and have successfully launched.
Congratulations!
What’s your next move? What will you focus on outside of delivering your brand promise?
That’s when you go into the wonderful world of marketing.
In the previous column, I talked about the importance of branding and creating experiences that will generate repeat clients. With brand-building, there are several things you have to keep in mind like brand values, the voice, the messaging, the segmentation, etc. However, more times than not, you can get one or a few of these things wrong and yet still be successful if you avoid this one marketing mistake. Conversely, your strong branding and product will leave a lot of profit on the table if you don’t avoid this one marketing mistake: not marketing enough.
In my time studying marketing in UP Visayas, we always heard that word-of-mouth is the best kind of marketing you can have. That’s true to this day, the success of campaigns are measured in the amount of earned media that they generate. However, the keyword is generating. It’s an active process to continually push your marketing. Developing a product and hoping people talk about how good it is is not enough. You must actively create and influence conversations by inciting curiosity, for example.
This is even more important if you have the best product in your category. How are your customers going to know you have that superior product? How are they going to know you have competitive prices? How about your after-sales service? Your competition might be doing better than you already just because you’re not marketing yourself enough.
You can’t win the game if you’re not playing.
You’ve heard of ABC: Always Be Closing. What I’m talking about is ABM: Always Be Marketing.
Now this does not mean simply churning out advertisements and content on social media (although I would argue that a social media page is vital for businesses today). There are many simple ways that you can approach consistent marketing. There is really only one general goal you’ll be aiming for: to create a connection. Here are a few tips to do that.
Think of marketing as the clothes you wear. Each day, when we leave our homes, we choose different outfits depending on where we’re going. If we’re going to work, we dress appropriately for the office and our officemates. If we go to the beach, we dress appropriately for the beach. It’s the same as in marketing. You have to define your key audience, and then proceed appropriately.
So think about your ideal customer. Where do they spend their time? Why? What kind of people are they in these spaces, and then try to occupy those spaces. Get in front of cameras. Get on stages. Talk to people. Again, create a connection so you can begin to communicate. But you have to be where your audience is first. Once you’re there, think less about promoting your business and more about adding value. One thing that most business owners don’t fully grasp is that marketing is communication. Communication is two-way. Talk about your business in a way that is helpful. Listen to your audience and understand what they’re looking for, what their problems are, and provide that solution for them.
You can even market on social media just by discussing the passion that you have for your business, and providing tips for people to see how you work. This column that I regularly write for Daily Guardian is a prime example of that. People, more than ever, want to see the inner workings of the businesses they buy from. They want to know your story and who you are. And now is the perfect time to tell those stories.
We’ll discuss more about what you can do to start marketing your business by yourself, but I hope I was able to sufficiently discuss why you should always be marketing. Do you have thoughts? Shoot me an e-mail at lcidfernandez@prometheus.ph!
