I don’t get it. What is your marketing all about?
- You have a website.
- You have a Facebook page.
- You have a Twitter account, an Instagram account, a Reddit account etc.
- You are running a survey on SurveyMonkey
- You are emailing your clients or subscribers.
- You have an app on another website for running your event registrations or you are using Eventbrite
- You are creating a course on Thinkific or something similar.
- You are participating in a community event next month.
- and what else?
But you aren’t taking the time to integrate all of these efforts!!!???!!!!
I have three words for you – Strategize, Simplify, Support
Think out and plan what your goals are and what your marketing campaigns will be. Focus on what and when you use each type of tool…. Use those tools necessary to do the job and that your clients are going to use – and frankly that you are going to use…. Take effort on each tool in a way that supports the efforts in the other tools. All of which are meant to forward your goals…. to bring in revenue.
This is actually one of the reasons that I love a content management system like WordPress or Drupal – for solopreneurs, microbusinesses and non-profits, you are able to do so much within one platform. There are excellent plugins and integrations with most if not all major tools that will allow you to maximize the power of your website – and keep your followers in your space!
Let me explain
1) Strategize your marketing approach
Have you ever heard of “hope marketing”? That’s when you send out random pieces of marketing and advertising that are not linked to your business goals, and ‘hope’ that you will get a response. In this age of pretty sophisticated marketing and promotion, you need to be more strategic about your efforts. If you are a solopreneur or a micro-business, chances are you also don’t have a lot of money or time to spend right?
The goal is to maximize your efforts by thinking ahead about things like
- why am I doing this effort?
- what do I hope to get out of this effort?
- how much time/money/resources do I have?
- who can help me?
- what points do I check on my progress and decide on changes or stopping?
- what works best together for this effort?
Pull it all together into a mini plan and then take action! Don’t waste all your beautiful marketing content on ‘hope marketing’ – follow through, review progress, make tweaks, and etc. Basically think things through, plan steps out, and follow through from a big picture that feeds into your business goals!
2) Simplify your marketing tools
Seriously, if you do not like taking photos or have the time to source out images that you like, why are you on Instagram? If you don’t like being on camera, why are you spending money on creating videos for YouTube? Because some guru out there told you that if you weren’t using those tools you won’t get as much traffic? Ok, yes, there are some social media tools out there that are phenomenal – but if you don’t like them, won’t use them, and don’t want to learn how to use them, why are you wasting your efforts?
Pick tools that work for you and with you – master them and rock them to your advantage. Better to be a master at Facebook then a novice at five different tools. Those five different tools will dilute your efforts.
Do you know what social media your target clients use? It used to be youth used MySpace, then it was Facebook, and now they are on Instagram and SnapChat and are moving to TicTok- but are youth even your target market? Email is still the number one common tool in our digital age – every time someone signs up for something they have to input an email account right?
3) Support your marketing efforts by integrating!!!!!
Think of your website as your organization’s client outreach hub. You want people on your website so they can see what else you are up to. You want them to get to know you and interact with you, and buy something from you. The longer they are on your website, the better. Think of it as a house party versus a neighbourhood block party – people in your house are a captive (and if you have done it right, entertained) audience whereas people outside in the neighbourhood block can wander off at any moment as there is so much around them distracting them.
Not only that, you own your website, and have control over the information you collect from the visitors and your clients. What if Facebook or Google change their rules again and you have built your marketing program around an approach that has been canceled? If people are interacting with you exclusively through Twitter, are they your clients or Twitter’s – because where does their contact information reside?
So, when you post to social media, the goal is to get them to take action – on your website, preferably. Sure post it to YouTube, but include a link to your website. Are you telling a story on Instagram, great, include a link to your website and make sure your story is reflected in some way on your website. All your marketing activities should be reinforcing each other. This is how you build that traffic, and make each piece of marketing reinforce the other. This will strengthen your brand and build momentum for you.
Let’s use the example of a survey:
First you decide why you want to run a survey – what is it that you are trying to learn from the respondents? Are you testing out a new product idea? Trying to find out which of your products you should keep and which you should let get of
- You can use a form on your website to run a simple survey where the system automatically sends you an email for each respondent.
- There are also survey plugins that give you a bit more functionality like collating the responses into a table as well as sending you emails.
- Or you want more advanced analytics, you can create one in SurveyMonkey, or similar, and then embed it into your website.
Once your survey is set up, you can then post your website url to your social media accounts, encouraging people to come back to your website. You can send an email out to your subscribers, asking them to complete the survey.
If the survey is in your website, then your visitors are staying on your website, and not going to a different company’s website where they may get distracted and not come back to your website where you want them to be.
There are many different ways of approaching a survey – and this is just the start of one idea. Please, book a time with us to discuss how you can be more strategic, simplify your tools, and support your efforts by integrating!
(This article was previously published at Online Web Admin, which is now Mindset Marketing Services)
