If marketing was quick and easy, then everyone would be winning at it. However, marketing is largely about getting people to know, like and trust you if they are to consistently buy from and support your business. That kind of connection with your brand doesn’t just happen overnight. Just like a pie, marketing is a layered combination of many ingredients that, while there are standards, you are charged with adding your own special combination of spices and unique flavors to be distinct to yield the best results.
It’s takes time but totally worth the investment! It’s also through this process of including your special touches that your brand is formed.
So today let’s talk about the long game of marketing and how you can play to win.
Choosing the Perfect Ingredients
There was once a time when brands simply had to advertise what their product did and name the price to get customers to buy. Today, marketing has less to do with what you sell and a lot more to do with creating emotional connections with your audience due to the wide variety of options available to your potential customers.
According to a study conducted by Forbes, people who have a positive emotional connection with a particular brand are 8.4% more likely to trust, 7.1% more likely to buy and 6.6% more likely to forgive a company for mistakes they’ve made!
The message here—build a connection with your target audience by aligning with their needs, perceptions and goals while adding value to their lives. Add a dash of some love when building your strategy! Be human and nurture them with content that educates and persuades, emotional stories that connect, consistent and genuine engagement that focuses on their needs.
Last, but not least, your unique brand message should be tied into everything you share with your audience. Always keep in mind the question, “What do I want my brand to be well known for?” and work towards attaining that goal. These are the ingredients you will need to warm your customers up to you and build your brand’s reputation.
The right combination of marketing approaches with a distinct brand are the foundations of a delicious pie. No combination of ingredients is perfect, however, there are the perfect ingredient for your business. Let’s discuss your branding and marketing mix at a consultation session here https://tinyurl.com/2fcv8d2x.
Putting the Pie Together
So, you’ve got your ingredients! Now, you need to layer it, correctly. That is, you need to understand the why-what-when and how of creating a successful strategy. Why this strategy? What will it contribute to your business? When should you use it? How do you plan on executing (with what methods)? It’s a lot to process! But like preparing your main ingredients, you must set up the correct base to execute a solid strategy. That base will include:
Clearly defined business goals - know what you want to achieve in the long term, and supporting short-term activities that align
Zoning in on your target audience
Assessing your budget - How much are you willing to invest in getting the right tools that will help the smooth execution of your strategy?
Analyzing the competition - see what they are excelling at, and what they are failing at. Use this to your advantage to create an even better pie!
Baking the Pie
Now comes the most exciting (and probably the trickiest) part of building your marketing strategy:
Deciding what your marketing channels are, and what form your content and promotional campaigns will take.
Consistently engaging with your target audience online and off-line and so that you and positioning to influence their perception of you.
Invest in creating relevant, persuasive and valuable content. A marketing study conducted by Hubspot found that short-form video content was the most effective type of content on social media, while Mediafly, another marketing research company highlighted buyers as being 52.6% more engaged in interactive content than they were in viewing static content.
Take a peek in the oven. Observe, assess, monitor your progress and successes. In the end, having a thorough understanding of your audience is key and sometimes, it may even take a bit of trial and error before you get your content strategy just right.
Understanding your brand vision, providing value, selling with emotion and having a customer-centered approach are the key forces you want built into your marketing strategy. Getting your brand noticed, liked and trusted to ultimately increase sales for business success—will not happen overnight! But with a little patience and ample preparation, what you’ll have in the end will be akin to a perfectly baked pie!
If you had to choose a pie to describe your company marketing, what pie would it be?
Would it be sweet or savory?
Would it be vegan, meat, fruit or nut based?
Comment below