Relax and plan your Marketing Strategy

Many small Business owners try and manage too many marketing campaigns at once which can damage their overall marketing strategy.

Marketing in today’s technologically advanced world can be overwhelming and confusing. Business owners don’t often know where to start and therefore think that they need to try and do everything … and do everything themselves! That’s why you need a clear marketing strategy.

They don’t understand the fundamental basics of a professional brand image to their company, good website design with easy navigation, social media presence, professionally designed and printed sales materials, active blogging, and of course that dreaded acronym: SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

We recently started working with a small business owner who with no marketing strategy was so overwhelmed with where to start and what to do. He could barely explain what business marketing efforts he had tried, let alone what he found to be successful. He then continued by showing us the company’s social media profile pages and website.

As you can imagine, these were a mix of colours, font styles and inconsistent company logos, whilst the imagery had been sourced from Google images and was not re-sized or formatted correctly for use. The printed marketing material was quite clearly produced in-house, probably from a Word document, and again the imagery was of low resolution, incorrectly formatted for print and not colour corrected for production.

There was a number of press Ads that had appeared in the local paper, all of which had been ‘designed’ by the publication for insertion. Again, none of the press ads upheld consistency for the company’s brand and you wouldn’t think that they were for the same company once you laid them out together on a table.

Please don’t misunderstand, we at BlueFlameDesign appreciate that it can be difficult setting up a business on your own without the guidance of a professional. More importantly, we commend those that manage to do so under their own esteem; designing and producing their company stationery, press advertising, leaflets and brochures etc. but there will come a point in time when a firm decision will need to be made ….. Do you want your business to appear more professional and grow accordingly or are you happy chugging along as you are?

If you are wanting to grow your business then it is important that your business portrays a professional brand image. One that instills trust, faith, recognition and competence with your current and potential client base.

It is also important to map a ‘plan of attack’ in the correct order and tackle one marketing issue or campaign at a time. Thus building up brand recognition and consistency across all levels. Unless you have numerous staff members that can help you juggle all the marketing balls, trying to do it yourself all at once will be a waste of time and money.

When I was in the corporate marketing world with large marketing departments and advertising agencies, we worked on multiple marketing campaigns at once, but we tracked the metrics on all campaigns separately and understood the true ROI (Return on the Investment) for each.

At the end of the day, we would know if the campaign worked and if we should do it again.  We would know if it drove customers to websites and if they purchased our products/services.

Here is a short list that we hope many will find useful. It’s a basic marketing strategy checklist for those wanting to grab hold of there current business marketing efforts and bring them all inline within a single marketing strategy.

First and foremost, take a deep breath and relax. Don’t feel overwhelmed or daunted by the tasks that lay ahead. Remember that you don’t have to try and do them all at once and that BlueFlameDesign is only an email away if you would like us to give a guiding hand.

• Professional looking logo design and brand identity with a matching domain name
• A well-designed business card that has been professionally printed
• A unique and well-built website design with a great CMS (Content Management System).  This is fundamental as A) it is important that you have an online presence as most people will now turn to the internet to search for suppliers, products and services B) You need control over your website copy and content C) You can’t have good SEO or social media outreach without a good “mother ship” to direct it all to
• A basic understanding of the different types of social media and which platforms you feel would work for you. Remember, as a business owner you want to be on social media as a “business” and not a “person” (e.g. Make sure your Facebook page is a business page, not a personal page)
• Understand the demographics of your customers so you know which social media outlets to attack first and worry about the others later.  For example, I have a friend who is a solicitor. Although he has a Facebook page for his business, he tends to focus his social media efforts on LinkedIn (I think of LinkedIn as the Facebook for business to business marketing).  If your business is something like landscaping or photography you might want to focus on Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram as a starting point.  These are social media platforms where you can post great images of your products
• Refresh your current advertising strategy. Build a ‘house style’ for your press ads to help them become easily recognisable. Maybe include a simple QR Code to aid with measuring response
• Redesign your corporate brochure or printed marketing material to reflect your new business brand. Employ the services of a reputable designer who will be able to guide and direct you with their knowledge and experience.

The list above is by no means exhaustive but by walking through these few steps you will soon find that your company has a consistent brand across your business marketing efforts that will project a professional and identifiable image both off and online.

If you would like assistance with refreshing and re-aligning your current brand image and business marketing strateg then please feel free to contact BlueFlameDesign – Together we can ignite your business brand and set your marketing alight!