‘Don’t be Stupid’ Business Marketing Tips…

Basic marketing advice can sometimes save you a lot of time and money which are the two main themes that goes in to getting you results from the likes of social media, videos, banners, content writing, SEO, Google Ads and more. By keeping things simple you can avoid some of these blindingly obvious no go areas in marketing:

  • Thinking you need to spend millions to get results. You do not need to be an expert neither have ever so deep pockets when it comes to marketing, the skill set is to understand your target audience and the best way to communicate your business to them. Many elements of marketing you can do yourself and it just requires your time such as social media updates, content writing and even photography – Outsourcing is usually required for more specialised elements such as graphic design, videos, web design etc.
  • Telling people what’s good about you instead of telling people what good you can do them. Sometimes you need to reverse your thinking and consider what your clients are looking to achieve over what your service offers. Simple example would be to say ‘We offer mortgages at the most competitive rates in the UK‘ compared to saying ‘How would you like to save on average 5% off from your mortgage repayments each and every month‘…
  • Not knowing your target audience. Just because you are being good by dedicating a lot of time to marketing and sharing many a finely written article, video, photo and more it will not gain you any ROI should you be displaying them on the wrong channels or in the wrong manner. A post on Twitter is like a drop in the ocean, you are competing with millions and the split second that your post is view-able before it fades in to invisibility is very short. Have you researched where your target audience is most active, when they are active and how they react and engage? Stick to channels that will be effective, ie what will a message on Snapchat get you if you are attracting clients to pension funds? Remember that not everyone in the world will want to engage with your business, make sure you get in front of the right people.
  • Do not wait around to test the market. Even before you launch a business or a product/service you should look to test the water with marketing. Do not simply start marketing when you are at the stage to launch – You should by that stage have built up a strong knowledge of how what you are offering is being received.
  • Sticking to sales, sales, sales… Do not think that marketing is simply about selling, you are looking to build relationships. By long termsmarketing plans, engaging / entertaining / educating your audiences you will increase your chances of selling your business offering. If you stick to sales orientated marketing you are less likely to build audiences and trust. Place valuable content that your audiences can use over ‘we sell this for this price‘.
  • Sharing poor content. It shouldn’t just be all about sharing content no matter what – Quality content will be much more effective over poor content, of course it is obvious you say! Remember that there are over 1 billion blogs on the internet so how can you share great and unique content as the internet is awash of information / content that is being shared over and over again including being simply rewritten and shared out again – People are thirsty for unique content, relevant to them and likely to be worth their while engaging with. This will help you establish authority in your industry sector.

Christopher Walkey

Founder of Estate Agent Networking. Internationally invited speaker on how to build online target audiences using Social Media. Writes about UK property prices, housing, politics and affordable homes.

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