Small businesses fight daily to get their message out. You can increase profit with a better marketing plan, but it’s often easier said than done. You know you’ve got to break out of your small initial circle and reach new people in order to grow and succeed. What’s the marketing plan that helps you get paid more and faster?
Marketing Matters (A Lot)
Today’s business climate is cutthroat. There is more content than ever before, and more ways to consume products than ever before. In the online world alone there are myriad ways to be a business: you can freelance, be a social media influencer, a digital star, or sell services and products exclusively online. Venture offline into the brick and mortar world and the options only grow.
With so much going on all the time, a marketing plan becomes non-optional. You need to cut through all the noise and get your company in front of your ideal customer. Your marketing plan will do just that, and from there, your business will grow. Growth means you’ll get paid more.
So how exactly do you come up with a better and more profitable marketing plan?
Create a Clear Plan
You can’t start until you know which direction you want to go in. You have to have a clear plan for your business. From there you can reserve engineer and figure out how to get it.
Sit down and sketch out a one-year, three-year, and five-year business plan for yourself.
Answer the following questions as best you can:
- What are my income goals?
- What are my growth goals?
- Where is my target market? Who is my target demographic?
- What are the paths I want to take? (i.e do I want to open a store online? Do I want to search for speaking gigs?)
These are the starting points for your marketing plan. Answer these questions and you begin to carve out a path for you and your business to take.
For example, by answering ‘who is my target demographic’ with ‘Millennial women’, you know that you need to be active on channels where Millennial women are. You can eliminate things that don’t fit into reaching that market.
Do Your Research
The reason a lot of people fail to grow is because they don’t know their markets. Success isn’t just handed out to special people, despite what social media and reality tv tell you. Don’t fall for the highlight reel: success takes hard work. And the first action item is to do your research.
You should know your market, your customer, you competitors and your own product inside out. Business owners have to convince people that their product is worth its price tag. Whether you sell yourself and your services, or a physical product, you need to know why people are going to want to buy from you. What makes you the best and what makes you worth it?
If you’re marketing to Millennial women you need to research where Millennial women are and what they’re interested in.
Tray and answer these questions:
- What social media platforms are they using?
- What/who are they currently buying in my market?
- What’s my target age range?
Crunch Your Current Income
If you want to turn your plan and research into a company where you regularly get paid more money than you’re making now, you’ll need to focus on your current income.
Use your current income as a starting point. Your current customer base is X and you’re making Y. Therefore, you need to increase customers by a certain amount to reach the next income level. How can you increase customers? By marketing to your target demographic in the places they are, with the tone they respond to, and with the value they’re seeking.
You should also make it easy to get paid by setting up a payment system that is easy to use and handles things for you. Don’t make it hard for people to give you their money!
Marketing depends on doing your research and reaching out to the right people. Don’t shout into a void. Set up a marketing plan with care and get paid more now.
