If you’re running a small business, knowing how to market it can be really tricky. A lot of people spend a huge amount of time crafting ads for social media, which they then post and promptly forget all about because they didn’t seem to gain any traction.
To run an
effective marketing campaign, it’s essential that you not only determine who your
target market is but that you contact them in the most appropriate way, and you
measure your results.
Know who your target market is
This should be the first part of any marketing campaign. How can you design a campaign that creates a dialogue if you don’t know who you’re talking to?
When finding your target market, it’s important that you specify one market group only. If you try to talk to too many different groups at once, you will find that your message becomes diluted and isn’t as effective.
Think about
what age your target market is, how much money do they have, and what do they
spend their days doing. An effective way to do this can be to design an ‘avatar,' which is
basically a character sheet for someone in your target market. This way, you
can tailor your marketing campaign to this specific person.
Set specific and measurable objectives
Once you know
who you are targeting, you need to set your marketing objectives. These are the specific goals for your campaign.
It’s important
that your objectives are specific and that you can measure them. For example, a
goal like ‘generate more
sales’ is too wooly and can’t be measured.
However, if you had a goal like ‘increase number of sales through our website by 5%', this is
something that you can measure and is, therefore, a helpful objective.
Determine how you will measure success
In order to determine whether or not your campaign was a success, you’ll need to be able to measure the outcome. It’s important that you know how you will do this from the start.
For example,
if your goal is to increase website sales, you could use an offer code so that
you can see which sales have been generated through the campaign. If your goal
is to increase traffic to your website, you could use Google analytics.
Choose your communication method
Which communication method you choose will depend on your target group and your budget. Bear in mind that your communication method should be something that will capture your target audience.
For example,
if you are planning on running an email marketing campaign, it’s important
that you contact people who have expressed an interest in similar businesses to
yours in the past; otherwise, your emails will likely go unopened. Companies
like Lead Lists can help you find lists of people who are likely to
be interested in what you are offering, giving you a much more effective
campaign.
Execute and measure your success
Finally, once your campaign is running, be sure to monitor it and measure your results. If it performs well, great; you know what to do next time. If it doesn’t do as well as you had hoped, then you can learn from it for next time.
