Today we’re going right back to the basics of marketing for business because marketing can quite often feel overwhelming and if you don’t work in marketing, like me, it can be really scary and really daunting and you just sometimes don’t know where to start, or what to do with it.

If you’re an established business doing marketing, you can quite often come to that point where you’re doing so much, feel a bit overwhelmed and I don’t know if you’re doing the right things. It’s quite good sometimes just to take a step back, go right back to basics and take stock of what you’re doing. Just so you can make sure that you’re doing the right things at the right time and that you’re not feeling that overwhelm.

Tip 1:  Target Customer

The target customer is one of the most important things that you need to think about when you’re doing your marketing. There are two different ways to think about the target customer.

There’s an Ideal Client Avatar (ICA) and then Target Customer.

The best way to explain ICA is that if my phone was going to ring now and my ideal client was on the other end this is ICS.

So, for me it’s “Helen”, she’s come from a rags to riches story, she’s got an existing business, she’s building it, but she’s been doing everything herself and then all of a sudden she needs some marketing help.

She’s good at networking; she’s got good contacts.  She’s professional, she has a good reputation, she’s got a team that works for her. I’ve really encapsulated who I want to ring me who is the ideal person that I want to get business from. Helen is my ICA.

And then I’ve got something called target customer. Target customer is a little bit different because Helen is just that one person, the ideal person who I want to ring me and buy my product or engage and work with.

Target customer is a bit different because quite often I’ll say to people, “Who’s your target customer?” and they’ll go, “Oh, everybody, everybody”.  It could be everybody, but actually, really, it’s not everybody. Even though you might think it…I could say any business or businessperson could be my ideal target customer. But, no they’re not, we really have to hone down and think about who that is.

So, you might have lots of different people, but we need to put them in categories. So, think of little boxes, you might categorise them into gender, you might categorise them into age groups, industry for example.

It might be based on geographic location, it might be UK wide, it might be specific cities, or it might be Cumbria.

So, once you’ve really thought about those different groups of people that you’re targeting, it makes it so much easier because then you know, who you need to speak to with your marketing.

So, if my target customer is over sixty, for example, then I know that social media potentially isn’t going to be the right way to target them, e-newsletters, potentially isn’t going to be the way to target them. Then you have to think outside the box and how am I going to reach that target audience?  Could it be through, press articles in the local newspaper?  They’re more likely to buy the local newspaper.  Could it be through a flyer through their door?   So once you really think about who you’re targeting, you can then work out, if the marketing that you’re doing is appropriate to that target audience.

So, ICA is your ideal client; the person that you want to pick the phone up to.

Your target customer is different groups of people and the marketing that you do, relates specifically to each of those different groups, so you might have different messages and different things you say to those people.

So, the first thing that you need to do is think about target customer.  Really define who your target customer is.

Tip 2: Key Messages

The next thing you need to think about is your key messages.

Again, the things that you say to these different people are really important, and what a lot of people don’t do is think about the key things that they want to be telling their clients.

I want you to think about what makes you special? What are your ‘unique selling points’ USP?  What makes you different from everybody else? What makes me different from other marketing consultants?  What makes you different from other web designers? Or what makes you different from other care workers, or aromatherapists, whatever it is and think about what problems you solve? How can you help your client? What are the things that are issues for them?

Think about the five things that make you really stand out.

The other thing that I do, is think what makes me different and unique? What are your core values, your passions, not just about your work and the business, but about you too?

Tip 3: Marketing Aims

The third thing to think about is your marketing aims.

We all have a bit of an idea where our business is heading and what we want to achieve in business, but have you ever thought specifically about your marketing aims? And again, people think, ‘Ah, I just want…  I want to make more money.  I want to do more sales.’ But I want you to be a bit more specific than that.  I want you to think about what do you specifically want to achieve in marketing, and I want you to set a timescale as well.

It might be you want to improve your social media, or you want to grow your following, or you want to increase engagement and comments on social media.

You might want to raise brand awareness, so more people have heard about you. You might want to drive more traffic to your website. You might want to increase sales. You might want to get more PR in the newspaper, news stories.

When you’re a business owner, you haven’t got time to think of everything you could be doing in terms of marketing, so I want to you to pick the top three things you want to achieve with your marketing?

Raise brand awareness, so how are we going to do that? Think about the different ways that you can get your name out there.

Want to improve social media presence? So how are you going to do that? Following more people, interact with more people, get off your page, post more, turn up every day on your social media.  You know, think specifically about that.

By picking just three and not trying to do everything, can really help people that are feeling a bit overwhelmed by their marketing because let’s face it, there is so much you could do and if you try and do it all, and you try and think about doing everything you are going to feel completely overwhelmed by it.

So, just pick three things that you really, really want to do and focus on those, and that will help you really focus down, and think about what you want to achieve.

So, back to basics, have a think, Who is your target audience?  What are the key messages you are going to tell them?  And what are the three aims to help you do that?

Don’t try and do everything; we’re not superhuman, just pick three and focus on those and do them really, really well.

If you want to find out more about the basics of marketing for business and how I could help you with your marketing click here