The marketing game is tough. Perhaps tougher than ever in this day and age.
Every successful brand has a strong online presence and a team of experts to ensure their campaigns go as smoothly as possible.
This means a lot of new entrepreneurs are at a disadvantage when their brand is only starting out.
With limited resources and no manpower, how can you enter the market?
We’re here to tell you that even alone, you can have plenty of impact on your audience, and it could be easier than you think.
Simple Marketing Strategy
All the best marketing endeavours have solid foundations on which they’re built. Especially when you’re a one-person-show, making a fool-proof plan on how you’ll tackle marketing can make or break you. What you need is a simple to follow, but well thought out marketing plan. Think of it as a roadmap. It needs to contain your social media posting schedule, any events you want to attend and when, possible networking opportunities, promotions and so on.
This document will be something solid to rely on as you tackle marketing on the fly.
Focus on Priorities
While making a marketing strategy, it is important to know your goals and aims. What do you want to achieve this week? Or this month? Marketing helps spread awareness about your brand, and depending on what you prioritise, your roadmap will look differently.
Realise what your brand currently needs – growth, awareness, bigger sales, etc. Each of these requires a different approach, so prioritising will help you make fewer mistakes when it comes to making decisions. As a one-person marketing team, you won’t able to implement everything you want, so knowing exactly what you need and when will save you time and resources.
Get Professional Advice
The market nowadays can get extremely competitive and difficult for solo brand owners. Which is why having a mentor, or a person who can lend you a hand every once in a while goes a long way, or hire BeFound SEO in Dublin. Networking and collaborations can help you acquire many new connections that can teach you the ropes of good marketing.
Consider even one-time hiring a professional for a crash course. They can tailor the strategies and techniques to your brand’s needs and market.
Make the Most out of Social Media
Social media is your best friend, whether or not you have a marketing team. Nowadays, a brand benefits the most through YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Social media allows you to engage with the audience and make your brand more approachable. By posting varying content on each different platform, you’ll give the audience a reason to follow every account and look out for updates – out of sheer interest.
You can feature discounts, promotional materials, organise meet-ups and so much more. The only thing to be mindful of is the cautiousness with which you approach social media. One wrong tweet or post can send your brand plummeting, so do careful research before deciding on what to post where.
Automate and Get Scheduling
While on the topic of social media, it’s important to emphasise the significance of automating. Since you’ll be pressed for time with your marketing strategies, it’s good to have some software tools that can do the legwork for you, such as mass e-mails, for example.
You can write a batch of blog posts during one day, and then scheduling them so that one is posted every day. In the same vein, you can schedule email newsletters and your social media posts. This step will help in the long run, as you won’t be forced to take a day or two off work to update your online content.
Connections and Networking
The best thing for any budding company and brand is for its owner to network as much as they can during the starting stages. Good connections are a big step in the right direction, as other brand owners can help propel yours in some way.
Whether through collaborations, joint booths at trade fairs, attending the same meet-ups or offering benefits for each other’s customers. Organise giveaways or workshops together to maximise your outreach. Knowing the right person at the right time can do so much good for your brand that it should be on the top of your list of marketing to-dos.
Optimise Content for Keywords
Online, content is king. People find your brand on Google through quality content, which is why you should optimise it to better implement your keywords. Choose longer texts formatted clearly for online reading. Google considers longer texts more thorough and is more likely to recommend them.
Similarly, you should devise tempting calls to action that will keep them on your website. It is important to know who your target audience is, what kind of content they want/need, and how to draw them in. It will take some target demographic research, but you will have a better footing with content marketing.
Collaborate
A cheap, yet very useful way to draw in your audience and give your brand recognition is through collaboration. For example, you can write guest posts on other, more influential blogs. Guest posts can reach a much larger audience, and give credence to the brand’s quality, since bloggers want only the best content for their audience, and the readers know that. Similarly, you can team up with influencers on social media.
Finding influencers who can represent your brand makes for a strong word-of-mouth that guarantees a very big outreach. Having them review your brand in some way will go a long way, as their fans are more likely to trust brands influencers themselves trust.
To Summarise
Marketing for one doesn’t necessarily have to be difficult. It certainly doesn’t mean you’ll have to do the work of a whole team of people, staying overnight and losing sleep over analytics.
What this one-person-show means, is that you will have to work smarter.
Learn from seminars and online courses, work with the masters of the industry, never stop networking, and automate as much of your process as you can.
Find an angle where you can represent the brand to the best of your abilities, because being alone in this game can actually be your strongest point.
It shows bravery and adaptability, and it’s something any audience will understand and respect.