Marketing & Advertising
Marketing & Advertising
Marketing and advertising are broad subjects that can easily confuse business leaders who are trying to determine the ideal strategy for their business that fits their budget.
In our experience, many businesses approach their marketing by trying out various marketing activities while taking their best guess at what is and what is not working. Many times, these marketing initiatives are selected by mimicking colleagues or competitors, or by responding to an advertising salesperson pitching their service.
Too often, business leaders approach their marketing without a plan or strategy based on proven real-world experience.
Understand Your Marketing
The best marketers in the world have real world experience. They spent their own money, they learned by doing things themselves, and they proved themselves by getting results.
If you don’t have the experience, or the time it takes to gain the experience you need to masterfully market your business, then you need to find a team who can help you.
You don’t have to be a marketing guru to successfully manage a marketing team who is working for you. But you should know how to manage your marketing team as well as employees in any department within your business.
Proving ROI
In reality, you can’t prove your return on investment (ROI) down to the penny. In fact, you will need to be comfortable with the fact that a portion of your marketing spend will support your brand development more than immediate lead generation.
So, how do you protect yourself from wasting money on fruitless marketing initiatives?
First, you need to understand the two key focuses in your marketing:
#1 Lead Generation
We all want more clients, and we want them sooner than later. Lead generation will focus on activities designed to bring in leads in the short term.
By “short term” we tend to look at a 90 day window to assess how effective a lead generation activity is performing.
#2 Branding
If your marketing initiative isn’t serving your lead generation efforts, then it better be helping to grow your brand.
To determine what is best for your brand development, you need to truly take the time to understand your market and the demographic you serve. When you do that, then you can plan out how to build and implement a marketing strategy.
Remain consistent and be frequent in your branding efforts. Starting and stopping, or one-off marketing efforts, are not generally a good idea.
The Rule of 7
In general, people need to be exposed to your brand an average of seven times before they will take action with your service or product.
Obviously, these interactions with your brand need to be of quality. And they need to be useful.
The question is, how long will it take for people to be exposed to your brand seven times? The answer depends on many variables, and you can’t take shortcuts.
Branding is More Profitable in the Longrun
The revenue you will generate from the growth of your brand will be greater than your lead generation activities in the longrun. But it won’t happen quickly.
Your marketing efforts toward branding, today, will truly take form in three to five years while continuing to grow if you do things properly.
Tips on Managing Your Brand
Always remember that it takes a lifetime to build a brand, and only one second to destroy it. Your brand is your name, and your name is everything. It’s the most valuable thing you own, and you should never compromise it.
No short-term gain is worth taking a hit to your brand.
Learn more about branding.
Understand the Value of Your Data
Whether your starting out a campaign, or you’re well established, never underestimate the value of your marketing data.
When starting out a new campaign, the first few months of data are the most valuable thing you’re buying. That data will tell you everything you need to know about how to adjust your campaigns. Your marketing data wikl give you insight as to what is working and what is not.
When you have time invested into a marketing strategy, your data is equally valuable. You can evaluate your historical data to guide your decisions while also benchmarking performance against previous periods and also comparing year by year.
Tip: Always own your own data. Do not let an outside company set up your marketing in their name, nor on a proprietary system that is unavailable to you should you choose to leave a vendor.
Successful marketing and advertising requires a combination of art and a science. To truly dominate your market, you want to rely on the guidance and expertise of a team with first-hand experience in brand growth.
Numana brings together a team of seasoned business leaders who have the first-hand experience to help you dominate your market. Our tactics have a proven track record–we built them and tested them inside thriving businesses.
Trust your business growth to a team with the guile and experience to get real results.
Can we help you reach your goals?
Schedule a free consultation to discuss your goals and how we can help you grow your business.
