In the early stages of a business, marketing is crucial. The key is to find the right balance between a reasonable budget and success. Fortunately, this is possible thanks to digital marketing and digital advertising.
The 4 pillars of marketing are:
Your Product or Service - and do people want to buy it?
Your Price Point - are you budget, middle range, luxury?
Place/Distribution - where you are going to sell? How will you get your product or service to your client/customer/consumer?
Promotion/Advertising - how will you tell people about your product or service?
The two biggest advantages to investing in digital advertising campaigns are cost efficiency and measurable results (as opposed to traditional advertising methods such as print or TV advertising).
When setting up a promotional campaign, define the target audience, budget, and a realistic conversion rate. Again, if you need help, think about outsourcing for Google Ads or social media campaigns.
Consider the 5 M's of Advertising:
Mission - goals and objectives of your ad
Money - how much you will spend
Message - what do you want to say
Media - where will you place your ad
Measurement - how will you evaluate the ad results
Digital promotion provides you with valuable feedback to inform your Marketing Plan: who is looking at your ads, where do they come from, which products are attracting more clicks or conversions than others. Many companies fail because of an inefficient marketing plan that fails to understand their customers and their price points. You need to know the products your customers actually want to buy and how the product will reach the customer.
Awareness is key
With traditional promotion avenues it can be hard to measure effectiveness, digital marketing provides you with information to allocate funds to your most effective channels and effective content. Traditionally marketing was 2-5% of revenue for B2B and 5-10% for B2C, with smart digital promotions, the savvy marketer can reach more clients for less cost AND have more measurable results.
Some external factors that negatively affect a business are unavoidable, but there are many internal factors business owners can act upon to prevent failure. The first two years are critical to creating a perennial business. So, stay on top of your marketing budget and don’t become a statistic!
If you would like help creating plans for your business, give me a call.