Monday, August 15, 2011

Marketing Strategies

In today’s generation, the buzz is all about social media.  Marketing is crucial to the success and growth of any business, ministry or organization.  Whether you are starting a home-based business or maybe you have a storefront business or maybe you have a level-marketing business; marketing is important no matter what product or service you are offering.
What is marketing?  It is basically advertising or informing others that you have a product or a service to offer.  It’s letting others know that you can solve their problems.  Well how will others know about you unless you make yourself known to the public?  Well let’s talk about some of those strategies to get your business in front of potential customers.
Facebook, Twitter, Blogging, Websites, LinkedIn, YouTube are some of the most popular sites that a lot of people are using.  Although I have accounts with all these social media sites, I never used to use them.  One day a lady called me about my publishing company and I asked her, “how did she hear about me.”  She stated, “my blog.”  It was then that I realized that I needed to be consistent with what I was doing online. 
I will speak further about social media on my next blog; but for now I want to speak about the printing marketing material.  Business cards, brochures, flyers, and rack cards are still necessary to growing your business.  As a business owner and entrepreneur, we must meet the demands and accommodate to where are customers are.  Yes, social media is the happening thing, but printing your marketing material is just as imperative.  All of your customers are NOT online and you will miss a large percentage of your potential customers if you do not have printed marketing material as well as an ONLINE presence.
Make sure your material clearly defines your product/service and the verbiage is plainly articulated on your marketing material.  You want to make sure that people can clearly articulate what your business offers.  Remember, people are busy and don’t have time to decipher what you do.  Let your customers know what problem you can solve for them and how they can reach you.  Wording is just as important as the design and the paper stock.  It all speaks to your business.
We’ll go into this a little further on our next blog.  Sign up for our workshop “Building Your Business Beyond a Hobby” Saturday, October 8, 2011 – 10:20am – 2:30 pm.  Visit: www.karenmpresley.com for more details