Do you ever feel like you’re constantly running around, trying to get your marketing materials put together and out the door? Are you frazzled by the marketing process, and driving your writer, designer, or printer absolutely nuts? Is your “plan” to just pick one new idea every now and then to implement? Or are you constantly hopping on the latest marketing idea, and throwing away your time and money with your efforts?You’re not alone; most small businesses have the same approach to marketing. The result is marketing that’s not cohesive; it’s marketing using the “push-and-pray” method – you just create marketing pieces here and there, and then hope for new clients and sales to come rushing in. When you’re busy, you just forget or put off your marketing entirely; then, when you finish all of your client projects, you panic, push out some new marketing materials, and hope for the best.
The answer to push-and-pray marketing is to plan your marketing in advance: to sit down and create a Marketing Machine so that your marketing runs smoothly and effortlessly all year long. Creating a year-round plan for marketing can really improve the number of sales that you’ll be able to make, and keep a steady stream of clients and income coming in. There are several things to consider when creating your Marketing Machine:
Consistency and repetition are two of the most important things to planning your marketing. Experts say that you have to make 6 to 12 “first” impressions on a potential client before you’ll be remembered. So make sure to set up your Marketing Machine to include many marketing pieces per year, evenly distributed throughout the year (see “Timing,” below) and presented in many different ways (see “Format,” below).
You should also make sure to have consistent and repetitive copy and design elements throughout your materials. Using some of the same text selling points across all of your marketing materials helps increase memorability. And making sure the look-and-feel of your materials is also consistent, with a well-designed and well-established Visual Vocabulary, will make the pieces of your Marketing Machine look like a well-planned, professional, and unified set, instead of a disjointed mess, just slapped together.
Format is the way that you’re delivering your marketing materials. Marketing can be presented in many formats:
Printed materials, like stationery, brochures, postcards, and datasheets
Online materials, like your website
Digital materials, like Word templates, email signatures, and PDF files
Written materials, like articles and press release
Meeting and presentation materials, like PowerPoint presentations, presentation folders, proposal covers, and leave-behind materials like brochures or other marketing pieces.
Follow-up materials, like eZines or online newsletters, offline newsletters, sales letters, and thank-you cardsIt’s important to match the media that you’re marketing in to your target audience to get great results from your Marketing Machine.
For example, if your audience is highly technical, marketing online is probably a good idea. But if you’re selling to people who rarely use computers, printed media would be a better ice cream filling machine factory direction to take.
Timing includes making sure that you market consistently throughout the year. But there are some other factors to consider when setting up your Marketing Machine.
creammould