Your website is the heart of your online marketing presence. It’s the one place on the internet over which you
Welcome to the Ultimate Marketing Strategy Plan for Small Business
You must develop a strategy before you even think about the tactics. This is the key element to make marketing effective. You must have an approach that is focused on a very specific type of client, with a very specific need or problem, and a promise to solve that problem in a very specific way.
Visit our Essential Marketing Strategies for Small Business podcast to get an audio overview of the Guide to small business marketing strategy.
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Small business marketing strategy table of contents
Understanding and choosing your Ideal client
In marketing today it’s common to hear that you must know who your target audience is in order to be effective. This implies that you determine the makeup of a market your business is most likely to attract. What if you began to think about who you like to attract - your ideal client.
- Getting Started with Defining Your Ideal Client [Podcast]
- Understanding, Narrowing, and Choosing your Ideal Client
- How to Discover Your Perfect Target Customer in 5 Steps
- Finding Your Ideal Client
- The Secret to Finding Highly Profitable Clients
- Understanding Your Ideal Client
- How to Create an Ideal Client Profile
- Attract Your Ideal Customer with Perfectly Positioned Content
Solving problems vs providing solutions
Nobody wants what you sell. They want their problems solved. Keep that in mind. Very few people want the things, the services, and the solutions that we sell.
Crafting the visual elements of your brand
The color, the fonts, the way your office looks - all of those things go into either supporting the brand promise or taking away from it. I’m not saying that you have to spend thousands and thousands of dollars on getting designs to make everything look perfect, but the elements should support what your message is. They should support who you’re trying to talk to.
- How to Build a Small Business Brand Through Design [Podcast]
- The Importance of Visual Elements in Your Brand Strategy
- Know Good Design
- Why You Need Visual Content
- What Every Marketer Should Know About Color Theory
- 20 Actionable Tips to Build a Winning Visual Brand Identity
- 3 Tips for Creating a Memorable Visual Brand Identity
Using content as the voice of strategy
Content has grown beyond just being a tactic. Content really is air. It’s the thing that powers the entire customer journey. It’s the way for us to actually create the voice of our strategy.
- Using Content As Your Voice of Strategy
- Content as an Essential Strategy
- How to Make Content the Voice of Strategy
- Content is a Verb, Content is a Strategy?
- How to Make Strategy More Than a Nice Idea
- How to Create a Content Strategy That Will Actually Drive Results
- How a Content Marketing Strategy Drive Your Bottom Line
Guiding the Customer Journey – The Marketing Hourglass
Part of your marketing strategy has to be an understanding of how you are going to guide the customer journey.
The way people buy today has changed so dramatically that we have to understand that it’s our job not to corral or create demand but to be around and organize the behavior that the buyer actually wants to participate in.
- The Marketing Framework That is a Must For Your Business
- How to Build Your Marketing Hourglass
- How to Develop Content for Every Stage of the Customer Journey
- 7 Steps of the Content Hourglass
- How to Guide the Customer Journey
- Use the Marketing Hourglass to Examine the Customer Journey
- Guiding the Customer Journey
People in professional services need to be good at what they do, but their audience hopes that’s a given. Sometimes even the best of the best have a hard time growing their business because they are so focused on the services they provide, they just don’t dedicate time to the growth of their company (or simply don’t know where to start to do that).
Full table of contents
Solving Problems
People don’t want what you sell – they want what they believe they will get, dodge, or acquire based on buying what you sell. Your job as a marketer is to understand the problems your audience is trying to solve and match your solutions to them.
- Keys to Business Growth for Professional Services
- Why You Must Address Problems Before You Can Offer Solutions
- Why You Must Refocus Your Message on Problems Not Solutions
- 5 Questions That Will Lead to Market Domination
- The Best Business Marketing Blogs
- Focus Your Brand Marketing on Problem Solving, Not Demographics
Must-have website elements
As a professional services provider, your website should be your most valuable marketing asset and the hub of all of your marketing efforts. It needs to act as an actual tool for your business and work as a lead generating machine.
- Must-Have Website Elements for Professional Services
- 7 Must-Have Elements of Every Small Business Website
- Why the Majority of Websites Fail
- Why Your Website Needs a Storyteller Instead of a Designer
- How to Build a Powerful Website for Professional Service Providers
- How to Get the Professional Services Website You Want
- Must Have Features for Your Business Website
Content for lead generation
Instead of focusing on building an endless supply of leads, you should only be focusing on the amounts you actually need as well as how to balance bringing new customers in, and keeping new customers around.
- Perfecting Your Lead Generation Efforts: A Guide for Service Professionals
- How to Create a Content Lead Generation System
- Lead Generation - A Complete System
- How to Use Content to Generate a Steady Flow of Leads
- Using Content Upgrades for Lead Generation
- 20 Types of Lead Generation Content to Put Behind Your Landing Pages
- 4 Ways to Make Your Videos for Lead Generation More Successful
- 9 Ways to Generate Qualified Leads with Content Marketing
Perfecting your follow-up
A customer generating system doesn’t have to be that complex, it simply needs to be based on your overall growth needs and goals.
- How to Perfect Your Lead Generation Follow-Up
- Follow-Up is the Momentum-Building Power Tool
- Keys to Follow-Up for Professional Services
- Effective Marketing for Professional Services
- Lead Generation is Only Half the Battle - How to Master the Sales Follow-Up
- The 3 Simple Sales Follow-Up Systems You Can Put in Place Now
Creating a remarkable customer experience
Everyone talks about creating a great customer experience, but few people really deliver on.. Creating an exceptional customer experience is pretty simple really, as long as you pay attention.
- How to Create the Ultimate Customer Experience
- The Marketing Framework That Is a Must for Your Business
- Creating Memorable Moments for Your Customers
- How to Attract Customers and Keep Them Forever
- Begin with the Customer Experience in Mind
- How to Create a Remarkable Customer Experience
- What is Customer Experience? (And Why It's So Important)
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How to Put Your Website At the Center of All Your Marketing
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