One of the questions I often get asked is, “How can I better market my business?”
10 Things You Can do to Market Your Business
- Remove obstacles stopping customers from giving you money – How can someone buy your product or service? How many clicks does it take? How many forms do they have to fill out? How many emails do they have to respond to? How many phone calls or in-person meetings does it take? Ask yourself why you’re making it so hard for someone to give you money and then think about the ways you can make it easier on them.
- Lower the risk involved in choosing your company – How can you make is so the client literally feels foolish for not choosing you? Are you showing ROI? Are you providing testimonials? Do you have examples of your work? Are you using a SSL certificate? Do you have trust icons in place? Remove all hesitations to the sale.
- Start with value and prove value or savings – How does your product or service move the customer closer to pleasure or farther from pain? How does it provide value (ie. give back more than what it costs)? What case studies do you have to show this value? What videos do you have to show the value? Do you even have a brochure? Pictures?
- Start with the familiar (Think “Cover songs”) – If this is the first time someone has seen your product or website, they are going to latch onto anything that looks familiar. That’s why symbols like “As seen on NBC and Huffington Post” as well as trust symbols like “Trusted by McAfee” are so important. It’s the difference between starting your set with an original instead of cover song.
- Be consistent – waffles are delicious, but nobody likes a waffler. McDonalds is a force to be reckoned with because they are always the same. Seth Godin’s blog is so powerful because you know he’s going to post everyday. While pivoting can be good, it’s not something you should do every day. People crave consistency and it helps to sell. Marketing supports the selling process.
- Be transparent – show your processes as much as you can. People now expect it and when you don’t it makes it look like you’ve got something to hide. Your picture should be on your website and marketing materials. No stock photography! “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
- Email marketing – nothing converts higher than email marketing, but you’ve got to actually do it. Reading top 10 lists like this is easy. Collecting email addresses and consistently sending out weekly or monthly emails is not. Thankfully there are systems that can automate some of this for you, but it doesn’t do all of it. You’ve got to want to grow your business. This is one of the best ways.
- Social proof – famous marketer, Gary V says “social media is the Internet” and while that’s not entirely true, his point is still valid. Go where the people are. They may not be on your website, but they are on social media. And the more Likes, Followers, or Loves you get is social proof to customers that buying from you is probably a smart thing to do.
- Video marketing – Youtube’s been out for a while now, but there’s even better options now for marketers such as Wistia which can work in conjunction with your email marketing to get more opt-ins or conversions. Like email marketing, the key here is to just do it. It’s not as hard as it once was, but there is still a big fear of video that a lot of people have trouble overcoming. Start small. Get going. You can delete your old, bad stuff once you get better.
- Measure what matters – candy metrics like unique visitors do not likely matter to your business. What matters are conversions, email signups, and sales. What are you tracking? It matters. What you ask about leads both your mind and your employees down a path so it better be the path you want to be on. If you’re not on the right path, turn the ship around, Captain.