Successful marketing always equals successful business. Everyone has heard of the old adage “build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door”, except that era of business is long gone. Market a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door is more like it. We harp on this all the time with every client: successful marketing creates successful businesses. In fact, you can do other things wrong in your business, and still be successful as long as you have successful marketing.

This is pretty easy to understand. If you promote your business, you’ll be successful. But successful marketing (as opposed to the unsuccessful variety) is harder to do. What do you need to create successful marketing? Start with a strategy!

Strategy is where you are and where your business is headed. Tactics are how you’re going to get where you want to go. Strategy is critical and it involves research first and then insight from that research. If you are considering expanding your business into a new area, do some research. Interview your customers or potential customers and ask them whether they’d buy your new product or utilize your new service. Understand where they spend their time (both at work and away) and what motivates them to buy that type of product and service.

Successful marketing starts with a good strategy.

Successful marketing also includes execution of that strategy. It does your business no good to have a marketing plan, start it and then fail to complete it because you got busy doing the actual business that you’re in. Yes, you’re busy, so that’s why you need to lean on marketing professionals to help you. You need to lean on your team to help you.

Marketing is an investment in business success. It’s not an expense item (although you CAN expense it), it’s investing in the future success of your business. The success you have now is a result of your prior efforts. Marketing keeps successful businesses going by fueling future growth.

Successful marketing execution involves following your plan. If you committed, say, to developing a content plan for your business to boost your search results, you can’t start to write content and then fall off the wagon six months into the program.  If you committed to posting on your social channels every other day, or publishing an email twice per month, you have to keep at it. Consistency is key.

Successful marketing involves analysis.

Marketing is part art and part science. The only way we really know if something works is to live by the data. Try something, and then analyze its success. If it works, do more of it. If it doesn’t, modify one thing about it – you could change your message, you could change your timing or even your media/channel – and test it again.  Rinse and repeat until you find the magic that works for your business.

Analysis and modification of your marketing tactics is critical for successful marketing.

Using unsuccessful marketing, you can simply stab in the dark at things and wonder why they didn’t work, abandon all efforts and then complain about business. Who wants that?

The important thing to know is that what defines success for your business and how you get there is different than another business. Each organization – and its customers – are unique. Working with clients in the same industry we know that they may share the same customer base, and many things should be the same between them, but the businesses’ own unique facets – new product development schedule, brand and message, even the involvement of the business founder in marketing – has a big impact on what works well for that business.

Foundational elements of successful marketing:

Identify what you know you can handle and hire a trusted consultant to help with the rest.

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