Running a business without paying attention to your marketing is like driving a car without fuel; long term you won’t get very far. Marketing covers any and all activities dealing with selling your company’s services and products, which is no small task.
While most people view this as simply advertising, in reality, marketing covers a wide range of jobs including (but not limited to) product design, product research, consumer research, promoting, and distributing. Marketing builds awareness around your business and is responsible for increasing sales, engaging with customers, and expansion. Ultimately it ensures that your business will grow and thrive.
Here at EntrepreneursRx, we understand that marketing is about informing, equalizing, sustaining, engaging, selling, building reputations, and growing your business. We also understand that while you are an expert for your product or service, we don’t expect you to be an expert in marketing that service; which is a whole other game of its own.
With this in mind, let’s talk about marketing and what it means to stay in your lane when it comes to building your business. More specifically how knowing your own limitations and seeking help can be the best plan for the long-term success of your business. It can even be the difference between stellar success and complete collapse.
You are an expert in your field. You have put years of blood, sweat, and tears into fine-tuning your skills that you are now looking to produce and sell. Having this experience means you know the ins and outs of your business, service, and/or product.
That being said, like most entrepreneurs, you probably don’t have much background, learning, or practice in marketing and the marketing world. We here at EntrepreneursRx don’t expect you to take on mastering the ways of Marketing on top of your current demands and expectations, but we do understand that marketing professionals, who just like you have spent years fine-tuning their skills (marketing), can help your business grow, prosper, and thrive. Staying in your professional lane means seeking the help and knowledge of such professionals in order to help your business reach its full potential.
While some Entrepreneurs may hesitate to hire a professional marketer, let’s look at key reasons why professional marketing is fundamental. Even the most basic and simple marketing plans have many tiers involved, including items like determining the audience, branding the service to fit that audience, research on the consumers and product, graphic design, website design and implementation, promotion, creating social media platforms and promoting said profiles, instituting brands presence, producing content, and maintaining an advertising schedule. Instead of investing your time to learn and master these skills, a trained professional can manage these areas.
- To manoeuvre your business through the intricate, ever-changing marketing realm, interpret the vast strategies available and make wise recommendations
Modern marketing is comprised of a multitude of strategies. There are hundreds of platforms, tools, skills, and methods to be considered when putting together a marketing campaign. Hired professional marketers are not only experts in manipulating and working through all these strategies, they have the knowledge of what strategy/strategies will be most efficient and effective for you and your businesses goals.
2. To generate material that will establish authority within your industry
This type of content marketing can be very complex and require a lot of time and understanding. Putting the right content out there will establish a company’s authority in that industry, secure customers, distribute information on your product or service, and use keywords and search engines to bring natural traffic to your company. Having the skills to generate such content requires years of training and a deep understanding that most individual business owners don’t have (and don’t want to have to manage on their own).
To create unique and interactive resources that fit your company’s goals and values
The modern marketing arena demands the use of many platforms to promote a brand or business. A good marketing plan should include a variety of (if not all) videos, tutorials, podcasts, live streams, animations, info-graphics, on top of written work such as articles and whitepapers. Professional marketers have the skills and access to the software to produce such resources.
3. To accurately represent your brand on social platforms
A marketing professional/team also understands how to promote your brand socially. Social media promoting involves understanding and manipulating platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter, as well as monitoring engagements within those platforms, engaging with your business’s audiences (feedback, complaints, questions), and keeping track of all the activity on these accounts.
4. To grow your brand and website ideas
In order for a business to excel, it must have a brand presence and a thoughtfully designed website. Many elements go into play when considering your site such as understanding and focusing on your audience and their preferences, type of service and product, the industry in general, as well as the competition, and the company’s vision, goal, ethics, and overall message.
5. To examine and evaluate the engagement activity of the campaigns
Today’s modern marketing strategies are dynamic in that they are constantly evolving. While a marketing campaign may start out one way, down the road it could need to be modified, based on a number of factors, in order to be even more effective. The only way to know how successful your campaigns are is through regular analytics. This includes monitoring website activity and social media interactions. While being just another aspect of marketing a business, it is a complex and time-consuming one that can ensure the long-term success of your marketing campaign. Professional marketers are trained in analyzing and researching this activity to make your campaigns the most successful they can possibly be.
6. To save you time and money
The importance of saving you time and (long-term) money cannot be overlooked. No Google DIY “self-marketing” article can ever provide the same amount of training, skill, and experience that professional marketers possess. On top of this, marketing professionals have connections and networks that make maneuvering through the marketing process much easier and efficient. While upfront it may seem daunting to hire a professional marketer, the time, money, effort, and sanity you will save yourself in the long run is well worth it.
7. To save your sanity and allow you to excel at what you do best
One of the worst things an entrepreneur can do is to spend any amount of time doing things that are frustrating and out of their realm of expertise when there are so many things that they could attend to with real success. Staying in your lane, admitting when you need help, and seeking those qualified in those areas is a sign of strength, not weakness. Can your business really afford for you to have a highly accomplished, experienced Thoroughbred jockey drive your expensive Formula 1 racecar?
Now that we have established the benefits of hiring a professional marketer, let’s talk about the criteria you should consider when selecting the best fit for you and your company. When searching for a marketing company there are some key factors you need to consider.
First, you want to consider that team’s experience. While you want a company with some background on your product/service, you also want an agency that personalizes its approach to what will be the best means to promote your business, not the easiest way. In order to assure this individualized approach, the next thing to consider is can they deliver.
A good strategy to determine this is to ask for other plans the agency has previously executed. Looking over the agency’s past campaigns from A to Z along with the results (success/failure) of the campaign can reassure them that they are capable of marketing your business successfully.
Making sure the agency understands you, your business, and the combined vision is key to a successful marketing relationship. This refers back to the People Pillar of EntrepreneursRx and hiring people. You don’t want to dive into a working relationship with a professional marketer until you feel confident that they are willing to learn about your business’s goals, vision, ethics, and overall personality. Remember this is someone you want to have a long-term business relationship with; they need to understand your needs to make sure they can fulfil them.
You also need to consider if this is someone you can get along with and have good chemistry with. This includes their ability to communicate with you. If you struggle to communicate, it will be very difficult for them to understand your vision and create the plan your business needs. The more genuine the relationship, the more positive results for the success of your business.
Next, you’ll want to consider that marketing company’s availability. While you want someone experienced, you also want to make sure that they have time for you and your business. Consider how many other companies they are working with at the time and if they will be able to work at your convenience, not at theirs. Fees will also help you determine the right professional for you, remember that while someone less experienced may have a lower fee, they may take double the time to complete the same task as a more experienced professional will. For this reason, basing your decision primarily on fees is also not the best approach to take it is just another aspect to consider.
Lastly, you’ll want to look over the agency’s reviews and references. It will give you insight as to how that company has worked with previous employers on topics already discussed like the relationship, quality of service, and results.
Having covered all the basics of what marketing professionals are capable of doing for you and your business, we hope you see that staying in your lane when it comes to marketing your business will bring the most long-term success.
Marketing will take the business that you have spent years dreaming about, creating and perfecting to the next level and beyond. The right marketing team will create a plan for your business that will inform and engage your audience, increase sales, grow your business, and of course, sustain it for the long-term success you have always envisioned.
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