The 4 Big Rocks that are Key to Building Your Marketing Foundation
A Concise Beginner’s Guide to Marketing Your Small Business
Every business no matter how large or small needs a steady stream of customers. Your leads need to be ready to purchase what you have to offer. Pulling together the right marketing system to do that can be a challenge. Especially if you are not trained in marketing or design.
The ultimate goal of any business is to make money. Customers need to be able to buy what you are selling. They need to know what it does. They need to trust you and feel confident your product or service will solve their problem. But before any customer can decide to give you a chance, they need to know your business exists!
Ok, so you have all that figured out in theory. How do you put it into action?
How do you get the right customers to stop, pay attention, and get them to buy? That is where your marketing foundation enters the game.
We’ll discuss everything you need to know about a marketing foundation and how to get your marketing started the right way.
What is a Marketing Foundation?
What is not a Marketing Foundation?
Why is your Marketing Foundation important?
What is a Marketing Foundation:
Before you start creating anything like a website, a logo, social media posts, or even a business card, stop! You need to be able to have a solid understanding of the business you want to create.
Part 1: Your Essential Marketing Strategy
What problem does your business solve?
Why are you in this business? What’s the goal?
Who do you think will benefit most from your services or products?
What makes your way of solving the problem better, different, or unique?
What’s the name of your business? It needs to help clients know who you are and what you do.
You’ll make better decisions and create much more effective marketing if you answer these questions first. This is not an extensive list but this gets the ball rolling and you thinking like a smart business owner. While strategy and planning may not seem boring or not exciting. It is where the magic happens.
Next, let’s make your business look and sound like the best solution for your clients. Establish your look and carry it through to all your marketing.
Part 2: Build Your Brand
Your look, feel, and how you speak or write about your business need to be appealing to the right people. Those people need to be excited and qualified to buy your services or products.
You will need a well-designed logo that will represent your business for years to come. Then you'll need to select fonts and colors to use to re-enforce your visual look in all your marketing
You need to be able to confidently talk about what your business does. If someone asks you what you do, you need to have a quick story to tell about them. Your answer needs to spark interest so they want to ask you another question.
Starting a professional look is an investment that will repay itself time and time again. Good design is essential. How much trust would you put into a business that looks haphazard in its appearance?
You need a home base online for your business. A professional business needs to own its domain. Running your business off social doesn’t cut it. It’s borrowed land. Social Media channels control how clients find you. You have to play by their rules.
Part 3: Build your Website
You need a well-executed website that is cohesive with your look to help people begin to remember you.
Copywriting on your website (and other marketing)is VERY important.
Focus on design and usability.
Make sure your website has a clear call to action. Tell the visitor what to do.
Websites grow and change over time. Starting with a straightforward website that can grow with you is great. Even a well-designed one-page website can work.
The last part of your Marketing Foundation is to create avenues that attract people to your business. There are many tactics and ways to do this. Not all will work for your specific business.
Part 4: Generating Leads, Turning Leads into Customers
Examples include:
Use social to give away a free sample or a guide.
Talk to people you know in your community (local or online).
Online and digital advertising including Facebook ads, Pinterest ads,
Local newspaper
Create content and share it.
There are TONS of ways to attract people to your business. Some are time intensive, some are fast, and some take time. Whatever ways you decide to get leads they need to produce a return on your investment. To grow your business, those ways need to be reliable and repeatable.
What is your Marketing Foundation is Not:
Your Marketing Foundation is not everything you will need in your business. It is where you start. Think of marketing like your house. You want to start off with the right plan, but you can always remodel it down the line.
Your Marketing Foundation is not a DIY experiment. Small businesses struggle because owners try to do everything. Most small business owners are very knowledgeable about their services and products. But they are not able to design and execute their own marketing.
Creating Your Marketing Foundation doesn’t happen in a matter of a few hours. Beware of services that say you can be running your own business in 1 day. Even if you could get it all done in a day it’s not going to be effective.
Why is your Marketing Foundation Important?
These four parts of marketing are the big rocks that you need to get in place to see real momentum in your business. Do not, I repeat, do not skip one of these four parts of marketing if you want to see real momentum in your business.
These four parts work together and overlap each other. Once you have all the parts working together you’ll be able to improve and refine them.
Your Marketing Foundation also sets you apart from freelancers and those running side businesses. You’ll have a foundation that creates a system to market your business.
Next Steps:
Building your Marketing Foundation is not a project that you should wait for years to do. Avoid stumbling through it.
Save yourself the heartache, the wasted time, and the stress of not meeting revenue goals. Instead, let’s talk through what you already have done to build your business.
We’ll identify what works well, what needs improvement, and what needs scrapping.
Book your 20-minute call to get started!
Written by: Heather Marine
Heather Marine is a professionally trained graphic designer and the owner of Elephant Mountain Creative, a marketing agency focused on small businesses and entrepreneurs. She has supported small businesses for over 17 years with strategy, branding, website development, and design.