Squeeze All The ‘Marketing Juice’ From Your Actions

Are you wasting money by not getting the biggest bang from your marketing time and money?

In talking to a retainer client in another part of the country recently, we happened to casually be informed about his offline marketing plans which included becoming a member of a local business association, setting up a logo-branded tent at the association’s monthly outdoor event, and decking his team in branded t-shirts to hand out pens and meet the local community.

We learned of this event with only a week to capitalize on it for his online marketing and reputation marketing.

As a business owner— no, as an entrepreneur— anytime you do anything bigger than sneezing, let your marketing coach and consultant know about it. Why?

If you’re investing time and/or money on anything to do with marketing, or expanding, or hiring, or training, or advertising, or capital improvements, or changing locations, or making a video, or purchasing a bigger business vehicle, or taking on a new line, or expanding your list of services, or getting new furniture in your reception area, or … (well, hopefully you are getting the picture!) then you should be letting your marketing firm know about it.

Why?

ROI

[I enjoy three-letter sentences, don’t you?]

Do you like getting a 3-fold Return On Investment for your marketing dollars? Wouldn’t 7-fold be better? How about 10-fold? Or much more?

How?  [another one]

Because today, the best form of marketing other than ‘word-of-mouth’ is to show up when people are searching for a business that does what you do. Be there—get found when prospects are looking for you!

If only the NSA (!)  knows what you’re doing to improve your business or serve your clients better (unless the NSA is one of your clients!) then you are not keeping your name, presence and links to your sites in the front of people’s minds and on the front pages of the search engines.

How do you show up? You build a presence, a valid presence of relevant content that Google and its users want to know about.  Content that proves that your company is the best answer to their search.

What online tools can you use to build that presence? You can…

• Position your news on a back page (or the front page!) of your website
• Post and link to your news on all social media, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
• Proclaim your news on your blog inside your website and/or on your Blogger or other offsite blog location
• Press release your news and spread it both online to the world, and offline to local media
• Pass along your news in emails and direct mail to your client and prospect lists (you DO have these lists, right?)
• Publish your news on Craigslist
• Produce a quick promotional video to announce your news
  • And put the video on a back page (or front page) of your website
  • And post it on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and all sorts of other social media
  • And then blog about your video!
  • And press release it
  • And share it with your lists
  • And announce it on Craigslist…

[Ahhh, a pattern emerges….]

Trust me, all these things (and more that we haven’t listed….) make Google take notice of your business and push you up in the search engine rankings. More prospects will find you, and if your marketing is good, some will become clients.

And remember, all are coming to you, without cold calling or expensive advertising!

Of course, you can hire or have a marketing agency on retainer to get all the above ‘Done For You’ (DFY). A good agency can even get your news posted on international authority sites that can bring your business huge credibility, and help manage and market your reputation.

Either way, don’t keep your business activities a secret from your marketing ‘team’.  Capitalize on the actions you are already taking, and squeeze ALL the marketing juice you can from them. It can pay off in big ways…